Skin Trade

Edward’s fingers dug into my arm. Dug in enough that I would have protested the pain, but it helped clear my head. A few bruises were worth it, and the moment the pain helped, I knew something else.

I whispered to him, “I’m being messed with.”

“Vampire?” He made it a question.

“Unless the white tiger queen can do shit that I’ve only seen vampires do before, yes.”

“Vamp or tiger?” he asked, voice low.

We were getting a few glances from the police officers we passed. Did they see the bruising grip, or the whispering? Or were the rumors so good that we’d just become a curiosity?

I glared at a couple of uniforms who were staring. “Like what you see?”

“Leave it, Anita.” Edward just kept us moving past them. He loosened his grip on my arm a little, and instantly I could feel the tigers behind us in the rooms. I could almost see them looking up and trying to see me.

I leaned in, and whispered, “Tighten the grip.”

“What?”

“The pain helps keep my head clear.”

He went back to bruising my arm, and we kept walking toward the doors. I could see the press of the hot, white sunlight against the doors.

“If the sunlight helps…” he said.

I said, “Then it’s vampire.”

“If it doesn’t…” he said.

“Tiger,” I said.

He didn’t even bother to say yes. We both knew what we were doing, and why. Bernardo called from behind us, “Where’s the fire?”

Edward looked behind, but I didn’t. I had my eyes on the goal of the doors. I concentrated on the pressure of Edward’s fingers on my arm and the sunlight just ahead. He called back, “We need some air.” Bernardo, and Olaf if he was with him, would know that we weren’t moving that fast for a little air. It was the shorthand of people that knew each other. They knew Edward better than they knew me, but shorthand for him in that moment worked just dandy for all of us.

Bernardo and Olaf caught up with us as we got to the outer lobby area. Victor stood up from where he’d been sitting. The moment I saw him, the tigress in me roared again, and this time the metal shield that I’d built in her path wavered like metal water. It didn’t break, but it bent.

Edward didn’t even slow, but waved Victor off, and kept us heading for the door. Bernardo had the door open and waiting for us, as if he’d picked up on the urgency. Olaf trailed after all of us, not helping but not hindering, either. Right now, I’d take not hindering.

The tigress inside me leapt onto the warped metal and began to try to climb. “Hurry,” I said.

Edward pulled me through the doors. The heat hit me first, breath-stealing, like walking into an oven. The tiger didn’t hesitate. She wanted out.

Then the light hit me, and it was like some hot, white searchlight. It slashed through a darkness that I hadn’t been able to see. A darkness that held Her. She stood in the dark and shrieked at me. But the sunlight cut her off, and all I had to fight now was the weretiger that had managed to climb my shields and was ru

I tried to put up another shield, and I couldn’t. Marmee Noir was gone for now, thrust out by the sun, but what she’d done inside me was still there. It was still crippling me.

Edward still had a light grip on my arm. “Anita, are you all right?”

“The vampire’s gone, but she’s done something to me.” The tiger was ru

“What has happened?” Olaf asked.

“I’ve got a better question, what is happening?” Bernardo asked.

If I’d had a wereleopard or a werewolf, or even a werelion, I could have distracted the tiger inside me, turned the beasts against each other, or even a tiger of a different color. I stood in the heat and the light, and I needed things that I couldn’t explain to the others.

“I can help you calm your tiger.” Victor’s voice came from behind us. He’d followed us into the light.

“I don’t think so,” Edward said.

“No,” I said. “I mean, yes.”

Edward looked at me. “Anita, he almost brought your beast earlier.”

“That was an accident,” Victor said, “but I am trained to help the females of my clan keep their human form.”

Edward drew me closer to himself. But we were out of time; the tiger was about to hit the surface of me. “Let him try, Edward, or I could be tiger for real.”

I reached for Victor, and Edward let me go, reluctantly. Victor put his hands on either side of my face, the way that Crispin had done when I’d first met him in North Carolina. Victor threw his colored glasses away, so that I gazed into those pale blue eyes, naked to the light. I fell into those eyes, and the tiger slowed inside me. It didn’t stop, but it slowed.

He lowered his face toward mine.

I sensed movement to the side and caught the tall, dark presence of Olaf. Edward stopped him from touching us. “Let him,” Edward said.

Victor kissed me. He pressed his mouth over mine. With Crispin I had forced my beast into him and brought his own tiger, but now Victor breathed his power into me. Not his beast, but his power. That skin-tingling, breath-stealing power, like nothing I’d ever felt from any lycanthrope except his own mother.

The tiger inside me paused, then started trotting again, so close, so close to being out.

Victor drew back enough to say, “You must accept my power willingly. You are too strong for me to force your beast into stillness.”

The tigress was at the surface of me, like she was gazing up from the bottom of some pool, and I was that pool. Always before the beasts had slammed into me, as if I were a solid object to tear through, but now I was water, and the tigress hesitated.

“Look at me, not your beast, Anita.” He drew my attention back to his eyes, his face.

The tigress scraped a claw down the underneath of the water that was me, and only Victor’s hands kept me standing. Always before it had hurt more, but now I knew, absolutely knew, that this new watery barrier would not hold the beast. Whatever Marmee Noir had done, she wanted me to shift. She wanted me to be tiger. I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew that anything she wanted, I shouldn’t give her.

The tiger took another pass, and I swear I felt my skin move with it. “Save me,” I whispered.

“Let me in,” he whispered back, as he pressed his mouth on mine one more time.

I wasn’t sure how to do it, so I dropped the shields to my beasts. The tigress let out a roar of triumph, in the same instant that Victor’s power smashed into her. She screamed at its touch, but the power drove her back. Victor’s power was a warm, living wind that chased her back, gently but inexorably. Then, suddenly, she was gone, and I was alone in my skin. Alone in my skin, but still wrapped in Victor’s arms.

He drew away from the kiss, but kept his arms on me, as if he wasn’t sure I could stand. Me either.

“You’re bleeding,” Bernardo said, softly.

I looked down and couldn’t see anything under the vest, but Victor had blood on the lower part of his body. “I don’t think it’s mine,” he said.

Edward moved up to block the view. “We need to get out of here.”

“You make friends too damn fast for comfort.” Hooper was there, with some of his team.

Victor whispered, “Can you stand?”

I thought about it, then nodded.

Victor stepped away from me, standing so that the cops might not see the blood on his front. I said, “Sorry you don’t like how I make friends, Sergeant.” I meant that, actually. I liked Hooper and would have liked to keep his good opinion, but… The most important thing was to get the hell away from all the other cops and see how badly I was hurt.