Лорел Гамильтон - Rafael

“You have never been to the heart of our people, so you have never seen eyes like mine.”

“I think I know why your power and I are getting along so well.”

“Tell me.”

“How about if I show you?”

“Show me what?”

“I’m going to call a little of the magic in me, so you can feel how similar it is to yours.”

“We are not necromancers here.”

“This isn’t necromancy. I just don’t want you to freak out when I open myself to the power, okay?”

“Show me something worth seeing, Anita Blake.”

I took that for reassurance that she wouldn’t freak out and I called an ability that hadn’t come through Jean-Claude, or any of the shapeshifters I was tied to, but a self-professed goddess. My skin ran with the energy she had shared with me. The magic around us pulsed and then hesitated like a heart skipping a beat.

“Your eyes,” Neva said, “this can’t be.”

The beat of magic around us caught up with that lost beat, and it was as if my body were a gong and it had hit me solidly in the chest. It stole my breath and staggered me backward.

Claudia caught me or I might have fallen. “Neva, you are not allowed to harm her.”

“I did nothing,” she said.

I fought to have enough air to say, “Not her . . . fault.” I looked up at her as I said it and watched her face pale.

“Neva, what have you done!” She turned back to the other woman, and her anger and fear raised her beast enough that I jerked back from the heat of it.

Pierette said, “Anita’s eyes are not the witch’s doing.”

“I can see them for myself. Neva, what did you do?”

“It is you and our king who should have told me that she carries our magic inside her.” Her anger and fear translated to heat like I’d opened a blast furnace. I stumbled back from them both, and it was Pierette who caught my arm so I didn’t hit a wall.

“Control your little beasts, witch,” Pierette said.

I looked and saw that the rats were beginning to creep forward, still unnaturally silent and well behaved. I looked at them with eyes made of black space and starlight, and their energy wasn’t right. They weren’t ordinary animals of any kind. They watched everything with a weight of intelligence and thought that wasn’t very ratlike. Rats are smart, very smart, but they’re animals and no matter how intelligent they can’t look at you with that sense of a personhood in their eyes, their bodies.

“Wererats don’t come this small,” I whispered.

Pierette said, “They are just rats that the witch is controlling.”

“No, they’re not just rats.” I didn’t know what they were, so I had no word to substitute, but I knew what they were not, and that was a normal animal of any kind.

“What do you see, Anita?” Neva asked; it took me a second to realize she’d used just my first name.

“I’m not sure, but something’s wrong with them, or right with them, but right or wrong, they’re different.” I glanced back at her and physically she looked the same, though now I could “see” where the tip of the short sword on her back poked out of the line of her shirt. Her thick, unbound hair hid the hilt that came out above the opposite shoulder. How was she carrying it? Just thinking about it gave me the hint of straps under the short-sleeved blouse. I looked at Claudia and I knew where she’d hidden a small blade on her calf, because now I could see the slightest difference from one leg to the other. It had been like this the first time when Obsidian Butterfly had put her power inside me, but never again. I’d gained other powers, but this hypervision for weapons and dangers had never come back. If Neva could see what I saw, then she knew where every weapon was hidden on Pierette and me. Nothing could hide from this.

Neva and Claudia were arguing. Claudia demanding what she’d done to me, and Neva angry that no one warned her I had a piece of their magic inside me already. I glanced back at the rats and realized they were listening. I don’t mean the way a dog does, but the way people do. They were hearing and understanding what the two women were saying back and forth.

“Obsidian Butterfly,” I said. I had to say it a little louder for them to hear me enough to stop bickering.

“What did you say?” Claudia asked.

“Itzpapalotl.” Neva used the original Aztec name.

“Yeah, that’s her,” I said.

“What of her?”

“She’s the master vampire of Albuquerque, New Mexico. When I visited her a few years back, she shared power with me. That’s where the eyes came from for me. Where’d you get yours, Neva?”

“The gods of the people were not vampires.”

“I can’t speak to all the Aztec pantheon, but I can tell you that Obsidian Butterfly is a vampire, but if you ever meet her in person, don’t tell her that. She thinks she’s a goddess; no harm letting her keep thinking that and a hell of a lot safer for you.”

“Why would Itzpapalotl share power with you?” Neva asked.

“She wanted me to help her get rid of some mutual enemies. Who shared energy with you?” I asked.

“Our ancestors.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Our magic comes from our ancestors and the gods they walked with,” she said, as if that cleared everything up.

“Were the gods they walked with Aztec by any chance?” I asked.

“Some, our people have been touched by the gods of all the lands we have passed through.”

“And the rats?” I asked.

Neva looked at me and there was a moment of staring into the starlit darkness of her eyes. The first time I’d looked into eyes like that I’d been rolled so completely that the vampire could have done anything to me, but now I stared into them and did not fall into them, because I had an answering power in my own eyes. I might owe one would-be goddess in New Mexico a thank-you note.

“What of our small brethren?” she asked.

“I thought your magic was controlling normal rats, but whatever they are, they aren’t normal.”

“They have always been here,” Neva said.

“The rats are part of the power here,” Claudia said.

“The magic has changed them as it changed me,” Neva said.

“Just to be clear, Claudia, you’re saying that Neva’s eyes have always glowed like this, it’s not new?”

“Since I first joined the rodere at eighteen.”

“And all the witches of the rodere have eyes like this?” I asked.

“When the power rides them.”

“Good to know,” I said out loud; in my head I thought, Good to know she’s not possessed by the same vampire that’s got Hector .

“It is getting late, we need to get Anita inside,” Claudia said.

“Yeah, if I have to fight my way through the crowd, we best get started,” I said.

“The fighting has already begun, Anita Blake,” Neva said. She walked past us, and the rats made room for her, spilling wide around her so she could walk and not worry about stepping on them. She walked away without glancing back at us, but one of the rats stood on its haunches and looked back for her. Could she see through its eyes? I looked at the rat and it looked back at me. We stared at each other. Its fur was black, darker than most of the others’. It stretched up tall, showing a small spot of white on its chest and a white paw. Its nose wiggled as it sniffed the air; did my magic smell different to it, or did Obsidian Butterfly’s power smell just like home? It settled back on all fours and looked at me. Again, there was that sense of too much mind staring back at me from the small body.

“The rat is looking at you,” Pierette said.

Claudia came to stand beside me. “We need to go inside,” she said.

I nodded at the profoundly serious-looking rat. “Is this normal for the rats here?”