by Mindy Klasky
“Let’s go!” he barked from the other room, and I leaped about a foot into the air. So much for inner peace. At this rate, I’d settle for anything short of outright panic.
James had used my delay to close the door to the Old Library. He was waiting for me in the center of a sea of blue mats. I crossed to stand in front of him, tapping my thumb against the inside band of my coral ring. I should have taken off my jewelry. It was too late now, though. I wasn’t about to ask for a delay. I didn’t want to antagonize James any more than I already had by, um, breathing.
The padding was thick enough that I needed to spread my feet for balance. I clenched my fists by my side, wishing that my black pants had pockets. I consciously stopped myself from raking my fingers through my hair again.
James nodded once. “Let’s begin,” he said.
I don’t know what I was waiting for. Maybe some sort of civilized bow, where we greeted each other like equals, honoring the spirit that each of us brought to the room. Maybe I thought that a hidden tape recorder would switch on, that some tinkling Indian music would fill the silence as it had in yoga classes I’d taken in the past. Maybe I waited for a measured recitation, a careful counting of my inhales and exhales, the way James had done the week before.
I definitely wasn’t expecting a swift kick behind my right knee. Or an iron hand closing around my left wrist as I fell toward the mat. Or my body being leveraged into an unexpectedly controlled tumble. Or the weight of James’s chest settling over mine like a lead blanket.
I hadn’t even seen him move.
My breath snagged in my throat as I took a quick survey of my body. Fingers - present. Toes - present. In fact, I wasn’t hurt at all. At least, nothing more serious than my dignity was injured.
I started to sit up, only to find that I could not move a single limb. James had pinned me to the mat with the thoroughness of a bug collector displaying a prize Morpho butterfly.
“Let me go!” I protested.
He did. For one second, faster than my heart could contract, quicker than my eyes could see, I was free. Then, to my eternal embarrassment, I was pinned again. This time, though, he sat on the mat, cradling me against his chest. Our position was like a mockery of the intimacy we’d shared on his leather couch. Then, he had nurtured me, protected me, healed me from almost certain death.
Not now. Here in the training room, his legs arched over my hips. His ankles were hooked firmly against the insides of my thighs. His right arm was lodged in my armpit and his left arm curved over my shoulder. He gripped his own wrists across my chest, pulling me closer, effectively making my arms useless weight.
I fought like a crazed bobcat. I screamed his name while I kicked my heels against the mat, enraged to discover that I could only raise my feet an inch or so off the surface. I twisted from side to side, trying to break free from his oaken grasp around my shoulders. I grunted as I arched my back, desperately ignoring the fact that the motion brought my breasts into even closer contact with his hands.
None of it made any difference.
I was thoroughly trapped, restrained more completely by the cold weight of his limbs than any vampire had ever been held by a sizzling silver chain. Whatever tiny motion I could make was patently insufficient to leverage him off of me. Frustrated, furious, I realized that any further fighting was completely useless. I collapsed against him, vowing to conserve what minuscule strength I had so that I could get revenge.
At some point. In the future. Once I’d learned how to fight.
“Very good,” he rumbled, his lips making my earlobe vibrate. “Lesson number one: Don’t waste your energy fighting a battle you have no hope of winning.”
I didn’t answer. The most childish corner of my brain sneered that I had no chance of besting him in a battle of words either, so I might as well stay silent. In reality, I was afraid that I’d start crying if I said anything at all.
“Lesson number two,” he said, as if I’d given him the satisfaction of a reply. “Vampires are fast.” He freed me. No sooner had I registered that my arms could move, that my legs could push back against the mat, that I could shove my elbow into his solar plexus and spring away, than he restored absolute control, holding me even tighter than before.
My cheeks flushed. My move would have worked against a human, I was certain. A normal man would have been left gasping for breath, and I would be at the far end of the room, eyeing the swords and staffs and calculating a sweet dose of vengeance.
James was toying with me, like a cat playing with a real-fur mouse. I flooded with resentment at being treated like an inanimate object, even as I fought to figure out some form of revenge. Or, at least, escape.
“Lesson number three,” he went on, as if I weren’t panting in exasperation. “We vampires don’t breathe, so forget every aspect of your training designed to choke us, or to knock the air out of our lungs.” As if to reinforce the idea, he tightened his grip on his own wrists, tugging me even closer to his unmoving chest. I gritted my teeth and snagged my own ragged breath, trying not to notice how far my lungs expanded, how much my breathing made me press against his hands. I was definitely wearing a sports bra to our next session. Maybe two.
“And lesson number four. You’re better off on the ground. Ground fighting gives you at least a chance of besting a full-grown male vampire. You don’t have to deal with a difference in height, and you can use the difference in weight, even a difference in strength, to your advantage.”
I didn’t believe a word of it, but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of admitting as much.
He went on, though, as if I’d just agreed with his every word. “In training, of course, the goal is for you to learn, to build your skills. Whenever you concede defeat in this room, you can ‘tap out.’ Just tap your hand against the floor three times.”
Great. Why couldn’t I just cry “uncle”?
As if I’d spoken my sarcastic question aloud, he hissed and shifted to a new, impossible hold. His legs remained where they were, intimately hooked over mine, but now his left forearm was levered against my throat, pulling my head back toward his. His mouth had slipped lower than my ear; I felt his knotted forearm against the sudden pounding of my jugular. I opened my mouth to shout, to scream, to tell him to stop, but his grip was too tight. I couldn’t draw air. I couldn’t speak at all.
Frantic, desperate, I pounded my hand against the mat.
He released me immediately. “Excellent,” he said, as I scrambled across the mat, raising trembling fingers to my throat.
I glared at him. Sure, I’d told Allison about the vampires. I shouldn’t have done that. But he had no right to hold a grudge, no right to treat me like this. I thought of a dozen different retorts, a hundred different accusations that I could make.
But in my heart of hearts, I knew this wasn’t about Allison. This wasn’t about my sharing vampire secrets with humans.
This was about keeping me safe in a world where I knew about the creatures of the night, where I understood the predatory danger that I would face every single time I entered Judge DuBois’s courtroom.
I closed my eyes and forced myself to take a deep, steadying breath. My throat felt bruised, vulnerable. I concentrated on the shimmery feeling of oxygen spreading through my veins, flowing into the very tips of my fingers and toes. As I exhaled, I let go of my fear, my anger. I repeated the exercise four times, and by my final exhalation, I’d found a hard core within myself, a rigid resistance that rivaled the stony tendons of James Morton’s wrists.
“Fine,” I said, settling the word between us with calculated ease. “I understand the idea. Why don’t you show me how to break one of those holds.”
I caught a flash of approval in his eyes, gone almost before I’d registered it was there. The corners of his lips barely curled up as he said, “Your first matter of business is to get me on the ground. If you’re forced to fight standing up, you lose. It’s as simple as that.”
Simple for him,
maybe. Equalizing the odds seemed impossible. I had no choice, though.
It was attack or be attacked.
That was the last conscious thought I had for almost two hours.
James drove me through pose after pose. We worked forever on a simple swiping motion, on my darting a foot toward his vulnerable knee, on my striking his relatively fragile ankle. Time after time, he stepped away before I could do any damage. He used my momentum against me, throwing me to the floor. He grabbed at my wrist or my arm or my foot, jerking me off-balance. Sometimes he caught me before I fell, rattling my teeth as he yanked me upright. Other times, he let me hit the mat.
Finally, I figured it out. I distracted him by driving the heel of my hand toward his jaw.
My angle of attack was perfect; the overhead lights flashed off my hematite bracelet, bright as a solar flare. James reared back, dashing his eyes closed, and I used his own imbalance to pull him down. Once I had him on the mat, I straddled him, sitting on his belly, forcing his shoulders back to the mat with my straightened arms.
For one glorious moment, I had won. I had made the mighty vampire topple; I had brought him to the floor.
Before I could rejoice in my accomplishment, though, he twisted beneath me. The edge of one rock-hard hand jutted into my hip, knocking me off-balance. He arched beneath me and swung to the side, liberating his torso. Another buck, and he’d shifted his legs, thrown his feet behind my back. He tightened his thighs and pulled me close, locking me against his pelvis in a motion more intimate than any I’d shared with a human lover. His hands closed around my biceps, pulling me down so that my chest was crushed against his.
“Let me go!” My protest only served to tighten his muscles. He shifted beneath me, sealing the minuscule space between us. I was shocked to feel my body respond, to feel my spine melting beneath his unspoken command, easing me closer, merging our bodies into one.
I didn’t want to feel that. Strike that. I couldn’t feel that. Not with a vampire. Not with my boss. Not with a man who was holding me against my will. In my sudden, blinding panic, I couldn’t work out which was worse—grappling with a bloodsucking creature that wasn’t human, lying between the legs of the man who signed my paychecks, or responding even momentarily to an attacker.
“Please,” I moaned, trying to push off his chest. The motion only tightened his hands around my arms, drawing me nearer. I could have heard his heart hammering, if he’d had one in working order. As it was, I wasn’t sure why he’d bothered with the tight black T-shirt. I could feel every ripple of muscle beneath his clothes, every tremor through his body as he bound me even closer.
Finally, I remembered my first lesson. I shifted my wrist as much as I could. I tapped three times, hoping that the smooth stretch of his obliques would work, since I couldn’t reach the floor.
He released me immediately.
I scrambled to the edge of the mat, sitting down hard, drawing my knees up to my chest. I clutched my fingers around my shins and said, “I don’t want to do this any more.”
“I know.” He shrugged and flowed to his feet. “You’ve had enough for one night.”
“I mean, I don’t want to do this at all.”
“I know,” he said again. His eyes met mine, steady and compelling. This would all be so easy if I could just fall into that gaze. If he could just Enfold me. Then, I wouldn’t have to worry about vampires. I wouldn’t have to remember that they existed, that Schmidt and Richardson were plotting some sort of major attack on the Washington region.
And I’d be just as unhappy with that solution. I wanted to keep my job. I wanted to stay at the Night Court. I wanted to do whatever I could—however feeble my human assistance might be—to stop Richardson’s plan. If mastering this humiliating training was what it took to help, I was going to do it.
I just wished that James’s damned T-shirt didn’t look like it had just come out of the clothes dryer, crisp and dry. There wasn’t even a wrinkle to suggest that he had been inconvenienced by my maneuvers. I tugged at my own jacket, glancing down quickly to make sure that I was still modestly covered.
“Go ahead,” he said, nodding toward the door in the corner. “Shower and get dressed.”
I staggered to my feet uncertainly. I knew that there were two shower heads in that room, side by side. I might have just been locked hip to hip with James, but I wasn’t about to strip naked in front of him.
He must have recognized the rebellion in my eyes. He gave me an honest, uncomplicated smile for the first time all night. “I’ll change out here,” he said. He didn’t bother to explain that he hadn’t broken a sweat during our little dance. “Do you want me to wait for you? Or can you get back to your office alone?”
I imagined walking up five flights of stairs behind him, struggling to control my breath, pretending that my pride wasn’t every bit as bruised as my body. “I’m fine,” I said.
“Double up on fluids for the rest of the night,” he said. “You’ll feel this by the time you go home.”
I felt it now. I couldn’t wait to see the full range of Technicolor bruises I’d earned. Earned or been given, I wasn’t even sure. Disheartened, I nodded and headed toward the locker room door.
“Sarah,” he called, just before I reached the refuge. I froze, but I didn’t look back at him.
“You did well tonight. It will get easier, the more you train.”
It couldn’t get any harder.
I tried to say something witty, but I was suddenly too tired to talk. I settled for nodding.
He seemed to accept my silence, because he said, “Don’t forget to turn out the lights when you leave.”
I tried to tell myself that it was a good sign that he trusted me down here alone. He knew that I would follow all the rules. He’d forgiven me for talking to Allison, for telling tales out of school.
As I stood under the shower, though, all I could make myself believe was that James Morton didn’t consider me a threat at all, in any way, shape, or form.
By the time I got back to my desk, I was in a better mood. I’d been impressed with the hot water heater that supplied the locker room shower—it was still going strong when I stepped out from under the needle spray after a full half hour, even though I’d kept the stream on the highest temperature possible. My body had almost—almost—forgiven me the walk up five flights of stairs.
I’d detoured to the vending machines before returning to my desk, stocking up on a handful of treats to make up for my long-delayed midnight lunch. Sometimes, vegetables and hummus just aren’t enough of a reward. Actually, I craved a steak more than a Snickers bar, but that wasn’t an option.
When I got back to my office, I was faintly amused to see that someone—presumably, James—had moved the hands of the “I’ll Be Back” clock to four. Fancy that—a three-hour training session in the middle of my shift, and I wasn’t even late getting back to work.
The clock was a nice touch, but I actually laughed out loud when I saw the small white bottle on my desk. Ibuprofen. Painkiller of champions. I washed down a few with half of the water bottle James had also thoughtfully provided. I tried not to be relieved when I saw that the cap was factory-sealed on the bottle. There was no way I could be downing the secret vampire Enfolding drug.
Not that it made any difference to un-Enfoldable me.
I was determined to stay ahead of the pain I was certain would come. For the next hour, I nursed the bottle of water religiously, taking care of a handful of mundane filings on the human side of the court’s computer interface. I was down to about fifteen minutes on my shift when the door to the office opened.
I climbed to my feet carefully, pleased to discover that my body hadn’t succumbed to agony. Yet. Nevertheless, my legs were trembly as I walked toward the counter. I could feel the warning weakness in my thighs, like rubber bands that had been stretched too far and left to sag back into place. That weakness made me clutch the counter when I realized the identity of my visitor. “Chris!” I said, t
rying to balance the sudden mixture of pleasure and wariness in my tone.
“Good morning,” he said. And it was actually morning. Five o’clock was early for anyone on a normal schedule, but almost a normal time to be talking to people. Chris’s hair was still damp from his wake-up shower.
That was all right. My hair hadn’t quite dried yet either. I hoped he wouldn’t notice, wouldn’t ask any questions that I couldn’t answer truthfully. “What brings you here?” I asked.
“I was hoping I could buy you a cup of coffee. Maybe hear a little about your job, figure out some of the parameters for our article.”
A cup of coffee. That was the last thing I wanted right now. I thought of my bed, waiting for me back at my apartment, with its springy mattress and planes of soft sheets. My summer-weight comforter was ready to be pulled over my shoulder as I curled on my side and dropped off to sleep.
I yawned.
Not some dainty, caught behind the back of my palm, girly yawn. No. This was a jaw-splitting, tongue-curling monster of a yawn, one that threw back my shoulders, stretched out my spine, and left my eyes watering. And my face flushed with embarrassment. “Excuse me!” I gasped.
He laughed. “I’m the one who should say excuse me. I wasn’t thinking past the challenge of setting my own alarm early enough to catch you here. I’m sorry—coffee was a terrible idea. Why don’t you tell me a good time to meet?”
“Why don’t we try tomorrow evening? I mean, tonight, Tuesday.” I was getting tangled in the confusion of the calendar, in the vagaries of working the graveyard shift. I shook my head and tried again. “I don’t have to be here until nine, so we could have dinner before that?”
Nice girls didn’t turn plans for coffee into dinner dates. Not that I had to play the “nice girl” with Chris. I was already comfortable with him. Already relaxed about silly social rules. Besides, this wasn’t a date. It was a business meeting, where I was going to do my best to deflect city council attention from the Night Court.
