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

else alive. And kill the bad vampires. Yeah, mustn’t forget that part.
    I had other phone calls to make before I could leave town. Cell phones are wonderful things. First call was to Larry Kirkland, fellow U.S. Marshal and vampire executioner. He answered his own cell phone on the second ring. “Hey, Anita, what’s up?” He still sounds young and fresh, but in the four years we’d known each other, he’d acquired his first scars, along with a wife and baby, and was still the main person for the morgue stakings. He had also refused to kill the shoplifter. In fact, he’d been the one who called me from the morgue to ask what the hell to do about it. He’s about my height, with bright red hair that would curl if he didn’t cut it so short, freckles, the works. He looks like he should be going out with Tom Sawyer to play tricks on little Becky, but he’s stood shoulder to shoulder with me in some bad places. If he had one fault, other than that I wasn’t entirely a fan of his wife, it was that he wasn’t a shooter. He still thought more like a cop than an assassin, and sometimes that wasn’t good in our line of work. Oh, and what did I have against his wife, Detective Tammy Reynolds? She didn’t approve of my choices in boyfriends, and she kept wanting to convert me to her sect of Christianity, which was a little too Gnostic for me. In fact, it was one of the last Gnostic-based forms of Christianity to have survived the early days of the church. It allowed for witches, read psychics in this case. Tammy thought I’d be a fine Sister of the Faith. Larry was now a Brother of the Faith, since he, like me, could raise zombies from the grave. It’s not evil if you’re doing it for the church.
    â€œI’ve got to fly to Vegas on a warrant.”
    â€œYou need me to cover while you’re gone?” he made it a question.
    â€œYep.”
    â€œThen you’re covered,” he said.
    I thought about giving him more details, but I was afraid he’d want to come with me. Endangering myself was one thing, endangering Larry was another. Part of it was that he was married and had a baby; the other part was that I just felt protective of him. He was only a few years younger than me, but there was something still soft about him. I valued that, and feared it. Soft either goes away in our business or gets you killed.
    â€œThanks, Larry. I’ll see you when I get back.”
    â€œBe careful,” he said.
    â€œAren’t I always?”
    He laughed. “No.”
    We hung up. He’d be pissed when he learned the details about Vegas. Pissed that I hadn’t confided in him, and pissed that I was still protecting him. But pissed I could live with; dead, I wasn’t sure about.
    I also called New Orleans. Their local vampire hunter, Denis-Luc St. John, had made me promise that if Vittorio ever resurfaced I’d give him a chance to get a piece of the hunt. St. John had almost been one of Vittorio’s victims. Months in the hospital and rehab after had made him pretty adamant about helping kill the vampire that put him through all that.
    It was a woman’s voice on the other end of the phone, which surprised me. To my knowledge, St. John didn’t have a wife. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure I have the right number. I’m looking for Denis-Luc St. John.”
    â€œWho is this?” the woman asked.
    â€œU.S. Marshal Anita Blake.”
    â€œThe vampire executioner,” and she made it sound like a bad thing.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI’m Denis-Luc’s sister.” She said Denis-Luc with an accent I couldn’t match.
    â€œHi, could I speak to your brother?”
    â€œHe’s out, but I’ll give him a message.”
    â€œOkay.” I told her about Vittorio.
    â€œYou mean the vampire that nearly killed him?” she asked.
    â€œYes,” I said.
    â€œWhy would you even call him?” Her