Лорел Гамильтон - Rafael

“No, they never pay this much attention to anyone but the brujas.”

“What do you want?” I asked.

“I want you to come inside with me,” Claudia said.

“I’m asking him,” I said.

“You mean the rat?”

“Yes,” I said, still staring at the small pointed face.

It made a noise that I think that was supposed to be a squeak but sounded lower-pitched, like it would sing bass in rat choir. It turned and walked away, body longer and sleeker, as if it had lost some mass in the last few seconds.

“Bye,” I said, as if it could understand me.

The rat stopped and turned its upper body to look back and squeaked at me before racing away into the shadows.

“Did that sound like he said bye ?” I asked.

“No,” Pierette said.

“They don’t talk,” Claudia said.

“If you say so,” I said.

“Your eyes are back to normal,” Pierette said.

“Then let’s go.”

“Can you call the eyes back at will?” Claudia asked.

I thought about it, then nodded.

“Good, because all the rodere respect the magic of our brujas.”

“Respect or fear?” I asked.

“Both.”

“You want me to flash the eyes as we go inside?”

“Save them in case we’re losing,” she suggested.

“What would happen if I accidentally drained the energy out of one of them?”

“Would it just weaken them?”

“No, they’d start to dry out like mummies.”

“Like what you did to Chimera?” Claudia asked.

“Yeah.”

“Don’t do that,” she said.

17

AFTER NEVA AND the rats outside, I thought I was ready for anything inside, but I was wrong. They wanted to touch me, not to hurt me—women, men, young, old, they touched my arms, squeezed my shoulder, shook my hands. The first one who tried to hug me nearly got punched, but Claudia touched my hand in time so that they hugged me without getting hurt.

“It’s so good to see you in person,” a woman said, and hugged me like I was her long-lost friend. I smiled and nodded and said, “I’m glad I could be here tonight.”

A man grabbed me in the fiercest hug yet and tried to kiss me. I turned my head to the side so he got my cheek, and Claudia pulled him off me before I could decide how violent to be about a stolen kiss.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m sorry.”

It was a woman with half her head shaved and more tattoos and piercings than I’d seen in a while who took my hand in hers and said, “When you feed the ardeur on us, it’s amazing.”

“Thanks,” I said, not sure what else to say.

She stepped a little closer, both hands holding mine. I thought her eyes were black, but they were just the darkest charcoal gray I’d ever seen. “My name is Mariposa, it means butterfly .”

I looked at the butterfly tattooed on her left shoulder and smiled. I think the smile encouraged her a little too much, because she leaned in even closer and said, “I would love for you to feed on me in person.”

My face must have shown that I didn’t know what to say, because she laughed and said, “Don’t tell me I’m the first one who’s asked.”

I nodded.

She laughed again, lips parted enough that I could see her tongue was pierced.

Pierette pulled me back with an arm across my shoulders and drew me into a hug. Mariposa grinned and just moved back to let the next person take my hand. She was the first one to proposition me, but not the last. I’d known the ardeur could be addictive, but I’d trusted Rafael to be strong enough to resist. I hadn’t even thought about what might have been happening to the other wererats. I felt careless that I hadn’t thought about it; Jean-Claude breathed through my head, letting me know that it hadn’t occurred to him either, and that did make me feel a little less slow on the uptake.

A man grabbed my arm and I’d had so many people touching me by then that I just turned to him with a smile, trying to be friendly, or at least diplomatic. I felt his body lunge forward before I even saw the blade in his hand. I didn’t have time to go for one of my own knives; all I could do was use my free hand to sweep his arm past me. He’d committed too much energy to stabbing me, so when I swept his arm, he stumbled past me even more than I’d planned. I put my hand over his where he was still gripping my arm and used it like a handle to help his stumble become a fall that put him on his knees.

He tried to twist back toward me with the blade in his hand, but I still had his other arm. I went from using it like a handle to turning it into a joint lock on his elbow. I put enough pressure on it to let him know I’d break it if he kept moving.

He kept turning toward me with the knife, so I broke his elbow. It made a nice meaty pop. Normal people scream and stop fighting after that, but he didn’t even bother to scream. He just kept turning toward me, and with his elbow broken the arm was no longer stiff enough to act as a barrier. He let me tear his arm up and didn’t even hesitate as he slashed for my thigh, and I tried to switch one hand to his shoulder to keep him away from me.

18

I FELT THE hit of his blade on the outside of my thigh, because I’d turned my leg so he missed the femoral artery on the inside of the thigh, and the moment I felt the knife bite into me I used his arm and shoulder to try to put him flat on the ground and keep his other arm and the knife away from me. I’d done similar moves in practice and in real life, but I forgot one thing—I was stronger now, a lot stronger.

His arm tore away from his body, gushing blood everywhere, and it was so fresh and there was so much of it that it was hot on my skin. I screamed and he was already screaming, and all I could think was Where’s the knife? The blood was so thick and fast that I couldn’t see what the bad guy was doing, and with his arm barely held to his body by skin, I couldn’t use it to feel his movements. My fingertips found his back and that was something I could understand. I let go of his useless arm and rode his back down to the floor. I drove my knee into his back because I wasn’t big enough to keep him down with just my weight, and pinned his remaining shoulder to the ground to keep the knife that was still in his hand away from me. I drew the knife at my waist with my other hand and plunged it into the side of the man’s neck and gave it a twist on the way out. Almost no blood came out; that wasn’t right. I’d seen enough throat wounds to know they bleed like a son of a bitch.

I heard someone yelling my name, but I kept staring at the knife in my hand and the barely bleeding neck wound. What was happening? Why wasn’t it bleeding more?

“Anita!” Claudia was kneeling on the floor, balanced on the balls of her feet, shouting at me.

I blinked at her and wanted to ask her, Why isn’t his throat bleeding more? Even though it was just steel he should have bled before he healed it.

“Anita, can you hear me?” Claudia asked.

I blinked at her again and then nodded.

“Are you hurt?”

“My leg, he cut my leg.” My voice sounded beyond calm, there was no emotion to it at all. I felt dull and distant. I wasn’t hurt bad enough to be in shock; what the hell was wrong with me?

“How bad?” she asked.

I shook my head, not sure how to answer the question. “He was going for my femoral, but I turned so he only got the outside of my thigh,” I said in that dull, emotionless voice.

“Take his blade, and then I’ll look at your wound.”

I looked down his arm where his hand was still wrapped around the knife. It was as if his arm had gotten longer and everything was farther away than I knew it was; distortion like that wasn’t good. Maybe I was more hurt than I thought.