Rafael (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #28) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,85

passed him the tiny wired piece. “After I kill you, I will carve the crown from your skin, old man!”

Rafael just reached his hand toward Fredo, who pulled a blade from one of the many on him and handed it hilt first to his king. Hector threw the tiny microphone toward Fredo, who didn’t bother trying to catch it, he just let it dangle from the other half of the wire. Fredo pulled a blade that looked to be a match to the one he’d handed Rafael and offered it to Hector.

They took a stance on either side of the line in the sand. Fredo moved back from them toward the edge of the pit, and then Fredo must have shut the microphone off, because he shouted something that I couldn’t understand from here. Rafael saluted Hector with his knife. Hector returned the gesture, but with the blade pointed at the ground; in practice it points up or a little to the side, never at the ground, because that means it’s a fight to the death, as in I’m going to put you in the ground. I hadn’t been able to see Rafael, but I guess he gave the same salute. This wasn’t training, or practice, it was for real. The men moved in a blur too fast for me to follow and the fight was on.

28

IN THE MOVIES knife fights last a long time, because it’s supposed to be good cinematography, it’s supposed to be pretty and exciting. In real life they’re fast, because you’re fighting for your life and you don’t give a damn about pretty, you want to survive. Rafael and Hector moved forward at the same time, but the exchange of blades and arms blocking and moving them each past each other was so fast I couldn’t follow it with my eyes. It was like special-effects fast and then Rafael was bleeding from his lower arm, but Hector was bleeding from his side. Blur of movement and blood. The side wound bled more, dripping down in a bright red wash I hoped meant it was deeper, but wasn’t sure. They both ignored the wounds as if they were nothing; neither of them even hesitated. Most people will when they get cut, and a lot of them die in that moment, because the person who isn’t cut takes advantage of it, but neither of the men on the sand was going to make that amateur mistake. The first exchange had turned them around so that Rafael was facing us and all I could see was Hector’s back.

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