Skin Trade(56)

“If you smell a certain animal, then you’ll go talk to that local group,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

He came over and carefully unbagged the evidence. I took the mask down and leaned forward. I closed my eyes and called on that part of me that wasn’t quite human anymore. I could visualize the beasts inside me: wolf, leopard, lioness, white and yellow tiger. They were all lying in the dark shadows of ancient trees that had been the visualization for my inner place since a certain very ancient vampire had messed with me. Marmee Noir, the Queen of All Vampires, had given me the tigers in a bid to control me. So far, I was still ahead; so far.

I called, gently, to the beasts, and felt them stir. I could keep them from trying to physically manifest now. I could call them as energy. I tried that now. I needed to scent something. I called on wolf. She came trotting to my call, white with her black markings. I’d done some research and knew that her markings meant the strain of lycanthropy was probably from the far north, someplace cold. You had more white wolves where you got more snow.

My skin ran in goose bumps, and I lowered my face toward the piece of technology. The first smell was death. The wolf growled, and it trickled out my lips.

Memphis said, “Are you all right, Marshal?”

“I’m all right; please don’t talk to me while I do this.”

The smell of plastic was sharp, almost bitter. The wolf didn’t like it. Underneath that was sweat, fear, and she did like that. Fear and sweat meant food. I pushed the thought back and concentrated. I needed more. I smelled Sherman, the scent of a man, and that he still smelled of the soap and shampoo he’d used that day. It was like peeling the layers off an onion. I think if I’d been a wolf I could have smelled all of it, and interpreted it, but my human brain was slow.

I felt my nose touch the felt piece, and thought, What animal did this? I smelled saliva, and it wasn’t the same scent as Sherman. Though my mind couldn’t interpret how it was different, it just was. I needed the scent of the animal, not the person. I gave myself over to the wolf, to the feel of fur and pads, and… there. The faintest whiff of something not human.

I followed that faint scent the way you’d follow a path that you found in the woods. A path that was barely there, lost in weeds and small trees. I pushed my way through that narrow opening, and suddenly the world was full of… tiger.

The tigers inside me rushed up, roaring. I stumbled back from the evidence, the scent, Memphis. I fell on my ass on the floor, with the wolf running for cover and the tigers snarling inside my head. Once this would have meant the tigers trying to take over my body, tearing me apart from the inside out, but now I could keep it lower key.

Someone grabbed my arm, and I looked up. What was this plastic man? I looked past the faceplate and found him human, and soft, and knew that all that education, all that determination, was nothing before claw and fang. I had to try twice to speak, “Room, give me room.”

He let me go, but just knelt back. I looked at him and the other two. Patricia was afraid, and that made the tigers roil inside me, happy kitties. Fear means food.

I pushed to my feet and stumbled for the door. I had to get away from them. I should never have tried this without Edward here to make sure… make sure it didn’t get out of hand.

“I need air, that’s all. Don’t touch me.” I made the door and stumbled outside. I ended up on my knees on the floor, leaning against the wall, trying to shove the tigers back into the safety zone. They didn’t want to go. They’d smelled another tiger, and it excited them.

Edward spoke from a little distance. “Anita, you all right?”

I shook my head, but held a hand palm out, to say Stay away. He did. “Talk to me,” he said.

My voice came breathy, but it came. “I called on a little furry energy to try and get a clue.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know what killed the others, but we’re looking for a weretiger that’s probably under six feet in human form, or has abnormally small hands. This one is powerful enough to be able to do claws and teeth only, with no fur and no other outward change.”

I felt Olaf and Bernardo close, before I looked up and saw them. Edward kept them back, which was probably just as well.

“Only the most powerful can do that,” Edward said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“You learned all that from smelling?” Bernardo said.

I looked up, and was pretty sure it wasn’t a friendly look by his reaction. “No, I learned most of that from the body, but tiger was smell.” I looked past him to Olaf now in his black assassin gear, stripped of the hazmat suit. I pointed a finger at him. “I couldn’t think with you in there with me. I didn’t know how useless you make me until you weren’t there.”