Skin Trade(201)

I couldn’t stop myself. “Don’t.”

“Say please.”

“Please.”

“Good, then if you want to see him whole again and the others alive, come into the back room alone, and unarmed. Leave your holy objects behind, too.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you know what I’ll do if you refuse me, and I can feel that you care about him, that it would hurt you to see him burned.”

I repeated what I saw, what he said. Rocco said, “We won’t let her go in alone.”

I repeated, “They won’t let me.”

“The police, I think they might.” He walked to the door that opened into the main part of the club. There were dancers, customers; it was full. “I came last night, and detained them all.” He turned toward the only two doors that led out, and the air shimmered before one, and there looked like there were swords floating in front of the main door. Something moved on the stage, like a shimmer of summer heat. It was a third jinn, and we didn’t know what this one did. Shit.

“If the police do not let you come in alone and unarmed, I will have my servants kill all these nice people. You come to me, and I will release all the customers.”

“You release the customers, and I’ll come in.”

“Not alone,” Edward said.

“Can I bring one person in with me?”

“By all means, but not one of your marshals-one of the SWAT. They seem to die easily enough.”

“No,” Edward said.

“Oh, that’s Death, I know his reputation. He isn’t allowed inside.”

I repeated what he said.

“Pick carefully, Anita; it will simply be another hostage to use against you, but by all means help me torture you more.” He sounded so cheerful about it, and I realized he was; he had a room full of victims. What more could a serial killer ask for than that?

“But you’ll release the customers first.”

“Agreed, as soon as I see you outside with your SWAT friend. Now, I think I will shut this down between us. I thought to control you, and I did peek this morning; quite a show.”

I was too scared and too angry to be embarrassed. “Then you know what happened to your other servant.”

“Yes, you broke my hold on him, just like the Darkness could do. Her talents as a human were very similar to yours; I should have thought, but you don’t expect to meet two necromancers of such power in one lifetime.”

“Lucky you,” I said.

“I will leave you with a parting image, to inspire you to do exactly as I’ve asked.” He went back to the other room, and I didn’t want him to, because nothing he was about to do would be good.

He went to Requiem, as I’d known he would. He unstoppered the little vial of holy water. “I’m coming, damn it, you’ve made your point.”

“Oh, I’m not doing this to make my point, Anita. I’m doing this because I want to, and because it will hurt you, and because he is beautiful and I hate him for it.”

“Vittorio!”

He trickled the water along Requiem’s ribs. It smoked instantly, and Requiem’s spine bowed, a scream coming even through the tape.

Vittorio capped the vial. “I will wait on the rest. You have a half hour to arrive, Anita, or I will try a more tender piece of him.”

“I’m coming, you son of a bitch, I’m coming.”

“Temper, temper.”

“This isn’t mad, Vittorio, you haven’t seen me mad.”

“Nor you me, Anita, nor you me.” He pushed me out, closed the link down, and left me blinking in the sunlight, clinging to Edward’s arms.

“Who’s going in with you?” Bernardo asked.

“Cannibal is,” I said. I looked and found Rocco. He met my gaze, no flinching.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Speak Arabic for me, and then we eat these sons of bitches.”

A smile crossed his face, it was pleased and slightly Olaf-ish. I knew that smile, because there’s something about having an ability when you always have to be good that makes you wonder what it would feel like to be bad. I was about to give Cannibal the chance to be as bad as he wanted to be, as bad as he had the stomach to be. There was more than one way to skin a cat; well, there was more than one way to eat a vampire.





73




GRIMES DIDN’T LIKE me going in, and he sure as hell didn’t want Rocco to go in with me. Edward didn’t like me going in without him. But we had the arguments in the cars, so we could argue on the way and make the half-hour deadline.

“Lieutenant,” Rocco said, “I can say the spell that will banish the jinn, and Anita can’t.”