Laurell Hamilton - Skin Trade

“Anita, you still there?” Edward asked.

“Give me a minute to find some privacy.”

I opened the door leading down and closed it behind me. I was standing at the head of stone steps that led down and down. I kept one hand on the wall as I started down. High heels were not meant for these steps. Hell, they seemed carved for something that didn’t walk quite like a human being at all. Something bigger than a person, with different legs maybe.

“Vittorio wouldn’t have come back to St. Louis,” I said.

“Probably not, but you know better than most vampire hunters that the vampires have other resources.”

“Yeah, I’m Jean-Claude’s human servant, so Vittorio could have one, too.”

“Hell, Anita, he could have humans with just a couple of bites. You know that once a vampire uses its gaze on someone and does the whole bite thing, they’ll do anything for their master.”

“I wouldn’t sense a human with a few bites on them. They hit the radar as just human.”

“So, yeah, I think you’ve been spied on. I’d tell you not to come, Anita, but I know you won’t listen.”

I stumbled on the steps and had to catch my balance before I said, “You honestly would tell me to stay home on this one? You, who are always inviting me out to hunt bigger and badder monsters?”

“This one’s made it personal, Anita. He wants your head.”

“Thanks for that imagery, after my little present this morning.”

“I said it on purpose, Anita. You’re like me now; you’ve got people you love, and you don’t want to leave them. I’m just reminding you, like you remind me, that you really do have a choice. You can sit this one out.”

“You mean stay safe in St. Louis while the rest of you guys hunt this bastard?”

“Yes.”

“And you can tell me, honestly, that you wouldn’t think less of me for playing it that safe?”

He didn’t answer for so long that I was almost at the blind corner turn at the halfway point of the stairs. I didn’t prompt him. I just listened to him breathe and concentrated on my heels on the uneven stones.

“I wouldn’t blame you for staying home.”

“But you would think less of me,” I said.

He was quiet. “I’d try not to.”

“Yeah, and the rest of the cops who already think I’m a girl, and that I’m sleeping with vampires, and that I’m sleeping around with other cops, they wouldn’t think less of me?”

“Don’t get yourself killed because of pride, Anita. That’s a guy reason to die. You’re a girl; think like a girl for once.”

“Edward, if they’ve been watching me in St. Louis, I may not be safe here, either.”

“Maybe, or maybe he’s luring you out, Anita. Maybe he would have come back to St. Louis for you, but with all the people Jean-Claude has around him he couldn’t get to you.”

I walked around the corner, thinking about that. “Shit, I hope you’re wrong about that.”

“You knew it was a trap, Anita.”

“Yeah, but knowing Vittorio is throwing down the gauntlet in Vegas is one thing. Believing that he’s picked somewhere far away so I’ll be away from Jean-Claude and his guards is… frightening.”

“Good, I want you scared on this one, because you should be.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means Vittorio has been watching you, or having someone else do it. He sent the head on a day you’d be there. He sent it early in the morning before your vampire lover will be awake, so no one can tell you to take guards, or not to go. In St. Louis, if Jean-Claude is still down for the day, you’re in charge.”

“We’ve been working really hard at making me more human servant and Jean-Claude more master.”

“Yeah, so hard that you’ve moved into the Circus with him. The other marshals don’t think much of you shacking up with the master of your city.”

“Prejudiced bastards.” I was at the big cell-like door that led into the underground proper.

“I also heard that Jean-Claude and your boyfriends have come out of the closet. I take it that the idea that Jean-Claude is fucking you and your boyfriends was to explain why he was letting you fuck other men.”

“We told the vampire community that, not the marshals. How do they know all this?”

“You aren’t the only one who’s a little close with their local vampires, Anita.”

“I’ve met your local vampires, and I know that you are not talking to Obsidian Butterfly. She’s so scary that the worldwide vampire community has made Albuquerque, New Mexico, off limits.”

“I live in Santa Fe.”

“Yeah, and it’s still too close to Obsidian Butterfly and her group. It’s why you have to travel out of state to hunt vampires; your local master is too scary to share.”

“She thinks she’s an Aztec goddess, Anita. Gods don’t share.”

“She’s a vampire, Edward, but she may actually be what the Aztecs worshipped under her name.”

“She’s still a vampire, Anita.”

“I don’t like the tone in your voice, Edward. Promise me if you ever get a warrant of execution against her or any of her vampires that you’ll let me come help.”

“You’d have flown to Vegas without me.”

“Maybe, or maybe getting a human head in a box was weird even for me. Maybe I am afraid of Vittorio, and I don’t like running into a trap like some rabbit. Maybe I just hadn’t had time to think to call you.”

“That’s a lot of maybe s, Anita.”

“I may lose the phone signal if I go any farther underground, Edward, but I have to pack, so…”

“It’s a shorter flight for me to Vegas, so I’ll see you on the ground.”

“Edward,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Do you really think Vittorio planned me to have to fly to Vegas before Jean-Claude could be awake to argue with me, or make me take guards?”

“I don’t know, but if he did plan it this way, then he’s afraid of your guards. He’s afraid of you with Jean-Claude. He’s afraid of you with all your shapeshifter friends. But he’s not as afraid of you on your own.”

“I won’t be on my own,” I said.

“No, you won’t be,” he said.

“I don’t mean just you, Edward. Vittorio killed police officers. I don’t think he understands how serious that can be.”

“We’ll explain it to him,” Edward said, voice gone empty of accent, empty of almost anything. It was the voice that he used when he was at his most deadly.

“Yes,” I said, “we will.”

Edward hung up.

I hung up and went through the door into Jean-Claude’s living room.

TWO OF MY lovers were dead in the bed that we all shared. They’d be alive again later in the day, or earlier in the night, but for now, Jean-Claude and Asher truly were dead. I’d touched enough dead bodies to know that sleep does not mimic death. There is a looseness, an emptiness, to the dead that not even coma can imitate.

I stared down at them. They lay in a tangle of white silk sheets. Jean-Claude all black curls and that beautiful face; a line less or more, and he’d have been too beautiful, too feminine, but you never looked into his face and thought girl . No, he was all male no matter how pretty he looked. It helped that he was naked on top of the sheets. Nude, there was no mistaking him for anything but oh so male.

Asher’s golden waves spilled across his face, hiding one of the most perfect profiles that had ever existed. I had some memories from the vampire who had made him: Belle Morte, Beautiful Death. She was over two thousand years old, and she still thought that his left profile was the most perfect she’d ever seen in a man. His right profile was marred, in her eyes, by the acidlike scars of the holy water that the Church had used to try to burn the devil out of him. The scars didn’t take up that much of his face, just from midcheek to chin on one side. His mouth was still as kissable, his face still had that heartrending beauty, but to Belle, the scars had covered everything.