[Anita Blake 17] - Skin Trade (7 page)

“Nothing I can do will bring them back, but I will do everything I can to kill the vampire that did it.”

“We're about saving lives, Marshal, not taking them,” Grimes said.

I opened my mouth, closed it, and tried to say something that wouldn't upset him more. “I don't save lives, Lieutenant, I take them.”

Rocco said, “Don't you believe that killing the vampires saves their future victims?”

I thought about it, then shook my head. “I used to, and it may even be true, but it just feels like I kill people.”

“People,” he said, “not monsters.”

“Once I believed they were monsters.”

“And now?” Rocco asked.

I shrugged and looked away. I was seeing a lot of empty land and the beginnings of strip malls. It might have been Vegas, but the landscape was more Anywhere, USA.

“Don't tell me the infamous Anita Blake is going soft?” This from Hooper.

Grimes said, “Hooper,” in a voice that clearly meant he was in trouble with the boss.

Hooper didn't apologize. “You've told me my team is her go. I need to know, Lieutenant. We all need to know.”

Rocco didn't so much as move or even wince; he went very still, as if he wasn't sure what was about to happen. Just that reaction from him let me know that they didn't question their looie much, if ever. That Hooper did it now showed just how upset they all were about the men they'd lost and the men in the hospital. That moment was Hooper's way of grieving.

I sat beside Rocco and let the weighted silence stretch in the truck. I was going to follow the sergeant's lead.

Grimes finally said, “You don't learn if you can trust someone from asking questions, Sonny.”

“I know that, Lieutenant, but it's all we have time for.”

I felt tension slide out of Rocco as he sat beside me. I took that as a good sign, and waited.

Grimes looked at me. “We can't ask if you've gone soft, Marshal. That would be rude, and I think you'd answer it the way any of us would: no.”

I smiled and shook my head. “I'll kill your vampire for you, Grimes. I'll kill anyone who helps him. I'll kill everyone the warrant lets me kill. I'll get revenge for your men.”

“We aren't about vengeance,” Grimes said.

“I am,” I said.

Grimes looked down at his one big hand where it lay on the seat. He raised brown eyes up to me then, face solemn. “We can't be about vengeance, Marshal Blake. We're the police. We're the good guys. Only the criminals get to do revenge. We uphold the law. Vengeance takes the law away.”

I looked at him and saw that he meant it, down to the bottom of his eyes. “That is a brave and wonderful sentiment, Lieutenant, but I've held people I cared about while they died at the hands of these things. I've seen families destroyed.” I shook my head. “Vittorio is evil, not because he's a vampire but because he's a serial killer. He takes pleasure in the death and pain of others. He will keep killing until we stop him. The law gives me the legal right to do the stopping. If you don't want it to be about revenge for your men, then that's your concern. He'll be dead no matter whose death I'm avenging.”

“And whose death will you be avenging?” Hooper asked.

No one told him to stop this time.

I thought about it, and I had my answer. “Melbourne and Baldwin.”

“The two SWAT you lost in St. Louis,” Grimes said.

I nodded.

“Were you close to them?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Met them once.”

“Why vengeance for two men you met once?” Rocco asked it, and there was the first trickle of energy from him. He'd lowered his psychic shields just a little. Was he an empath, wanting to read how I really felt?

The truck was pulling in, and Hooper was parking. I looked into Rocco's dark eyes, darker than the lieutenant's. Rocco's were so dark, they almost crossed that line from brown to black. It made his pupils hard to find, like the eyes of a vampire when its power begins to fill its eyes, all color of the iris and no pupil.

“What flavor are you?”

“Flavor of what?” he asked.

“You're too tall to play coy, Sergeant.”

He smiled. “I'm an empath.”

I gave him narrow eyes, studying his face. His pulse had sped, just that tiny bit, some parting of the lips. I licked my bottom lip and said, “You taste like a lie.”

“I am an empath.” He stated it, very firm.

“And?” I said.

“And what?” he asked.

“An empath and . . .” I said.

We stared at each other in the backseat, the air growing thicker, heavier, as we peeled our shields down.

“Can we move this inside?” Grimes asked.

“Yes, sir,” Rocco said.

“Sure,” I said.

“Are you willing to have him read you?”

“Grimes said it, questions won't tell you if I'm for real, but something tells me that the part of Rocco here that's not empath will tell you a hell of a lot more.”

“We want to know about the last time you hunted this vampire, Marshal. Are you ready to relive that?”

I didn't even look at Grimes; I just held that dark, steady gaze from my fellow psychic, because I knew something that the lieutenant probably didn't know about his sergeant. Rocco was eager to try me. It was part that male instinct to see who's the bigger dog, but it was more than that. His power was eager, as if it had an edge of hunger to it. I couldn't think of a polite way to ask if his psychic ability fed on the memories he collected. If it did, if he could, then I wasn't the only living vampire in Vegas.

 

 

ROCCO AND I slipped our shields back up the way others would have shrugged their jackets on. We were both professionals; nice.

Grimes told Hooper, “Take us in through the garage. The briefing room should be ready for the meeting.”

Hooper pulled out of the parking spot and maneuvered around to a really big garage door. We drove the whole SUV inside, and suddenly I could see why the door was big.

I would say the garage was full of trucks, but the word didn't do them justice. I'd seen the equipment that St. Louis SWAT had, and I was suddenly filled with serious equipment envy.

We all got out. I noticed sort of peripherally that there was a carpeted exercise area to the left, but I mostly looked at the vehicles. I recognized the Lenco B.E.A.R., because St. Louis had one, but the rest were new to me. There were two smaller trucks that looked like the little brothers of the B.E.A.R., and probably were, but the rest of them, I had no idea. I mean, I could guess what they did, but I didn't know the names. They had one of the biggest RVs I'd ever seen. The vehicles alone were intimidating and strangely masculine. I know that most men talk about their favorite cars as if they were beautiful women, but there was nothing feminine about anything sitting in that garage.

“Marshal Blake,” Grimes said, with some force to it.

I turned and looked at them, clustered and looking back at me. “Sorry, Lieutenant, but I just had a minute of equipment envy.”

He smiled. “If there's time before you leave, we'd be happy to give you a tour.”

“I'd appreciate it.”

The garage door lowered. “Your weapons are secure in the back of Sonny's truck.”

“Agreed,” I said.

He motioned. “Briefing room then.”

I nodded, and followed them around the edge of the exercise area. I noticed the beige storage lockers with locks against the wall. I was guessing weapons lockers, and eventually we'd lock up my stuff, but frankly, if the bad guys got in here, I was betting on us. The back of Sonny's truck was dandy.

The briefing room was a largish room with long tables and chairs in rows. There was a whiteboard at the front of the room. It was all very classroom. The six men waiting in the room for us didn't look like students, though. No one had called from the truck, so either Rocco was even more psychic than I thought, or they had planned on introducing me to their practitioners from the beginning. I couldn't decide if I felt ambushed or would have done the same thing in their place. Would I have trusted me?

They all had the same short haircuts as the rest, as if they went to the same barber, but I had Shaw's high and tight to compare them to, which meant they all had plenty of hair, it was just short. They were all tall, the shortest maybe five-ten, most six feet or above. They were all broad of shoulder, and the uniform couldn't hide that everyone worked out. But they were SWAT; either they stayed in shape or they lost their spot. The main difference between them all was the color of hair, eyes, and skin tone. Even just standing there, doing nothing, they were very much together, a unit, a team. Did I feel left out? Naw. Did I feel like I was the exhibit for show-and-tell day? A little.

Sergeant Rocco stepped into the room and introduced me. The lieutenant and Hooper stayed by the door, which was now closed. “This is Davis, Davey.”

Davey was yellow-blond, with clear blue eyes and a cleft in his chin that helped frame a nice mouth. Should I have not noticed Davey's mouth? Probably.

I offered my hand; he took it and shook it nice and solid. Since his hand was at least twice the size of mine, it was nice that he didn't hesitate on the shake. Some big men have trouble with my small hands, as if they're afraid to break me. Davey seemed confident he wouldn't hurt me. Good.

“This is Mercer, Mercy.”

Mercy had medium-brown hair and large, pale eyes that couldn't decide if they were blue or gray. Looking right at me as he shook my hand, they were blue, but it was an uncertain color, as if the light would change it. He had a good handshake, too. Maybe they all practiced.

The next man's hair was almost the same color, but it had more curl that even the short haircut couldn't hide completely. His eyes were a pure, solid milk-chocolate brown. There'd be no color change here.

When he was introduced as Rusterman, I'd have expected his nickname to be Rusty, but it wasn't. “Spider.”

I fought the urge to ask,
Why Spider
, and let Rocco move me down the line. Next up was Sanchez, who matched the name, but still managed to look so much like all the other men that it was like looking at Army Man, now in new Hispanic. It wasn't just that they were all tall and athletic, but there was a sameness to them, as if whoever hired for the unit had a type he liked and stuck to it.

Sanchez's name was Arrio, and I wasn't sure if it was his real first name or another nickname. I didn't ask because, frankly, it didn't matter. They were giving me their names, and I took them.

Sanchez's hand in mine gave a little spark, like a small jolt of electricity as we touched. We both fought not to jump, but the others noticed, or maybe they felt it. I was standing in a room full of trained psychics.

“You spiked her, Arrio; bad practitioner, no cookie,” Spider said. The other men gave that masculine chuckle that women, even butch women, can never quite imitate.

“Sorry, Marshal,” Sanchez said.

“No harm, no foul,” I said.

He smiled and nodded, but he was embarrassed. I realized that the handshake had been a test not just for me but for all of us. Just as the men would test their bodies in weight training, the gun range, drills, this was a test, too. Could you hide what you were, hand to hand with another psychic? I'd met a lot who couldn't have done it.

“You need to work at your contact shielding, Arrio,” Rocco said.

“Sorry, Sarge, I will.”

Rocco nodded and moved to the next man. He was Theodoros, very Greek sounding and looking, but he was Santa, though Santa never looked like that when I was a little girl. His hair was straight and as black as Sanchez's and my own. He was the proverbial tall, dark, and handsome, if you were into jocks. I wondered how in hell he'd earned the nickname “Santa.” It was Spanish for
saint
, but somehow I didn't think that's what they were going for.

Santa didn't have any trouble shaking my hand and not letting me feel anything but a firm handshake. It would be a point of pride for him and the last man. Sanchez had blown it; they'd work harder because of it.

The last man was also ethnic, but I wasn't entirely sure what flavor. His short hair was curly enough to be African American, but the skin tone and facial features were not quite that. He, too, was tall, dark, and handsome, but in a different way. His eyes couldn't decide if they were dark brown or black. They were somewhere in between my dark brown and Rocco's almost black. But either color, they were framed by strangely short but very, very thick lashes, so that his eyes looked bigger and more delicate than they were, like something edged in black lace.

“Moonus, Moon,” Rocco said.

We smiled; we shook. Rocco motioned me to follow him to the front of the room. We stood in front of the whiteboard. “I'm Cannibal.” Like Spider, Cannibal made me wonder why that name.

“If we're doing first names and nicknames, then I'm Anita.”

“We heard you had a nickname,” Cannibal said.

I just looked at him, waited for him to say it.

“The Executioner.”

I nodded. “The vampires call me that, yeah.”

Davey called out, “You look a little short to be the Executioner.”

“Everyone looks short to you, Davis,” I said. “What are you, six-four?”

“Six-five,” he said.

“Jesus, most of the human population must look short to you, unless you're at work.”

They laughed at him, and with me, which was good. The sergeant quieted the laughter with a gesture and said, “We do use nicknames, Marshal; do you want us to use yours?”