Rafael (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #28) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,1

if a panther could smile like a person, though that wasn’t her flavor of wereanimal, but somehow rat just didn’t convey the dangerous beauty of Claudia.

She let me help her put most of her weights back on the weight racks because I insisted on helping, but it was a workout just to do that part. I let her help me put my weights on the bar because it was fair. “Just so you know, I wouldn’t lift this by myself without someone to spot me.”

She gave that fierce smile again, with a small deep chuckle. I’d only recently learned Claudia was a throaty alto when she sang, and that she could sing. It had been worth going to karaoke just to hear her.

I lay back on the bench and centered myself under the bar. I hadn’t been super strong long enough to really believe it all the time. I looked at the weights and thought, I’m about to press three times my body weight, which was ridiculous, except that I’d done it before. Claudia put her hands over the bar, ready to help if I needed it; without her there I would have been scared to do it.

I wrapped my hands around the bar, using the roughened part of it to help me decide on hand placement, and then I couldn’t put it off anymore. Lifting this amount of weight off the rack wasn’t about strength really, it was about believing it was possible. I’d learned that I couldn’t look too hard at the weight on either side of the bar, because it made part of my head start screaming, Impossible, I can’t lift this! I could do the inhuman weights for most of the exercises and just marvel at it, but the chest press and the squat rack both spooked me, because if they went wrong, I could end up crippled or dead, if I’d been human, and of course that was the other part that rattled around in my brain. How human was I? How much did the metaphysical connections to the vampires and the shapeshifters help me here? They made me stronger and harder to hurt. They helped me heal faster than human-normal from cuts, stabs, bullets, a brain injury, but did they cover being crushed? Did I really want to find out just to lift in the gym? Saying it that way made it sound stupid.

“You can do this, Anita, you know you can,” Claudia said, leaning her face a little more into my line of sight.

I looked up into her true brown eyes, the utter surety in her face. She was right, I knew she was right. “I can do this,” I said.

She gave that fierce smile again and leaned over to whisper, “We got company, make me proud.”

I didn’t point out that whoever had come into the weight room would have to be a shapeshifter, which meant that they would be able to lift this and more, but as I’d learned in the weight room when I was merely human, it wasn’t always about who was stronger, it was about who wanted it more. I wanted it, because if the guards who just walked in had been ones she liked, she’d have yelled it out, teased them about me being tougher than them. That she’d whispered it meant she didn’t like them, which probably meant neither would I.

I suddenly wasn’t afraid of the weights; Claudia was there, she could catch anything I could lift, and besides, I wanted to make her proud. She’d started being my weight-lifting partner even though I wasn’t strong enough to spot for her. She was teaching me how to use the new supernatural strength, and without saying it out loud she enjoyed having another woman who worked out hard.

I cleared the weight off the rack, took in my breath, and started lowering the bar down. My body had a moment of going You’re joking, right? when my elbows bent and the bar touched my chest, not resting on it, but just touching it. My arms trembled as I started pushing upward. The elbow on the side that had the most scars hesitated a second, and then I was pushing up, using my breath to help push the weight up, as if I could blow it away from me. I could feel the muscles bunch and move in a way that no other exercise made them do, or maybe weights made me more aware of it. I loved the feel