Skin Trade

“It is,” I said.

“Three bags, longer than you are tall, full of weapons, but only one suitcase for clothes,” Rocco said.

“Yep,” I said.

They all sort of nodded as they worked to find room for the suitcase in the back. I’d learned a long time ago that if you packed like a girl, you lost brownie points with the police. The idea was to try to be one of the guys; that meant you did not bring your entire wardrobe on a job. Besides, it was the continental United States; there’d be a mall somewhere if I ran out of clean clothes.

Hooper aka So

We pulled out, and Shaw was still standing there in his ring of uniformed officers. He’d been the one to suggest we get out of the heat, but he was still standing in it, watching me from behind his mirrored shades. I realized I’d never seen his eyes, not once. I guess, to be fair, he’d never seen mine.

“He does know we can still see him, right?” I said as we drove past.

“Yes,” Grimes said, “why?”

“Because suddenly he looks unhappy.”

“We lost men,” Grimes said.

I looked at him and found that the pleasant face had slipped a little. Some of the pain that had to be in there showed around the edges. Pain, and that thin edge of anger that we all carry around with us.

“Nothing I can do will bring them back, but I will do everything I can to kill the vampire that did it.”

“We’re about saving lives, Marshal, not taking them,” Grimes said.

I opened my mouth, closed it, and tried to say something that wouldn’t upset him more. “I don’t save lives, Lieutenant, I take them.”

Rocco said, “Don’t you believe that killing the vampires saves their future victims?”

I thought about it, then shook my head. “I used to, and it may even be true, but it just feels like I kill people.”

“People,” he said, “not monsters.”

“Once I believed they were monsters.”

“And now?” Rocco asked.

I shrugged and looked away. I was seeing a lot of empty land and the begi

“Don’t tell me the infamous Anita Blake is going soft?” This from Hooper.

Grimes said, “Hooper,” in a voice that clearly meant he was in trouble with the boss.

Hooper didn’t apologize. “You’ve told me my team is her go. I need to know, Lieutenant. We all need to know.”

Rocco didn’t so much as move or even wince; he went very still, as if he wasn’t sure what was about to happen. Just that reaction from him let me know that they didn’t question their looie much, if ever. That Hooper did it now showed just how upset they all were about the men they’d lost and the men in the hospital. That moment was Hooper’s way of grieving.

I sat beside Rocco and let the weighted silence stretch in the truck. I was going to follow the sergeant’s lead.

Grimes finally said, “You don’t learn if you can trust someone from asking questions, So

“I know that, Lieutenant, but it’s all we have time for.”

I felt tension slide out of Rocco as he sat beside me. I took that as a good sign, and waited.

Grimes looked at me. “We can’t ask if you’ve gone soft, Marshal. That would be rude, and I think you’d answer it the way any of us would: no.”

I smiled and shook my head. “I’ll kill your vampire for you, Grimes. I’ll kill anyone who helps him. I’ll kill everyone the warrant lets me kill. I’ll get revenge for your men.”

“We aren’t about vengeance,” Grimes said.

“I am,” I said.

Grimes looked down at his one big hand where it lay on the seat. He raised brown eyes up to me then, face solemn. “We can’t be about vengeance, Marshal Blake. We’re the police. We’re the good guys. Only the criminals get to do revenge. We uphold the law. Vengeance takes the law away.”

I looked at him and saw that he meant it, down to the bottom of his eyes. “That is a brave and wonderful sentiment, Lieutenant, but I’ve held people I cared about while they died at the hands of these things. I’ve seen families destroyed.” I shook my head. “Vittorio is evil, not because he’s a vampire but because he’s a serial killer. He takes pleasure in the death and pain of others. He will keep killing until we stop him. The law gives me the legal right to do the stopping. If you don’t want it to be about revenge for your men, then that’s your concern. He’ll be dead no matter whose death I’m avenging.”

“And whose death will you be avenging?” Hooper asked.

No one told him to stop this time.

I thought about it, and I had my answer. “Melbourne and Baldwin.”

“The two SWAT you lost in St. Louis,” Grimes said.

I nodded.

“Were you close to them?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Met them once.”

“Why vengeance for two men you met once?” Rocco asked it, and there was the first trickle of energy from him. He’d lowered his psychic shields just a little. Was he an empath, wanting to read how I really felt?

The truck was pulling in, and Hooper was parking. I looked into Rocco’s dark eyes, darker than the lieutenant’s. Rocco’s were so dark, they almost crossed that line from brown to black. It made his pupils hard to find, like the eyes of a vampire when its power begins to fill its eyes, all color of the iris and no pupil.

“What flavor are you?”

“Flavor of what?” he asked.

“You’re too tall to play coy, Sergeant.”

He smiled. “I’m an empath.”

I gave him narrow eyes, studying his face. His pulse had sped, just that tiny bit, some parting of the lips. I licked my bottom lip and said, “You taste like a lie.”

“I am an empath.” He stated it, very firm.

“And?” I said.

“And what?” he asked.

“An empath and…” I said.

We stared at each other in the backseat, the air growing thicker, heavier, as we peeled our shields down.

“Can we move this inside?” Grimes asked.

“Yes, sir,” Rocco said.

“Sure,” I said.

“Are you willing to have him read you?”

“Grimes said it, questions won’t tell you if I’m for real, but something tells me that the part of Rocco here that’s not empath will tell you a hell of a lot more.”

“We want to know about the last time you hunted this vampire, Marshal. Are you ready to relive that?”

I didn’t even look at Grimes; I just held that dark, steady gaze from my fellow psychic, because I knew something that the lieutenant probably didn’t know about his sergeant. Rocco was eager to try me. It was part that male instinct to see who’s the bigger dog, but it was more than that. His power was eager, as if it had an edge of hunger to it. I couldn’t think of a polite way to ask if his psychic ability fed on the memories he collected. If it did, if he could, then I wasn’t the only living vampire in Vegas.