Burnt Offerings - Laurell K. Hamilton [41]
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 to kill them.”
A shudder ran through me from head to feet. It wasn’t exactly fear. It was horror. Horror at the casualness of it, the callousness of it. “Asher mentioned Padma. Is he the Beast Master?”
“The Master of Beasts,” Jean-Claude said. “You cannot kill him for this indiscretion, ma petite.”
“You’re wrong,” I said. The horror was there like a coating of ice underneath my skin, but over that was anger. Rage. And under the rage was fear. Fear of anyone that would skin another person alive just to make a point. Told you something about a person. Told you how few rules they had. Told me, in no uncertain terms, that I should kill him as soon as I saw him.
“We cannot punish them for this tonight, ma petite. Tonight is about survival for all of us. Remember that and curb your anger.”
I stared at the thing on the door. “I am way past anger.”
“Then curb your rage. We must save the rest of our people.”
“If they’re alive.”
“They were alive when I came upstairs to wait for you,” Liv said.
“Whose skin is it?” I asked.
She laughed, and it was her usual bray. All healed, all better. “Guess,” she said. “If you guess right, I’ll tell you, but only if you guess right.”
It took more control than was pretty not to point the Browning at her. I shook my head. “No games, Liv, not with you. The real games don’t even begin until we get downstairs.”
“Well said, ma petite. Let us go down.”
“No,” Liv said. “No, you’ll guess. You’ll guess who it is. I want to see your face. I want to see the pain in your eyes while you think about each of your friends, Anita. I want to watch the horror on your face while you picture it happening to each of them.”
“What did I ever do to you, Liv?”
“You stood in my way,” she said.
I shook my head and pointed the gun at her. “Three strikes and you’re out, Liv.”
She frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“Betraying us was one. Trying to roll me with your eyes was number two. That was partly my fault, so I would have let it go. But you took an oath to protect all of Jean-Claude’s people. You swore to