Skin Trade

I sat in the back of the squad car musing on what it meant to have a badge when your job description hadn’t changed. We were assassins. Legal, government-sanctioned assassins. Some of us tried to be good marshals, but in the end, the other marshals saved lives, and all we did was take them. In the end, all the badges in the world didn’t change what we were and what we did. I rode through the darkened city until light hit and I saw the Strip rising over the buildings like some force of nature glowing against the night. We weren’t headed that way, but I knew it was there, like being able to feel the ocean even though you can’t see it.

Thomas drove us away from the bright lights, and that was about how I felt tonight, like I was getting pushed further from the light, further from what it meant to be human, further from who I thought I was and who I thought I’d be. I sat in the back letting Edward’s and Thomas’s soft voices wash over me. They were talking shop; all cops do it. Talk about crime or women, and with me in the car, they wouldn’t do that. Edward would see to it, and Thomas would still be on his best behavior.

I sat there and let my confusion wash over me until it was a kind of depression. I didn’t know how to be a good cop and a good monster at the same time. My two worlds were begi

51

EDWARD AND I got to flash badges and go down the corridor that held the interrogation rooms, but we heard the argument from around the corner. I recognized Bernardo’s voice and that of another man. I caught words: “How do you know… You can’t let her go… Why not?”

We came around the corner to find Detective Ed Morgan arguing with Bernardo. I hadn’t realized that Morgan was a little under six feet until I saw him next to the very six feet of Bernardo. Always harder to get up in someone’s face if you have to look up at them, but Morgan was trying. Olaf was leaning against the wall, slouching so he didn’t tower over everyone, looking bored.

Morgan turned on us like a storm looking for somewhere to fall. He pointed a finger at us. “You know something that you’re not telling us about Paula Chu.”

“We just got here,” I said. “We don’t even know what the fight’s about.”

Olaf pushed himself upright and said, “They want to let the weretigers go, and Bernardo is trying to hold Paula Chu.”

Bernardo looked at us, his eyes black with anger. The bones of his face tight with it.

“But he won’t tell me why he wants to hold Chu,” Morgan said, striding down the hall toward us. Edward and I kept walking, so we sort of met in the middle. He waved a finger in Edward’s face, then mine. “And one of you told him to keep her here, but not why. Why? What are you holding back?”

The anger vibrated off him in waves. I had the thought, I could feed on that anger. I’d feel better, and the fight would be over. No, bad, Anita, bad idea. I tried to put my hands in my pockets, but had too many weapons in the way.

“Maybe it’s the fact that she was the live-in girlfriend of the weretiger that went apeshit this afternoon,” Bernardo said, coming up behind us all. Olaf trailed behind him.

“That’s not enough to hold her,” Morgan said.

“I know you can hold her for longer than this, Morgan,” Edward said.

I had an idea. “What if we make a cast of the claws on all these tigers, match them to the wounds. We can let them go after that, if you want.”

“We are not encouraging these people to shapeshift inside the police station, Blake. No way.”

“They don’t need to shift all the way, just the claws,” I said.

He frowned at me. “What?”

“I told the ME that the claw marks were those made by the very powerful shapeshifters that can just put claws out and then back down, sort of like switchblades.”

“We had the lecture on lycanthropes,” Morgan said. “The powerful have two shapes: full animal and man-animal. And once they shift, they can be overcome by a desire for fresh meat and killing. They can’t shift back for at least six to eight hours, and once they shift back, they are comatose for hours after that. I’m not setting weretigers loose in our station, when we can’t guarantee that they’d even be thinking enough like people to let us take a cast of their claws.”

“Trust me, if they can do the instant claws, then they’re thinking just fine, and only the very new lycanthropes have the overpowering need to feed right after they shift.”

“And I’m just supposed to believe you instead of our own experts,” Morgan said, disdain thick in his voice.

“She’s who I call when I’m stumped,” Edward said.

I looked at him and tried to see behind that pleasant Ted face. “Thanks, Ted.”

“It’s the truth.”

“I don’t care that you trust her. I don’t trust her. I don’t trust any of you.”

I said, trying for patience, “Your expert either hunts them or studies them academically, right?”

Morgan frowned, thought about it, then nodded. “Yeah.”

“I live with two of them. Trust me when I say that I know shapeshifters better than your expert.”

“So because you’re fucking some shapeshifters, I should just trust you?”

I smiled, but it wasn’t my happy smile, it was the one I did when I was trying not to get mad. “Yeah, actually, I know shapeshifters in ways that your expert couldn’t imagine.”

“I don’t need to hear about your kinks, Blake.”

I took that last step, invading his personal space. I stepped until either he had to back up or we’d touch. He stood his ground, so that we were a hair’s breadth apart. From any distance at all, you’d think we were touching.

Morgan blinked down at me. That blink was a nervous gesture; his tell, like in poker. He didn’t like me this close, or…

I spoke carefully, letting the anger seep into my voice. “My kinks are none of your business, Morgan. Catching this bastard is. Do you want to help me catch him, or her, or do you want to piss and moan and criticize my sex life?”

“What am I supposed to think when you tell me you’re living with two of them?”

“You’re supposed to think that I am a valuable resource of information about a little-known minority in this country, and that my insight might be invaluable to this investigation.” I spoke lower and lower, and watched him lean in to hear.

His face was almost touching mine when I finished. He had an odd expression on his face as he said, softly, “Invaluable.”

I didn’t kiss him, didn’t touch him at all, but in that moment he surrendered to me, and I fed on his anger. One breath, it was inside him; the next, it was on my skin like a warm rush of air. I closed my eyes and breathed it in, and it was good, and I hadn’t meant it.

Edward touched my shoulder and eased me back from the detective. Morgan stayed standing, staring at where I’d been, as if I hadn’t moved.

Bernardo whispered, “Your eyes.”

We heard someone behind us. Edward got his sunglasses out of his pocket and handed them to me. I didn’t ask why; the look on all their faces was enough. My eyes had gone all vampiry. I’d had it happen a time or two, but I’d always been able to feel it happen. I slipped the glasses on and realized that I hadn’t done it on purpose, but Morgan was still standing there, staring at nothing. Not knowing what I’d done to him, or how, I didn’t know how to bring him out of it. Feeding on someone’s anger had never done this before. Shit.

Bernardo started walking down the hall. “Sheriff Shaw, how you doing tonight?”

Of course, it would be Shaw. Double shit.

“Bring him out of this, Anita,” Edward whispered.

“I don’t know how.”

“Do something,” Olaf said under his breath as he moved not down the hall but to block Shaw’s view of Morgan and me. With his broad back in the way, I moved closer to the detective.