“What of our small brethren?” she asked.
“I thought your magic was controlling normal rats, but whatever they are, they aren’t normal.”
“They have always been here,” Neva said.
“The rats are part of the power here,” Claudia said.
“The magic has changed them as it changed me,” Neva said.
“Just to be clear, Claudia, you’re saying that Neva’s eyes have always glowed like this, it’s not new?”
“Since I first joined the rodere at eighteen.”
“And all the witches of the rodere have eyes like this?” I asked.
“When the power rides them.”
“Good to know,” I said out loud; in my head I thought, Good to know she’s not possessed by the same vampire that’s got Hector.
“It is getting late, we need to get Anita inside,” Claudia said.
“Yeah, if I have to fight my way through the crowd, we best get started,” I said.
“The fighting has already begun, Anita Blake,” Neva said. She walked past us, and the rats made room for her, spilling wide around her so she could walk and not worry about stepping on them. She walked away without glancing back at us, but one of the rats stood on its haunches and looked back for her. Could she see through its eyes? I looked at the rat and it looked back at me. We stared at each other. Its fur was black, darker than most of the others’. It stretched up tall, showing a small spot of white on its chest and a white paw. Its nose wiggled as it sniffed the air; did my magic smell different to it, or did Obsidian Butterfly’s power smell just like home? It settled back on all fours and looked at me. Again, there was that sense of too much mind staring back at me from the small body.
“The rat is looking at you,” Pierette said.
Claudia came to stand beside me. “We need to go inside,” she said.
I nodded at the profoundly serious-looking rat. “Is this normal for the rats here?”
“No, they never pay this much attention to anyone but the brujas.”
“What do you want?” I asked.
“I want you to come inside with me,” Claudia said.
“I’m asking him,” I said.
“You mean the rat?”
“Yes,” I said, still staring at the small pointed face.
It made a noise that I think that was supposed to be a squeak but sounded lower-pitched, like it would sing bass in rat choir. It turned and walked away, body longer and sleeker, as if it had lost some mass in the last few seconds.
“Bye,” I said, as if it could understand me.
The rat stopped and turned its upper body to look back and squeaked at me before racing away into the shadows.
“Did that sound like he said bye?” I asked.
“No,” Pierette said.
“They don’t talk,” Claudia said.
“If you say so,” I said.
“Your eyes are back to normal,” Pierette said.
“Then let’s go.”
“Can you call the eyes back at will?” Claudia asked.
I thought about it, then nodded.
“Good, because all the rodere respect the magic of our brujas.”
“Respect or fear?” I asked.
“Both.”
“You want me to flash the eyes as we go inside?”
“Save them in case we’re losing,” she suggested.
“What would happen if I accidentally drained the energy out of one of them?”
“Would it just weaken them?”
“No, they’d start to dry out like mummies.”
“Like what you did to Chimera?” Claudia asked.
“Yeah.”
“Don’t do that,” she said.
17
AFTER NEVA AND the rats outside, I thought I was ready for anything inside, but I was wrong. They wanted to touch me, not to hurt me—women, men, young, old, they touched my arms, squeezed my shoulder, shook my hands. The first one who tried to hug me nearly got punched, but Claudia touched my hand in time so that they hugged me without getting hurt.
“It’s so good to see you in person,” a woman said, and hugged me like I was her long-lost friend. I smiled and nodded and said, “I’m glad I could be here tonight.”
A man grabbed me in the fiercest hug yet and tried to kiss me. I turned my head to the side so he got my cheek, and Claudia pulled him off me before I could decide how violent to be about a stolen kiss.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m sorry.”
It was a woman with half her head shaved and more tattoos and piercings than I’d seen in a while who took my hand in hers and said, “When you feed the ardeur on us, it’s amazing.”
“Thanks,” I said, not sure what else to say.
She stepped a little closer, both hands holding mine. I thought her eyes were black, but they were just the darkest charcoal gray I’d ever seen. “My name is Marisol, it means butterfly.”
I looked at the butterfly tattooed on her left shoulder and smiled. I think the smile encouraged her a little too much, because she leaned in even closer and said, “I would love for you to feed on me in person.”
My face must have shown that I didn’t know what to say, because she laughed and said, “Don’t tell me I’m the first one who’s asked.”
I nodded.
She laughed again, lips parted enough that I could see her tongue was pierced.
Pierette pulled me back with an arm across my shoulders and drew me into a hug. Marisol grinned and just moved back to let the next person take my hand. She was the first one to proposition me, but not the last. I’d known the ardeur could be addictive, but I’d trusted Rafael to be strong enough to resist. I hadn’t even thought about what might have been happening to the other wererats. I felt careless that I hadn’t thought about it; Jean-Claude breathed through my head, letting me know that it hadn’t occurred to him either, and that did make me feel a little less slow on the uptake.
A man grabbed my arm and I’d had so many people touching me by then that I just turned to him with a smile, trying to be friendly, or at least diplomatic. I felt his body lunge forward before I even saw the blade in his hand. I didn’t have time to go for one of my own knives; all I could do was use my free hand to sweep his arm past me. He’d committed too much energy to stabbing me, so when I swept his arm, he stumbled past me even more than I’d planned. I put my hand over his where he was still gripping my arm and used it like a handle to help his stumble become a fall that put him on his knees.
He tried to twist back toward me with the blade in his hand, but I still had his other arm. I went from using it like a handle to turning it into a joint lock on his elbow. I put enough pressure on it to let him know I’d break it if he kept moving.
He kept turning toward me with the knife, so I broke his elbow. It made a nice meaty pop. Normal people scream and stop fighting after that, but he didn’t even bother to scream. He just kept turning toward me, and with his elbow broken the arm was no longer stiff enough to act as a barrier. He let me tear his arm up and didn’t even hesitate as he slashed for my thigh, and I tried to switch one hand to his shoulder to keep him away from me.
18
I FELT THE hit of his blade on the outside of my thigh, because I’d turned my leg so he missed the femoral artery on the inside of the thigh, and the moment I felt the knife bite into me I used his arm and shoulder to try to put him flat on the ground and keep his other arm and the knife away from me. I’d done similar moves in practice and in real life, but I forgot one thing—I was stronger now, a lot stronger.
His arm tore away from his body, gushing blood everywhere, and it was so fresh and there was so much of it that it was hot on my skin. I screamed and he was already screaming, and all I could think was Where’s the knife? The blood was so thick and fast that I couldn’t see what the bad guy was doing, and with his arm barely held to his body by skin, I couldn’t use it to feel his movements. My fingertips found his back and that was something I could underst
and. I let go of his useless arm and rode his back down to the floor. I drove my knee into his back because I wasn’t big enough to keep him down with just my weight, and pinned his remaining shoulder to the ground to keep the knife that was still in his hand away from me. I drew the knife at my waist with my other hand and plunged it into the side of the man’s neck and gave it a twist on the way out. Almost no blood came out; that wasn’t right. I’d seen enough throat wounds to know they bleed like a son of a bitch.
I heard someone yelling my name, but I kept staring at the knife in my hand and the barely bleeding neck wound. What was happening? Why wasn’t it bleeding more?
“Anita!” Claudia was kneeling on the floor, balanced on the balls of her feet, shouting at me.
I blinked at her and wanted to ask her, Why isn’t his throat bleeding more? Even though it was just steel he should have bled before he healed it.
“Anita, can you hear me?” Claudia asked.
I blinked at her again and then nodded.
“Are you hurt?”
“My leg, he cut my leg.” My voice sounded beyond calm, there was no emotion to it at all. I felt dull and distant. I wasn’t hurt bad enough to be in shock; what the hell was wrong with me?
“How bad?” she asked.
I shook my head, not sure how to answer the question. “He was going for my femoral, but I turned so he only got the outside of my thigh,” I said in that dull, emotionless voice.
“Take his blade, and then I’ll look at your wound.”
I looked down his arm where his hand was still wrapped around the knife. It was as if his arm had gotten longer and everything was farther away than I knew it was; distortion like that wasn’t good. Maybe I was more hurt than I thought.
I looked at Claudia and her expression softened for a second. “You must finish the kill by taking his blade.”
I wanted to say, I hadn’t meant to kill him, I hadn’t even drawn one of the blades with high silver content. How could he be dead? I moved the knee that I was driving into his back, but he never reacted to the pressure change, but until the head and heart were gone, death wasn’t a sure thing, so I kept one knee on his remaining shoulder so I’d feel if he tried to move, and then I reached down his arm for the blade he was still gripping.
Somewhere between reaching for it and getting to his hand, that unnatural stretching of reality stopped happening. Maybe it was just shock? I took the knife out of his soft, unresisting hand, and that was when I knew he was dead. I hadn’t meant to kill him, and if the blade I’d just taken from him didn’t have a high silver content, he hadn’t meant to kill me either. God.
19
THE KNIFE I’D taken off the dead man had been silver. He’d meant to kill me; good, that made me feel just a teensy bit better about what I’d just done. If there’d been more fighting to do, I could have rallied and kept going, but strangely, no one wanted to fight me now. Of course, no one wanted to hug or flirt with me now either; since I was drenched in fresh blood, I couldn’t really blame them. Going from a violent, life-and-death fight to nothing meant that all the adrenaline just washed away, which left me feeling weak, faint, nauseous, and really needing a few minutes out of sight of strangers to get my shit together.
I had cleaned my blade on the dead man’s shirt and put it back in its sheath. I didn’t have a sheath for the silver blade I’d taken off him, so it was still naked in my hand. I held it out wordlessly to Claudia.
“You’re entitled to the sheath and any other weapons or equipment that he’s carrying,” she said.
I glanced down at the body lying there in the huge pool of blood. I understood now why the throat wound hadn’t bled much; the hydraulics had lost too much fluid by the time I got to his neck. The blood was still shiny; it’s almost cheerful red when there’s enough blood in the right light. It would start to darken soon.
“Is there some place I can clean up?” I asked in that detached voice that people who don’t understand violence think means you don’t care, but that’s not it at all. It means you care too damn much, so much that your mind is trying to shut down so that you won’t feel all the emotional fallout all at once, because if you do, then you’re going to fall apart right here, right now.
“There’s an area where the fighters get ready and there’s a bathroom,” Claudia said.
“Which gives me the most privacy?”
“Bathroom,” she said.
“That,” I said.
She started guiding me away from the curtain opening that was the way into the main fighting pit. That was fine with me; I’d had enough fighting for the moment. Pierette moved up beside me and took my left hand in hers. I squeezed her hand to let her know I appreciated the gesture, but I took my hand back. If anyone was too nice to me in that moment, I was going to lose my shit, and I couldn’t afford that in front of all the wererats here.
They looked at us as we passed, some not wanting to make eye contact, but others stared, and some even nodded. I didn’t know if I was supposed to nod back or ignore them, so I pretended I didn’t see and did nothing but follow Claudia’s tall figure. She was walking ahead of me like a good bodyguard, clearing the crowd, but we moved in an oval of emptiness; people were staying away from us, from me. They weren’t all horrified, but they were all being careful of the crazy woman who had just torn a man’s arm off.
The numbness was starting to wear off, the nausea was getting worse, and I was having to concentrate on not letting my hands shake. The cut on my leg was stinging. I didn’t have a limp, but it hurt. “Is there a doctor on site?” I asked.
Claudia looked back at me. “Leg hurting?”
“Starting to,” I said.
She stopped and turned to me. “There are doctors in the fighters’ area.”
I sighed and fought a serious urge to rest the top of my head against her as if I were a tired five-year-old, but I fought it off. I’d just torn a man’s arm off; surely I could not break down for a few minutes longer.
“Sure.”
She looked at me for a second, as if she knew I wasn’t sure at all, but she didn’t question it, just turned around and started leading us back toward the curtained area and the fighting. I should have known better than to try to leave the fighting early; that never really worked out for me. Onward, motherfuckers, onward.
20
CLAUDIA HELD THE curtain to a narrow hallway, but it was like a wall at a sports stadium. It curved around to either side, and I could hear the movement of a lot of people just out of sight. The noise was murmurous like an ocean made up of the movement and sounds that people make even when they think they’re not making any noise at all. She led us to the left, and we passed more curtained doorways leading into the stadium, or I guess the fighting pit.
We came to the first door, but it didn’t lead toward the sound of the crowd, it was on the wall opposite all the curtained entrances. There was also a tall, muscular guard standing by the closed door. He looked impressively big until Claudia got close enough and then you realized he was at least six inches shorter than her. Hard to be the biggest dog in the room when you’re not.
“Claudia,” he said, giving that little nod I’d seen people give me in the crowd after the fight. Among the rodere it seemed to mean more than just an acknowledgment of I see you.
Claudia didn’t nod back, which was my first clue that maybe it was like a salute in the military. You had to salute officers, but it was up the higher rank if they saluted back. She just said, “Franco,” but that was all. Apparently, she didn’t think he rated a return salute.
He opened the door for her, but when I tried to follow her in, he put an arm in my way. I stared at the arm and thought about my options. “Franco, why is your arm blocking my way?” My voice sounded normal, almost pleasant. I recognized the tone; it meant I was ready for a fight, but I was going to try to talk my way out of it first. Conservation of energy and all that.
Pierette said from behind me, “Shall I move him for you?”
“You should not be in here at all, cat,” Franco said.
Claudia was on the other side of his arm now. “Franco, she needs a doctor.”
“Anyone who lets themselves get that cut up just coming through the rats outside the pit doesn’t get to use our doctors tonight. Those are the rules, Claudia, you know that.”
“It’s not her blood,” Claudia said, stepping out of the doorway, so that I had to back up and Franco had to move his arm. Pierette stayed a little behind and to one side of me. I stepped back far enough to give myself room in case I actually had to fight my way through Franco to get medical care. Pierette moved wide and to the side of me so we could flank him if it was allowed. I admired the wererats’ having so much culture and tradition, but I was getting tired of being on the wrong side of it all.
I was hoping a dramatic gesture could cut through the bullshit, so I pulled the front of my T-shirt away from my body. It clung to my skin, soaked, and I fought the urge to start screaming Get it off me, because up to that point I’d been ignoring the sensation of so much blood in my clothes that it was like I’d been dumped in a pool fully clothed. I knew logically that I had to have been this messy before; I mean I was a vampire executioner and had spent years beheading chickens or slitting the throats of bigger livestock to raise zombies. I had to have had this much blood on me at some point, right? But if I had ever been more blood-soaked than I was right that second, I couldn’t remember it.
I pulled enough of the T-shirt out of the front of my pants so that I could squeeze it out like you’d wring a wet washcloth, but instead of water I wrung blood out on the floor.
I looked up at Franco as I held my newly bloody hands out from my body. “Not my blood.”
“You are really unpopular to have that many of us challenge you,” he said.
“Only one person tried to kill me outside, just one,” I said.
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