“Won’t he have to kill you to do that?” I asked. I hugged my arms, because without the hot water it was starting to get chilly.
“No, he would have to kill the challenger who just killed me.”
“I don’t understand.”
He handed me one of the towels from the hook outside the shower stall. I took it and started to dry off as he continued to talk. “I wanted to find a young wererat to train up to be my successor. Hector was on the list. In another five to ten years he could be what the rodere need, what the Coalition needs, but now he is too new, too inexperienced to lead us. It would be a disaster if he wins tonight.”
“Yeah, you’d be dead,” I said, and had to carefully towel-dry my hair without rubbing it or wrapping the towel on it, which breaks the curl. I and Micah had had the towel lecture from Jean-Claude for weeks as the wedding got closer. I’d be the bride, but Micah would be standing with us and God forbid our hair not look fabulous for the day. Even listening to Rafael now, I was careful to remember. So stupid, but it made Jean-Claude happy.
“My death would be a disaster now with no one to lead us, but someday I will lose, Anita. Someday all warriors grow old and weak, or when two people are of the same size and equally well trained it is sometimes luck that chooses the winner of a fight. In boxing or MMA, the loser lives to train harder, to learn from their mistakes and come back and win another day, but tonight will be a final loss for one of us.”
“Before you were talking as if you couldn’t win tonight. Is he really that much better than you?”
He shook his head. “No, I don’t believe so, but I see his death as a waste of potential. I will mourn his loss to the rodere, but he will celebrate my death. I cannot afford to think like a king tonight and see a great warrior and the potential for so much more. I must be the fighter I once was not just in body, but in mind and attitude. I need the tunnel vision that Hector has, because he believes in his cause. He believes that I am selling us into slavery to the vampires through you and Jean-Claude.”
“That’s not true, you know it’s not.”
“And yet I cannot prove it to Hector or to any of my enemies. Even now I want you to feed on me tonight and take power from all of them.”
“Proximity makes vampire abilities stronger, Rafael. If Hector has never been this geographically close when I fed the ardeur on you, then it’s just going to convince him even more that I’m going to give you all to Jean-Claude as food and slaves.”
“Sex slaves,” Rafael said.
“Excuse me?”
He smiled, but not like it was entirely funny. “The rumor says that Jean-Claude’s seductive powers will turn us all into sex slaves for him and his vampires and those wereanimals closest to him and you.”
“I’ve heard that rumor that everyone who joins any group in St. Louis has to sleep with one of us, but the whole sex slave thing is new. Do they think we’re pimping people out, or how will it work?”
“I do not know and neither does Hector, but he is homophobic, so the fact that I’m supposed to be sleeping with Jean-Claude seems to threaten him and other young men in our clans. The last fight I won was someone like Hector, someone I saw as a potential next king. Even if I win tonight, Anita, I am starting to destroy the future of all I have built, for a kingdom is only as good as its leader. If the person who follows after me is a bad king, then he will destroy everything that we have worked so long and hard for, and if I keep killing the best and brightest of our young men, then I will win the battles, but eventually the war will be lost. Do you understand what I mean?”
I nodded, wrapping the towel around me, and having to fold it at the top so that I’d be able to walk later without tripping. “I think so, you’ve defeated all the would-be kings who would have been bad leaders, but now you’re starting to fight the ones that you think could rule, just not now and not yet.”
“Exactly, even if I win tonight, it is still a loss for the future of my people.”
“I don’t care if it’s a loss for future generations, Rafael. I don’t give a flying fuck if Hector would age into being a great king. He doesn’t get to kill you tonight. He doesn’t get to wear your crown a decade too early. He isn’t a fit ruler tonight, and tonight is all that matters, Rafael.”
“So fierce, would you miss me that much, or is it only as an ally and a part of your power base that you will mourn me?”
“You know I care for you as more than a friend and ally.”
“I’m attracted to crazy bitches, Anita; that means that love to me is about drama and screaming and horrible behavior. That makes me feel loved; as fucked up as that is, it is still the truth, and before you ask, I am speaking with the therapist that Micah recommended. I even know that I was raised by someone who was that kind of unstable crazy, and that is why I chase it. Knowing why doesn’t change that it makes me feel loved, or that it tears down my life and breaks my heart again and again. I am a king and I cannot afford any more unstable would-be queens, but you are so sane, Anita, so pragmatic at times that I don’t know what you feel, or what I feel.”
“Therapy takes time,” I said.
“I hope someday to be able to love a woman who doesn’t play games or burn my belongings in the driveway.”
“Or stab you,” I said.
He smiled. “Yes, that, too, but I still miss the women who go with that kind of insanity.”
“Do I say I’m sorry, or do you want me to pick some of your stuff that I don’t think you’ll miss much and plan a bonfire for you? We could roast hot dogs and make s’mores.”
This time he smiled at my joke. Brownie points for me. “That will not be necessary, but perhaps a summer cookout in the backyard, around the pool, with s’mores toasted over the fire pit would be nice.”
I smiled. “That sounds good.”
“It does.”
I handed him one of the other towels. “If you don’t dry your hair soon, you’ll have to wet it down and start over, and if I don’t put in all the leave-in conditioners, Jean-Claude will make me start over on mine.”
He started drying his hair, still smiling. “Let us find a bed and do more things that put a smile on both our faces.”
I was about to agree with him when Jean-Claude whispered through my head, “Ma petite, how close are you to feeding on Rafael?”
I very carefully thought back, “Why?”
I could suddenly see Jean-Claude still dressed for fencing practice, though the way he and the other older vampires practiced it was more traditional combat arts. I did mostly kali, which was Filipino martial arts, though my main instructor, Fredo, was helping me incorporate the knife skills I’d been using for years, so it wasn’t a pure style of Sinawali, but as Fredo taught me, What is kali? I am kali. Which basically meant that you should do it the way that works best for you. Kali isn’t just a martial art, it’s a combat style, and that means you do it the way that keeps you alive. Martial arts have referees and point systems. Combat arts have, did you live? I liked all the blade classes, from the various types of sword and knife work to the axe class that Truth and Wicked had just begun teaching. Some people thought blades weren’t practical for modern day, but they should look up the Tueller Drill. A regular human being with no supernatural speed can still stab you before you can draw, aim, and fire a gun if they’re within twenty-one feet of you. Between twenty and eighteen feet you may shoot them as they stab you and die together, but eighteen to sixteen feet and they will stab, or club, or smash your brains in, faster than you can shoot them. But honestly even without the practical statistics, I just seemed to like anything with an edge. Saturday’s class was vampires and wereanimals that had lived when the sword was the weapon at a gentleman’s side. It was one of the few blade classes I wasn’t trying to take.