Page 49 of Rafael (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 28)

“Does it still help for us to touch?” Pierette asked.

“Not as much, let’s see what happens when we stop touching.”

“I can feel the power of so many of us in one place now,” Claudia said.

“It’s not just that,” I said as I drew my hand away from Pierette. The moment I didn’t have her skin against mine the power swept over me like a giant ocean wave. So. Much. Power. I stopped breathing for a second, as if I were holding my breath, waiting for the wave to pass over my head so I could surface.

“Anita,” Claudia said, voice sharp.

It startled me and I took a gasping breath as if I had really been underwater and just surfaced. “What else is in there beside the fighting arenas?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t get power like this just from fighting.”

“Spilled blood is sacred, my queen, and lives sacrificed even more so.”

It felt like I was fighting to lift my chest enough to get a deep breath. I had to figure out how to navigate this power level before we got out of the car. I just called inside my mind, “Jean-Claude, are you feeling this?”

“I am.” His voice came like an echo.

“How do I deal with it?”

“I can tell you how to harness it, or block it, but swimming through it is harder. It is so very alive,ma petite, and that is not my area of expertise.”

“Power is power—help me navigate?” I said.

“We will try, my queen.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that last part out loud.”

“Are you doing that mind-to-mind thing?” Claudia asked.

“Yeah.”

“Jean-Claude?”

“Yeah.”

“We’re pulling into the gate,” Claudia said. It was a tall fence with razor wire at the top.

“We’re out of time, Jean-Claude; if you have any advice, now is the time.” I said it out loud and I didn’t care.

Jean-Claude didn’t bother with words, he just shared knowledge and skill at working with supernatural powers. Centuries of practice that he thought might help me now. I got glimpses of memories that went with some of it, but it was like shuffling and then cutting cards, you got hints of images instead of the full card, but it was like I could suddenly count cards and keep it all in my head. If anything that he knew would help me tonight, I had it just like that. Let’s hear it for practice, because we’d started training in the metaphysical the same way we did in the physical. It wasn’t as formal and the groups were smaller and more personal, but we’d never been better at this part of things, except for Richard, who was like a missing piece of our puzzle. I pushed the thought away and realized that it hadn’t been my thought, it was Jean-Claude’s; he felt the loss of Richard more than I did, because I’d found people to fill Richard’s place in my heart and my bed, but Jean-Claude was still looking to fill all the holes that our absent werewolf left for him. Jean-Claude pulled the emotion and thought back and shielded more carefully from me. He was a lot better at cherry-picking what he shared with me; I still had a tendency to do an info dump that included a lot more than I needed to share.

“I will be here if you need me,ma petite, and if the need is great, I will be there in the flesh.”

“Don’t endanger yourself,” I said.

“I will be discretion itself,ma petite.”

The guards at the gate opened them for us, and the SUV glided between them and the energy stole my breath again. “Remember what you have learned,ma petite.Je t’aime.”

“Je t’aime,” I thought, and then I swallowed hard as if I’d changed altitudes. We’d come through a magic circle like my friends that were Wiccan, witches, cast when they were working magic, and just like their circles it was meant to raise power and contain it. It felt like I was inside that giant beating heart; the power was all around me so that it felt like the car was vibrating with it, but I knew it wasn’t real. Magic was like emotions, they both felt real, until you tried to explain them to other people and then they didn’t make any sense.

“Why is there a permanent magic circle here?” Pierette asked; she was looking through the tinted windows of the SUV as if looking for threats, or for who was casting circles.

I answered her question in a voice breathless as if I’d been running. “To keep the power in.”

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