Лорел Гамильтон - Rafael

Hector’s mouthful of teeth was going for his face, not his throat. The bastard was going to kill him slow. Rafael managed to slide the knife that was still pinned outside Hector’s body inside the arm, which made Hector have to turn toward it and use enough attention to slice Rafael’s hand and force him to drop the knife. Then Hector’s body shuddered, then froze for a moment; his face, which had begun to shapeshift, began to sink back into human as blood gushed out of his mouth. Heart blow, but how?

Hector went up on his knees, still straddling Rafael’s body, and Rafael used the weight of the other man to give him the leverage that his ruined legs couldn’t give him, so that he sat up and started digging with the blade that he’d plunged in under Hector’s ribs, going under the sternum for the heart. It was the knife that Hector had had to drop to call claws. Rafael must have found it in the sand. The hilt of the blade was kissed as hard against Hector’s skin as it could go, but Rafael was digging for the heart—no, he already had the heart on the tip of the blade. Now he was trying to rip it to pieces while it was still in the other man’s chest, and it would be game over.

I cheered without meaning to, and then Hector levitated straight up and off the knife point as if by an invisible hand. Hector ended up on his knees, coughing dark blood and thicker things out on the sand, but it started to slow almost immediately. He was healing again, damn it.

“Go to him, Anita, keep our king alive until our magic finds his master.”

I turned and looked into Neva’s darkling shining eyes. She motioned me toward the arena.

“Anita can’t help him fight, none of us can,” Claudia said; her voice was anguished.

“Hector’s vampire master levitated him off a knife blade, that means that Rafael’s master can help him, as well,” Neva said.

“I don’t know what Padma is doing to keep Rafael from healing, or how to rapid-heal him myself.”

“Then do what you know best, Anita Blake.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Fight for him.”

“Only if I go with her,” Pierette said.

“Anita is your vampire queen, of course you must fight at her side.”

“If you are going to fight, do it now,” Claudia said.

Hector stood up on the sand. He shouted, wordless, joyous. He flexed his healed hands and arms above his head and stretched luxuriantly like a cat as if he were clawing at the air with just his human fingertips. The blood was still drying on his body from all the injures. His fighting shorts were black on the front with it.

“There are weapons behind all the barriers,” Benito said. “Since there was no negotiation, you can use any of them.”

“But so can Hector,” Claudia warned.

Hector started walking across the sand toward Rafael. We were out of time. “Jump and go to him,” Neva urged.

I looked at the railing and thought about jumping twenty feet and didn’t know how to do it without breaking an ankle or something.

“I will go ahead of you, my queen. Join me swiftly,” Pierette said, and she took off running like Hector had, except when she got to the railing, she used the railing to vault over like Rafael had.

I was already running for the railing before she vanished from sight. I realized as the railing got closer that I was afraid of making a jump this high. It was like the heavier weights; I still felt too human to do it. Claudia yelled after me, “Treat it just like a tuck and roll in practice.”

I heard the clang of metal sharp and sudden, and just by the sound of it I knew it was swords. My hand hit the railing and I launched myself up and over. I had a moment to see Pierette with her swords from the sheaths on her back, one in each hand. Hector had double swords, too. My seconds of hesitation had given Hector time to grab them from behind the wooden barriers. Then I couldn’t see anything but the whirl of my clothes and body, as I had to start tucking and turning in the empty air. I prayed that Pierette would be okay for the seconds the fall would take and that I wouldn’t twist or break anything important when I landed.

30

THE FALL WAS both too quick and too long and I had to fight not to come out of the tuck too soon, and then I was rolling on the sand, but the momentum of falling that far meant it wasn’t just one or two rolls and I didn’t come smoothly to my feet the way that everyone else had. I ended on one knee, feeling vaguely dizzy. I was as surprised as anyone to realize I had a knife in each hand from the wrist sheaths. I was so far away from the fight that I might have not bothered pulling a weapon yet. They were on the far side of the arena, blades flashing in the light. Pierette was standing in front of Rafael, who was still bleeding on the sand. Hector was trying to fight his way past her to finish the fight.

I could see the weapons hanging on one of the wooden barriers. There was a pair of kalis swords with their combination of straight and that one swelling curve like a bigger wave to all the small waves of a kris. It was my favorite blade in practice and they were hanging right there. I put the knives back in their wrist sheaths and grabbed the swords. They were so much heavier than practice blades. I tried their weight, whirling them in my hands as I started across the sand toward the fighting. One of the reasons that the wererats practiced with live blades was that the difference with practice swords wasn’t just the dull edge versus sharp, but weight. As I started jogging over the sand, tightening muscles to hold myself steady over the shifting surface so I didn’t twist an ankle or a knee, I was really happy that I’d practiced with real swords. It would be a terrible moment to have to swing a real blade for the first time as I came in at Hector’s back.

If you expected me to give him a chance to turn around so it would be a fair fight, then you’ve been watching too many movies. In real life it’s not cheating to survive.

Hector heard me coming, because his swords came swinging out toward both of us as he whirled in a circle, clearing us both back from him, so that he could move to face somewhere in between us. I recognized it as part of the Archangel series. Pierette and I both moved toward him at the same time, and then Hector had to defend against both of us.

I ducked under his arm, the sword whistling over my head, and I might have been scared of that sound so close to me, but I was moving too fast and trying to slice open his femoral with one sword, while raising the other up to guard myself just in case he tried for my throat as I whirled past him.

He turned so I cut the front of his thigh instead of the artery, but I cut along his side as I went past, because some damage was better than none. He bent a little forward, but I was at his back and didn’t have time to wonder why as he tried to turn with a sword swinging toward me, but Pierette moved in closer in front of him, and I came up behind him, aiming for the side of his throat.

He moved his head just enough that I missed the kill shot, but blood still showed on his skin as I moved past him and was in front of him again as Pierette glided around him from the other side, so that we traded front for back, and I was suddenly facing Hector on my own.

One blade came for my throat at the same time that the other blade tried to slice open my stomach and pierce my liver. I swayed my upper body out of reach and brought my own sword up to block the liver shot. Hector stumbled, but I still had to block one of his blades as I spun away from his second. He collapsed to his knees, and my blade was coming for his unprotected throat when another sword was suddenly there saving him.

I stepped back from Hector where he knelt in the sand, swords up, ready to defend against the new threat. Pierette was moving with me. It was Claudia and Benito, both forcing us back from the kill.