Лорел Гамильтон - Rafael

I asked Claudia, “Is she allowed to use magic against me?”

“If you want to be queen over all of the rodere, you must face all the powers at our disposal,” the woman answered for Claudia.

There were two more women on the steps behind her. They had knives naked in their hands just like I did. Nice they weren’t being sneaky about it. Maybe me getting out a knife had made it possible for them to do it? Damn it, I did not know enough rules here.

“Claudia, tell me the rules here.”

“They want to sit at Rafael’s side and have a chance to be his queen.”

“No one told me that I’d have to compete just to sit down tonight.”

“We didn’t expect them to challenge you since you are not a wererat,” she said.

“What’s your name?” I asked the woman whose energy was still pushing against my shields.

“Rosa.”

“Well, Rosa, you know I’m just here for tonight, so if you and your friends want to fight over Rafael some other time, knock yourselves out, but I’m not a wererat so I can’t be queen here.”

“If you leave, then we will not hurt you,” she said. She tried to use her height to loom over me, but with Claudia beside me it wasn’t that impressive. Her two friends behind her crowded a little closer on their steps, emboldened by me offering an olive branch instead of a fight, I guess.

“She used magic first, can I use magic, or a blade, or what? Tell me the rules, Claudia.”

“Show her your eyes, Anita; let Rosa understand what you could do to her.”

It took me a blink or two to realize what she meant by eyes, and then I called up the power that Obsidian Butterfly had shared with me. I knew my eyes had gone black with the glimmer of starlight, because I could see the knife at Rosa’s belt. She might not have drawn it, but she still had a blade. I’d assumed she was armed, but now I knew for certain.

The other two were better armed, and that was just what I could see under their clothes around Rosa, so at least three blades apiece for them, counting the ones in their hands. I realized that Rosa’s magic had been pushing at me the whole time I was looking for weapons on them. There had been a time when she’d have been a problem for me magically, one I would have solved with weapons, but that was then, and this was very much now.

I looked up at her, instead of at her center body mass like I would for a physical fight. The moment she saw my eyes she went pale and stumbled back into the women behind her. They saw my eyes then, and the one in the very back held her hands up like I’m sorry and backed away.

The second woman said something rapid in Spanish. I think it was a spell of protection or a prayer. It wouldn’t save her, because I wasn’t evil. Common sense would save her from me if she just went back to her seat, no deity intervention needed.

“Go back to your seats,” I said.

“You cannot be one of our brujas,” Rosa said.

I looked at her with the eyes that a would-be goddess had given me, and I saw her magic as a faint glow like a flashlight with a fading battery.

“Don’t try your magic against mine, Rosa, just go back to your seat.”

“You’re afraid to fight me,” she said, but her voice wasn’t as certain as her words wanted to be.

“You know that’s not true, Rosa, don’t make me prove that you’re the one who’s afraid.”

“I am not afraid of you!” Her glow was red now, like fire burning underwater.

“We can smell your fear, Rosa,” Claudia said, and her voice held derision.

“No!” she yelled, and she pushed her red energy at me.

I reached through it like it wasn’t there and felt it shred like mist against the rock of my shields. I had her wrist in my bare hand and my blade pressed against her sternum before she could move. Had I been that fast, or was she just that slow when she did magic, the way I’d had to stand still to redo my shields for Nathaniel and Damian?

I drew her life out through her skin where it touched mine. Her glow faded first as if it had been erased.

“No!” she cried out.

“Tap out,” I said, but even as I gave her an out, I started to get that high from eating her life’s essence.

Claudia said, “Tell her you give up. Say you give up your right to fight for Rafael’s attentions tonight.”

Rosa’s skin was starting to cling to the bones of her body; her face looked skeletal, skin starting to dry out as I fed. She collapsed so suddenly to her knees that if I hadn’t moved my knife out of the way in time, she’d have driven it into herself. She didn’t try for her knife; it was too late for that. I kept my grip on her one wrist and held the knife out away from her so she wouldn’t hurt herself on it. “Say you give up, while you can still talk,” I said.

“Give up, give up, I give . . . up.” She whispered that last as her eyes started to flutter. If she could pass out, she was lucky; I’d never seen anyone who lost consciousness during it, no matter if it was me or Obsidian Butterfly doing it. If I didn’t stop, the woman would be reduced to a dried husk like a desert-dried mummy, but she’d still be able to scream.

“Anita,” Claudia said, “she tapped out.”

I realized I hadn’t stopped, and I was still drinking her down skin to skin. I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and I began to reverse the energy. It was a rush to take the energy, but it was also one to give it back. Death and life, the two great energies that make the world go round.

Rosa’s skin began to smooth out, her body becoming young and beautiful again, but when her nearly black eyes could stare up at me from where she’d collapsed to the steps, the arrogance was gone, replaced by terror. I never liked seeing that I’d done something that made people terrified of me, but in this case maybe that was what it took to stop more people from throwing their lives away trying to attack me tonight? If scaring the hell out of a few people saved their lives, or the lives of others, it was a fair trade.

“Go back to your seat, Rosa,” I said, and my voice was gentle, as if she were sick and I were trying to send her back to bed to rest.

“Don’t ever touch me again,” she said in a voice squeezed down by fear.

I let go of her wrist and moved down a step to stand up. She still had a knife and she was supposed to be trained in its use. Pity and guilt for what I’d just done to her wasn’t worth getting killed for, or even injured. I was so done with the wererats and their constant fighting.

I felt the witches behind me before I turned and saw them. Neva’s power went before her like a marching band at halftime announcing something scary this way comes .

Claudia stepped between me and Rosa. “I have this one,” she said, which meant either she was bodyguarding me after all or she didn’t want to deal with the witches; me either, but Claudia had already called dibs.

Neva had two younger witches with her, both trailing on either side of her on the steps. One had short wavy black hair with pale tan skin, the other had long wavy black hair with deep brown skin; with Neva’s complexion in the middle it was like a color wheel showing possible variations.

“Necromancers do not give life back,” Neva said.

“It’s how the spell works,” I said.

“No, it is not,” she said.

We looked at each other. It was the younger woman with long hair who broke the silence. “You enjoyed the rush of energy. It fills your aura with power.”

“Just because it felt good doesn’t mean I liked doing it.”

“Isn’t that the definition of feeling good?”

“Not for magic like this,” I said.

“Why did you use the spell if you hate it so?” the short-haired woman asked.