Лорел Гамильтон - Rafael

I looked up into his storm-cloud eyes set in her face and missed her brown. “How?” I asked.

Benito asked, “How do we distract him without attacking him?”

Pierrot smiled with her lips and then slid into my lap, one arm around my neck and the other hanging loose for weapons, though he/she wasn’t obvious about it. It was natural for my arm to slide around her waist and my other hand to cup the side of her thigh to hold her more securely in place as she wiggled in my lap to find just the right spot. It would have been a lot more titillating if I’d been a man, but she still managed to be distracting. Maybe that was the point, because all the touching and adjusting helped calm me down. I could think again, and Hector’s voice wasn’t getting through. Pierette wasn’t even one of my moitié bêtes , so was it just her being a leopard, which was my first animal to call? It always felt good to touch your animal of choice.

Jean-Claude whispered through my mind, “She is our lover, ma petite ; for our bloodline that is power.”

Pierette glanced at Benito, who was bending over us as Claudia kept an eye on the crowd around us and Rafael tried to refute Hector’s accusations. “Hector’s master has always had an eye for the ladies,” Pierette said.

I said, “He has a rape fetish.”

Pierette said, eyes still gray, “No bad thoughts, Anita. We need to tempt him and you frowning will not do that.”

“He likes unwilling partners,” I said.

“That is true, but he loves most of all to see a woman happy with someone else, in love with someone else, and then steal her away from them. If he can force her lover to watch the abuse, so much the better.”

The anger was just there, as if it had been only minutes ago instead of years. I could still see Hannah with her face bloody, her dress torn, and Fernando laughing as she begged Jean-Claude to help her. Willie McCoy, the love of her undead life, standing there in one of his bright suits and ugly ties that he’d loved to wear even when he was still human. Jean-Claude had had to hold him back or he would have tried to save her, and he would have died trying. I’d had a gun and had used it to threaten and buy us time, but in the end we’d gotten lucky because a little inner council squabbling played out in our favor, but Padma had chosen Hannah because she and Willie loved each other so much. It had amused him and his son that Willie and Hannah loved each other so much that hurting her was torturing them both. We’d been able to prevent Padma and his equally awful son, Fernando, from actually raping Hannah, but I hadn’t been able to save Sylvie, the second in line to the werewolves’ throne, or Vivian, one of our wereleopards. I’d rescued them after the damage had been done, and we’d been able to kill the son, who had been the primary rapist in Sylvie’s torture, but even revenge doesn’t undo the damage.

Rafael handed the microphone to Claudia and leaned over us. “Your rage feeds mine. I was forced to watch some of the torture to the women before they started cutting me up. I want him dead.”

“That’s the plan,” I said, smiling up at him so that only he could see that my eyes were nearly black with anger.

He smiled then and it was such a close echo of mine that I wasn’t sure if it was his smile, or mine. It usually took longer to intermingle than this, but maybe it was the shared hatred?

Pierette raised her face up toward his anger. I wondered if he saw that her eyes were the wrong color or if he just saw a pretty woman gazing up at him. He moved past her offered kiss to me, though, saying, “One should always dance first with the woman you brought to the ball.” He kissed me soft, and I leaned into it, my hands tightening around Pierette, so I didn’t accidentally dump her off my lap.

“What are you doing, Rafael?” Hector asked, and I realized that Rafael’s body might be blocking the view.

Rafael rose up from me to look deep into Pierette’s eyes. I couldn’t see their color as she rose up to meet his lips in their very first kiss.

“How dare you insult all the beautiful women of the rodere by favoriting a wereleopard and a vampire’s whore!”

There were mutterings of agreement from the crowd, but I didn’t care, because I was watching Rafael and Pierette kiss inches above my head. I liked watching my lovers kiss over me, usually one on either side of me in a bed, but this was good, too. It helped bring me back to my center and chase all the ugliness of the death and blood away, which was no mean trick since the blood was starting to dry on me. Maybe the three of us could catch a shower later?

Rafael drew back from the kiss and looked at me. “I can feel how much you enjoyed seeing us together.”

“Told you so,” I said, and the look on his face made me smile.

“How you must hate what you are to turn your back on your true queens.” The word hate seemed to burn and hiss along the skin.

Rafael turned from us with a last parting smile, then took the microphone again. “I love being rodere. I love my people and all that we have built together.” He didn’t have the magical voice, but his sincerity seemed to reach people without any extra vampy power.

“How can you turn to us with their mouths still hot on your skin and claim to love being a wererat?”

“Your words sound far too poetic to be just your words tonight, Hector.”

“My words are my own!”

“I do not think so, I think you smell like someone else is in your skin.”

“You are babbling, old man.”

“Then let us stop babbling and start fighting,” Rafael said. The change was so abrupt, it was startling, and judging from Hector’s body language, I wasn’t the only one surprised.

Pierette leaned in against my neck as if she were nuzzling me, but she hid her whisper against my skin. “It is too soon to fight. We must delay.”

“We do not fight for kings in front of outsiders,” Hector said, but his voice didn’t have the oomph to it.

Pierette whispered, “That will do,” as if she’d had something to do with Hector not wanting to jump straight to fighting.

“You threatened Anita in the locker room; if she did not leave when you killed me, you would have her, and you would destroy the vampires, kill all those she loved with the wererats doing your dirty work.”

“I did not say that.”

“Did you threaten to rape Anita after you killed me?”

“She should not be here.”

“Answer the question, Hector, let us smell the truth on you.”

“You’re the one who brought her here tonight. You almost got her killed in the outer room.”

Rafael asked a different question. “Did you threaten to rape Claudia after you were king?”

“It is within my rights as king to ask for any woman I want.”

“Ask, but never to take,” Rafael said.

“A king does not beg for what is already his by right.”

Rafael yelled, pulling the microphone back so the echoes were perfect, “Did you tell Claudia that you would rape her?”

The crowd started saying, “Answer him” and “Why won’t you answer?” and “Why won’t he answer?” A woman near us said, “If he’d rape Claudia, none of us are safe.” She was so right.

The crowd was chanting, “Answer, answer, answer, answer . . .”

Hector yelled, too, but he didn’t move his microphone and it whined through his answer, “Yes! I will kill you, and then I will fuck Claudia and Anita, and the cat you dragged in tonight!”

It was such an ambitious brag that I wasn’t even angry or afraid, because I absolutely knew Hector wasn’t up to all three of us in one night, especially if we were unwilling to cooperate.

Pierette sat up straighter in my lap. “Padma should know better than to threaten me, let alone both of you.”