Rafael

by K. Hamilton, Laurell

  Rafael handed the microphone to Claudia and leaned over us. “Your rage feeds mine. I was forced to watch some of the torture to the women before they started cutting me up. I want him dead.”

  “That’s the plan,” I said, smiling up at him so that only he could see that my eyes were nearly black with anger.

  He smiled then and it was such a close echo of mine that I wasn’t sure if it was his smile, or mine. It usually took longer to intermingle than this, but maybe it was the shared hatred?

  Pierette raised her face up toward his anger. I wondered if he saw that her eyes were the wrong color or if he just saw a pretty woman gazing up at him. He moved past her offered kiss to me, though, saying, “One should always dance first with the woman you brought to the ball.” He kissed me soft, and I leaned into it, my hands tightening around Pierette, so I didn’t accidentally dump her off my lap.

  “What are you doing, Rafael?” Hector asked, and I realized that Rafael’s body might be blocking the view.

  Rafael rose up from me to look deep into Pierette’s eyes. I couldn’t see their color as she rose up to meet his lips in their very first kiss.

  “How dare you insult all the beautiful women of the rodere by favoriting a wereleopard and a vampire’s whore!”

  There were mutterings of agreement from the crowd, but I didn’t care, because I was watching Rafael and Pierette kiss inches above my head. I liked watching my lovers kiss over me, usually one on either side of me in a bed, but this was good, too. It helped bring me back to my center and chase all the ugliness of the death and blood away, which was no mean trick since the blood was starting to dry on me. Maybe the three of us could catch a shower later?

  Rafael drew back from the kiss and looked at me. “I can feel how much you enjoyed seeing us together.”

  “Told you so,” I said, and the look on his face made me smile.

  “How you must hate what you are to turn your back on your true queens.” The word hate seemed to burn and hiss along the skin.

  Rafael turned from us with a last parting smile, then took the microphone again. “I love being rodere. I love my people and all that we have built together.” He didn’t have the magical voice, but his sincerity seemed to reach people without any extra vampy power.

  “How can you turn to us with their mouths still hot on your skin and claim to love being a wererat?”

  “Your words sound far too poetic to be just your words tonight, Hector.”

  “My words are my own!”

  “I do not think so, I think you smell like someone else is in your skin.”

  “You are babbling, old man.”

  “Then let us stop babbling and start fighting,” Rafael said. The change was so abrupt, it was startling, and judging from Hector’s body language, I wasn’t the only one surprised.

  Pierette leaned in against my neck as if she were nuzzling me, but she hid her whisper against my skin. “It is too soon to fight. We must delay.”

  “We do not fight for kings in front of outsiders,” Hector said, but his voice didn’t have the oomph to it.

  Pierette whispered, “That will do,” as if she’d had something to do with Hector not wanting to jump straight to fighting.

  “You threatened Anita in the locker room; if she did not leave when you killed me, you would have her, and you would destroy the vampires, kill all those she loved with the wererats doing your dirty work.”

  “I did not say that.”

  “Did you threaten to rape Anita after you killed me?”

  “She should not be here.”

  “Answer the question, Hector, let us smell the truth on you.”

  “You’re the one who brought her here tonight. You almost got her killed in the outer room.”

  Rafael asked a different question. “Did you threaten to rape Claudia after you were king?”

  “It is within my rights as king to ask for any woman I want.”

  “Ask, but never to take,” Rafael said.

  “A king does not beg for what is already his by right.”

  Rafael yelled, pulling the microphone back so the echoes were perfect, “Did you tell Claudia that you would rape her?”

  The crowd started saying, “Answer him” and “Why won’t you answer?” and “Why won’t he answer?” A woman near us said, “If he’d rape Claudia, none of us are safe.” She was so right.

  The crowd was chanting, “Answer, answer, answer, answer . . .”

  Hector yelled, too, but he didn’t move his microphone and it whined through his answer, “Yes! I will kill you, and then I will fuck Claudia and Anita, and the cat you dragged in tonight!”

  It was such an ambitious brag that I wasn’t even angry or afraid, because I absolutely knew Hector wasn’t up to all three of us in one night, especially if we were unwilling to cooperate.

  Pierette sat up straighter in my lap. “Padma should know better than to threaten me, let alone both of you.”

  Rafael laughed at him, and he wasn’t the only one. People in the audience joined him, not a lot, but enough.

  Hector snarled at him, and said, “I will kill you tonight, Rafael, and when I am king, no one will laugh.”

  “Even if you kill me tonight, Hector, you will never be king now.”

  “Enough talk, old man, time to die.”

  “Hector, you speak like someone who does not know our laws.”

  “All I have to do to be king is to kill you, old man, that’s all I need to know.”

  Rafael said, “Let Claudia explain your mistake,” and handed the microphone to her.

  “You have challenged the three of us publicly in the fighting pits, Hector. By your own words, if you manage to kill Rafael tonight, then you will face all three of us together.”

  Pierette stood and drew me to my feet with her hand in mine so we could go stand closer to Claudia. She slid her arm around my waist, and I did the same. I trusted her to have a reason for the unusually bold public display, because normally she was much more circumspect outside the bedroom.

  “I will have my way with all of you. I will rape the cat until her master fills her eyes and then I will slay them both,” he said.

  “You talk like a vampire, not a rat,” Claudia said.

  “And you talk like someone who is afraid to face me alone.”

  “You didn’t challenge me alone, you challenged me along with Anita and Pierette, so that’s how we’ll fight: three against one.”

  “That is not what I meant.”

  “Words have weight in the fighting pit,” she said, and it had the ring of an old saying.

  Some of the people near him moved toward him and then he shoved one of them away. “Get away from me, you crazy old woman.”

  “We do not hurt our elders,” Claudia said, and this time I had a bit of knowledge that must have come from Rafael. If any member of the rodere survived to true old age, they were revered and no longer had to fight to survive in the clan. It was such a rare thing to happen that it was considered sacred to be truly ancient among them.

  Rafael took the microphone back from her. “Is she hurt?” he asked.

  The crowd around the white-haired woman he’d pushed took the microphone from him after the group around Hector closed in with a silent threat of share the microphone, or else.

  An older man with hair almost as white said, “She is not injured, but she says this one smells like a stranger to her.”

  “He is possessed by a vampire whose animal to call is rat like Nikolaos, but a hundred times more powerful than she was,” Rafael said. Again, the statement was too abrupt for any of the supernatural groups I’d been involved with from vampires to werewolves. I didn’t like the constant fighting, but I liked cutting to the chase.

  There were some gasps, but mostly a heavy silence from the crowd. I expected them to move back from him even at the possibility of it, but I’d underestimated the wererats. They crowded closer to him, even though they had to know that touch made all vampire powers stronge
r. “What are you doing? Rafael is trying to poison your mind against me. He seeks to escape our battle because he knows he cannot win!” Hector yelled.

  I thought the crowd was going to grab him and it would be over, but they never touched him. In fact, they kept their hands down close to their sides, in a clear attempt to appear harmless as they leaned in toward him. I realized suddenly that they were trying to smell his skin. Rats have one of the best senses of smell in the animal kingdom; apparently that still applied in human form for them.

  Rafael said, “Did you forget the laws of the fighting pit, Hector, as you forgot to respect your elders?”

  “I forget nothing, old man! What are you all doing? Get away from me!” He was shouting at the people around him.

  Neva leaned in to speak low to me and Pierette, because she couldn’t talk to me alone while we were standing so intertwined. “Every time you touch each other, or Rafael, the red at the center of his aura pulses and fills more of the darkness around him.”

  “And he sounds less like Hector,” Claudia said with the microphone safely away from her mouth, or maybe she’d turned it off. Either way the sound didn’t carry.

  “Can we prove he is Padma’s creature?” Pierette asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Rafael said.

  “But if we can prove he’s Padma’s rat to call, then you won’t have to fight him,” I said.

  “Who told you that?” he asked.

  I stared up at him. He looked back at me, face serene as if what he’d said made sense to me. “If we can make him go all vampy, then you won’t have to fight him, right?”

  Neva said, “Challenge has been given and accepted—Rafael must fight.”

  I looked at her and she was far closer than I’d realized. Her eyes were still black with the gleam of silver starlight in them. Did her eyes ever look normal, or were they permanently stuck like this, the way Micah’s eyes were to leopard?

  “But Hector is like a Trojan horse, he’s not here to fight Rafael and be king, he’s here to destroy us all.”

  “He must kill me first and that is no easy task.” He was so confident now; the doubts of earlier in the day were like an illusion he’d shaken off.

  “If he used vampire powers, is that cheating?” I asked.

  “It would depend on the power,” Rafael said.

  “That’s crazy,” I said, and let go of Pierette so I could touch him; what I wanted to do was grab him by his shirt and shake him, but since he wasn’t wearing a shirt, I settled for touching his arm and the top of his shorts on one side. “Rafael, you’ve felt his power before and now he has even more power. We can’t let him use that here on you, on the rodere.”

  “He called to my beast and I could not refuse him, but now he is in our inner sanctum and we have power here that we do not have in the outside world.”

  “What power?” I asked.

  Neva came close to us and spoke low. “I believe the reach of our magic will go outside of here now.”

  Rafael turned to her, sliding an arm around my waist without thinking, as if it were just the natural thing to do. I wasn’t sure it was natural, but I slid in closer to him as if I agreed. Frankly, I was too tense to cuddle well. We were all in terrible danger—didn’t he understand that?

  “We have small magic outside here,” Rafael said.

  “No, my king, not small, not tonight, not with her power inside you, and the power of a goddess similar to ours inside her.”

  I started to open my mouth to argue that Obsidian Butterfly wasn’t a goddess, or that I was a monotheist, but honestly, I was more interested in her saying they had a goddess similar to Obsidian Butterfly. I knew they didn’t have a vampire as powerful as her hidden away in here, so what did Neva mean?

  “What do you mean about a goddess power inside Anita?” he asked.

  “All women have the power of the Goddess in them,” Neva said, as if she were telling him something he should already know.

  “Of course, but you were not speaking in generalities,” he said.

  “Get away from me, all of you!” Hector yelled.

  “He is done talking to the rest of us,” Claudia said, and handed the microphone to Rafael.

  The young bruja that Neva had called mija came forward and said, “Carlos texts that Hector smells like a stranger, and Abuela Flora says he smells like a tlahuelpuchi.”

  “Isn’t that just another word for vampire?” I said.

  “Young people think so,” Neva said.

  “They are born, not made, and their desire for blood only arises at puberty,” the young bruja said.

  “It is good to know you can listen as well as talk, mija,” Neva said.

  “Gracias, abuela,” she said, and looked pleased with herself. I wondered if abuela, which I knew meant grandmother, was an honorary term or a familial one. I’d ask later; the last time I’d seen my own abuela I’d been fourteen.

  Rafael said, “If all supernatural blood suckers are defined as vampires, then yes, a tlahuelpuchi is a type of vampire.”

  “Can’t we use that to just take him into custody?” I asked.

  “You cannot be here as a marshal, Anita,” Rafael said.

  “I don’t mean me taking him into custody, I mean you guys jumping his ass and capturing him so that we can use him to find Padma.”

  “Challenge has been given and accepted, Anita,” Rafael repeated.

  Benito said, “I’d like nothing better than to jump his ass, but once inside the fighting pit there are no excuses for canceling a fight.”

  “Even the fact that we know he’s a Trojan horse for an evil vampire?” I asked.

  “A Trojan horse is only dangerous if you don’t know that it is full of enemies,” Neva said.

  I looked into her black eyes and realized that the other bruja with her had normal eyes; only Neva’s stayed in power mode. “What are you planning to do?” I asked.

  “Win,” she said.

  “Rafael,” Hector yelled, “are we going to fight, or will you talk the night away, old man?”

  Rafael raised his arm so that the brand on his arm showed clearly. “If you want my crown, little boy, come and take it.”

  “You first, my king.”

  Rafael gave a slight nod. Hector did a deep bow that swung his braid forward over his head, which meant he was doing it wrong. For a real bow you bent at the waist, not the neck; I’d been learning protocol for bows and curtsies for the wedding.

  Rafael handed the microphone to Benito, then ran down the steps toward the railing, put one hand on the top of it, and vaulted over. The crowd cheered.

  “That’s a twenty-foot drop,” I said, my heart beating a little too hard just watching him go over.

  “Yes,” Benito said, as if it was no big deal.

  I glanced around, but everyone was chill with Rafael jumping, so I tried to be cool about it, too, when what I wanted to do was run to the edge and see if he’d broken his leg. Instead I stayed where I was and watched him walk toward the middle of the sand. He hadn’t broken anything; in fact, he’d taken the time to dust off any sand that might have clung to his black shorts.

  Fredo stepped out into the sand below us, walking toward Rafael. Fredo was slender with his salt-and-pepper hair cut short and neat; the equally short and neat mustache and beard that he’d added recently made him look like a stranger almost. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to them. He looked even shorter than the five foot six I knew he was as he met Rafael in the middle of the sand. It gave me some idea of how tiny I’d look out there. Rafael was still unarmed, as Hector had been, but the overhead lights gleamed silver in the banderillas and small knives across Fredo’s black T-shirt. Some of them were throwing knives and some were just small blades. He was one of the few people I’d ever met who was truly dangerous with a throwing blade. If there was any way to use a blade for lethal purposes, Fredo could do it.

  Hector backed up the steps between the benches and did a running start, on stairs, before lau
nching himself into the air, where he rose higher as if he had invisible wings. I’d have fallen on my ass just running on the stairs, but Hector lengthened out his body, his arms tucked in tight, his legs long and graceful together as he flipped himself in the air as if he were on a high dive over a pool instead of solid, unforgiving ground. I honestly thought he was going to crash-land and the fight would be over before it began, but at the last second he bent his body over and did a shoulder roll across the sand like Rafael had done, except Hector rolled farther and faster from the extra momentum he’d gotten from his fancy airtime.

  He came to his feet with an almost balletlike leap, arms up and out, when he landed. He smiled at the crowd, waving an arm again; there was that echo of dance or gymnastics or something that you didn’t learn in martial arts.

  The crowd went wild, fickle motherfuckers. Flashy bastard, but my stomach was tight as I watched him glide toward the center, where the other men were waiting.

  27

  FREDO PATTED HECTOR down, tracing the edges of the fight shorts and even making him open his mouth to check that he wasn’t hiding anything there. He did the same for Rafael. He even checked their bare feet and hands and ran fingers over their hair. It was more like a prison search then even a cop pat-down.

  When Fredo was satisfied that neither fighter was carrying anything but what God gave them to fight with, he literally drew a line in the sand between the two men. Then he reached back and hit the switch on something at his waist that I hadn’t even seen until he touched it. I realized it was a cordless microphone setup when Fredo spoke into the tiny mic by his mouth. I could see it as a thin black line almost lost in his beard now that I knew what I was looking for.