Rafael (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #28) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,93

“The brujas need you. I will stay here with Claudia and tend Rafael. The tourniquets and QuikClot will hold our king on this side long enough for the brujas to work their magic.” He offered me a hand and I took it, but my hand was so slippery with Rafael’s blood that I lost my grip and Benito grabbed my arm to steady me.

“So much for being suave and debonair,” I muttered.

He smiled and patted me on the back before he let me go. “Pierette and Fredo will have your back while you help the brujas.”

I didn’t question it, just walked toward the other little group on the sand.

32

HECTOR WAS STILL on the ground with his wrists and ankles shackled together with a long bar of metal. They were the new restraints that the police had designed for supernatural prisoners now that they were actually taking some of them into custody instead of just executions all around. Fredo and Pierette stood ready with sword and knife. When Neva and the other two brujas looked at me, their eyes were all black and shining with the cold light of distant stars, but Hector was still laughing. “The greatest magic the rats have at their disposal and it is not enough. You cannot defeat my master.”

“Where do you want me?” I asked.

“Riding my cock,” Hector said, and laughed.

I ignored him as if he weren’t there and looked at Neva.

“Fill your eyes with the light between the stars,” Neva said.

I did what she asked, and suddenly I could see the red aura around Hector like a wound, and that he had a real wound in his back. I could see him bleeding internally from where Pierette had pierced his kidney. It wasn’t like X-ray vision, but almost like his aura had sprung a leak and the black and red were intermingling like paint spilling from two different cans.

“What do you need me to do?” I asked.

“We can use this one to find his master. We see him sitting in a hotel room, but we cannot breach the darkness around him. It is a piece of Madre de la Oscuridad, and it stands as a wall between us and what needs doing.”

“My master had hoped you would have a child with one of your men by now. He says you owe him a son,” Hector taunted.

“He gave up Fernando to save his own life, and he loved him a hell of a lot more than he loves you,” I said.

“Only someone descended form Belle Morte’s bloodline would speak of love and moitié bêtes in the same breath,” he said, and his hazel eyes were solid brown and starting to shine.

“Do you know what hotel he’s in, can you see a name, a notepad, a card, anything for the physical location?” I asked Neva.

“Once you join your power to ours, you will see what we see.”

“How do we do that?” I asked.

“I am told that all your powers work better through touch, is that true?”

“Most of them.”

“Then kneel and lay hands upon his skin, and we will lay hands upon you. You will be our battering ram against his castle wall.”

“You carry so many of my beasts inside you, Anita, if you touch me, my power will take you over. You will be my creature as Hector is my creature.”

“Bullshit,” I said.

“The darkness will consume you if you touch me.”

I smiled then, and he didn’t like that I smiled. The doubt on his face, the confusion, was an expression I remembered from his last visit. It was funny how facial expressions stayed the same no matter what body people were wearing.

“You got just a tiny piece of her power, Padma, I got the rest.” And I shoved my hand through the blackness and the red until I touched the bare skin of his chest and stomach, and I could see the cord like a metaphysical leash from Hector leading down into the floor, into the ether, into . . . Neva spoke next to my face. “Find the vampire, Anita, find me the vampire on the other end.”

My necromancy opened like a flower and the darkness parted before it, and I was suddenly seeing the room where Padma was sitting on the edge of a bed. It wasn’t a good hotel, more motel—oh, how the mighty had fallen. I felt Jean-Claude’s thrill of discovery before he backed off and hid his reaction. I knew without even thinking the question that he was telling Pierrot. The