[Anita Blake 17] - Skin Trade Read Free Page A

the first time you have to look someone in the face while they beg for their life . . . Let’s just say that even with practice, putting a stake through someone’s heart is a slow way to die. They beg and explain themselves right up to the last.”
    â€œBut they’ve done something to deserve death,” he said.
    â€œNot always; sometimes they fall into that three-strikes law for vampires. It’s written so that no matter what the crime is, even a misdemeanor, three times and you get a warrant of execution on your ass. I don’t like killing people for stealing when there’s no violence involved.”
    â€œBut stealing big items, right?”
    â€œNo, Sheriff, one woman got executed for stealing less than a thousand dollars of shit. She was a diagnosed kleptomaniac before becoming a vampire; dying didn’t cure her like she thought it would.”
    â€œSomeone put a stake through her heart for petty theft?”
    â€œThey did,” I said.
    â€œThe law doesn’t give the preternatural branch of the marshal program a right to refuse jobs.”
    â€œTechnically, no, but I just don’t do the stakedowns. I had stopped doing them before the vampire executioners got grandfathered into the U.S. Marshal program.”
    â€œAnd they let you.”
    â€œLet’s say I have an understanding with my superiors.” The understanding had been that I wouldn’t testify on behalf of the family of the woman executed for shoplifting if they simply wouldn’t make me kill anyone who hadn’t taken lives. A life for a life made some sense. A life for some costume jewelry made no sense to me. A lot of us had turned down the woman. In the end they’d had to send to Washington, DC, for Gerald Mallory, who was one of the first vampire hunters ever who was still alive. He still thought all vampires were evil monsters, so he’d staked her without a qualm. Mallory sort of scared me. There was something in his eyes when he looked at any vampire that wasn’t quite sane.
    â€œMarshal, are you still there?”
    â€œI’m sorry, Sheriff, you got me thinking too hard about the shoplifter.”
    â€œIt’s in the news that the family is suing for wrongful death.”
    â€œThey are.”
    â€œYou don’t talk much, do you?”
    â€œI say what needs saying.”
    â€œYou’re damn quiet for a woman.”
    â€œYou don’t need me to talk. I assume you need me to come to Vegas and do my job.”
    â€œIt’s a trap, Blake. A trap just for you.”
    â€œProbably, and sending me the head of your executioner is about as direct as a threat gets.”
    â€œAnd you’re still going to come?”
    I stood up and looked down at the box and the head staring up at me. It looked somewhere between surprised and sleepy. “He mailed me the head of your vampire executioner. He mailed it to my office. He wrote a message to me in the blood on the wall where he slaughtered three of your operators. Hell, yes, I’m coming to Vegas.”
    â€œYou sound angry.”
    In my head I thought, Better angry than scared . If I could stay outraged, maybe I could keep the fear from growing. Because it was there in the pit of my stomach, in the back of my mind like a black, niggling thought that would grow bigger if I let it. “Wouldn’t you be pissed?”
    â€œI’d be scared.”
    That stopped me, because cops almost never admit that they’re scared. “You broke the rule, Shaw, you never admit you’re scared.”
    â€œI just want you to know, Blake, really know, what you’re walking into, that’s all.”
    â€œIt must have been bad.”
    â€œI’ve seen more men dead at one time. Hell, I’ve lost more men under my command.”
    â€œYou must be ex-military,” I said.
    â€œI am,” he said.
    I waited for him to say what service; most would, but he didn’t.
    â€œWhere were