Page 73 of Rafael (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 28)

Rafael asked a different question. “Did you threaten to rape Claudia after you were king?”

“It is within my rights as king to ask for any woman I want.”

“Ask, but never to take,” Rafael said.

“A king does not beg for what is already his by right.”

Rafael yelled, pulling the microphone back so the echoes were perfect, “Did you tell Claudia that you would rape her?”

The crowd started saying, “Answer him” and “Why won’t you answer?” and “Why won’t he answer?” A woman near us said, “If he’d rape Claudia, none of us are safe.” She was so right.

The crowd was chanting, “Answer, answer, answer, answer...”

Hector yelled, too, but he didn’t move his microphone and it whined through his answer, “Yes! I will kill you,and then I will fuck Claudia and Anita, and the cat you dragged in tonight!”

It was such an ambitious brag that I wasn’t even angry or afraid, because I absolutely knew Hector wasn’t up to all three of us in one night, especially if we were unwilling to cooperate.

Pierette sat up straighter in my lap. “Padma should know better than to threaten me, let alone both of you.”

Rafael laughed at him, and he wasn’t the only one. People in the audience joined him, not a lot, but enough.

Hector snarled at him, and said, “I will kill you tonight, Rafael, and when I am king, no one will laugh.”

“Even if you kill me tonight, Hector, you will never be king now.”

“Enough talk, old man, time to die.”

“Hector, you speak like someone who does not know our laws.”

“All I have to do to be king is to kill you, old man, that’s all I need to know.”

Rafael said, “Let Claudia explain your mistake,” and handed the microphone to her.

“You have challenged the three of us publicly in the fighting pits, Hector. By your own words, if you manage to kill Rafael tonight, then you will face all three of us together.”

Pierette stood and drew me to my feet with her hand in mine so we could go stand closer to Claudia. She slid her arm around my waist, and I did the same. I trusted her to have a reason for the unusually bold public display, because normally she was much more circumspect outside the bedroom.

“I will have my way with all of you. I will rape the cat until her master fills her eyes and then I will slay them both,” he said.

“You talk like a vampire, not a rat,” Claudia said.

“And you talk like someone who is afraid to face me alone.”

“You didn’t challenge me alone, you challenged me along with Anita and Pierette, so that’s how we’ll fight: three against one.”

“That is not what I meant.”

“Words have weight in the fighting pit,” she said, and it had the ring of an old saying.

Some of the people near him moved toward him and then he shoved one of them away. “Get away from me, you crazy old woman.”

“We do not hurt our elders,” Claudia said, and this time I had a bit of knowledge that must have come from Rafael. If any member of the rodere survived to true old age, they were revered and no longer had to fight to survive in the clan. It was such a rare thing to happen that it was considered sacred to be truly ancient among them.

Rafael took the microphone back from her. “Is she hurt?” he asked.

The crowd around the white-haired woman he’d pushed took the microphone from him after the group around Hector closed in with a silent threat ofshare the microphone, or else.

An older man with hair almost as white said, “She is not injured, but she says this one smells like a stranger to her.”

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