Sucker Punch (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #27) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,142

She’s really good at helping newbie Therianthropes stay in human form. Who’s the second woman?”

“Petra,” he said.

I stared at him for a second, because he had to be joking. Petra’s real name was Pierette. Petra was her Clark Kent alias, like Edward’s was Ted or Olaf’s Otto. And just like theirs, Petra was a law-abiding and government-worthy identity, but Pierette had been a spy and assassin for centuries. She was somewhere between Edward and Olaf on stability when she flipped from upstanding citizen to merciless killer, so not my choice for a traveling companion. She was also only a little taller than me with short dark hair and brown eyes. She fit Olaf’s vic profile as well as I did.

“Why the fuck would you bring her here? You know what he is.”

Nicky nodded. “We all do.”

“I don’t even know what that means, Nicky, but fuck, just fuck.”

“Argue later, Anita. I need you policing your men and your women now,” Edward said.

“Shit,” I said, and started moving toward the problems.

The sooner I got things straightened out and maybe even apologized for the public display of affection (PDA), the better. It had been indulgent of me, but I still felt better, clearer-headed even. I walked around the cars with Nicky and Edward at my back. With them as backup, I could do anything if violence was the answer, so not great for Leduc, but potentially perfect for Olaf.

Leduc was literally up in the faces of Milligan and Custer, his big belly shoving at them aggressively almost the way he’d gone after Rico at the first crime scene. Ethan and Newman were trying to calm things down, which left Angel and Petra standing off to themselves with Olaf. Angel’s shoulder-length hair was almost back to natural white blond; only the last few inches were still the raven black that she’d dyed it. Her hair was very straight, but she’d styled it into a faux-1940s hairdo.

Her clothes matched the hairstyle. Chunky black-and-white heels, with a black pencil skirt that hugged the generous swell of her hips and painted its way down the fullness of her thighs, making her look even curvier than I knew she was. A little white blouse with black lace tracing the short puff sleeves made her look like a retro sexy secretary from a soft-core porn. She was five-eleven; in the heels she had to be at least six-one. She glanced back at me, at us, and the makeup was the dark Goth makeup I knew she’d be wearing once I saw the clothes. It wasn’t what she usually wore when she was going out of town on Coalition business, but it was one of her favorite fashions for date nights. I’d discuss with her why she’d dress for a date on Coalition business later.

At least Pierette was dressed for work, in black stretch jeans fitting into tactical boots identical to mine. They looked cuter with jeans than with my tac pants, but the tac pants had more pockets. She’d put on a short jacket that left her lower body with just the curve-hugging jeans. I had a second of realizing that I liked her ass in the jeans better than Angel’s in the pencil skirt. Dating women was still so new to me, it still startled me when I noticed women at all. The fact that I was comparing the two of them the way I thought only men did bothered me, but not half as much as the look on Olaf’s face. Angel was inches too tall for his preferences, even if she hadn’t been wearing heels. With the hair color and the blue eyes, she wasn’t his ideal victim, but she’d said or done something, or maybe Pierette had. Whatever the case, the look on his face was aimed at both of them. I wasn’t even sure how I knew that, but I knew.

He’d turned so that no one else could see him but the two women. He’d dropped the mask so that they were staring into a face that wasn’t just stripping them naked in his mind, but flaying the skin off their bodies, or maybe he was thinking things about them that I couldn’t even imagine thinking. The look on his face was alien, other, in-fucking-comprehensible to anyone who wasn’t a sexually sadistic lust killer.

My instinct was to go straight to the two women and mark territory hard, but Olaf wouldn’t attack them here in front of witnesses. We’d established that in the woods earlier.