Page 62 of Rafael (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 28)

“Now, Claudia, you know you can’t challenge me until after I kill Rafael.”

“He’s baiting you, Claudia, don’t allow him to manipulate you,” Pierette said.

Hector’s lascivious gaze moved to her, but in the second it took for it to change targets it went from sex to hatred. I wasn’t exaggerating either, he looked at Pierette as if he hated her. It was way too personal a look for just having met.

“What are you doing here, kitty-cat? You have no business here among us.”

“She’s with me,” I said.

His gaze stayed on hatred as he looked at me. “Anita Blake, you have no business here either.”

“Rafael says otherwise.”

“When he dies, your safe passage dies with him.”

“I didn’t get a safe passage through the rats outside. I fought my way through just like everyone else.”

“So, you really did tear one of us into pieces with your bare hands? Such dainty hands, I don’t believe the story now. Did you go for your silver blade as soon as you got scared?”

“I never went for silver.”

“Lies.”

“No lies,” Claudia said.

He looked at her and this time there was intelligence and something else, calculating his chances, debatingsomething. I couldn’t read the expression. “If she is not one of us, then she could not have done what they are saying she did.”

“She bled Tony out with her bare hands, I swear it.”

“You smell of truth, but I knew Tony. A human couldn’t have killed him unarmed.”

“I never claimed to be human,” I said, but even my tone wasn’t happy. I still hated the idea that I wasn’t human; no, I hated that I had never been human, not if that meant normal.

“You aren’t one of us, and you aren’t a vampire, so you’re human,” he said.

“I saw my first ghost when I was ten, I raised my first dead at fourteen, I’m not sure human was ever what I was.”

Hector studied me out of those green-brown eyes. It wasn’t a teasing look, or arrogant, it was thoughtful. If the arrogant asshole was just the icing that hid an intelligent, deep thinker, Rafael was in more trouble than I’d thought, but then maybe he’d seen this part of Hector before, maybe it was what made him think the guy could be king someday. As a future leader smart was good; as an enemy to defeat, not so much.

“Point taken, Anita,” and he said my name the way it’s meant to be pronounced,A-nee-ta. He tried to walk around Claudia to get closer to me, but she moved so that he couldn’t circle around us.

He looked at her again. “I thought you didn’t like me, Claudia.”

“I don’t.”

“Then why do you keep attracting my attention every time I look at another woman?”

“I’m supposed to take Anita to Rafael.”

“Take? Are you her bodyguard here, where everyone must fight for themselves?”

“I did not guard her outside in the open.”

“But you guard her now?”

She hesitated but said the only thing she could say. “No.”

“Then I am going to move around you to talk directly to Anita; if you move between us again, I will take it as a challenge.”

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