Skin Trade(110)

“When you’ve been on the job long enough,” Cox said, “you’ll know that going home alive is win enough.”

“Getting married made you a wussy,” Shelby said.

Other officers joined in the good-natured ribbing. Cox took it like the ten-year veteran he probably was; I knew what he meant. I didn’t even have my ten years in, but getting home alive to the people I loved had become more important to me than catching the bad guy. It’s a grown-up attitude, but sometimes it means it’s time to change jobs. Or ride a desk. I’d suck at desk work.

It made me feel less wussy that Edward had turned down a contract to hunt Marmee Noir. When Death himself, his nickname among the vamps, starts turning down hunts so he can get home alive to his family, the world has become a different place. Or maybe the world is the same, and it was Edward and I who had changed.

Everyone’s radios went off at the same time: handheld, shoulder mic, all of it. I caught the dispatcher’s words. Someone had hit the emergency button on their handheld. The next thing we heard was a full-out officer down call.

Everyone ran for their cars. I stuck at Cox’s heels. Shelby, too; apparently they were riding together. “Take me with you, Cox.”

He hesitated at the door of his car while car after car squealed away, sirens and lights roaring. “Orders say you stay here.”

“Forrester is my partner.”

“You guys don’t run in pairs,” Cox said.

“He’s my rabbi.”

“I heard he was more your Svengali,” Shelby said.

Cox said, “Shut up, Shelby.”

Shelby did.

Cox and I had one of those long stares, and then he nodded. “Get in.”

Victor glided up beside me.

“Not him,” Cox said as he opened the door.

“If one of my tigers has attacked officers, I might be able to stop him.”

I wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but… “Let him ride; if we leave him behind and he gets hurt, we’ll get shit for that, too.”

Cox cursed softly.

“I know,” I said, “some days you just choose which ass-chewing you’re gonna get.”

“Ain’t that the truth.” He got in, and Shelby got in with him. Since he hadn’t said no, Victor and I got in the back. Lights and sirens went, and we were screaming out after the other cars. I was still hunting for the seatbelt when we went around a corner fast enough to throw me into Victor.

He put an arm around me, held me close, and I was left with another problem. How do you make someone who can bench-press a small car let go of you, short of bleeding him? Answer: you don’t.





44




I SPOKE OVER the noise of the sirens. “Let go of me.”

He leaned his mouth in closer and spoke next to my ear. “We have little time, and there are things you need to know.”

I fought my muscles not to tense and keep trying to push him away. I tried to relax into him, but finally had to settle for just nodding. “Talk.”

“I felt your power in Gregory’s house.”

“That wasn’t just my power. Sanchez had messed with me.”

“I do not mean when the energy changed and was not you.” So he had felt Marmee Noir. I wondered if he knew what it had been, if he’d sensed Her. “I felt your energy, Anita. Together we might be able to force Bendez out into the open.”

“How?” The car careened around another corner, and only Victor’s death grip on the door and me kept us still. I wondered, if we wrecked, would he be able to hold me? I needed my seatbelt, but he kept whispering in my ear, kept holding me close, and I kept not moving away.

“I can sense him, and combined, you and I might force him into the open.”

“How do we combine?”

“I read the article you wrote for The Animator about combining powers between yourself and your two fellow animators for raising more and older dead. It is not dissimilar to that.”

I wanted to turn, to see his face, because he’d read the business journal for my profession. The only reason to do that was to research me. But turning my head would have put those whispering lips from ear to mouth, and that didn’t feel like an improvement. The car was going about a hundred miles an hour, and Cox drove like a maniac in a line of maniacs. The speed, the driving, put my pulse in my throat and scared the hell out of me, but still I let Victor hold me, still I hadn’t pushed away and gone for a seatbelt. I wore a seatbelt like a religion, but it was like I couldn’t move. I could only listen to that soft, masculine voice in my ear. It all sounded so reasonable, and in that moment, I was no longer certain if it was really reasonable or if Victor was rolling me like some sort of vampire. I couldn’t tell anymore. That couldn’t be good, could it?