Rafael (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #28) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,96
rats didn’t care what he wanted, and neither did I, because I wanted him dead. I did not want him haunting our steps and I never wanted him near our child. We needed him dead and the rats liked me better because he didn’t like them. He didn’t even like wererats, because they were just animals, after all.
The first one took a bite. “Stop, I command you! You will not hurt me. You cannot hurt me; I am your master.” He sounded so sure of himself, but we could feel his fear, we could smell it on him, feel the trembling of him underneath our feet and against our bellies as we climbed him. Fear meant food.
They started biting him, hundreds of tiny mouths taking a bite, and then they began to feed. And he started to scream. “You cannot do this! I am your master!”
“You are not master here,” Neva, the two other brujas, and I said in unison, “not in our holy of holies. You cannot win here when we have another vampire to call rats for us, another bruja to see the darkness between stars, another wererat to be a conduit for the Goddess. You only seek to steal power, Master of Beasts, but Anita seeks to share it. Someone who shares is always more welcome than someone who takes.” And all the time Neva’s words poured from our mouths the rats fed. If Neva hadn’t held me in her power, our power, their power, the Goddess, or the God, or something, I would have been horrified, shocked, guilt ridden, but he had threatened our child, one we didn’t even have yet. He would have killed us all, enslaved us all, and that we could not allow.
Regular rats shouldn’t have been able to hurt him, it would have been like a lead bullet, but the magic changed the rats into something more like a silver-dipped bullet that could pierce supernatural flesh. The fire died in his eyes while they were still tugging and slicing the flesh from his bones. And then we were back on the sands, and the light died in Hector’s eyes while we were still pulling back from them. He hadn’t survived the death of his master.
I half expected the rats all around us on the sand to fall on Hector’s body like the other rats had on Padma, but the rat on my shoulder made a soft, almost chirp sound in my ear. We aren’t that kind of rat, it seemed to say.
Neva said, “That is not how we dispose of bodies here in the fighting pit.”
I knew because Rafael knew that there was a trap door that opened over the river and there was something not rat, not human, that had been there when the wererats first came to St. Louis. The wererats had built upon the power of this place and what lay beneath. The dead of the fighting pit were sacrifices to what hid in the river here, and in turn it had become part of the magic of the brujas, part of the power of the holy of holies.
I knew that Rafael was healing before I turned and saw him sitting up on the sand. My eyes were back to normal as I crossed the sand toward him. I wanted to run to him, but I still had the rat on my shoulder, and I wasn’t sure how secure he was there. I’d never had a pet rat, and immediately in my head the rat was disgusted with the thought that he was a pet.
“Sorry,” I said, out loud.
Rafael held his hand out to me, and I took it and knelt on the sand, keeping my shoulders straight so I didn’t spill the big rat off. Rafael was smiling at me; his legs were healing all that damage like those fast-forward films of blooming flowers. It was wonderful and a little disturbing.
“You killed another master vampire for us,” he said.
“It was a group effort,” I said.
“A group effort that wouldn’t have worked without you with us,” he said, and raised my hand to his lips to lay a kiss across my fingers.
I wanted to say so much, ask so many things, but I let it all go to trail my fingers down the edge of his face. The rat on my shoulder started to walk down my arm toward him.
“And who is this?” he asked.
“He didn’t like being called a pet, so I’m not sure I get to name him.”
“He says you may choose a human name for him,” Neva said as she walked toward us, “and he will let you know if he likes it.”
“Fair enough,” I said.
“I had hoped to take you up on your offer with Pierette tonight, but though I am healing I will not be able to do anyone justice tonight, let alone you and another lovely woman.”
“That’s all right, I think I’m not in the mood after all this.”
“I am sorry that you found our world so harsh.”
I shook my head. “It is what it is, but if Padma hadn’t attacked us here, then we couldn’t have defeated him this easily. He underestimated the power of the rodere.”
“He underestimated more than that, Anita.” Rafael leaned toward me as far as his healing legs would allow, so I moved the rest of the way to him.
“I told you before, I’d come to you.”
“You did, but I know you like your men to meet you partway.”
I smiled and we kissed.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to Matt Stumpf for helping reawaken the warrior inside me, and to Guro Dan Inosanto for sharing his knowledge and skill with all of us. It is an honor, sir.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laurell K. Hamilton is a full-time writer and the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series and the Merry Gentry series. She lives in a suburb of St. Louis with her family.
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