Лорел Гамильтон - Rafael

“I guess not,” I said, but my pulse was a little faster than it should have been.

Hector took a deep breath of the air. “I like smelling your fear, Anita. I like it better that you’re afraid of me now.” He smiled, but it was more a snarl than a smile, showing teeth to remind the other person that even in human form teeth can still tear flesh.

Pierette said, “So you declare that you will use the wererats to attack Jean-Claude and his vampires?”

“I do not answer to cats.”

I repeated the question.

“The wererats are the majority of Jean-Claude’s foot soldiers; take them and the numbers are on our side. He knows that. We all know that. Why pretend?”

“What will you do if you take the wererats and the vampires, then what?” I asked.

“Then I truly will be king.”

“You shouldn’t be this confident,” Claudia said.

“Perhaps Jean-Claude and all your pretty boys should be watching their backs tonight,” Hector said. He leaned in as he said it and I let him, because I was watching his eyes and not the rest of him. His eyes were a solid dark brown, no green at all, and down in the depths of that darkness was power that tried to pull at me.

I felt my eyes fill with my own power and I said, “You can’t roll me with your eyes, whoever you are.”

I felt Hector move a second before his elbow tried to connect with the side of my head. I moved my head away and my arm up to sweep his elbow away from me and let his own momentum carry him past me. I drove my foot into his leg at the same time. If he’d been human, it would have broken, but he just went to his knees and I was coming in at his back for a throat shot with a blade in each hand as he tumbled out of reach across the floor, coming up on one knee and foot, hands up and ready for me.

We faced each other, both of us breathing a little hard not from exertion but from the emotion of it. I’d have killed him if he hadn’t moved and he knew it. “Your speed and skill of arms is much improved.”

“Improved over what? We’ve never met before,” I asked, still in a fighting stance with naked blades in hand.

He blinked and his eyes were back to the greenish brown of Hector, all the vampire powers locked away. “Over what I was told.” He held his hands out, palms toward me, in the universal gesture of I mean no harm , or at least I’m done for now . “I think maybe it’s too dangerous to play with you, Anita Blake.” He stood slowly, carefully with his hands up so I wouldn’t have any excuse to rush him.

I came out of the fighting crouch and backed up slowly but kept the knives out. He’d just threatened everyone I loved. If I could kill him here and now without starting a war between the wererats and vampires, I’d so do it.

“I will go back to watch the lesser fights now, and you can decide if you want to watch me fight Rafael more than you want to be at the side of the men you love most in the world while they fight for their lives.”

My heart started thudding too fast, adrenaline pumping through me like champagne shaken too hard. I whispered through my head just enough to see if Jean-Claude was listening in, and he was there like a cool line of calm. I didn’t have to get to a phone; he’d warn everyone.

“Liar,” Claudia said, “everything was true, but not that last. Jean-Claude and the others aren’t fighting for their lives, you’re bluffing on that.”

“Am I?” Hector said, and again there was that feel of another older, less cocky personality.

“We can smell the lie,” Lillian said.

Pierette moved closer to him, hands out to her sides, showing that she didn’t mean any harm, but Hector moved so that he could keep an eye on both of us. He ignored the other wererats more than the two of us; that seemed wrong. They were a fighting culture, everyone was dangerous.

“It was worth a try,” Hector said, “but now I’ll leave so you can change. I can be a gentleman when I must.” He backed toward the door, hands out, so he gave us no excuse.

Jean-Claude breathed through my mind, “Thrust power into him, now, before he leaves.”

“Why?” I whispered.

“Trust me, ma petite .”

I did, so I thrust power toward Hector. Jean-Claude hadn’t specified which power, so I went to my default—necromancy. I thrust it into that tall, handsome body, but I wasn’t looking for wererat. There it was like a cool, underground stream hidden away, vampire hiding under all that hot shapeshifter energy, and then I was thrust out so hard I staggered backward into the lockers.

Hector’s eyes burned with dark brown fire like sunlight through brown glass. “Naughty necromancer, you’ve made Rafael your rat to call, or you couldn’t have pushed past Hector like that, but it won’t matter once Rafael is dead.” He turned and went for the door with a confident swagger, Hector in charge of the body again.

One of the nurses said, “What was wrong with his eyes?”

“Vampire, he’s a vampire’s animal to call,” I said.

“You’ve met the vampire before,” Pierette said.

“Yeah, I got that feeling, too,” I muttered.

“No, I mean I know you’ve met him before.”

I looked at her and her eyes were a dark charcoal gray. Her master Pierrot’s eyes in her face. “I hoped your power would force a mistake, and it did.”

“What mistake?” I asked, looking into a face that I was beginning to hold dear and seeing someone else looking out of it. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to it.

“He overreacted to your necromancy and revealed too much of himself.”

“I didn’t get a sense of who it was holding Hector’s leash,” I said.

“I smelled something that wasn’t Hector, but I couldn’t tell much else,” Claudia said.

“Pierette could, couldn’t you, my darling?”

“Yes, master,” she said, and that they were both still using the same mouth to have the conversation was just weird enough that I almost missed my cue to ask, “What did you smell, Pierette?”

“It was a who,” Pierrot said, and it was him, because he liked to milk a reveal. Pierette was much more straightforward—it was one reason she was part of our poly group and he wasn’t.

“Who?”

“Padma, Master of Beasts.”

“The vampire council member who almost took us over once before?” Lillian asked.

“Yes,” they said.

“Motherfucking son of a bitch,” I said, and I went for the door. I was going to kill Hector and now. The wererats could get mad at me later.

23

CLAUDIA CAUGHT ME at the door, putting her hand against it so I couldn’t open it. I knew how much she bench-pressed; if she wanted to hold the door shut, there wasn’t anything I could do about it. “You can’t kill him, not before he fights Rafael.”

“The hell I can’t.”

“If our laws allowed us to kill him now, like this, I’d help you. I’d love to tear his arrogant ass to pieces, but until he fights for the crown, we cannot touch him.”

Lillian spoke from behind us. “We are allowed to defend ourselves, but nothing more until he fights our king.”

I could see Pierette behind Lillian, still just standing there as if she were listening to things we couldn’t hear, which I guess was Pierrot in her head. “Tell them how dangerous he is, Pierrot, or Pierette, or whichever, tell them.”

Pierette turned to me and between one blink and the next her eyes went from solid brown to dark gray. Did my eyes ever do the change that smoothly? Did I want to know?

“He is one of the old council members, but we have no way of knowing if our dead queen made him more powerful with her magic, or if she kept him powerless. If the first, then we will slay him, but if the second, we are all in terrible danger.”