Page 70 of Rafael (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 28)

“Yeah, but he’ll never do it again.” I still wasn’t sure how I felt about what I’d done to the man, so I pushed it down with all the other things I wasn’t sure about. The place wasn’t as full as it had once been, because I’d accepted more of myself, but killing Tony was going to go in the box with the other things that made me feel like a monster.

Rafael started to hug me but stopped with a look at the knife still naked in my right hand. “I would hold you, comfort you, if you will allow it.”

“It’s not silver, you’ll live,” I said.

He gave me a startled look, because even inside my head I had felt nothing when I said it, nothing, just the emptiness where some of my emotions should have been,used to be, but some things are so awful you can’t feel too much about them, not if you want to keep moving forward.

“I did not set you up, Anita. I swear I thought you would be safer than this here among us.”

I studied his face, those dark brown eyes, and then I let down my shields, opened a brick for him in the wall so I could know that he meant it. He was telling the truth, but that was only a little better. It meant that he hadn’t understood how afraid his people were of me and the vampires. Kings should know shit like that; Jean-Claude would have known, or would have known to admit he wasn’t sure.

Rafael studied my face; felt my emotions, or lack of them; heard my thoughts, at least some of them. He was very carefully trying not to think or feel anything much. “What can I do to make this up to you?”

“Kill Hector, help us kill his master.”

“And that will make up for the fact that you trust me less now?”

“It’ll help.” And still I felt nothing. I realized I thought I’d have to kill more people tonight. I no longer trusted Rafael to be a good judge of what would happen, so I was shoving my emotions deep so I wouldn’t feel bad when the violence happened. I even acknowledged in the front of my head that I would not hesitate to use my new supernatural strength again, not if it would save my life, our lives, Rafael’s life, Claudia’s life. If it would keep the rodere free of the Master of Beasts, I would wade through a sea of blood and tear a dozen enemies apart with my bare hands. I would do what it took, whatever it took, to win, because if we lost... The Master of Beasts had had a rape fetish, the kind that wasn’t safe, sane, or consensual. I’d forced him to give up his only son to be executed; he would make me and all those I loved pay for that. It was a price I was not willing to pay, so I decidedto pay another price, the cost of victory, because no matter how many people I killed, no matter how bloodily and inhumanly I did it, it would still be better than watching Padma torture, rape, and kill everyone I loved.

Sometimes being the monster scared the shit out of me, and then there were moments like these when I realized I’d rather be the monster a thousand times over than be at the mercy of one.

25

NEVA AND HERbackup witches surprised all of us by saying they would stay. Rafael hadn’t been able to hide how unusual that was; the surprise and confusion of it ran through his body almost like fear. That was interesting and I filed it away to ask about later when the three witches couldn’t overhear us. They stood behind us bookended by Claudia and Benito on Rafael’s side and Pierette on mine.

The two of us sat in the carved wooden thrones, though Rafael’s truly looked like a throne with high carved spires on the back of it like something out of a European royal family except the carvings were rats, writhing in masses, crawling over flowers, chewing on human bones. There was even at least one plague doctor carved small, complete with the pointed mask, hat, and robes. The chair was beautiful and macabre. It was a chair for a movie wizard, or an evil king dressed all in black with jewels, not gym clothes. Of course, I didn’t match my chair either. It was much smaller, less impressive, dainty even, but the slender wooden rods were carved entirely of rats, and the headpiece had two carved rats holding a huge round cabochon of bloodred ruby. It was bigger than my thumb and that pigeon bloodred that almost doesn’t exist in modernrubies. It was only when the light hit it that I realized it was a six-pointed star sparkling in the depths of it. I’d seen star sapphires and rubies this big only in museum collections. Even knowing that rubies were a nine on the hardness scale, just down from diamonds, I worried about scratching it. Worrying about damaging the jewel and the carving was so mundane in the scale of things that it broke through the shock and made me more present looking down at the fighting pit. It looked like a small stadium had married a bullfighting ring, with the sand and some of the partial walls around the circle of it, as if sometimes there were things on the sand that people wanted to hide from. I had no idea why you’d needs walls for hiding from bulls in a fighting arena that was supposed to be for humans and wererats. They didn’t shift into anything that big, and they climbed well enough that the small barriers would be useless. I might have asked questions, but movement on the left-hand side of the arena drew my attention.

I recognized Hector; part of it was he was the only other one in the crowd dressed in fight shorts, but his energy stood out to me now. If he hadn’t come to visit in the locker room, maybe he would have blended into the hum and rush of all the other wererats, but now there was a taste to his power that couldn’t hide from me.Vampire, my magic whispered,there’s a vampire near us. It was the same little voice that had helped me stay alive for all these years while I hunted vampires. I’d have been dead a thousand times over if I hadn’t listened to that warning voice.

“You seat a vampire’s human servant above all the women in the rodere. How can you humiliate them like this?” It took me a second to realize that Hector was speaking over a microphone.

Benito handed Rafael one with a snake of cord attached to it. Rafael stood and said, “Anita has earned herway tonight with blood and death. She has honored the power of the rodere that I put inside her.”

“But the leopard that stands beside Anita did not earn her way, yet she stands above the women of the rodere. You put a cat above your rats, Rafael; what kind of king does that?” Hector said.

There were mutterings in the crowd that said they agreed with him. The energy changed, as if the air were a little thicker with their outrage.

“It is rare for other leaders to visit us here, but when it happens, they are allowed one of their people to accompany them so that there are no accidental assassinations that would cause war between us and another animal group.”

“First you let Anita sit in the queen’s throne for our people, and now you say she is a visiting queen, someone else’s queen. Wererats, tell me whose queen is she? Who does she belong to?”

Most of the crowd nearest to Hector yelled, “Jean-Claude!” In fact, there were a lot of voices from all over shouting “Jean-Claude,” but there were enough yelling “Micah!” that it rose above the other voices. Someone nearer to us yelled, “Nicky!”

Hector said, “She is not Nicky’s queen, she is his master, as she and Jean-Claude would be master over all of us!”

Boos from the crowd, cries of “No, never!” Even I had a second of feeling the pull to be angry. “His voice has power in it,” Pierette said.

Rafael stood tall and proud, and for the first time I felt the power inherent in him. The energy that came from being connected to every wererat in the country and a few outside of it. It wasn’t just power for Jean-Claude and me to feed on, but magic, the magic of command because most people don’t know how to follow without giving up some of their own personal power, but in this case it wasmore than that. Literally to be part of the rodere you had to give Rafael the keys to your energy, to yourself. Until that moment I hadn’t really understood how close the connection was to the one that Jean-Claude had with his vampires. I’d never heard of anyone saying that the ties to the leader of a shapeshifter group were a similar dynamic, but power doesn’t lie.

“I am the only master here,” Rafael said.

“We feel the vampires drain our lives away when you let her feed on you!”

When he saiddrain, I felt weaker; when he saidfeed, I felt pain like the memory of something trying to take a bite out of me. I started to shield harder, but Jean-Claude whispered through me, “Non, ma petite, we need to know what he is capable of.”

I let the power flow over me without blocking it out, but it didn’t cling either, but then I knew how to let things go, or to keep them from holding on to me; most people didn’t, as in most of the crowd.

“I have hidden nothing from you when I am with Anita. I have shared the power we raise with all of you.” But Rafael’s voice was just a voice. It could not carry the crowd the way that Hector’s magic could.

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