by Jack Knight
Today, I was going to set him straight.
“Alright, you cocky little fucker,” I snapped, “you get up here with me. Everyone else against the wall.”
It must have been the cold anger in my voice, or maybe the way I barked the order while glaring at the little bastard who thought he was too good to learn how to fight. Either way, every other person in the room ran to the walls so quickly it looked like they intended to break through the bricks Kool-Aid Man style.
When only the guy that had spoken was left in the middle of the room, he started slowly walking toward me. He had an angry expression on his face, but I could see the tension in his shoulders. His hands were subtly shaking, just enough to let me know that he was afraid. And, he should be.
“You think you’re so tough? You don’t need to learn from me?” I demanded as I crossed my arms over my chest. “Come at me. If you take me down, I’ll tell Ezra you don’t have to train with me anymore.”
The guy smirked, and then his hand darted toward his pocket. He hadn’t been afraid of me, his hands had been shaking because he was already preparing to grab something.
So fast it was like he had practiced it a thousand times, he pulled a small, silver knife from his pocket, it basically looked like a letter opener, which I had recently learned most mages used to pay the sacrifice for magic. He drew it across his palm and thrust his hand toward me in a single, practiced motion.
“Ignis!” he yelled.
A sphere of flame, no larger than a baseball, appeared in front of his hand and raced toward me.
If he wanted to cheat, that was fine. I had been planning on going a little easy on him. But, if he wanted to use magic, he would have to pay the consequences.
I didn’t move a muscle until the ball of fire had almost reached me. Just in time, I spun around, the fire passed me without ever touching me, and I was already running toward the little shit that thought cheating would help him fight someone who was trained to kill mages.
For a split second, I saw the cocky smirk on his face, but when I started running toward him, his expression became one of pure fear.
It only took a few seconds for me to cross the distance between us. When I reached him, I punched him in the stomach.
He leaned forward, I kneed him in the jaw.
His head was thrown back, I elbowed his kidney.
He let out a gasp of pain, I spun around him, wrapped my arm around his throat, used my momentum to whip him off of his feet, and I dropped him so he landed full on his back. His head slammed against the hard brick and he laid there, stunned, for a second before tears started leaking out of his eyes.
That wasn’t enough for me. This kid wanted to act like he was too good to learn how to fight. I wanted to show him just how important it was to know how to do it properly. A little bit of it may have been the thing about my mother being in town, too.
As he started to cry, I pulled my own knife from where it was sheathed at my belt. Instead of a tiny little letter opener like his, my knife was six inches long. The steel was tinted blue, lined with a thin layer of wood, and had sigils carved into it, so it would stop any creature with supernatural healing from recovering from any wounds it caused. My Hunter’s blade.
I slowly drew it across my left palm, and made sure to keep eye contact with the guy the entire time. The only sound in the room was the soft whimper coming from the guy at my feet as I returned my knife to its sheath and pointed my bleeding palm at him.
“I... I’m sorry... okay?” he cried
A pang of guilt ran through me, but I wasn’t going to give in. I wasn’t just doing this because he was a stuck up little shit. This lesson needed to be seared into him, because it would save his life one day.
“There’s a reason,” I seethed, loudly enough for everyone in the room to hear me, “I’m teaching you the same things over and over again. Vampires, shifters, mages, and Hunters are out there. Every one of them can kick your snot nosed little ass if you don’t learn how to properly fight back.”
To make sure to ram the message home, I whispered, “And, magic won’t always help you.”
His entire body was shaking, but I didn’t feel he would remember this unless he was really, truly scared. And, it would be a lesson to everyone else in the room.
“Ignis!” I shouted.
The guy on the ground closed his eyes just in time for me to move my arm.
The ball of fire that burst out of my hand was twice the size of the one that had been shot at me. When it slammed into the stone, inches from the guy’s head, a loud crack rang through the room from the stone breaking.
At that second, everyone around the room started whispering, and my heart skipped a beat as fear and confusion rushed through me.
The guy on the ground peeked up at me, but I didn’t care about him anymore, what just happened had completely distracted me.
I hadn’t done anything special. It should have been normal fire that broke the brick next to the guy’s head.
Even though it had only existed for a second, the image of the fire was burned into my mind.
The flames had been black.
CAN’T WAIT TO READ more? Check out Returned: Shadow Reapers Book 2 here!
