Rafael (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #28) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,91

Fredo cry.

I concentrated on his face, not letting myself look at Rafael yet; that would come, but first I’d deliver the message. “The brujas need their lore keeper to decide some things.”

Fredo nodded; he raised Rafael’s hand to press it to his face, closing his eyes, which made the first tears fall. He kept his face averted as he said, “My king.”

“It is all right, Fredo, go. I will be here when you return.” Rafael’s voice sounded almost normal. I finally let myself look at him. I’d been strong through all of it until I saw him lying there on the pale sand surrounded by a halo of blood, his and Hector’s, but mostly his own. Sand was clinging to the wounds; normally they’d have cleaned that out first, because once he was able to heal normally, he could heal so fast the sand would still be inside when he did it. He couldn’t get infections from it, but the body could encase foreign objects in tissue, sort of like an oyster does except you wouldn’t get a pearl from it, just a nonmalignant growth that sometimes had to be removed.

I stood there and looked down at him and tried to keep my face blank like I would at an awful crime scene, but this wasn’t some stranger, this was my lover and my friend.

Rafael managed a smile for me, but his eyes stayed pain-filled. “Your face, Anita, now I know how bad it is.”

I fought not to cry; I could at least do that for him. I started to kneel down and then realized I would have to put the bloody swords in the sand, so I wiped the blood clean on my pants, so that sand wouldn’t cling to the edge if I had to use them later. It probably wouldn’t have made that big a difference, but one, they weren’t my swords so I wanted to take care of them, and two, sometimes small things can make a big difference on how well an edge slices, or if it catches on things. You want a blade to slice clean, sharp, and even. It helped steady me to worry about the swords. It let me kneel and place them one on either side of me and not cry.

I touched his shoulder and he made a motion toward my hand with the other arm, but a shudder of pain ran through him and he had to close his eyes and focus on breathing not to cry out. He was king; he would not let them see him be weak. I had to swallow hard not to cry; if he could be strong, I could be, too. “Don’t move, Rafael. I’ll come to you.” I took his hand in mine, the same hand that Fredo had been holding.

Rafael opened his eyes, smiled, and then closed them again, breathing through another wave of pain. His legs were shredded. The only other time I’d seen damage like this had been wereanimal attacks where the human victims were already dead before I got there to hunt the killer down and make sure they never hurt anyone else ever again.

“Jean-Claude says we could give you energy to heal.”

He swallowed and tried to focus on my face. “What does Neva say?”

I debated lying to him, but I couldn’t do that to him. If we healed him and it lost him his right to be king . . . Rafael had to know the risks first.

“She says that since it’s vampire power keeping you from healing, it might be okay to use other vampire power to heal you.”

“Will it cost me the throne?” he asked, voice hoarse as if he’d been screaming when I knew he hadn’t been.

“They’re checking your rules and stuff, that’s why they wanted Fredo. I didn’t even know you guys had a lore keeper until tonight.”

“We are a complicated people.”

I smiled. “You can say that again.”

He smiled back, but his eyes were beginning to wander as if he couldn’t see me or was having more trouble focusing. He was pale. He had a slight dew of sweat on his forehead. I touched his hand to my face, but it was still warm and then I realized that Fredo had been holding it. Had his shoulder been warm or cold when I touched it? I couldn’t remember, so I raised his arm and laid my cheek against it. His skin was clammy. Shit!

I yelled back toward the waiting group around Hector. “Can I