Skin Trade(129)

The doctor was still there. He came forward to check me out, and Edward let him check my pulse. I was shirtless, so checking the stitches was easy enough. He had to move Victor’s arm to move bandages aside. “It’s almost healed.” He looked at me. “I saw that the claw marks had come from inside you, like it was clawing its way out; you’re not human, are you?”

“I shared my energy with her,” Victor said. He sat up on his side of the table, drawing the blanket around the bareness of him.

“But if she had not had her own white tiger for you to share with, it would not have worked,” Bibiana said.

“Whatever,” I said. I let Edward help me stand. I could stand. Yea!

Edward looked at me, then moved his hand away. I stood on my own. “Good, we’re out of here then.” He put my backpack over his shoulder.

He’d already added some of my weapons to his visible arsenal. We started for the door.

Then I felt it, like a cold breeze down my back. I said, “Vampire.”

Edward grabbed my arm and hustled us for the door, where Rick and some of the other white tigers blocked the way. We aimed our guns at them in unison. “We’ll just say you jumped us,” I said. “With all the dead cops in this town, they’ll buy it.”

“Anita Blake, so good of you to visit my little family.”

I didn’t even turn around. “Hi, Max. Thanks for the hospitality.” Then I screamed at the men blocking the door. “Move, or bleed!”

Max’s voice. “Move out of the marshals’ way. She’s a federal cop; you don’t mess with the Feds. It’s bad for business.”

The tigers at the door looked to another part of the room. They were looking at Bibiana.

“I am master of this city, and I say get the fuck out of the marshals’ way.” His voice had gone ugly with rage.

The weretigers moved, a little.

“Keep going,” I said, and we waited for them to move well away from the door. As they moved, I moved sort of with them, so I had my back to Edward and my empty hand on his back, so I could feel his movement and still watch the room. Edward would know that left him the door and the room beyond.

He opened the door with an audible click, and we eased through it. I looked away from the weretigers long enough to see Max in a doorway on the other side of the big bed. He was dressed in 1940s gangster chic, mostly bald, tall, but solid. If you didn’t know what you were looking at, you’d say fat, but it was all hard and muscled. Bibiana was glaring at him.

“Thanks, Max,” I said.

“Tell Jean-Claude that I know the rules.”

“I’ll do that.” And Edward was through the door, and my hand on him took me with him. We were into the other room; all we had to do was get the door shut.

Bibiana had to have the last word. “You have slept with my son. Tell me, what did you dream?”

The question was so odd that it made me stumble at the doorway. “Anita,” Edward said.

“It’s okay,” I said. I concentrated on the gun in my hand and watching the room. I kicked the door shut behind us, and we were suddenly in the dimness and noise of the club beyond.

Edward moved up beside me, both putting his arm around me and lowering my gun hand down to my side. He leaned over and whisper-shouted into my ear, “Ease down.”

The club was crowded, mostly with men at the tables and stages. The only women were the waitresses and the dancers.

Edward started leading me through the crowd. He slipped into that half-drunk-boyfriend-who-brought-my-girlfriend-to-the-strip-club act like someone had turned a switch. He was suddenly a good ol’ boy who was having a good ol’ time. The best I could do was not look too uncomfortable under his arm and try not to let anyone bump the gun in my hand. Though no one noticed the guns once we were away from the door, or they pretended they didn’t. I’d noticed that a black gun against black jeans in a dark club was pretty invisible.

I was still trying to keep the door in my peripheral vision, though I was pretty sure that neither Max nor Bibiana would want to mess up the front of the club. They’d hide the dirty laundry.

What had she meant about my dreams? I pushed the thought away and tried to push that itchy feeling between my shoulder blades away, too. I wanted to sprint for the far door, but we were pretending, and that means you blend in, so I pretended to help my drunk boyfriend through the crowd. Though I knew that Edward was watching everything and would go from this act to action in the blink of an eye.

A hand came out of nowhere and tried to grope my breasts. I had grabbed his wrist and twisted before I’d had time to think.

“Hey,” he said, and his face had that soft, confused look of the very drunk.