Page 4 of Rafael (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 28)

“I’ve seen what happens when one of us goes rogue,” Helios said. “Wearemonsters. We need people like Blake who can take us out when we go full beast mode.”

“Why are you taking her side? Did she fuck you like she fucks all the other men?”

“That’s out of line,” Helios said.

“So, you did fuck her!”

“Oh, for the love of God, Kane, it’s not my fault that Asher is bisexual and not just gay the way you want him to be,” I said.

“He’d be gay if it wasn’t for you,” Kane said, and he had moved so he could see me around the other man.

“Asher is Asher, he’s over six hundred years old, I didn’t change any of his sexual preferences.”

“Liar!” He screamed it at me.

“I’m not sleeping with your boyfriend, Kane.”

“But he still wants you!”

“And that is not my fault,” I said.

“Lying bitch!” Kane moved toward me and Helios stepped in between us. Kane pushed him hard enough to make the other man stumble. Helios made a fist, and part of me wanted him to take the swing.

Kane seemed to see it, too, because he calmed for a second and said, “Sorry, Helios, it’s not your fault, it’s hers.” And the calm was gone as if it had never been, he was right back to being furious—at me.

“Let Asher sleep with other women, and maybe he’ll get me out of his system.”

“No! It’s not women he wants, it’s just you, he’s only hetero for you.” I tried to see something in his face that I could reason with, but there was nothing but the jealous rage. It pinched his features down so that the handsomewas all gone. Some people really are pretty when they’re angry; Kane wasn’t one of them.

“You act like I’m the only woman he ever slept with, Kane. I know he slept with Dulcia, the leader of your old hyena clan.”

“Only because Jean-Claude told him to seduce her.”

“What about Belle Morte and Julianna?”

Kane made a sound low in his chest, and an eerie high-pitched growl spilled out of his human lips.

“Anita, just go, hit the showers. He’ll calm down once you’re gone,” Claudia said.

“Asher is bisexual, Kane. You can’t change that about him.”

His human words came out with that hyena squeal threading through them, so the sound raised the hairs at the back of my neck. “I can love him enough so he won’t need anyone else.”

“You sound like a woman who marries a gay man convinced she can love him straight.” I shouldn’t have said it, but I was just so tired of him.

He started rushing me, but Helios was there wrapping his arms around him from behind. I expected Kane to fight Helios then, but he just kept staring at me, trying to get at me like a dog on a chain.

I looked at the big man who was almost foaming at the mouth with rage. The anger didn’t smell good to me now, as if he’d gone past healthy anger into something more, or worse. Whatever was twisting Kane up inside was nothing I wanted to feed on.

Claudia got close enough to me to lower her voice over Kane’s yells. “Go, I’ll make sure he’s got a battle buddy with him at all times.” There was a very serious look in her eyes; she was acknowledging that I might not be safe alone with Kane.

I didn’t argue, just took my towel and left my water bottle by the weight bench. I didn’t want it badly enoughto get that close to Kane when he was having one of his fits. I was beginning to believe that his possessive jealousy of Asher was just that insane, as in something was broken inside Kane that needed either talk therapy or medication, or both.Crazy in lovewasn’t just a phrase for Kane and Asher, which was one reason I wasn’t sleeping with Asher. Under other circumstances we would have fired Kane and sent him to another city to be someone else’s problem, but thanks to Asher having made him his beast half, if Kane left, then so did Asher, and though I wasn’t sleeping with him, there were others who were, or who were working their way back to it. There were people here who were in love with Asher; too bad we all hated Kane, and he hated us right back.

2

I TURNED Acorner toward the locker rooms and nearly ran into Rafael. He had to catch me in his arms, or I’d have smacked face-first into his chest. I was more bothered by Kane than I’d thought, since I didn’t sense Rafael’s energy with his main bodyguard, Benito, right beside him. Even without the otherworldly energy they were both tall: dark, muscled, and handsome for Rafael, more sinister for Benito. They both had short black hair and brown eyes, but Benito had deep facial scarring from something that looked like more than acne, but it wasn’t just the scars. I had other people in my life who had facial scars, and none of them seemed like a villainous henchman in a superhero movie, but Benito did. Maybe it was the fact that he worked so hard being scary as Rafael’s main bodyguard.

I started to push away from Rafael, partly because I was startled and partly because that had been my reaction to getting close for so long. Luckily for all of us I’d worked on my issues enough to let myself realize that a hug might be nice, not for romance, but because Kane’s hatred of me was beginning to be unnerving. It never feels good when someone hates you, but when it’s for things you can’t change, like being a woman and having a pastrelationship with someone’s boyfriend... you can’t fix that.

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