Лорел Гамильтон - Rafael

He thought he was fast, because he was startled when he found us both looking at him and ready. He was about our size, delicate-looking for a man, and he didn’t look as strongly Hispanic as Rafael, more Asian-ish.

“No fighting in sight of the road, Danny, you know that,” Claudia said, looming over all of us.

“I didn’t draw a blade,” he said.

“You draw a blade within sight of the road, and you go into the pit as warmup. Those are the rules,” she said.

I hadn’t known that rule, but I waited until Danny walked back to join his group of friends before I spoke low to Claudia. “Any other rules that will get us thrown to the wolves, or rats, or whatever?” I asked.

“The punishments aren’t for first-timers, only for the people that should know better.”

“Good to know,” I said, as Pierette said, “Reassuring.” We looked at each other and smiled. It was more than a friend smile, but then we were more than friends.

We were in a dark space between two warehouses now, and I felt the waves of power move smoothly, but it was still a lot of energy getting displaced. Something big was “swimming” toward us.

I moved up beside Claudia and whispered, “Something powerful ahead.”

“Neva,” Claudia called out, “we are honored by your presence.”

“I knew you would know I was here, Claudia, but how did you know, Anita Blake?” The woman stepped out of the shadows, or maybe the shadows thinned out and let us see her, but either way she was taller than Pierette, but still well under six feet, so I guess average height. Her skin was very brown and showed her age as if she’d spent all her life in too much sunshine and not enough sunscreen. Her hair was still thick and black, unbound around her thin shoulders. She stood very upright, no stoop at all, but her body had begun to wear down anyway. Her bones were strong, but her muscles were thinning down the way that comes only after seventy.

“I don’t know.” And that was the truth.

“Why have you brought a leopard among us?” she asked, and I wasn’t sure if she was addressing me or Claudia.

“She’s with me,” I said, not really answering her question.

The woman smiled and it was like the shadows thickened around her, so that her eyes gleamed like black diamonds, but her face was almost obscured as if her eyes glittered bodiless. I called my own power, just a pulse of it, and felt Jean-Claude down that metaphysical cord, helping me. The darkness thinned, so I could see the outline of her face more clearly, but her eyes still glittered with more than just her inner beast.

Pierette moved a little uneasily and was looking behind us as if there was a threat there, too. I wanted to ask what but kept my attention on the woman. Claudia was just standing beside me, trying for neutral but not quite hiding the tension in her body.

I felt that sense of something swimming through the power again. It was both as big as the woman and not, or bigger, it was as if whatever it was ebbed and flowed and . . .

“Neva, they are guests of our king, not intruders,” Claudia said.

“Blades will not be enough for this, my queen,” Pierette said from behind me.

“Not enough for what?” I asked. I could feel it, but I didn’t understand what I was sensing.

“Can’t you smell them?”

“No.” But the moment she said them , I understood that it was a group of things moving through the magic, so many of them that their shape changed like starlings forming shapes in the air because there were so many of them, and then I knew even before I heard the first claws clicking against the bricks of the pavement.

I did that slow horror-movie turn because I was almost sure what was behind us and I didn’t want to be right. Rats, thousands of them.

16

I EXPECTED THEM to rush us, but they stopped a few yards away as if they’d come to some invisible barrier I couldn’t see. Some of them stood up on their hind legs and sniffed the air, but most of them waited in silence, barely moving like a frozen dark river of furred bodies. Only the glittering of their eyes as it reflected the dim light here and there proved that they weren’t all asleep like some magic Pied Piper lullaby. They should have been squeaky, or squabbling, or grooming, or something. The unnatural stillness of them was almost more unnerving to me than anything else.

I had to swallow past my pulse, which was trying to choke me, or maybe that was my heart trying to climb up and out. Pierette asked, “If I draw a blade, what will they do?”

“Whatever Neva wishes them to do,” Claudia said; her voice was low and careful as if she didn’t want to make any sudden moves or noises. Good to know that I wasn’t the only one who felt like we were on the edge of battle and all we needed was the first person to make a move, any move, and then bad things would happen.

“Is this some weird initiation that no one told me about?” I asked, trying to make a joke of it, but my voice held the panicked beat of my heart, breathless and thin.

“No,” Claudia said, as if she thought I’d asked a serious question.

“Why does our magic know you, Anita Blake?” Neva asked.

“What do you want me to say?” I asked.

“The truth.”

“I told you the truth already, so just tell me what you want me to say and I’ll say it.”

“Are you afraid of our small brethren?” she asked.

“You can hear how fast my heart is beating, you know I’m afraid.”

“Look at me, Anita Blake.”

It was a little too much like a command for my taste, but I’d worry about who was the toughest later, so I looked at her. I trusted that Pierette and Claudia would keep an eye on the furry horde, for what little good it would do us. We needed heavy firepower to have a hope of keeping the rats from engulfing us, things like shotguns and fully automatic machine guns and flamethrowers. Since we didn’t have any of that, I looked at Neva. Honestly, she was a much better view than the waiting rats. Funny how you don’t realize you’re scared of something until it’s staring you in the face. I’d forgotten how much I didn’t like rats.

Her eyes were like black diamonds except they weren’t just reflecting the dim light like the real rats, her eyes had their own light as if she were a vampire. The only shapeshifters that I’d ever seen with eyes like that had a vampire they called master. Holy shit, did she belong to the same vampire that Hector did? I wasn’t the only “vampire” who had multiple animals to call. If Hector’s master was the same, then we were in serious freaking trouble here.

“Anita Blake.” She said my name like it tasted bitter.

“Neva,” I said, for something to say while I screamed down my metaphysical connections, hoping that Jean-Claude was getting all this.

She turned her head to look at me out of one eye the way a bird will, and I caught a glint of light in her eyes that wasn’t black. I blinked and took a step toward her, then thought to ask, “May I come closer to see your eyes better?”

“A step, or two, no more; I do not want you tempted to go for a blade. I would hate to explain to our king what happened to his concubine.”

I didn’t really like being called a concubine, but she had several thousand rats waiting to swarm over us, so until that changed, she could call me any damn thing she wanted. I moved slowly and deliberately the two steps she’d given me; I didn’t want a misunderstanding.

She stared at me aggressively, both eyes forward, and there it was, starshine in her black eyes. They were the darkness of space with stars scattered and shining in the permanent night between the worlds.

“I’ve seen eyes like yours before,” I said, keeping my voice low and careful, just in case.