Anita Blake 24 - Dead Ice (32 page)

I admit that it was a quick shower for more than one reason, just in case Rafael did come out and want to talk. The second round of conditioner that Jean-Claude had started making me let set in was irritating, but I admitted that my hair looked and felt better since I’d been doing it. I hate when the prissy stuff works so well. It makes me suspect that there’s more practical use to all the pampering than I ever wanted to admit.

I was finally clean and dry and had put in the five, yes five, leave-in products that Jean-Claude had given me to use. I still wasn’t as good as he was at working it through, but it was a start.

In the silence Rafael made a sharp sound, as if moving had hurt.

I couldn’t stand it. “Rafael, it’s Anita.”

“I know your scent,” he said, in a voice that was almost normal, and didn’t match the sound he’d just made.

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

“You can’t fight my battles for me, Anita.”

I was outside the stall he was in, watching the water splash underneath the curtain. “I know that; the rats don’t allow their king to substitute the way some of the other animal groups allow.”

“We all appreciate that you study each of our cultures,” he said.

I leaned my shoulder against the cool tile. “Is there anything I can do to help you right now? Just say it, tell me, and I’ll leave you to it.”

He was quiet for so long that I started to move away. He called out, “Pull back the curtain if you want to see the wound, but there is nothing you can do to save me from my own weakness.”

I didn’t know what he meant by that, but I set down the conditioners and shampoo and pushed the curtain open. He was kneeling on the floor of the shower, his hands spread on the wall as if to hold himself upright. His shoulders still looked strong, but they were bowed, the top of his short, black hair resting against the tile. The back of his body was the dark, smooth, muscled line that I remembered, except for the wound on his back. I stepped into the stall and knelt behind him.

“It’s a puncture wound, but it’s not like any blade I’ve ever seen.”

“Nor I,” he said in a voice that held the same edge of pain I’d heard in the small noises he’d been making.

“I thought you weren’t allowed weapons when you were fighting for kingship of the wererats.”

“We aren’t.”

“So he cheated,” I said.

“Yes.”

“He’s dead, then,” I said.

He ran one hand through his short hair, slicking it back, as he turned to look at me. His face was dark with high, square cheekbones. He was a handsome man. His Mexican heritage was printed on his face the same way some Irish bloodlines are, though Rafael was as many generations away from Mexico as most Irish Americans were from Ireland. Sometimes DNA just survives to remind us who we are.

“Cheating means his execution was a given, yes.”

“What did he hope to gain?” I asked.

“My death.”

I looked into solid brown eyes, so dark they were almost as black as his eyes in rat form. I touched his wet hair. “He can’t be king if he’s dead,” I said.

“I suspect he was a sacrifice for someone else who would have stepped forward if I had died there.”

“I thought you couldn’t be king unless you killed the old one first?”

“Normally, no, but there are provisions in our laws for kings who die in battles that are outside leadership challenges.” His shoulders convulsed, his head pressing against the tile again.

“Why haven’t you changed form and tried to heal?”

“I did.”

I reached out to the wound in his midback but didn’t touch it. “It’s as big as the palm of my hand still.”

“I do not believe the wound size has changed.”

“It should have, even if it was silver. You’re too powerful to still be this hurt.”

“I was too powerful, but even kings age and grow weak eventually, Anita. It is usually age, not lack of fighting skill, that slows us enough to lose the crown. The king I defeated was white of hair in human and rat form.”

“You aren’t old, Rafael.” There was something wrong with the wound. It didn’t look right.

“Older than I look,” he said.

“What made this wound?”

“It was a four-sided blade, very wide as it went toward the hilt.”

“Sounds more like a spearhead of some kind than a knife,” I said.

“It was unique.”

I got up and pushed the curtain back further so I could get more light directly on the wound. “He shoved it in and twisted it, or something.”

“He broke off part of it into the wound. Their healer had to fish it out after I left the challenge circle.”

I thought of having something that big shoved into my back, and then the wrenching strength used to twist and break off the blade inside the wound. The flesh inside the wound looked . . . burned. “You should be in that nice hospital area the wererats staff for the local lycanthropes.”

“I cannot afford to let the others know I am weakening, Anita. I killed the one who did this, but if people realize I can no longer heal better than this, then there will be another challenger next week, or next month, but they will come like vultures to a wounded animal.”

“So you came here so none of your people would figure it out.”

“You and your kings are my allies. My being weak is a bad thing for all of us, so you will keep my secret until we can find a new king who would not be a disaster in my place.”

“If you mean set you up to be killed by someone you want to be the next rat king, you can just forget that. I’m not a big believer in suicide.”

He grabbed my wrist. “Anita, don’t you understand? I am the king not of just the local rodere, but all the rats across the country. The group here, alone, is large enough to challenge almost every other shapeshifter group.”

I looked into his almost desperate eyes and said the only thing I could. “I understand that, but I won’t let you sacrifice yourself until we’ve exhausted all the other options, Rafael.”

He knelt straighter, rotating his back so he could look at me more straight on, and the movement made him double up in pain, almost taking us both to the floor with his grip on my wrist.

“I need more light. There’s something wrong with this wound.”

“Do what you must,” he said. He’d let go of my wrist and was just on all fours, letting his head hang down like an exhausted horse. I got his arm across my shoulders, my other arm around his body, being careful not to touch the wound, and helped him to his feet. He usually stood so straight, so strong, but now he stumbled and I held most of his weight for a second; then he fought his feet back under him and helped me get him out into the better lighting of the main shower area.

I debated on whether to make him walk to the benches in the locker room or just let him slide to the floor here, because standing wasn’t happening unaided, and he wanted as few people as possible to see how badly he was hurt. I finally put him near a wall so he could lean on it, but he was back on his knees where he started. He was kneeling in a bright pool of light, though, and that was what I needed.

I could see the initial thrust of the weapon in the outer part of the wound. The edges had started to heal, but it was silver and there was only so much even Rafael’s body could do. That wasn’t the part of the wound that looked odd to me. It was deeper into the meat of his body.

“As deep as this is, it should still be bleeding, but it’s not.”

“Have I healed it, then?”

“The outer edges of the wound, yes, I think so, or your body is trying to, but deeper in the wound track it’s like the flesh is burned. I’m not even sure that’s exactly the right word, but
burned
is the best I have to describe what I’m seeing. We need a doctor.”

“No.” His voice was very final as he said it. I’d been in enough meetings with the leaders of the lycanthrope community to know that when Rafael said no like that, it was a decision, not a suggestion.

“Fine, but can I bring Micah down here to give a second opinion?”

He leaned his forehead against the tile as if just staying on his knees was effort. “Yes, I trust him as I trust you.”

I had to go to the locker room to get my phone and call Micah.

His greeting was, “Nathaniel says dinner is getting cold.”

“I need you down in the group showers. One of the shapeshifters is hurt and the wound looks wrong.”

“We have a doctor on call for that. Anita, what aren’t you telling me?”

“It’s Rafael and he doesn’t want the doctor to see. He says he trusts you, me, Jean-Claude, Richard, and the other kings and allies, but no one else.”

“I’ll be right there,” he said, and the earlier slight domestic chiding was gone. He was all business. One of the things I’d always valued about him was how he let all the small stuff fall away and just concentrated on the important things.

I stayed by Rafael. He started holding my hand, squeezing occasionally from the pain, and reminding me just how freakishly strong he was. “If I hurt you, you must say something.”

“Trust me, I will.”

He shuddered again, his upper body arching toward the floor. His head touched my thigh, and I stroked his wet hair. “Stay down, it’s okay.”

“You mean lay my head in your lap and you will pet me?”

“If that will help, yeah.”

He let his forehead rest a little more solidly on my thigh, hesitated for another moment, and then eased onto his side, his head cradled on my thigh, one hand in mine. When he’d settled as much as he could, I touched his hair and stroked it back from his face again. When he didn’t protest, I kept running my fingers through his damp hair while he lay in my lap, huddled around his pain, his hand squeezing periodically against mine, as the pain spiked.

“Thank you,” he said, softly.

“For what?”

“I trust Micah, Jean-Claude, and even Richard, but I can’t allow myself to be this weak with them.”

I tried to make light of it. “Oh, I don’t know, I think Jean-Claude would let you put your head in his lap.”

“Don’t do that,” he said.

“Do what?”

He moved his head enough so he could look up at me. “Discount something that is important.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, and fought not to squirm. “You’re my friend,” I said, finally. It seemed the wrong word.

“Do you let all your friends put their heads in your lap when you’re nude?”

I hadn’t felt naked until he remarked on it. I fought off the automatic embarrassment and said, “It’s against the shapeshifter code to remark on nudity if it’s not meant sexually.”

“That is true, but though we are not in love with each other, nor dating, what we have is more than just friendship, Anita.”

I looked away from the demand in his eyes but forced myself to look back when I realized how much I didn’t want to meet his eyes. No cowardice in anything, large or small, because if you start flinching in small things, it can spread to larger ones. I needed to be brave for my job, and just for myself.

I studied the face of this strong, brave, honorable man and laid my hand against the side of that face. “Yes, more than friends.”

He smiled, and that alone made it worth saying.

I knew Micah was near before he came into the shower rooms, though I wasn’t sure if I’d smelled him, sensed him, or heard him; I just knew before he walked in the room that it would be him.

He hurried toward us, still dressed, which seemed odd enough in the showers that I wanted either him to strip down, or us to magically have clothes. He knelt down beside Rafael, hand going to the side of the wound in his back. It was big enough that he didn’t have to ask where, or what.

Micah made a small hissing sound under his breath like a cat when it’s startled. “Tell me what happened, Rafael.”

He did, with me helping to expand the bare-bones story he told. “The wound looks burned or something—I mean it’s deep and not healing, but it’s not bleeding either. It should be bleeding, right?”

“Did their healer pack the wound?”

“Initially to stop the bleeding, but you know we can’t leave it full of bandages.”

“Yes, our bodies can heal the dressing inside us,” Micah said.

“Why isn’t this healing?” I asked.

A shudder ran through Rafael that made him squeeze so hard on my hand it stole my breath away. “That was a bad one,” I said.

“I did not mean to hurt you,” he said.

“It’s just the pain seems to be growing worse, and it should be getting better, right?” I looked up at Micah for reassurance, or an explanation.

“Yes, it should be,” he said. He put his hands on either side of the wound and peered down at it like I had earlier. “Maybe the healer left silver in you. I would like to search the wound, but it’s going to hurt.”

“Do whatever is necessary,” Rafael said. He took a firmer grip on my hand and closed his eyes. I kept stroking his hair as if that would make everything better, but sometimes it’s not about logic, just comfort. What comforts you is like emotions; they may not make any sense at all, but they’re still true.

I watched Micah slide his fingers into the wound, though I could tell what he was doing from Rafael’s hand in mine. He was silent in his pain now, fighting not to show how much it hurt even in his body movements. He was being stronger and more stoic in front of Micah. It was as if all his reaction went directly into his hand, so that he whitened his fingers gripping so hard. I gritted my teeth and let him hold on.

“There’s something in the wound,” Micah said.

“Silver?” I asked.

He plunged his fingers almost out of sight into Rafael’s back. The grip on my hand made me have to say, “Ease up, Rafael.”

“I am sorry.”

“It’s okay, I’m glad to be here, but you’re so strong, just don’t want to break a bone.”

“Forgive me.”

Micah said, “Fuck!” He almost never cursed.

We both looked at him as he jerked his fingers out of the wound and showed us the tips of his fingers. There was whitish-gray liquid on them, and the skin was blistering. He stood and turned on the shower next to us, running it over his hand.

“What is it?” Rafael asked.

“I’m not sure,” Micah said, “but it’s in the wound. Whatever it is reacts almost like liquid silver; you’re never going to heal with that in there. None of us could.”