Skin Trade(195)

“You’ll have to rise up to see me,” Victor said again.

I started easing up, holding the second man’s arm by the wrist so I wouldn’t disturb him.

“Honestly, Anita, they won’t wake. Everyone on the bed will have to sleep off the change. That won’t happen for hours.”

I could see him now, in the big chair in the corner. He’d put on one of the bathrobes that came with the room. His short white hair was tousled, as if he’d been running his fingers through it, or maybe it was bedhead.

Then I had an image, not of sight, but touch. I remembered running my hands through his hair, and forcing him to look in my eyes as we…

“Oh, shit,” I said.

He nodded. “That would about cover it.”

I was sitting up now, my back to the leather headboard. I could see the man on the other side now. He had long, dark hair that spilled over his face and went past his shoulders. He was muscled, and tall, and I didn’t know him.

“Who are they?”

“You should recognize one of them.”

I kept my voice low, as if they were just asleep. “I don’t know the one at my back.”

“You’ve probably seen him on the billboard outside the Taj. He’s our guest star for the next month, and then he is to go home. Your Requiem is taking his place for a month.”

I pictured the flashing image of the smiling redhead with the words, “Come watch the beefcake turn into kitty-cats,” and the sign morphed from human to a red tiger.

“Oh, no,” I said.

There was a noise from nearer the door. I couldn’t see anything, but I remembered in North Carolina that there’d been one tiger on the floor. A man sat up, with a groan. He had straight black hair that fell around his shoulders, and a face that had uptilted eyes, like Bibiana’s, but his skin wasn’t pale. He was tanned and looked like the outdoors was his thing. He laid his face in his hands and groaned again. “What happened?” he asked.

“What do you remember?” Victor asked him.

He looked around the room until he saw me sitting in the bed. “Her.”

Victor nodded. “Yes, her.”

“I didn’t do this on purpose,” I said. I was remembering a dream. A dream with Vittorio in it and the Mother of All Darkness. The dream was coming back quicker than whatever had happened in this room.

“The Father of Tigers did it,” the man on the floor said.

I stared at him as Victor said, “Who?”

“Vittorio,” I said, “it’s one of his old names. How do you know that title of his?”

“I was his tiger to call.”

“Was?” I asked.

Victor just suddenly had a gun in his hand, pointed at the man. It was one of my guns.

“He called me from halfway across the world. I had to answer him. He was my master before, and when he regained enough power, I could not resist him.” He seemed to be staring at nothing, but the look on his face said that whatever he was remembering wasn’t anything good. “I thought I was free of him forever, but there’s no escape, not if he wants you.”

“He came into the hotel,” Victor said. “He touched me, and I had to come here. I didn’t even hear him come up to me. I heard nothing until he touched me, and then I just did what he wanted. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t ask for help. I couldn’t say no to him.”

“No, it’s like you’re his slave, or puppet. He can make you do such horrible things, and you can’t stop.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“To him, I’m Hong, but to myself and for centuries, I’ve been Sebastian.”

“All right, Sebastian, you said was, as in past tense, you were his animal to call. What changed?”

“You changed.” He stood up, and he was as unself-consciously nude as all the wereanimals. I had a sudden memory of him above me, his body spasming, head back, lost to orgasm, and the sensation of him inside me. It made me have to take a deep breath and blow it out, slow. He was short, about my size. I looked at his hands; they were small, almost as small as mine.

“He may have fed on the energy of what we did in this room, but the moment we had sex, the moment I felt you feed on me, it was like you broke something in me. You broke his hold on me.”

“That’s not possible,” I said.

“The Dark Mother did it centuries ago. It was one of her specialties to be able to break bonds between masters and servants. She would strip other masters of their power, and keep that power for her own.”

“Victor, toss me a gun,” I said.

He looked at me.

“Just do it.”

He checked for the safety, which I liked, then tossed me my Smith amp; Wesson. I caught it, clicked off the safety, and pointed it at Sebastian. “Did you kill the SWAT practitioner?”