Лорел Гамильтон - Rafael

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.

“Neva says we need him alive,” Benito said.

“To find his master,” Claudia added.

“You have betrayed our laws, the duel is forfeit, I am king,” Hector said, but he spat blood on the sand. It wasn’t from anything I’d managed to do to him. I fought the urge to glance at Pierette or ask what she’d done at his back to make him spit blood.

Fredo came to stand between the two fallen fighters. He was still trying for an appearance of neutrality, but he turned the mic on and spoke for the almost silent crowd. “If we heal no matter what is done to us, then our fighting skills mean nothing. A vampire has violated our holy of holies; the vampire would put a king of their choice on our throne. Those closest to him have smelled the vampire on the traitor’s skin. It is not enough to kill the traitor; we must slay his vampire master.”

The crowd cheered, and some of them made a high, guttural hissing noise, which I think was the rat equivalent of cheering, or maybe it meant something else altogether. As long as they agreed that we could do what needed to be done to Hector and Padma, I didn’t care what it meant.

“We must end this threat in its entirety,” Neva said from much closer than I’d expected. All three of the brujas were on the sands. How had I missed five people coming down here? That kind of carelessness could get you killed in a fight. Oh hell, I’d been listening to Fredo and the crowd. I couldn’t even blame the combat.

Hector got to his feet. He’d healed whatever Pierette had done to him. Claudia, Benito, Pierette, and I went down into a fighting stance. “Four against one, is that what has become of the honor of the rodere?”

Neva yelled a word I didn’t understand and stamped one foot hard on the sand. I felt something rush past, and then Hector stumbled on the sand as if someone had tripped him. Claudia and Benito were on him before he’d regained his balance. I didn’t know what had just happened, but they did. Pierette and I moved up, but Benito and Claudia had disarmed him with nearly identical flourishes that drew more blood, as they forced his swords to the sand. They kicked them out of his reach. Hector rushed Benito, sweeping one arm and sword past him, but Benito hooked Hector’s leg and sent him sprawling backward, fighting for balance. Claudia drove her elbow into the side of his head, which staggered him more, and then brought her other elbow to the other side and hit him again. He swayed, eyes rolling back into his head. Benito was there to catch one arm as he sank to his knees. A man I didn’t know came across the sand with a pair of special shackles. Not a single voice from the crowd rose in protest. When they had him secured, Neva said, “We will work our magic upon this one. You see to our king.”

“Can the doctors come help him now?”

“Not yet,” she said.

“Can he shapeshift and heal himself?”

“Not until Hector has left the sand.”

“In vampire duels between masters, if the human servant kills, it’s considered the same as the master vamp doing it.”

“We need Hector alive to work our magic on him and his master,” she said.

“But afterward if I strike the blow, does it count as Rafael’s kill?”

“No, because Rafael is not your master, you are his; if you kill for him, he will still lose his crown.”

“Shit,” I said. Jean-Claude whispered through me, “We can give him energy to heal as we have shared with our other halves in the past.”

“What does your master say to you?” Neva asked.

I wasn’t even surprised that she could sense Jean-Claude. “We could give Rafael energy to heal. Will your laws let me do that?”

“Normally, no power outside of each champion would be allowed to aid them.”

The other witch who had remained silent up to now said, “Rafael carries enough power as our king to be able to heal better than this, especially here in the heart of our power.”

“So why isn’t he healing better?” I asked.

Neva said, “We believe that this Master of Beasts is preventing it, though that should not be possible, especially here.”

“If vampire power is breaking Rafael, let me use vampire power to fix him, please?”

“We will have to convince the assemblage that it is a fair balance of power, or you could heal Rafael and still lose him his throne.”

I wanted to scream my frustration.

“Nothing like this has ever happened during a challenge for kingship, Anita. Give us a few moments to search our law and lore,” Neva said.

The younger one with long hair said, “Trade places with Fredo and send him to us. He is one of our lore keepers.”

I could have asked what that meant, but it seemed self-explanatory, so I just turned and started walking toward Rafael, because Fredo was kneeling beside him. I’d send Fredo back and I’d hold Rafael’s hand, and this would all work out. I tried really hard to believe that as I walked toward them. I tried not to look at the blood on the sand around Rafael and do the math in my head of how much blood you can lose before it’s too late. I had never dreamed that a shapeshifter could bleed to death, but the only thing that prevented it was their healing abilities; take away that and they were just stronger, faster humans. It was ridiculous that we would all let him bleed to death when regular first aid could give him enough time for us to fix whatever Padma had done so that Rafael’s own power could heal him. I would not let that happen, even if it cost him his crown, I would not let him die because of rules, not if I could save him. I promised myself that as I walked across the sand and saw all the blood around him. I promised myself I would save him, fuck the rules.

31

I CROSSED THE sand with the borrowed swords still naked in my hand. I had no sheaths for them and until the fight was declared finished, I was holding on to them, just in case. I knew the idea was that by delaying Hector’s death, we had a chance to find Padma and end the larger threat, but it still felt like the swords should have been soaked in blood, with maybe Hector’s head to throw at Rafael’s feet. Here, here is your enemy dead; even if you die, he died first. As presents went it probably wasn’t very romantic, but for survival and shared rage, it would have been nearly perfect, or maybe I wasn’t thinking clearly?

Fredo was holding Rafael’s hand, and when he looked back at me, his eyes were shining with unshed tears. The moment I saw the tears, my stomach clenched tight. I’d never seen Fredo cry.

I concentrated on his face, not letting myself look at Rafael yet; that would come, but first I’d deliver the message. “The brujas need their lore keeper to decide some things.”

Fredo nodded; he raised Rafael’s hand to press it to his face, closing his eyes, which made the first tears fall. He kept his face averted as he said, “My king.”

“It is all right, Fredo, go. I will be here when you return.” Rafael’s voice sounded almost normal. I finally let myself look at him. I’d been strong through all of it until I saw him lying there on the pale sand surrounded by a halo of blood, his and Hector’s, but mostly his own. Sand was clinging to the wounds; normally they’d have cleaned that out first, because once he was able to heal normally, he could heal so fast the sand would still be inside when he did it. He couldn’t get infections from it, but the body could encase foreign objects in tissue, sort of like an oyster does except you wouldn’t get a pearl from it, just a nonmalignant growth that sometimes had to be removed.

I stood there and looked down at him and tried to keep my face blank like I would at an awful crime scene, but this wasn’t some stranger, this was my lover and my friend.