Лорел Гамильтон - Rafael

“Where do you want me?” I asked.

“Riding my cock,” Hector said, and laughed.

I ignored him as if he weren’t there and looked at Neva.

“Fill your eyes with the light between the stars,” Neva said.

I did what she asked, and suddenly I could see the red aura around Hector like a wound, and that he had a real wound in his back. I could see him bleeding internally from where Pierette had pierced his kidney. It wasn’t like X-ray vision, but almost like his aura had sprung a leak and the black and red were intermingling like paint spilling from two different cans.

“What do you need me to do?” I asked.

“We can use this one to find his master. We see him sitting in a hotel room, but we cannot breach the darkness around him. It is a piece of Madre de la Oscuridad, and it stands as a wall between us and what needs doing.”

“My master had hoped you would have a child with one of your men by now. He says you owe him a son,” Hector taunted.

“He gave up Fernando to save his own life, and he loved him a hell of a lot more than he loves you,” I said.

“Only someone descended form Belle Morte’s bloodline would speak of love and moitié bêtes in the same breath,” he said, and his hazel eyes were solid brown and starting to shine.

“Do you know what hotel he’s in, can you see a name, a notepad, a card, anything for the physical location?” I asked Neva.

“Once you join your power to ours, you will see what we see.”

“How do we do that?” I asked.

“I am told that all your powers work better through touch, is that true?”

“Most of them.”

“Then kneel and lay hands upon his skin, and we will lay hands upon you. You will be our battering ram against his castle wall.”

“You carry so many of my beasts inside you, Anita, if you touch me, my power will take you over. You will be my creature as Hector is my creature.”

“Bullshit,” I said.

“The darkness will consume you if you touch me.”

I smiled then, and he didn’t like that I smiled. The doubt on his face, the confusion, was an expression I remembered from his last visit. It was funny how facial expressions stayed the same no matter what body people were wearing.

“You got just a tiny piece of her power, Padma, I got the rest.” And I shoved my hand through the blackness and the red until I touched the bare skin of his chest and stomach, and I could see the cord like a metaphysical leash from Hector leading down into the floor, into the ether, into . . . Neva spoke next to my face. “Find the vampire, Anita, find me the vampire on the other end.”

My necromancy opened like a flower and the darkness parted before it, and I was suddenly seeing the room where Padma was sitting on the edge of a bed. It wasn’t a good hotel, more motel—oh, how the mighty had fallen. I felt Jean-Claude’s thrill of discovery before he backed off and hid his reaction. I knew without even thinking the question that he was telling Pierrot. The Harlequin would be hunting Padma. If we could hold him in place, they’d have him.

Padma looked up at me as if I were floating in the air in front of him. “So, you have found me; I will be out of this city before even the Harlequin can find me.”

“The last time I saw you, you were wearing silk and real jewels. You’re looking a little threadbare.”

I felt movement, a great seething ocean of power behind me like I’d felt outside the warehouse. I didn’t have to see to know it was the small rats again, but I looked all the same. The pale sand was black with fur, more than outside, so many more. Thousands of rats filled one half of the stadium floor. They sat waiting, watching, too quiet, too intent for just rats. The rat with the white spot on its chest and the one white paw stood up on its hind legs and looked at me.

“I survived the loss of my human servant and my tiger when I had to flee Europe. I will survive whatever you do to this one, too.”

“I’m sorry for the loss of Gideon and Thomas.” They’d been his tiger to call and his human servant. His own triumvirate of power. That he’d survived the death of them both would be like Jean-Claude surviving losing me and Richard. It was impressive.

Padma looked surprised. “Thank you, Anita Blake.”

“You’re welcome; they both deserved so much better than you.”

Padma hissed at me, showing fangs, which was rare for the really old vampires. They considered it déclassé to flash fangs like an animal.

“Did you abandon them the way you’re abandoning Hector?”

“He knew the risks.”

“So, you’re going to leave Hector to die, just like you left your son.”

He stood up from the bed, glaring at me, hands in fists at his sides. There was a black wavering in the air around him. “I will wait for you to have a child of your own, Anita, and then I will return and extract my revenge.”

“It was your choice to trade your son’s life for your own, Padma. I’d have been happy to kill you instead.”

“In all the history that Hector remembered, they had never allowed an outsider in the fighting pit on a night when they chose a new king. You were not supposed to be here tonight, Anita.”

“Hector couldn’t win without you cheating and saving his ass. Levitating him off the blade was too much; you gave yourself away, and you’d have done that without me here. Even if he killed Rafael, the wererats would have challenged him until someone killed him. He would never have sat the throne or taken the oaths that you need to possess the wererats. This has all been for nothing, Padma. You never could plan long term on your own.”

“You are too young to know that,” he said.

“I share a lot of old memories with people who saw you as the weakling you are.”

“I was weak, that is true, but that was before the Mother came to me and together, we are so much more.” The air around him wavered like dark mist, and then it was as if the darkness separated from him, looming at his back. I couldn’t decide if it was black flame, or like a dark ghost, but it wasn’t the darkness, it wasn’t even the darkness between stars that filled all our eyes.

“I will be sorry to lose my rat, but there will be other rats to call, other animals to enslave.”

“You’re half-right,” I said. I felt the darkness inside me move, liquid and alive; I had drunk down the night itself, and I had a second of fear that she had been inside me all this time, waiting to join with the lost pieces of herself, but I knew that wasn’t right. I’d met another vampire in Ireland that had a piece of her power, but it hadn’t been like this; they had gained one of her abilities to strengthen their own, but the darkness hadn’t been separate from them.

“The darkness has moved aside for you,” Neva said.

“It doesn’t belong to him,” I said.

“It belongs to itself,” the one Neva called mija said.

“It’s looking for someone to use,” I said.

Neva whispered, “Our power will touch you, do not be afraid.”

I didn’t know what she meant until I felt something much smaller than a human hand touch my hand. It startled me enough that I looked down and lost concentration on Padma. The black rat with its white spots was looking up at me. The other rats had spilled around the island of all of us, but some had climbed the three brujas and the one on my hand. I stared into those black button eyes, and I swear there was too much weight of intelligence and personality for any rat I’d ever seen. I mean they’re smart, but not that kind of smart.

“They will not hurt another rat,” Hector said.

I laughed, and there was that uncertain look that I knew was Padma’s and not the confident swaggering man that Hector was supposed to be. “Do you know anything about real rats?” I asked.