He smiled and shook his head. “Left out things, not lied. You’re dating the master of your city, Marshal, living with him; we need to know if that has compromised your loyalties.”
“Thanks for the politeness, Lieutenant; the last Vegas cop who asked me accused me of fucking everything that moved.”
Grimes made a face of distaste. “None of my men would ever have said that to you, but I apologize to you for the abuse of our city’s hospitality.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant, I appreciate that.”
“Wizard was Cannibal’s second-in-command for this squad.”
“Wizard was the man you lost,” I said.
He nodded. “We need to see how you fit in here, and we have maybe an hour to do it, before we have to deliver you back to Shaw.” Not Sheriff Shaw, I noticed; I wondered if he’d figured out who’d insulted me.
Cannibal spoke, turning me back to look at him. “If you were like our own executioner and just used weapons, we’d try to find time to put you on the range, but it’s your psychic abilities that will mess us up the most. We can always take your weapons away, but we can’t take the rest.”
“If I don’t pass your test, what then?”
“I won’t endanger my men,” Grimes said, “if you are the danger, Marshal Blake.”
“If I do pass?” I asked.
“Then we’ll help you serve your warrant,” Grimes said.
“If you don’t pass, there are other vampire hunters in town,” Cannibal said, “ones that aren’t psychic enough to be a problem.”
“They also won’t be psychic enough to be a help, either,” I said.
“We can help ourselves,” Cannibal said.
“Can any of you sense the living dead?” I asked.
“None of us has a talent with vampires in particular, no.”
I stared into Cannibal’s dark eyes as I said, “The dead come in lots of flavors, not just vampires, Cannibal.” I took that small step closer to him, not quite invading his personal space. I spoke low. “Just as vampires come in different flavors, too.”
Cannibal smiled, and again I got that flash of anticipation from him. “Let’s do this, then.”
“Let’s.”
Louder, for the room-his lieutenant and his men-he said, “Are you ready, Anita?”
“How ready do you want me to be?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you want me to try to keep you out, or do you want me to cooperate with your little mind-reading act?”
“I’d love to try to breach your shields sometime, but we don’t have time, and the last psychic who played that game with me had to be taken out in an ambulance.”
“Are you that good, or that bad?” I asked.
One of the men made a noise, like
“If we had time I’d make you prove that, but we don’t, so I’ll drop my shields enough to let you in, but I won’t drop them completely. Please, don’t try to force them all the way down.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because not only can I sense the dead, but sometimes they can sense me. If you breach all my shields, I’ll shine like a beacon, and all the vampires in the area will know something supernatural is in town. I’d rather not advertise quite that loudly yet.”
“I don’t think you’re lying about that, which means you’re not exaggerating.”
“I try not to exaggerate, Sergeant; the truth is strange enough without that.”
“I’ll be careful of your shields, Anita.”
“Okay, how do we do this?”
“Sitting down,” he said.
“In case one of us falls down,” I said.
“Something like that.”
“You really do believe you’re the strongest psychic in this room, don’t you?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I shrugged. “Fine, let’s get chairs.”
The men handed us up a chair apiece. We sat down facing each other. I lowered my shields a little, like partially opening a door. Not only could I feel Cannibal’s energy humming along my skin now, but there were buzzes and flashes and heat from some of the other men. I fought not to concentrate on them, just to ignore it the way I did ghosts. Ignore it and it will go away.
“It works better if I can touch you,” he said.
I gave him a look.
He smiled. “So young to be so cynical.”
I held out my hands, still frowning. “Fine.”
He took my hands in his, and only then did he lower his own shields, only then did he reach out to me with that humming energy of his. Only then did I realize that touch makes all vampire powers worse, more, even if the vampire in question wears a uniform and has a heartbeat.
7
HIS POWER FLOWED through the hole in my shields like something warm and alive. Shapeshifter energy was warm, but it held an edge of electricity, like your skin couldn’t decide if it felt good or hurt. Shapeshifters rode that edge of pain and pleasure, but this power was just warm, almost comforting. What the hell?
His hands felt warmer in mine than they had been a moment ago, as if his temperature were rising. Again, I kept trying to equate it to a lycanthrope, because it was so not the cool touch of the grave.
I realized I was staring at our hands. I was treating him like a real vampire. You don’t look one of them in the eye, but that was years ago for me. I hadn’t met a vampire that could roll me with its gaze in a long time. One very alive, psychic vampire wasn’t going to be able to do it, was he? So why didn’t I want to meet his eyes? I realized I was nervous, almost afraid, and I couldn’t have told you why. Short of someone trying to kill me, or my love life, my nerves were rock steady. So why the case of nerves?
I made myself look away from his hands on mine and meet his eyes. They were just the same almost black, the pupils lost to the color, but they weren’t vampire eyes. They hadn’t bled their color into shining fire across the whole of his eyes. They were human eyes, and he was only human. I could do this, damn it.
His voice seemed lower, soothing, the way you see people talk when they’re trying to hypnotize someone. “Are you ready, Anita?”
I frowned at him. “Get on with it, Sergeant; the foreplay’s getting tedious.”
He smiled.
One of the other psychics in the room, I didn’t know their voices well enough to pick who, said, “Let him be gentle, Marshal; you don’t want to see what he can do.”
I met Cannibal’s dark, dark eyes and said the truth: “Yeah, I do want to see what he can do.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, voice still low, soft, like he was trying not to wake someone.
I spoke low, too. “As much as you want to see what I can do.”
“You going to fight back?”
“You hurt me, and I will.”
He gave that smile that was more fierce than happy. “Okay.” He leaned in, drawing down all that extra height from his much longer waist to bring our faces close, and he whispered, “Show me Baldwin, show me the operator you lost. Show me Baldwin, Anita.”
It shouldn’t have been that easy, but it was as if the words were magic. The memories came to the front of
