Page 20 of Rafael (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 28)

He smiled. “Yes, that, too, but I still miss the women who go with that kind of insanity.”

“Do I say I’m sorry, or do you want me to pick some of your stuff that I don’t think you’ll miss much and plan a bonfire for you? We could roast hot dogs and make s’mores.”

This time he smiled at my joke. Brownie points for me. “That will not be necessary, but perhaps a summer cookout in the backyard, around the pool, with s’mores toasted over the fire pit would be nice.”

I smiled. “That sounds good.”

“It does.”

I handed him one of the other towels. “If you don’t dry your hair soon, you’ll have to wet it down and start over, and if I don’t put in all the leave-in conditioners, Jean-Claude will make me start over on mine.”

He started drying his hair, still smiling. “Let us find a bed and do more things that put a smile on both our faces.”

I was about to agree with him when Jean-Claudewhispered through my head, “Ma petite, how close are you to feeding on Rafael?”

I very carefully thought back, “Why?”

I could suddenly see Jean-Claude still dressed for fencing practice, though the way he and the other older vampires practiced it was more traditional combat arts. I did mostly kali, which was Filipino martial arts, though my main instructor, Fredo, was helping me incorporate the knife skills I’d been using for years, so it wasn’t a pure style of Sinawali, but as Fredo taught me,What is kali? I am kali.Which basically meant that you should do it the way that works best for you. Kali isn’t just a martial art, it’s a combat style, and that means you do it the way that keeps you alive. Martial arts have referees and point systems. Combat arts have, did you live? I liked all the blade classes, from the various types of sword and knife work to the axe class that Truth and Wicked had just begun teaching. Some people thought blades weren’t practical for modern day, but they should look up the Tueller Drill. A regular human being with no supernatural speed can still stab you before you can draw, aim, and fire a gun if they’re within twenty-one feet of you. Between twenty and eighteen feet you may shoot them as they stab you and die together, but eighteen to sixteen feet and they will stab, or club, or smash your brains in, faster than you can shoot them. But honestly even without the practical statistics, I just seemed to like anything with an edge. Saturday’s class was vampires and wereanimals that had lived when the sword wastheweapon at a gentleman’s side. It was one of the few blade classes I wasn’t trying to take.

Jean-Claude smiled up at me, because my visual was looking down at him as if I were a hovering camera; it was always the view from the mind-to-mind peeks. His black curls were back in a loose ponytail, but with or without the hair to frame it his face was still almost toolovely to be real. Once I thought it was vampire wiles that made him so beautiful, but it was just him.

He said, “I am soon to take my turn upon the field, and I need my concentration. The sweetness of your combined release will be most distracting.”

I didn’t try to talk anymore; I just lowered my shields enough so he could see Rafael and where we were in the process.

Rafael said, “What does Jean-Claude want?”

It made me startle and look at the other man, which made me lose the visual of Jean-Claude. I started to ask him how he knew anyone had contacted me, let alone knew it was Jean-Claude, then I realized he was rubbing at the goose bumps on his arms. “You felt the energy,” I said.

“I know when Jean-Claude is in your head.”

I didn’t have to file it away to share later, because Jean-Claude just knew what I knew, because he was in my head. “Interesting,” he whispered, and then was gone so that Rafael and I were alone again in the showers. Our thoughts and our feelings private and ours again.

“He’s at the new sword class the older vamps and shapeshifters are doing. He doesn’t want us to be feeding theardeurwhile he’s on the practice mat.”

“I didn’t think they used live blades,” Rafael said.

“They don’t, but you can still get hurt even with a dull practice blade.”

“True enough,” he said.

“I know that the wererats like to use live blades for most of their practices,” I said.

“If it is not silver, then it will heal almost instantly if you are a powerful enough shapeshifter.”

“Yeah, you’re powerful as fuck, so you’ll heal, but I’ve seen some of your people after the wererat-only practices and they don’t all heal like you do.”

He smiled and it had that arrogance, or maybe confidence, that he hid most of the time behind a diplomatic,almost humble demeanor. But since I’d been his lover, I’d seen him when he wasn’t so controlled, and you didn’t get to be king without being confident or even arrogant.

“You do not always heal as quickly as I do, and yet you participate in knife practice with us.”

I shrugged and felt both embarrassed and proud. “I was surprised when Fredo invited me into the private lessons.”

“You should be honored, Fredo includes only the very best in his private classes.”

I smiled and then felt myself blush. It usually took something sexual to get me to blush, which meant that being invited into Fredo’s private lessons meant even more to me than I’d thought. It was stupid to risk myself with real blades, and even in the private classes we used practice blades most of the time, but not all the time, and sometimes we used silver-edged blades, which meant that even a shapeshifter or a vampire would heal human-slow. The wererats and the golden tigers both believed that if you didn’t practice with silver blades at least part of the time, you didn’t really know how good you were or how you’d react when you got hit for real. I’d been cut up in real fights before, so I knew what it felt like and how I’d react, but the theory was sound.

Rafael laughed. “I am sorry that I have not been able to be in the practices since you were invited into them.”

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