I must have made some small involuntary pain sound, because Edward put my weapons on the floor and had his own knife in his hand. “We need to see, Anita.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but he’d picked up the slack of the shirt and was already cutting. I could have stopped him, but he was right, and I wasn’t afraid of Edward. He cut up the middle of the shirt, his blade sharp enough that it made a straight, almost surgical line up the center. He cut it until the collar of the T-shirt stopped the blade. I might have protested that I really was half naked now, but I could see my stomach, and the fact that everyone could see my bra just didn’t seem important.
“Crap,” I said.
There were bloody claw marks on my stomach. I’d bled before when I almost changed, but I’d never had wounds from it before. Blood had seeped out from under my nails, but never this.
Olaf’s fingers hovered over one ragged-edged wound. I started to tell him, Don’t touch me, but he said, “The edges of the wounds are wrong.”
“They go out, not in,” Edward said.
I stared down at the wounds, but the angle wasn’t as good for me, or maybe it’s just harder to look at your own body when it’s cut open and analyze the wounds. I tried to be positive. “Well, at least it’s not as bad as the last stomach wound.”
“True,” Edward said.
“Yes, your intestines are not bulging out this time,” Olaf said. He said it so calmly, as if it hadn’t mattered then and didn’t matter now. I guess, what can you expect from a sociopath?
He put those big fingers just over the wounds. There was a faint shudder in his hand, and he had to raise it higher to flex the hand, and then he put it back over the wounds and traced his hand over the wounds. “It looks as if something has tried to get out, not slashed from a distance.” He spread his hand over the marks. I started to protest, but realized his hand could almost cover it all; a dainty claw as claws went. Dainty as the wounds we’d found on the victims.
“They are the same size,” he said. He laid his hand on the wounds. The pain was sharp and immediate, and I know I made some small sound, because two things happened at once. Edward said, “Olaf,” with that warning in the word; and Olaf let his breath out in a sigh that was totally inappropriate for blood and wounds. Okay, inappropriate if you weren’t a serial killer.
“Stop touching me,” I said, and made every word as hard and firm as I’d ever made them. I don’t know why, but for the first time this kind of behavior from him didn’t scare me. It just pissed me off. Let’s hear it for anger.
He moved his hand and gazed down at me with those cave-dark eyes. Whatever he saw in my face didn’t please him, because he said, “You aren’t afraid.”
“Of you, not right now. I just had something try to tear its way out of me. Sorry, but on the horrible scale, that’s got my attention. Now stop using my pain as your foreplay and fucking help me.”
He took his leather jacket off, folded it, and put it against my stomach. “It will hurt, but if I apply pressure to the wounds you will not lose as much blood.”
“Do it,” I said.
He pressed, and it hurt, but sometimes things need to hurt some now, so they don’t hurt a lot more later. I must have made a small sound because Edward asked, “Is he hurting you?”
“No more than he needs to,” I said, and was proud that my voice was almost steady. Let’s hear it for the tough-as-nails vampire hunter. Not fazed by overgrown serial killers or the beasts inside her. Shit.
“Victor,” I said.
He turned in his seat to look at me. His glasses had apparently been left on the sidewalk because I was gazing into the bare blue eyes of his tiger. No, of him. The weretigers, like Victor, were born, not made. “Yes, little queen.”
“First, stop calling me that. Second, are the claw marks on me what my tiger would be sizewise, if it could get out?”
He thought about that for a second or two. Bernardo had to ask, “I made the last turn; what now?”
He gave him more directions, then turned back to me. “You are a very different kind of… case. But, I believe, yes. It is the size you would be.”
“Shit,” I said.
Edward said, “Martin Bendez had bigger hands than Anita, even human.”
“Our killer is a woman,” I said.
“No, some men have hands as small as yours,” Olaf said.
“Any of your male weretigers have hands this small?” I asked, and held up one hand for Victor to judge. He reached through the seats and held his own larger hand up next to mine.
“Only Paula Chu.”