Skin Trade

by Hamilton, Laurell K.

  “To me,” I said, and my voice sounded a little less certain of itself than I wanted it to sound. It was my turn to clear my throat.

  “Yeah, it reads, Tell Anita Blake I’ll be waiting for her.”

  “Well, that’s just . . . creepy,” I said, finally. I couldn’t think of what else to say, but there was that electric jolt that got through the shock for a second. I knew that jolt; it was fear.

  “ ‘Creepy,’ that’s the best you can do? This vampire sent you a human head. Will it mean more to you if I tell you it’s the head of our local vampire executioner?”

  I thought about that for a few breaths, felt that jolt again—somewhere between an electric shock and the sensation of champagne in your veins. “What word would make you happy, Shaw? Did he take any souvenirs from any of the other officers?”

  “You mean, did he decapitate anyone else?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I mean.”

  “No. He and his monsters killed three operators, but the bodies were not used for souvenir hunting.”

  “Operators . . . so the vamp executioner was with your SWAT?”

  “All warrants of execution are considered high risk, so SWAT helps deliver the message.”

  “Yeah, they’re talking about that in St. Louis, too.” I was still unsure how I felt about them forcing me to take SWAT on vampire hunts. Part of me was happy for the backup, and another part was totally against it. The last time SWAT had backed me, some of them died. I didn’t like being responsible for more people. Also, it was always a chore to convince them I was worthy to put my shoulder beside theirs and hit that door.

  “If our men killed any of the monsters, we don’t have any evidence to prove it. It looks like our people dropped where they stood.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I ignored it. “How long ago did all this happen?”

  “Yesterday, no, night before last, yeah. I’ve been up for a while; it starts to make you lose track.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “What the hell did you do to this vampire to make him like you this much?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe let him get away and not chase him. Oh, hell, Shaw, you know there’s no logic to these nut-bunnies.”

  “Nut-bunnies,” he said.

  “Fine, serial killers. Dead or alive they operate on a logic all their own. It doesn’t make sense to the rest of us because we’re not nut-bunnies.”

  He made a sound that I think was a laugh. “No, we’re not nut-bunnies, yet. The papers and television say you killed a bunch of his people.”

  “I had help. Our SWAT was with me. They lost men.”

  “I’ve looked up the articles, but frankly, I thought you’d take credit and not mention the police.”

  “They went in with me. They risked their lives. Some of them died. It was bad. I don’t think I’d forget that.”

  “Rumor has it that you’re a publicity sl—hound,” he said, changing the word he was going to use to something less offensive.

  I actually laughed, which was a good sign. I wasn’t completely in shock, yea! “I’m not a publicity hound, or a publicity slut, Sheriff Shaw. Trust me, I get way more media attention than I want.”

  “For someone who doesn’t want the attention, you get a hell of a lot of it.”

  I shrugged, realized he couldn’t see it, and said, “I’m involved with some pretty gruesome cases, Sheriff; it attracts the media.”

  “You’re also a beautiful young woman and are dating the master of your city.”

  “Do I thank you for the beautiful comment before or after I tell you that my personal life is none of your concern?”

  “It is if it interferes with your job.”

  “Check the record, Sheriff Shaw. I’ve killed more vampires since I’ve been dating Jean-Claude than I did before.”

  “I heard you’ve refused to do stakings in the morgue.”

  “I’ve lost my taste for putting a stake through the heart of someone chained and helpless on a gurney.”

  “They’re asleep, or whatever, right?”

  “Not always, and trust me, the first time you have to look someone in the face while they beg for their life . . . Let’s just say that even with practice, putting a stake through someone’s heart is a slow way to die. They beg and explain themselves right up to the last.”

  “But they’ve done something to deserve death,” he said.

  “Not always; sometimes they fall into that three-strikes law for vampires. It’s written so that no matter what the crime is, even a misdemeanor, three times and you get a warrant of execution on your ass. I don’t like killing people for stealing when there’s no violence involved.”

  “But stealing big items, right?”

  “No, Sheriff, one woman got executed for stealing less than a thousand dollars of shit. She was a diagnosed kleptomaniac before becoming a vampire; dying didn’t cure her like she thought it would.”

  “Someone put a stake through her heart for petty theft?”

  “They did,” I said.

  “The law doesn’t give the preternatural branch of the marshal program a right to refuse jobs.”

  “Technically, no, but I just don’t do the stakedowns. I had stopped doing them before the vampire executioners got grandfathered into the U.S. Marshal program.”

  “And they let you.”

  “Let’s say I have an understanding with my superiors.” The understanding had been that I wouldn’t testify on behalf of the family of the woman executed for shoplifting if they simply wouldn’t make me kill anyone who hadn’t taken lives. A life for a life made some sense. A life for some costume jewelry made no sense to me. A lot of us had turned down the woman. In the end they’d had to send to Washington, DC, for Gerald Mallory, who was one of the first vampire hunters ever who was still alive. He still thought all vampires were evil monsters, so he’d staked her without a qualm. Mallory sort of scared me. There was something in his eyes when he looked at any vampire that wasn’t quite sane.

  “Marshal, are you still there?”

  “I’m sorry, Sheriff, you got me thinking too hard about the shoplifter.”

  “It’s in the news that the family is suing for wrongful death.”

  “They are.”

  “You don’t talk much, do you?”

  “I say what needs saying.”

  “You’re damn quiet for a woman.”

  “You don’t need me to talk. I assume you need me to come to Vegas and do my job.”

  “It’s a trap, Blake. A trap just for you.”

  “Probably, and sending me the head of your executioner is about as direct as a threat gets.”

  “And you’re still going to come?”

  I stood up and looked down at the box and the head staring up at me. It looked somewhere between surprised and sleepy. “He mailed me the head of your vampire executioner. He mailed it to my office. He wrote a message to me in the blood on the wall where he slaughtered three of your operators. Hell, yes, I’m coming to Vegas.”

  “You sound angry.”

  In my head I thought, Better angry than scared. If I could stay outraged, maybe I could keep the fear from growing. Because it was there in the pit of my stomach, in the back of my mind like a black, niggling thought that would grow bigger if I let it. “Wouldn’t you be pissed?”

  “I’d be scared.”

  That stopped me, because cops almost never admit that they’re scared. “You broke the rule, Shaw, you never admit you’re scared.”

  “I just want you to know, Blake, really know, what you’re walking into, that’s all.”

  “It must have been bad.”

  “I’ve seen more men dead at one time. Hell, I’ve lost more men under my command.”

  “You must be ex-military,” I said.

  “I am,” he said.

  I waited for him to say what service; most would, but he didn’t.

  “Where were you stationed?” I asked.

  “Classified, most of
it.”

  “Ex-special teams?” I made it part question, part statement.

  “Yes.”

  “Do I ask what flavor, or just let it drop, before you have to threaten me with the old if-I-tell-you-then-I-have-to-kill-you routine?” I tried for a joke, but Shaw didn’t take it that way.

  “You’re making a joke. If you can do that, then you don’t get what’s happening.”

  “You’ve got three operators dead, one vamp executioner dead and cut up; that is bad, but you didn’t send just three operators in with the marshal, so most of your team got away, Sheriff.”

  “They didn’t get away,” he said, and something in his voice made that tight, black pit of fear rise a little higher in my gut.

  “But they’re not dead,” I said, “or you’d say so.”

  “No, not dead, not exactly.”

  “Are they badly hurt?”

  “Not exactly,” he said.

  “Stop beating the bush to death and just tell me, Shaw.”

  “Seven of our men are in the hospital. There’s not a mark on them. They just dropped.”

  “If there are no marks on them, why did they drop, and why are they in the hospital?”

  “They’re asleep.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “You mean comas?”

  “The doctors say no. They’re asleep; we just can’t wake them up.”

  “Do the docs have any clues?”

  “The only thing close to this is those patients in the twenties who all went to sleep and never woke up.”

  “Didn’t they make a movie years back about them waking up?”

  “Yes, but it didn’t last, and they still don’t know why that form of sleeping sickness is different from the norm,” he said.

  “Your whole team didn’t just catch this sleeping thing in the middle of a firefight.”

  “You asked what the doctors said.”

  “Now, I’m asking what you say.”

  “One of our practitioners says it was magic.”

  “Practitioners?” I made it a question.

  “We’ve got psychics attached to our teams, but can’t call them our pet wizards.”

  “So operators and practitioners,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “So someone did a spell?”

  “I don’t know, but apparently it all reeks of psychic shit, and when you run out of explanations that make sense, you go with what you got.”

  “When you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,” I said.

  “Did you just quote Sherlock Holmes at me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you still don’t get it, Blake. You just don’t.”

  “Okay, let me be blunt here. Something about my reaction wasn’t what you expected, so you’re convinced that I don’t get the seriousness of the situation. You’re ex-special teams, which means to you, women are not going to measure up. You’ve called me a beautiful woman, and that, too, makes most cops and military underestimate women. But special teams, hell, you don’t think most other military men are up to your level, or most cops. So I’m a girl; get over it. I’m petite and I clean up well; get over that, too. I’m dating a vampire, the master of my city; so what? It has nothing to do with my job or why Vittorio invited me to come hunt him in Vegas.”

  “Why did he run in St. Louis? Why didn’t he run here when he knew we were coming? Why did he ambush our men and not yours?”

  “Maybe he couldn’t afford to lose that many of his vampires again, or maybe he’s just decided to make his last stand in your city.”

  “Lucky fucking us.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I called around, talked to some of the other cops you’ve worked with, and some of the other vampire executioners, about you. You want to know why some of them thought this vampire ran in St. Louis?”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “You, they thought he ran from you. Our Master of the City told me that the vampires call you the Executioner—that they’ve called you that for years.”

  “Yeah, that’s their pet name for me.”

  “Why you? Why you, and not Gerald Mallory? He’s been around longer.”

  “He’s been around years longer than me, but I’ve got the higher body count. Think about it.”

  “How can you have the higher body count if he’s been doing this for at least ten years longer than you?”

  “One, he’s a stake-and-hammer man. He refuses to go to silver ammo and guns. That means he has to totally incapacitate the vampires before he can kill them. Totally incapacitating a vampire is really hard to do. I can wound one, bring it down from a distance. Two, I think his hatred of vampires makes him less effective when hunting them. It makes him miss clues and not think things through.”

  “So you just kill them better than anyone else.”

  “Apparently.”

  “I’ll be honest, Blake, I’d feel better if you were a guy. I’d feel even better if you had some military background. I’ve checked you out; other than a few hunting trips with your dad, you’d never handled a gun before you started killing monsters. You’d never owned a handgun at all.”

  “We were all newbies once, Shaw. But trust me, the new is all worn off of me.”

  “Our Master of the City is cooperating fully with us.”

  “I’ll just bet he is.”

  “He says bring you to Vegas, and you’ll sort it out.”

  That stopped me. Maximillian, Max, had met me only once, when he came to town with some of his weretigers after an unfortunate metaphysical accident. The unfortunate accident had ended with me pretty much possessing one of his weretigers, Crispin. He’d taken Crispin back to Vegas with him, but it wasn’t because the tiger wanted to leave me. He was disturbingly devoted to me. It wasn’t my fault, honest, but the damage was still done. Lately, some of the powers I’d gained as Jean-Claude’s human servant seemed to translate into attracting metaphysical men. Vampires, wereanimals, so far just that, but it was enough. Some days it was too much. I didn’t remember doing anything that impressive when Max was visiting.

  I’d spent most of his visit trying to be a good little human servant for Jean-Claude, and whatever became mine, like a weretiger, became my master’s, too. We’d done some fairly disturbing metaphysics, my master and I, for our guest’s benefit. We’d left him kind of creeped, unless he was way more bisexual than he’d ever admit.

  “Blake, you still there?”

  “I’m here, Shaw, just thinking about your Master of the City. I’m flattered that he thinks I can sort it out.”

  “You should be. He’s old-time mob. Don’t take this wrong, but if you think my opinion of women is low, then old-time mobsters think worse.”

  “Yeah, yeah, you just think women can’t cut it on the job. Mobsters think we’re just for making babies or fucking.”

  He made another laugh sound. “You are one blunt son of a bitch.”

  I took it for the compliment it was; he hadn’t called me a daughter of a bitch. If I could get him to treat me like one of the guys, I could do my job.

  “I am probably one of the most blunt people you will ever meet, Shaw.”

  “I’m beginning to believe that.”

  “Believe it, warn the other guys. It’ll save time.”

  “Warn them about what, that you’re blunt?”

  “All of it—blunt, a girl, pretty, dates vampires, whatever. Get it out of their system before I hit the ground in Vegas. I don’t want to have to wade through macho bullshit to do my job.”

  “Nothing I can do about that, Blake. You’ll have to prove yourself to them, just like any . . . officer.”

  “Woman, you were going to say woman. I know how it works, Shaw. Because I’m a girl, I gotta be better than the guys to get the same level of respect. But with three men dead in Vegas and seven more in some sort of a spell, ten dead here in St. Louis, five in New Orleans, two in Pittsbu
rgh, I’d like to think your officers will be more interested in catching this bastard than giving me a hard time.”

  “They’re motivated, Blake, but you’re still a beautiful woman and they’re still cops.”

  I ignored the compliment because I never knew what to do with it. “And they’re scared,” I said.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to; you’re special teams and you admitted it. If it’s spooked you, then it’s sure as hell spooked the rest. They’re going to be jumpy and looking for someone to blame.”

  “We blame the vampires that killed our people.”

  “Yeah, but I’m still going to be the whipping boy for some of them.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “The message on the wall was for me. The head came to me. You already asked me what I did to piss Vittorio off. Some of your people are going to say that I pissed him off enough to make him do all this, or maybe even that he did it all to impress me in that sweet serial killer sort of way.”

  Shaw was quiet, only his thick breathing on the phone. I didn’t prompt him, just waited, and finally he said, “You’re a bigger cynic than I am, Blake.”

  “Do you think I’m wrong?”

  He was quiet for a breath or two more. “No, Blake, I don’t think you’re wrong. I think you’re exactly right. My men are spooked, and they’ll want someone to blame. This vampire has made sure that the police here in Vegas will have mixed feelings about you.”

  “What you need to ask yourself, Shaw, is did he do it on purpose, to make my job harder, or did he not give a damn about the effect it had on you and your men?”

  “You know him better than I do, Blake. Which is it—on purpose, or didn’t give a damn?”

  “I don’t know this vampire, Shaw. I know his victims, and the vampires he left behind for killing. I thought he’d resurface because most of these guys can’t stop once they get to a certain level of violence. It’s like a drug, and they are addicted. But I never dreamed he’d send me presents or special messages. I honestly didn’t think I’d made that big an impression on him.”

  “We’ll show you the crime scene when you land. Trust me, Blake, you made an impression on him.”

  “Not the impression I wanted to make,” I said.

  “And what was that?”