Skin Trade(111)

The car slid to a screeching stop. Cox opened all the doors, and Victor let me slide away from him, though his hand slid down to hold mine. But just the hand was better. I could think without him wrapped around me. Fuck.

Cox put a hand on Victor’s shoulder, shaking his head. “Civilian, stay in the car.”

I kept pulling on Victor’s hand. He kept trying to hold on. Officer Cox said, “Let go of Marshal Blake, Mr. Belleci.”

Victor’s fingers fell away from me, and I pulled to make it happen sooner. Something was wrong when he touched me. Something that had never happened with any other wereanimal, not even the ones that were my animals to call.

The moment Victor wasn’t touching me, it was as if I could draw a deeper breath. Surrounded by sirens, lights, police officers, guns, and not yet knowing what officer was down and how deep the shit; and it was already better. I moved the MP5 on its tactical sling to my hands, ready to go, and followed at Cox’s heels. He was tall enough that his back was my view, but that was okay. He was letting me come along, and eventually I’d find Edward.

Then something flew over our heads. We all ducked instinctively, and it took a moment for my mind to catch up to what my eyes had seen. Someone in Vegas PD uniform had just been thrown completely over our heads, to hit on the far side of a second line of cars.

“Fuck!” Shelby said.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.





45




THE NEXT SOUND was gunfire, a lot of it. But the moment I saw the airborne officer, I knew there would be. Martin Bendez was about to die, and there was no way to save him. Whatever information he had was gone. The real kicker was that if I’d been near the front of the line, I’d have helped kill him. When a wereanimal goes a certain level of apeshit, you run out of options fast.

Cox eased forward, and I followed. Shelby brought up the rear. It looked like almost every other officer in Vegas was already clustered at the front area. They’d made a mass around some point I couldn’t see. I wasn’t tall enough to spot Edward or even Olaf from the back of the crowd, but somehow I knew that Edward, at least, would be near the front.

He was like one of those antitank missiles. Point front toward the enemy, and make sure you know where to stand.

I didn’t try to push; Cox did it for me. He just eased us through the crowd. I followed in his wake. Shelby got a little separated, but then he took up more room than I did, so people were more likely to not let him push through. Sometimes smaller is better.

We wormed our way close enough to the front that I glimpsed Olaf towering over everyone. I knew that Edward had to be close to him. I left Cox behind and continued to work my way closer to the big guy. I actually saw Bernardo first, then Edward, all with their guns still out. All still pointed at something I couldn’t see on the ground. Most of the rest of the police had eased up; some had even holstered.

“It’s dead.” I recognized Sergeant Hooper’s voice but couldn’t see him yet.

“It’s not dead until it shifts back to human form,” Edward said.

“What are you talking about, Marshal?” another man asked.

I eased up until I was just behind them. I could glimpse a white-and-black-furred body on the ground. “As long as it’s furry,” I said, “it’s still alive. Dead, they turn back to their original shape.”

Edward almost looked back at me, but kept his eyes and his gun on the downed tiger. “Better late than never,” he said.

I shouldered my way between him and Bernardo, and aimed my gun with theirs. “Sorry I missed it.”

“No,” Bernardo said, “you’re not.” Something in the way he said it made me wonder what else I’d missed besides the body on the ground.

“It isn’t shifting, just like the tiger in St. Louis,” Olaf said.

I settled the MP5 tighter in my arms, but not too tight, and sighted down at the still form. I couldn’t see any movement, or sense anything but stillness, but the one in St. Louis had done that, too. That one had nearly killed me and Edward’s stepson, Peter. It had killed one of our people.

“I know,” I said, and felt my body go still, sinking away into that silence where I went if I had time in a fight. It was a good quiet place to kill things from, the static narrowing inside my head.

Then the body moved. Someone actually shot into it, but it wasn’t that kind of movement. The skin receded like the ocean drawing back from the shore. What was left was a pale, nude man lying on his side. I couldn’t tell if he’d been handsome or ugly, because there wasn’t enough of his face left to answer the question. There was daylight showing through his chest now because the wounds remained the same, but the weretiger’s body was so much bigger, bulkier, that once they changed to human shape, the wounds all looked nastier. Less mass, more damage taken, as if once dead the lycanthropy stopped protecting the human host.