Лорел Гамильтон - Rafael

Rafael’s concentration was all on the man in front of him. I’d had all his attention on me in the bedroom, but not like this; this truly was the world narrowing down to the person in front of you. People think sex is the only intimate physical act, but they’re wrong. Intimacy implies pleasure to most people; those people have never experienced real violence firsthand. It’s incredibly intimate when someone is trying to kill you up close with a blade or their hands, the kind of intimacy that will give you nightmares.

They blurred past each other on the sand, and again I cursed myself for not being able to tell what they’d done. I was supposed to be good with a blade, but their speed made me blind to the intricacies of what they were doing. They glided and spun and used the empty hand to block and pass each other past their bodies. Suddenly blood flowed down Hector’s upper arm. The blood on his side had flowed down until it was darkening the edge of his orange shorts. That wound seemed to be bleeding worse than any of the others on either of them. Was it deeper? In a worse spot? I might have asked Claudia, but Hector launched himself at Rafael, who had to back up suddenly. I didn’t see the wound at first, because his longer black shorts hid it, but the material of the shorts themselves was cut open over the thigh. The color of the cloth covering so much skin made it hard to judge how bad it was, but it was a new wound and that was bad enough.

I thought, Rafael needs to finish this soon . The longer a knife fight went on, the greater your chance of being hurt or worse. Only the two of them being incredibly good and well matched had made it last this long, but they were whittling each other down; if something spectacular didn’t happen soon, the small wounds would accumulate and force a mistake.

I heard Claudia whisper, “Finish him.” I didn’t have to ask to know she was thinking the same thing I was.

Hector committed to a blow that tried for a liver shot, Rafael used his knife and free hand to move Hector past him, and I knew the blade was used because blood spilled out to shine in the lights. Rafael did something with his leg, and Hector was on his knees and Rafael still had control of his arm trapped across his chest with the knife. It was his empty hand that was going for Hector’s throat. What the hell was he planning to do?

Rafael’s hand touched the side of the other man’s neck, and blood welled dark and rich. Hector’s arm blurred out toward Rafael’s groin but hit his outer thigh instead, and blood welled there, too. “What the fuck?” I said.

“Claws,” Claudia said, before Rafael ripped them out of the front of Hector’s throat, and Hector did the same to the side of Rafael’s thigh. It ripped open his leg, so that the long shorts hung ragged and blood poured, but it fountained out of Hector’s throat, staining the sand in a wet, splattering arc.

Rafael was having trouble putting weight on the leg, as he kept control of Hector’s arm against his chest where he’d flayed the man’s arm open with the blade and was still using it to control and cut him more. If they’d been human, the fight would have been over, but they weren’t, and I’d seen powerful shapeshifters heal throat wounds that bad.

“His hand,” Pierette said, “Rafael’s only called claws on one hand. That’s very rare.”

“I’ve never seen anyone do that,” I said.

Rafael still held his knife, but when Hector called claws, he’d had to give up his blade even if his arm could have held on, because once the long claws came out, they wouldn’t wrap around a hilt.

“ Rafael es muy macho ,” Benito said, and I knew he meant it in the best sense, as in strong and powerful.

Rafael used the arm as a lever to put Hector on his stomach. The blood gushed into the sand so fast it turned black. Rafael used the braced arm and body to steady himself, or that was what it looked like as he moved the extra step to Hector’s side. He broke the arm at the elbow, a wet meaty sound that carried in the sudden silence, before he let himself collapse to one knee, pinning Hector’s lower back, the injured leg held awkwardly off to the side. It was bleeding bad enough that he’d need to heal it soon before he lost too much blood. He used his claws to grab Hector’s hair and pull the head back. I expected more blood to fountain out, but it didn’t; maybe there wasn’t enough left? With his knee pinning the body, he lifted most of the chest upward with the hair, as he moved the knife into place to tear out the other wells of the throat.

Hector’s eyes were still open. I wasn’t close enough to see the dead stare, and then I saw him blink. I had time to say, “He blinked.”

Claudia said, “His eyes.”

Hector used his working hand to fling sand up and into Rafael’s face at the same time he twisted and bucked underneath him, using his undamaged legs to send Rafael sliding off his back, but Rafael still had Hector’s hair in one hand and a blade. He used the hair to flip Hector with him, so that Rafael’s own body weight brought Hector’s back down to Rafael’s chest, and he plunged the knife into the side of the neck he hadn’t cut before. His good leg was around Hector’s waist so that he was holding him against him as he plunged the knife into the neck and tore it outward, the blade version of what he’d done with claws to the other side, but this time blood didn’t fountain out.

Power breathed like the faintest of winds, trying to hide what it was, but I knew. I said, “Vampire.”

“What?” Claudia asked.

“Vampire; Padma is pumping more power into little Hector.”

“What kind of power?” Benito asked.

“Healing,” Pierette said.

Hector drove his good arm up to block Rafael’s knife hand, and the broken arm had claws again. They dissected Rafael’s lower leg, so the muscle and tendons fell away from it. The leg couldn’t pin Hector anymore, so he rolled out and away from the other man. Hector got to his two good legs and showed his claws like brandishing ten switchblades.

Rafael lay in the sand with a blade in one hand, but the claws were gone in the other, which meant he was even more injured than it looked from here, and it looked fucking horrible from here.

“We have to help him,” I said.

“The vampire has used too much power. He has left us a trail,” Neva said.

I looked at her and found all three brujas looking at me with black eyes that were full of the cold light of stars.

“Time to die, old man.” Hector’s voice carried, and it shouldn’t have. Wereanimals don’t do voice tricks like that, but vampires do.

Rafael just propped himself up as best he could and made a come-ahead motion with one hand, like bring it . Then he half collapsed back to the sand, propped up on one elbow, the hand with the knife in it free to use, but use for what?

Hector charged him in a blur of speed.

I screamed, “Rafael!” but the sound was lost in the roar of the crowd.

29

IF RAFAEL’S LEGS had been working, he could have kicked out and maybe dislocated Hector’s kneecaps, but if his legs had been working, he wouldn’t have had to lie there on the sand as the other wererat came at him, slashing with what amounted to ten switchblades. But because Rafael couldn’t get off the ground, Hector had to go to the ground to finish him.

As hurt as he was, Rafael still raised the blade in his hand and tried, but Hector used his arm to brush Rafael’s arm and the blade aside and leaned over Rafael with a mouth full of razor-sharp fangs. He was going to tear his throat out with them.

Someone near us screamed and it wasn’t me. I wouldn’t let myself scream, or look away, I just prayed for a miracle, for something, anything to save him. Rafael tried to bring the knife in around Hector’s arm to stab him, but it was never going to work, it was just one last defiant gesture. Fuck.