Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 6-10 - Laurell K. Hamilton [216]
13
THE SIDE DOOR of the Circus has no handle. The only way in is if someone opens the door. Security measures. Jean-Claude knocked, and the door swung inward at his touch. Open, waiting, expecting us. Ominous.
The door opened into a small storage room with a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. A stark room with a few boxes against one wall. A door to the right led into the main part of the Circus, where people were usually riding the Ferris wheel and eating cotton candy. A smaller door led off to the left. There were no bright lights and cotton candy in that direction.
The light swung back and forth as if someone had just hit it. The naked bulb made the shadows thicker, and the light danced until it was hard to tell shadow from light. Something glinted on the left-hand door. Something attached to its surface. I didn’t know what it was, except it glinted dully in the strange light.
I shoved the door flat against the wall just to make sure no one was behind it. Then I put my back to the door and trained the Browning on the room.
“Stop the bulb from swinging,” I said.
Jean-Claude reached up and touched the bulb. He had to stand on tiptoe to do it. Whoever had set it swinging was over six feet.
“The room is empty, ma petite,” Jean-Claude said.
“What’s on the door?” It was flat and thin, and my mind couldn’t make a shape out of it. Whatever it was, it was hammered to the door with silver nails.
Jean-Claude let out a long sigh. “Mon Dieu.”
I crossed the room with the Browning pointed two-handed at the floor. Jean-Claude said the room was empty. I trusted that, but I trusted me more.
Liv staggered to the door. The front of her body was covered with blood, but her throat was perfect. I wondered if the Traveler had helped her after we walked away. She coughed, and cleared her throat so violently it sounded painful. “I wanted to see your faces when you saw the Master of Beasts’ compromise,” she said. “The Traveler refused to let him and his people greet you in person. This is the Master of Beasts’ calling card. How do you like it?” She sounded eager in a predatory, unpleasant sort of way. What the fuck was on the door?
Even standing next to it, I didn’t know what it was. Thin rivulets of blood were seeping down the door from it. The sweet metallic scent of blood warmed the stale air. The thing was almost paper thin, but had a consistency more like plastic. It curled at the edges, straining against the five silver nails.
I suddenly had an awful idea. So awful, my eyes couldn’t see it even after I’d thought it. I took three steps back from the thing and tried to see the silhouette. There; there; two arms, two legs, shoulders. It was a human skin. Once I found the shape of it, I couldn’t stop seeing it. I knew that when I closed my eyes tonight that it would haunt me. That thin stretched thing that used to be a person.
“Where are the hands and feet?” I asked. My voice sounded strange, distant, almost unattached. My lips and fingertips tingled with the pure horror of it.
“It is merely the back of someone’s body, not the entire skin, ma petite. Besides, it is hard to take the living skin off of fingers and toes when your victim is still struggling,” Jean-Claude said. His voice was utterly flat, carefully empty.
“Struggling? You mean whoever this was, was alive?”
“You are the police expert, ma petite.”
“It wouldn’t be bleeding this much if they hadn’t been alive,” I said.
“Yes, ma petite.”
He was right. I did know that. But the sight of a human skin nailed to a door had thrown me. It was a first, even for me. “Sweet Jesus, do the silver nails mean the victim was vampire or lycanthrope?”
“Most likely,” Jean-Claude said.
“Does that mean they’re still alive?”
He looked at me. His look managed to be empty and eloquent all at the same time. “They were alive when the skin was removed. If vampire, or lycanthrope, the mere removal of the skin would not be sufficient