Rafael (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #28) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,87
and away from the other man. Hector got to his two good legs and showed his claws like brandishing ten switchblades.
Rafael lay in the sand with a blade in one hand, but the claws were gone in the other, which meant he was even more injured than it looked from here, and it looked fucking horrible from here.
“We have to help him,” I said.
“The vampire has used too much power. He has left us a trail,” Neva said.
I looked at her and found all three brujas looking at me with black eyes that were full of the cold light of stars.
“Time to die, old man.” Hector’s voice carried, and it shouldn’t have. Wereanimals don’t do voice tricks like that, but vampires do.
Rafael just propped himself up as best he could and made a come-ahead motion with one hand, like bring it. Then he half collapsed back to the sand, propped up on one elbow, the hand with the knife in it free to use, but use for what?
Hector charged him in a blur of speed.
I screamed, “Rafael!” but the sound was lost in the roar of the crowd.
29
IF RAFAEL’S LEGS had been working, he could have kicked out and maybe dislocated Hector’s kneecaps, but if his legs had been working, he wouldn’t have had to lie there on the sand as the other wererat came at him, slashing with what amounted to ten switchblades. But because Rafael couldn’t get off the ground, Hector had to go to the ground to finish him.
As hurt as he was, Rafael still raised the blade in his hand and tried, but Hector used his arm to brush Rafael’s arm and the blade aside and leaned over Rafael with a mouth full of razor-sharp fangs. He was going to tear his throat out with them.
Someone near us screamed and it wasn’t me. I wouldn’t let myself scream, or look away, I just prayed for a miracle, for something, anything to save him. Rafael tried to bring the knife in around Hector’s arm to stab him, but it was never going to work, it was just one last defiant gesture. Fuck.
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.