Лорел Гамильтон - Dead Ice

I heard the water running and knew it had to be Rafael. If he’d just been one of the guards I’d have avoided him and showered around the corner, but he was a great deal more than that. What was protocol if you happened to know a king was in the showers? Did you avoid him, acknowledge him, say hi? He wasn’t my king, anyway, but he was my friend, and occasionally my food. Since the way I fed on him was through sex, it meant we were a little closer than typical friends. He was probably the closest thing I had to a true fuck buddy. You know, you’re in town, they’re in town, and you hook up. I hated the phrase, but for Rafael and me, it wasn’t inaccurate.

I stood there for a minute in the showers debating, and then I heard a small sound. It was a pain sound. I’d seen Rafael after bad guys had flayed the skin from his back. He didn’t make sounds like that for nothing. My hands were full of hair stuff, so I kept the extra-long towel over one shoulder, where it nearly dragged on the ground. I was mostly covered, and that would have to be good enough for whatever was happening. The small, involuntary noises stopped as I looked around the open shower area. He wasn’t in sight, but I could hear a shower still running, so it had to be one of the three private stalls that had shower curtains. I admit that I used them a lot when other people were showering after workouts. Shapeshifters don’t have a problem with nudity, but I wasn’t the only woman who didn’t want to strip down completely with the guys in the shower, so we had the stalls.

I debated on whether to ask if he was all right, but if he was having a moment in the showers, he was entitled. The guy rule was that even if you were crying, the other men ignored it unless you said something to draw attention to it, but quiet crying, especially when you’d tried to get privacy for it, meant you left it alone. Women usually want you to seek them out and ask what’s wrong; men don’t, as a general rule. There are men who want you to ask, and women who don’t, but the rule was true for most people I knew, so I left Rafael to fight his private battle and turned on one of the showers in the middle of the room. I could see if he opened the curtain and wanted to share, but otherwise he had his privacy.

I admit that it was a quick shower for more than one reason, just in case Rafael did come out and want to talk. The second round of conditioner that Jean-Claude had started making me let set in was irritating, but I admitted that my hair looked and felt better since I’d been doing it. I hate when the prissy stuff works so well. It makes me suspect that there’s more practical use to all the pampering than I ever wanted to admit.

I was finally clean and dry and had put in the five, yes five, leave-in products that Jean-Claude had given me to use. I still wasn’t as good as he was at working it through, but it was a start.

In the silence Rafael made a sharp sound, as if moving had hurt.

I couldn’t stand it. “Rafael, it’s Anita.”

“I know your scent,” he said, in a voice that was almost normal, and didn’t match the sound he’d just made.

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

“You can’t fight my battles for me, Anita.”

I was outside the stall he was in, watching the water splash underneath the curtain. “I know that; the rats don’t allow their king to substitute the way some of the other animal groups allow.”

“We all appreciate that you study each of our cultures,” he said.

I leaned my shoulder against the cool tile. “Is there anything I can do to help you right now? Just say it, tell me, and I’ll leave you to it.”

He was quiet for so long that I started to move away. He called out, “Pull back the curtain if you want to see the wound, but there is nothing you can do to save me from my own weakness.”

I didn’t know what he meant by that, but I set down the conditioners and shampoo and pushed the curtain open. He was kneeling on the floor of the shower, his hands spread on the wall as if to hold himself upright. His shoulders still looked strong, but they were bowed, the top of his short, black hair resting against the tile. The back of his body was the dark, smooth, muscled line that I remembered, except for the wound on his back. I stepped into the stall and knelt behind him.

“It’s a puncture wound, but it’s not like any blade I’ve ever seen.”

“Nor I,” he said in a voice that held the same edge of pain I’d heard in the small noises he’d been making.

“I thought you weren’t allowed weapons when you were fighting for kingship of the wererats.”

“We aren’t.”

“So he cheated,” I said.

“Yes.”

“He’s dead, then,” I said.

He ran one hand through his short hair, slicking it back, as he turned to look at me. His face was dark with high, square cheekbones. He was a handsome man. His Mexican heritage was printed on his face the same way some Irish bloodlines are, though Rafael was as many generations away from Mexico as most Irish Americans were from Ireland. Sometimes DNA just survives to remind us who we are.

“Cheating means his execution was a given, yes.”

“What did he hope to gain?” I asked.

“My death.”

I looked into solid brown eyes, so dark they were almost as black as his eyes in rat form. I touched his wet hair. “He can’t be king if he’s dead,” I said.

“I suspect he was a sacrifice for someone else who would have stepped forward if I had died there.”

“I thought you couldn’t be king unless you killed the old one first?”

“Normally, no, but there are provisions in our laws for kings who die in battles that are outside leadership challenges.” His shoulders convulsed, his head pressing against the tile again.

“Why haven’t you changed form and tried to heal?”

“I did.”

I reached out to the wound in his midback but didn’t touch it. “It’s as big as the palm of my hand still.”

“I do not believe the wound size has changed.”

“It should have, even if it was silver. You’re too powerful to still be this hurt.”

“I was too powerful, but even kings age and grow weak eventually, Anita. It is usually age, not lack of fighting skill, that slows us enough to lose the crown. The king I defeated was white of hair in human and rat form.”

“You aren’t old, Rafael.” There was something wrong with the wound. It didn’t look right.

“Older than I look,” he said.

“What made this wound?”

“It was a four-sided blade, very wide as it went toward the hilt.”

“Sounds more like a spearhead of some kind than a knife,” I said.

“It was unique.”

I got up and pushed the curtain back further so I could get more light directly on the wound. “He shoved it in and twisted it, or something.”

“He broke off part of it into the wound. Their healer had to fish it out after I left the challenge circle.”

I thought of having something that big shoved into my back, and then the wrenching strength used to twist and break off the blade inside the wound. The flesh inside the wound looked . . . burned. “You should be in that nice hospital area the wererats staff for the local lycanthropes.”

“I cannot afford to let the others know I am weakening, Anita. I killed the one who did this, but if people realize I can no longer heal better than this, then there will be another challenger next week, or next month, but they will come like vultures to a wounded animal.”

“So you came here so none of your people would figure it out.”

“You and your kings are my allies. My being weak is a bad thing for all of us, so you will keep my secret until we can find a new king who would not be a disaster in my place.”