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

you stationed?” I asked.
    â€œClassified, most of it.”
    â€œEx-special teams?” I made it part question, part statement.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œDo I ask what flavor, or just let it drop, before you have to threaten me with the old if-I-tell-you-then-I-have-to-kill-you routine?” I tried for a joke, but Shaw didn’t take it that way.
    â€œYou’re making a joke. If you can do that, then you don’t get what’s happening.”
    â€œYou’ve got three operators dead, one vamp executioner dead and cut up; that is bad, but you didn’t send just three operators in with the marshal, so most of your team got away, Sheriff.”
    â€œThey didn’t get away,” he said, and something in his voice made that tight, black pit of fear rise a little higher in my gut.
    â€œBut they’re not dead,” I said, “or you’d say so.”
    â€œNo, not dead, not exactly.”
    â€œAre they badly hurt?”
    â€œNot exactly,” he said.
    â€œStop beating the bush to death and just tell me, Shaw.”
    â€œSeven of our men are in the hospital. There’s not a mark on them. They just dropped.”
    â€œIf there are no marks on them, why did they drop, and why are they in the hospital?”
    â€œThey’re asleep.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou heard me.”
    â€œYou mean comas?”
    â€œThe doctors say no. They’re asleep; we just can’t wake them up.”
    â€œDo the docs have any clues?”
    â€œThe only thing close to this is those patients in the twenties who all went to sleep and never woke up.”
    â€œDidn’t they make a movie years back about them waking up?”
    â€œYes, but it didn’t last, and they still don’t know why that form of sleeping sickness is different from the norm,” he said.
    â€œYour whole team didn’t just catch this sleeping thing in the middle of a firefight.”
    â€œYou asked what the doctors said.”
    â€œNow, I’m asking what you say.”
    â€œOne of our practitioners says it was magic.”
    â€œPractitioners?” I made it a question.
    â€œWe’ve got psychics attached to our teams, but can’t call them our pet wizards.”
    â€œSo operators and practitioners,” I said.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œSo someone did a spell?”
    â€œI don’t know, but apparently it all reeks of psychic shit, and when you run out of explanations that make sense, you go with what you got.”
    â€œWhen you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,” I said.
    â€œDid you just quote Sherlock Holmes at me?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œThen you still don’t get it, Blake. You just don’t.”
    â€œOkay, let me be blunt here. Something about my reaction wasn’t what you expected, so you’re convinced that I don’t get the seriousness of the situation. You’re ex-special teams, which means to you, women are not going to measure up. You’ve called me a beautiful woman, and that, too, makes most cops and military underestimate women. But special teams, hell, you don’t think most other military men are up to your level, or most cops. So I’m a girl; get over it. I’m petite and I clean up well; get over that, too. I’m dating a vampire, the master of my city; so what? It has nothing to do with my job or why Vittorio invited me to come hunt him in Vegas.”
    â€œWhy did he run in St. Louis? Why didn’t he run here when he knew we were coming? Why did he ambush our men and not yours?”
    â€œMaybe he couldn’t afford to lose that many of his vampires again, or maybe he’s just decided to make his last stand in your city.”
    â€œLucky fucking us.”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œI called around, talked to some of the other cops you’ve worked with, and some of the other vampire executioners, about you. You want