by Rachel Caine
Claire gasped and gripped the stair-climber handles more tightly, resisting the urge to jump off and run to him. He was already rolling up to his feet—slower than last time, granted—and walked back to the mats. He put his right fist against his left palm, put feet together, and bowed.
The vampire bowed back. “Again,” he said. “I congratulate you on being the first to actually touch me. Now see if you can hurt me.” He bared his teeth in a savage little smile. “Come on, boy. Try.”
Shane settled into attack stance again, and then, very suddenly, it wasn’t all about the polite martial arts form at all. He went all street fighter, and the vampire wasn’t prepared for it. In fact, despite the vampire’s being faster and deadlier, Shane got him off balance in two quick, well-placed punches, swept his legs out from under him, and sent him on his back to the mat.
And he didn’t stop there. Claire gasped and stopped climbing, frozen, as he dropped down on the vamp, slamming both knees into the man’s chest, and pantomimed ramming a stake into his heart. There was something savage on Shane’s face, something she remembered seeing before, but only when he was fighting for their lives. A real, deep, burning hatred.
Shane didn’t move. He was staring down at the fallen vamp, and the vamp was locking eyes with him. Then, slowly, he stood up, hand with the invisible stake falling back to his side.
The vampire rolled up to his feet in one fast, fluid movement, keeping a healthy distance between them. He stared at Shane for a beat too long, then did the formal bow. Shane echoed him.
“You have a gift,” the vampire said. It didn’t sound like a compliment, exactly. “I think you’re too advanced for this entry-level class. See me later. I think you may be suitable for some advanced placement.”
Shane bowed again, stepped back, and took his place at the edge of the floor, kneeling down.
A thin blond girl got up to take his place, looking terrified. Claire didn’t blame her. Shane had brought a sense of real violence into the room, and that had gotten everyone’s attention; the sound of weights clanging and people talking had hushed and slowed, if not stopped.
Claire realized she was standing still on the stair-climber, and began pumping her legs again, mind not on the exercise at all, even though her calf muscles were already burning. She couldn’t stop looking at Shane now. She could see only a thin slice of his face between the others, but from that she knew that he wasn’t paying attention to the blond girl getting her ass kicked—gently—in the middle of the floor. He was staring straight ahead, face set and still, and if the victory had given him any kind of peace or triumph, she couldn’t see it.
SHANE
I wasn’t always like this. I know people think I like to fight, and, yeah, maybe they’re right—I do—but I didn’t when I was little. I just wanted to fit in and get along. The usual crap in a town where not fitting in got you a whole lot of trouble.
I guess the first time I hit somebody was in elementary school, which is pretty standard for guys, but it wasn’t because I was personally getting attacked. No, I threw the first punch.
I hit a guy named Terrence James because he was shoving around my best friend, who was littler and couldn’t stand up to save his life. I was about Terrence’s size, and there was something about seeing a big guy pick on a little one that made me see red.
Yeah, I’m not that complicated. I know why I felt like that. My dad. My dad, the guy who was okay when he was sober, but was a mean drunk. He didn’t hit me much, not then, but he was scary, and he’d always liked to push people around.
Felt good to push somebody like him around for a change. Punching Terrence didn’t feel nearly as good, though. My knuckles felt like I’d broken them into little pieces, but after the first horrific shock the pain was a good kind of pain, and it all fed into a red haze of euphoria as I looked at Terrence lying on his back, tears streaming down his face, telling me he was sorry and that he’d never do it again, ever.
And that’s how I discovered that I liked that feeling, that righteous, hot feeling of winning for what I thought was the right cause. I wasn’t afraid of a little pain to get there, either, which is a huge advantage in a fight. Let’s face it: most people don’t like to get hurt, so if you show you’re okay with it, they’re going to get a little bit weird. And maybe walk away. I don’t mind a win by default, as long as I win.
When I got older, people pretty much left me alone. I had that pit-bull mentality and a useful amount of height and muscle, both of which I probably owed to my father. Girls liked it, too, but not the right kind of girls, generally. I won most fights, lost a few, but I never quit. I took boxing and wrestling in high school and did okay, but I didn’t like the rules that much. I was a street brawler.
I guess I was on track to being my dad—maybe not as bad, but let’s face it, it wasn’t easy to resist the black hole that was Frank Collins, and I’d always done what he said. He liked that I could hold my own in a fight. After my sister and mother died, well, it got worse—a whole lot worse. Sending me back to Morganville to scout out the weaknesses had been a real show of faith from my dad, but the farther I got away from him, the more I realized that I didn’t want to be him anymore. He’d taken it too far.
Meeting Claire made me realize that I could be something different. Something better. The first time I saw her, black-and-blue but with this strange little core of strength…I recognized something we had in common. We didn’t quit. And we suffered for it.
I started out wanting to protect her, and the more I was around her, the more I realized that she was one girl who could take care of herself. I wasn’t used to chicks being equals—and Claire was, and is. She’s not that physically strong, but she’s quick and smart and fearless, and if sometimes I get overprotective about her, she’s the first one to remind me of that.
But I want to be ready, if it comes to a fight again—which it will. Not just against the normal human bullies and criminals; those were a piece of cake. No, I want to be able to defend her against the vampires, and that is a whole lot harder. Weapons are good, and I never turn those down, but the reality is I can’t count on always having one. I worry. There have been a couple of times—more than a couple—when only the fact that Michael had vampire strength he could throw in with mine had saved us.
And that really bothered me. I couldn’t depend on Michael, either. Or anybody else.
Mixed martial arts—that was the ticket. Hit your guy however you can, and put him down fast. My kind of fighting, and something that could work on vampires, if you knew what you were doing. I’d been itching to try it, and when the flyer came in the mail, it seemed like somebody up there liked me after all.
Michael had pulled me off to the side after Claire left to say he didn’t think it was a good idea. I told him to stuff it, but in a nice way, because even though he’s got fangs and a thirst, he’s still my bro. Most times. Took me a while to accept that, but I’m almost okay with his whole night-stalking lifestyle now.
Doesn’t mean I don’t want to be able to kick his ass if I have to, though. The chance to learn martial arts from a vampire…that was way too good to pass up.
I know how to do the real kind of martial arts. I mean, I had karate until I was thirteen and decided I was too cool for it. So I know how to put on a gi and tie a belt and be formal on the mats. Turned out that was good, because the instructor—some dude named Vassily, with an Eastern European accent straight out of an old movie—wanted to start out that way.
I was okay the first couple of passes, when he got me up to spar. It was like fighting anybody else, no big thing, until he started using vampire speed and strength on me. I couldn’t help it; that made me angry, and anger kind of makes me forget the rules. I went for his knee. He hit me like a wrecking ball smashing a wall, and next thing I knew, I was shaking it off with a giant ache in my chest. I’d been lucky. He could have caved in my ribs and Swiss-cheesed my heart if he’d hit full strength.
Then don’t let him hit yo
u again, loser. I could almost hear my dad’s voice, dry and mocking. He was dead now, but in my mind he was always there, always watching, and always judging. He’d hated vampires. I didn’t much like ’em, either. We’d always had that in common.
I didn’t think about walking away. I went back to the mat and bowed, and the second I got a chance, I attacked with everything I had. Full-on blitz. I knew I was going to get hurt, maybe badly, maybe killed, but I wasn’t going to be humiliated. Not by a vampire. No way in hell.
I got him. Hard. I could see the shock in his face, and the rush of rage, and as I stood there with the bloody taste of victory in my mouth, I actually wanted him to go for it, come get me, because, damn, I felt alive, actually alive…….
But he shut me down, said something I didn’t register, and bowed me off the mat. I don’t remember leaving or kneeling down. I just remember thinking, Next time, next time, next time, regular as a bell ringing in my head and drowning out every other thought.
I watched him go through the rest of the class. He didn’t hurt anybody else, but he could have. He wanted to; I could see it in flashes in his eyes. They’re all alike, you know. Hunters. Even Michael’s got it, though he hides it, and sometimes I pretend like I don’t see it, either. You have to be ready for them to turn on you.
Because if you’re not ready…somebody you love could get hurt.
I closed my eyes and imagined Claire. She always made me feel better. But although I could see her face, her smile, almost feel her presence, all I could think about was how easy it would be for them to take her away from me.
I couldn’t let that happen.
It occurred to me that what the vamp had said to me was that he’d see me later. Some kind of special class? Hell, yeah. I could do that. I needed to do that.
I needed to understand how to fight them, one on one, without help or weapons or hope.
Only the vampires could show me that.
Still…sitting there, hands on my knees, breathing fast, I couldn’t help but feel that even though I’d won, even though I’d done the impossible…somehow, I’d lost.
And it was first of a whole lot of losses.
Watching Shane kneeling there, so closed-in and so…cold, Claire felt a little sick. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like how he’d just fought, and she didn’t like how he looked afterward. Shane was usually happy after a fight, not…angry.
This whole thing is a bad idea, she thought. She didn’t know why, but she knew it was true.
“Hey,” said a low voice at her back, and Claire looked back to see Eve standing there. For the gym, she’d dispensed with the Goth makeup, but her tight T-shirt had a pink skull with a bow on it, and there were a skull and crossbones in rhinestones down the sides of her workout pants, too. She’d tied her straight black hair back in a shining ponytail. It was about as unadorned as Eve ever got, unless she was in disguise. “Did you see that? What the hell was that? Did Shane just go all Wolfman, or what?”
“I don’t know,” Claire said, and jumped down from the exercise machine. “But—”
“Boyfriend’s got issues,” Eve finished. “Yeah, no kidding. So, you came to spy, too?”
“Too?”
“Really, come on. Do you see me as the heavy-sweating type? So very not.” Eve looked her over critically. “And you aren’t, either, but you can pass for it, probably. Did they make you pay the ten bucks to get in?”
“Yeah.”
“This is so much less fun than I’d hoped. For one thing, nobody here is worthy of being ogled, and if they are, they’re way too sweaty. Or scary. Or both.” Eve gave a theatrical little shudder. “What do you say we do something else?”
“Like what?” Claire was still distracted by the sight of Shane, kneeling like a statue at the edge of the sparring space. He was still in that other world, looking off into the distance. Scary.
Eve gave her a slow, wicked smile. “Let me ask you this. Have you ever fenced?”
For a second, Claire thought she meant the traditional kind of thing, like hammering pickets onto rails in front of a house, but then she figured it out. “Oh. You mean with swords?”
“Exactly. If I’m going to sweat, I’m going to sweat in a cooler way. Follow me.”
“Wait. You fence?”
“I took it up in high school,” Eve said. “Come on, walk and talk, walk and talk. That’s a girl. Yeah, I had to have a sport, but I don’t like those icky team things. Fencing seemed retro cool, and plus, there were pointy things you try to stick into your opponent. It seemed like a good idea.”
Eve had clearly spent her time in the gym checking out every corner of it, because Claire had no idea there was another part to it, behind a door near the restrooms. Behind it lay a couple of racquetball courts (safely caged up behind clear plastic), and even an indoor tennis court; maybe the vampires had been craving it and couldn’t get out in the sun. But at the very back was a wood-floored room with racks on the walls that held swords, as well as neat stacks of white uniforms and those funky mesh helmets.
“Right. I wouldn’t start you out with a saber,” Eve said, moving Claire from contemplation of one particular row of choices. “Too whippy for a beginner. How about a plain old foil? You can only target from the neck to the waist; no double touches. Easy peasy.”
She grabbed a couple of the long, slender weapons and tossed one to Claire, who caught it. It felt strange in her hand, but not at all heavy. The blade was kind of square, and there was a round tip on the end. She made a tentative slashing motion with it, and Eve laughed.
“It’s a lunging weapon,” she said. “Hang on, let’s get you suited up before you start attacking anything.”
Suiting up sounded much less complicated than it actually was; by the time Eve had finished dressing her like a sword-bearing doll, Claire felt clumsy, hot, and claustrophobic. Between the thick padding and the tight mesh helmet, she had no idea how she was supposed to move, much less fight.
Eve had her own fencing suit, which she took out of a cheerful, skull-featuring bag of her own. Her outfit was black, with a pirate skull and crossbones where the heart would be. She looked dangerous. And a little bit crazy, even without the beekeeper helmet.
“Okay,” she said. “First fighting lesson is, we don’t fight, so stop pointing that foil at me. It’s not going to go off.”
Claire blushed and dropped the point down toward her toes. “Sorry.”
“No worries. You couldn’t hit me, anyway,” Eve said, and smiled. “I’m going to line up next to you. Just do what I do, okay?”
The first thing, apparently, was how to grip the sword properly. That took a while. Then there was lunging, which involved stabbing the sword out in a smooth, straight line while stepping out on her right leg in a deep crouch.
It hurt. A lot. In fact, after about ten of those, Claire was gasping for breath and sweating; in about fifteen, she was ready to cry. Eve stopped after twenty, but it seemed like she could have gone all day.
“I had to put all this on for that?” Claire muttered, as she pulled off her helmet. Her hair was soaked with sweat and sticking to her face. “Seriously? Nobody even waved a sword at me!”
“You have to get used to the weight and moving in it,” Eve said. “Suck it up, newbie.”
“You’re enjoying this.”
“Yeah, well, a lot. I had to do it. You should, too.” Eve winked. She moved off to a padded pole that had a red circle marked on it, and practiced some lunges on her own. Her sword point landed in the circle every time.
Claire spun around at the dry sound of hands clapping. She hadn’t heard anybody come into the room, but there he was, dressed in white fencing gear, with a sword in one hand and his helmet tucked under his arm. Oliver. He looked leaner and harder in the uniform.
Next to him, also dressed in white, was another figure. Amelie. The Founder of Morganville had never seemed so small before; the clothes she wore tended to enhance her height, as did the high heels. But like this,
Claire realized that Amelie wasn’t much taller than she was, and was very slender. In the fencing clothes, she could have passed for a boy, except for the feminine curves of her face.
“You’re coming along, Eve,” Amelie said. Eve broke off her lunges and stood very straight, sword point down. “I remember when you first began your lessons. I had to give personal approval for anyone who practiced those types of martial arts.”
“Yeah, well, it’s been a while since I was competitive,” Eve said. “Hey, Ollie.”
“For that,” Oliver said, “you may step onto the piste.”
“I didn’t come to fight.”
“You’re dressed for it. What is that—a foil? Nonsense. You’re more suited to an épée.” Oliver snorted and took another weapon from the wall, which he threw in Eve’s direction. She grabbed it out of the air with her left hand. It had a deadlier look to it, Claire realized; more like a triangular blade than the square base of the foil. Still had a tip on it, but it looked like a tougher thing to master.
Eve shrugged and tossed the foil back to Oliver, who put it on the rack. “All right,” she said, and cut the weapon—the épée—through the air with a hissing sound. “Your funeral, dude.”
Oliver bared his teeth in a grim smile and put on his helmet. “I doubt it,” he said.
Eve put on her helmet, too, and stepped into the narrow path marked on the floor. Claire moved back to stand by Amelie, who watched with an intense, focused expression on her pale face. As Eve and Oliver raised their swords in salute, she nodded and said, “Go.”
It was literally over in seconds. Claire was used to the kind of fighting from the movies—long, clanging duels with lots of moving around and occasional cape swirling. This was fast and incredibly deadly. She didn’t even see what happened, only that there was a blur of motion, some metallic clangs that came too fast to register, and suddenly Eve was standing there with Oliver’s sword tip tenting the fabric of her pirate-skull emblem, right over her heart. “Well, crap,” Eve said, and took a step back. “No fair using vampy speed.”
