Skin Trade(121)

“Look at me, not your beast, Anita.” He drew my attention back to his eyes, his face.

The tigress scraped a claw down the underneath of the water that was me, and only Victor’s hands kept me standing. Always before it had hurt more, but now I knew, absolutely knew, that this new watery barrier would not hold the beast. Whatever Marmee Noir had done, she wanted me to shift. She wanted me to be tiger. I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew that anything she wanted, I shouldn’t give her.

The tiger took another pass, and I swear I felt my skin move with it. “Save me,” I whispered.

“Let me in,” he whispered back, as he pressed his mouth on mine one more time.

I wasn’t sure how to do it, so I dropped the shields to my beasts. The tigress let out a roar of triumph, in the same instant that Victor’s power smashed into her. She screamed at its touch, but the power drove her back. Victor’s power was a warm, living wind that chased her back, gently but inexorably. Then, suddenly, she was gone, and I was alone in my skin. Alone in my skin, but still wrapped in Victor’s arms.

He drew away from the kiss, but kept his arms on me, as if he wasn’t sure I could stand. Me either.

“You’re bleeding,” Bernardo said, softly.

I looked down and couldn’t see anything under the vest, but Victor had blood on the lower part of his body. “I don’t think it’s mine,” he said.

Edward moved up to block the view. “We need to get out of here.”

“You make friends too damn fast for comfort.” Hooper was there, with some of his team.

Victor whispered, “Can you stand?”

I thought about it, then nodded.

Victor stepped away from me, standing so that the cops might not see the blood on his front. I said, “Sorry you don’t like how I make friends, Sergeant.” I meant that, actually. I liked Hooper and would have liked to keep his good opinion, but… The most important thing was to get the hell away from all the other cops and see how badly I was hurt.

“I’ll be your friend.” This from Georgie.

“Sorry, my dance card is a little full.”

“No fucking joke.” He gave me that look that you never want to see from a man who is supposed to be a coworker and has never been your boyfriend. His too-young face didn’t carry the look well.

But Hooper was giving me a look I wanted even less. He’d narrowed his eyes and was trying to see around the blocking bodies of the other men. He started toward us. Edward started us toward the car. Victor came with us. We did our best to keep the blood out of sight. It didn’t show on my black-on-black, but Victor’s pale shirt showed the blood scarlet.

Hooper sent the other men inside, then kept walking toward us. Sanchez caught up with him, kept him talking. It looked like they were arguing, but it gave us enough time to get me in the back of the car. Victor rode shotgun so he could direct Bernardo to the doctor. Edward rode in back with me, and Olaf, too. We tried to get Olaf to drive, but he simply would not agree to driving. Hooper had broken away from Sanchez and was moving our way again. We were out of time to argue.

“Drive,” Edward said.

Bernardo drove.





48




“TAKE OFF THE vest, Anita. We may need to put pressure on the wound.”

If it had just been Edward and me in the backseat, I’d have been okay with that, but Olaf sat beside me like some looming shadow. I gave one glance up at his face, and there was nothing in his face that made me want to undress in front of him.

“Stop being a girl,” Edward said, “just do it.”

“That’s not fair,” I said.

“No, and I know why you don’t want to do it, but bleeding to death because you don’t want Olaf to see you bloody and half naked is a stupid reason to die.”

Put that way… “Fine,” I said, and let that one word hold as much anger as it could. I helped him get me out of the holsters and weapons. I gave them to Edward, as I’d given them to him at Bibiana’s place, because who else would I trust with my weapons? But that left Edward’s hands full, and Olaf to help me unfasten the side of the vest. I expected him to dwell on each movement, the way he had in the morgue, but he was strangely businesslike. He simply unfastened the Velcro on the sides and lifted it off me. The blue of my T-shirt had streaks of purple on the stomach area, where blood had soaked through. Not good.

Olaf just suddenly had a knife in his hand. I said, “No! You don’t have to cut the shirt off me!” I started pulling the shirt out of my jeans. I admit that I was tensed, ready for it to catch and hurt on the wounds. Cutting it off would actually have been more practical, and the shirt was ruined anyway, but the sight of the big man looming over me with the huge serrated blade… No way was I giving him an excuse to bring the blade closer to my skin.