Rafael (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #28) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,88

on the sand. He shouted, wordless, joyous. He flexed his healed hands and arms above his head and stretched luxuriantly like a cat as if he were clawing at the air with just his human fingertips. The blood was still drying on his body from all the injures. His fighting shorts were black on the front with it.

“There are weapons behind all the barriers,” Benito said. “Since there was no negotiation, you can use any of them.”

“But so can Hector,” Claudia warned.

Hector started walking across the sand toward Rafael. We were out of time. “Jump and go to him,” Neva urged.

I looked at the railing and thought about jumping twenty feet and didn’t know how to do it without breaking an ankle or something.

“I will go ahead of you, my queen. Join me swiftly,” Pierette said, and she took off running like Hector had, except when she got to the railing, she used the railing to vault over like Rafael had.

I was already running for the railing before she vanished from sight. I realized as the railing got closer that I was afraid of making a jump this high. It was like the heavier weights; I still felt too human to do it. Claudia yelled after me, “Treat it just like a tuck and roll in practice.”

I heard the clang of metal sharp and sudden, and just by the sound of it I knew it was swords. My hand hit the railing and I launched myself up and over. I had a moment to see Pierette with her swords from the sheaths on her back, one in each hand. Hector had double swords, too. My seconds of hesitation had given Hector time to grab them from behind the wooden barriers. Then I couldn’t see anything but the whirl of my clothes and body, as I had to start tucking and turning in the empty air. I prayed that Pierette would be okay for the seconds the fall would take and that I wouldn’t twist or break anything important when I landed.

30

THE FALL WAS both too quick and too long and I had to fight not to come out of the tuck too soon, and then I was rolling on the sand, but the momentum of falling that far meant it wasn’t just one or two rolls and I didn’t come smoothly to my feet the way that everyone else had. I ended on one knee, feeling vaguely dizzy. I was as surprised as anyone to realize I had a knife in each hand from the wrist sheaths. I was so far away from the fight that I might have not bothered pulling a weapon yet. They were on the far side of the arena, blades flashing in the light. Pierette was standing in front of Rafael, who was still bleeding on the sand. Hector was trying to fight his way past her to finish the fight.

I could see the weapons hanging on one of the wooden barriers. There was a pair of kalis swords with their combination of straight and that one swelling curve like a bigger wave to all the small waves of a kris. It was my favorite blade in practice and they were hanging right there. I put the knives back in their wrist sheaths and grabbed the swords. They were so much heavier than practice blades. I tried their weight, whirling them in my hands as I started across the sand toward the fighting. One of the reasons that the wererats practiced with live blades was that the difference with practice swords wasn’t just the dull edge versus sharp, but weight. As I started jogging over the sand, tightening muscles to hold myself steady over the shifting surface so I didn’t twist an ankle or a knee, I was really happy that I’d practiced with real swords. It would be a terrible moment to have to swing a real blade for the first time as I came in at Hector’s back.

If you expected me to give him a chance to turn around so it would be a fair fight, then you’ve been watching too many movies. In real life it’s not cheating to survive.

Hector heard me coming, because his swords came swinging out toward both of us as he whirled in a circle, clearing us both back from him, so that he could move to face somewhere in between us. I recognized it as part of the Archangel series. Pierette and I both moved toward him