Fulk offered the sword forward another stubborn inch. “You – and your entire pack – learned to fight in an age of gunpowder.”
“It’s still an age of gunpowder.”
“Yes, and the vampires you’ve fought over the years have been weak, modern creatures. What good will your gun be against a vampire from the Middle Ages, well-schooled in the blade? How did you fare against Vlad when you fought him before?”
Nik let out a low growl. “I’m not fighting Vlad.”
“You don’t know who you’re fighting. There is no such thing as being too prepared. A warrior can’t be too well-versed.”
Nikita bared his teeth – but he was remembering what it had been like to catch Vlad’s sword with his knives. To shake, and bend, and fall beneath that vampire’s impossible strength, his expertise and precision. Nikita, trained killer, ruthless attack dog of Stalin, had felt like no more than a frail child when he’d faced off from the prince.
What Fulk said made a lot of unpleasant sense.
He wavered.
Then Fulk’s grin widened, sharp, and he said, “I promise to go easy on you.”
Nikita took the sword with a snarl.
They moved to a clear space in the center of the roof, circling one another. Fulk twirled his own sword again, showing off, and the blade looked like an extension of his arm, a part of him.
Nikita, by contrast, felt about as elegant as someone holding a broom. It was far longer than any knife he’d ever used, heavier. His palm was already sweaty on its grip.
“This is a waste of time,” he said, and knew he sounded sulky.
“Perhaps. If you’re a poor student,” Fulk said, and launched his first attack.
Nikita thought it was to his credit that he didn’t flinch away or shut his eyes, as moonlight slid down the wicked edge of the sword coming at him. He lifted his own sword, and the two blades came together with a metallic clang. Fulk did something with his wrist, and Nikita’s sword twisted out of his grip and went sailing away, clattering across the gravel.
Fulk gently touched the very tip to the center of Nikita’s chest. “And I’ve run you through.”
Nikita swatted the blade away, convinced he’d end up with a nasty slice, but Fulk had anticipated, and was already pulling it away before he could make contact. “I’ll say it again,” he said, trying not to let his temper show too badly. He was furious – mostly because he was mortified. Unarmed in one move, unable to do more than block the first strike. “No one at the Institute is going to come at us with swords.”
Fulk rested the flat of his blade over his shoulder, other hand landing on his hip. “Which is precisely why swords will be an advantage for us: they’ll have no defense against them. Swords have a longer reach than knives, and they can inflict more catastrophic damage. By all means, carry a gun as well; fight with your fists, and your fangs, and pure brute strength. But learn this, too.” He went to retrieve the fallen sword, and offered it again – without the mocking smile this time.
Before he could refuse, Sasha said, “Nik, what could it hurt?”
My pride, Nikita thought, sourly, but one glance at Sasha – as usual – put everything back into the proper perspective.
He took the sword.
“Do you want me to show you the proper way to hold it?” Fulk asked.
He sighed. “Yes.”
And so he did.
~*~
“You shoot well.”
Trina did not startle when Kolya appeared as if from thin air in front of her, nothing but a face inside his black hood, but it was a near thing, and her heart gave a few unsteady bumps.
She swallowed a gasp and said, “I’m sorry?”
“You shoot well,” he repeated.
“Oh. Thank you.”
“But do you have any skill with hand-to-hand?”
She thought of what she’d seen of him this morning – God, had that been this morning? It felt like weeks ago. Just realizing that made her tired all over again. But she thought of him, of the way he’d whirled, and ducked, knives sinking into skin, quick as any of Lanny’s better punches, his movements twice as graceful. It had been obvious, even amongst the arterial spray and the death rattles, to see that he’d been a dancer in another life.
“Some,” she said. “Self-defense training, a little jujitsu. But nothing like what you do.”
“Pretty sure nobody does what you do,” Lanny put in, tone admiring. “I’ll take a good bare-knuckle brawl any day, but that was impressive this morning.”
Kolya absorbed the compliment with quiet passivity. He looked at Trina. “Do you want to learn?”
“Oh. Um.” For a moment she was surprised by the offer – and then she remembered a vision she’d seen with Val’s help. A snow-dusted clearing. A young woman – Katya – and Kolya with his too-long hair, and unsmiling mouth, sending her reeling and spinning away, again and again, ducking too slow, forgetting her footwork. But then another memory, this one of a dark forest, a few shafts of moonlight filtering through the evergreen boughs. A quiet recollection of a past lost, and the same brutal hands gentle, now. A dance.
She met his gaze, his eyes dark, tilted faintly at the tips; a shrewd, miss-nothing gaze that was somehow sweet all the same. Safe, she thought. In the woods that night, decades ago, as he moved like Fred Astaire, like a ballerina, Katya had leaned into the press of his hands and known that they would stay chaste. Safe.
Trina wondered if those same memories were unspooling in his mind, now; if this offer wasn’t just for her, but for his own sense of self. A reclaiming of a past kindness.
Behind her, she heard the clang and scrape of metal on metal, Fulk’s calm corrections and Nikita’s occasional growl of frustration.
“Sure,” she said, “why not.”
“Okay,” Lanny said, when she shrugged off her jacket and handed it to him, “but I want a turn after.”
Kolya magicked a knife from each sleeve, and offered one to her.
“Whoa, nobody said anything about hand-to-hand with knives,” Lanny protested.
Trina took it; the grip was warm from being pressed up against his skin.
“The blade will never touch her,” Kolya said, and if his tone wasn’t actually reassuring, it was at least calm, and sure. “I’m only going to show her a few tricks. We can’t turn into wolves or brainwash anyone. We need our tricks.” He gave Trina the smallest, most hesitant smile.
She smiled back. “Yeah, we do.”
~*~
“Here.” Annabel appeared in front of Mia, both hands held down to her, fingers curling.
(And when had Mia sat down on the cold, hard gravel anyway?)
“If we’re gonna have a sparring party, I’ll show you a few things.” Her smile dimmed when Mia didn’t respond. “You okay?”
A glance proved that no one else was within immediate earshot; Val had moved over to watch Fulk and Nikita, offering bits of advice. She shook her head. “Yeah…not really. No. No, I’m not okay.”
Just admitting it aloud eased some of the tightness in her chest, though she felt guilty for saying anything at all.
Annabel frowned, brows crimping, then settled down to sit cross-legged beside her.
“You don’t have to–” Mia started to protest.
Anna said, “It’s okay not to be okay. In fact, I’m pretty sure nobody here is okay.”
“You’re okay.”
“Yeah, but I’m weird. I’m abnormally okay.”
Mia couldn’t help but smile, a little.
“I also give abnormally good advice.”
“Now that I don’t believe.”
“Ooh, ouch.” Anna pressed a hand to her heart a moment, the back of her other to her forehead, and for a moment it was easy to imagine the Southern belle she must have been. Then she got serious again. “You can tell me, though. We’re friends, right?” She sounded almost – hopeful.
Mia realized she wasn’t sure they were friends, that it was a quick and easy label
to slap onto their strange relationship. She’d thought they could be, when they first met, when she was still human, but now, after everything, she wasn’t sure.
She also realized, though, that she wanted badly to be friends. “Yeah,” she said, finding a smile, “that’s true.”
“Okay, so, you can talk to me. Is it the whole being a vampire thing, or the whole Val’s gonna drag us into a war thing?”
“Both. But, right now, it’s mostly the whole finding out my dad is a lot more twisted than I even realized thing.”
Anna’s eyes widened in understanding. “That.” She glanced toward Fulk, where Nikita was repelling an attack with a bit more surety than he’d shown a few minutes ago. Something like a smile touched the vampire’s face, before it turned to a grimace and he had to duck away and disengage again. “See, the thing is, Mr. Will Scarlet” – she said the name in a bit of a huff, and Mia wondered if disbelief, mockery, or rivalry was to blame – “isn’t wrong when he talks about there maybe being a split between the two branches. It’s government-funded, after all, and I’ve never seen a government in the world that could come to an agreement on anything. It would make sense that there’s corrupt pockets in the Institute. Some people are there for the science and the medicine, and some are there for the war.” She looked back at Mia, gaze serious now. “For the power they could get if they win the war.
“Now, don’t take this as an insult, but your daddy? He doesn’t strike me as the scheming, power-hungry type.”
Mia’s jaw clenched in automatic reaction. “He had Val chained up in a dungeon. He didn’t even let him wash his hair.”
“I know, I know, and that was awful. But look at it this way: by the time he got hold of Val, he’d already been chained up for centuries, and he came with a boatload of horror stories about what an awful, traitorous, murderous monster he was. What would you think, if you were in that position?”
“I was in that position, and I saw that he was a victim.”
Anna studied her a moment, whatever sort of glare she was giving, and then grinned. “There’s the fire we need.”
Mia let out a breath. “You’re baiting me.” It stung.
Anna rested a hand on her knee, expression softening. “Honey, I can’t tell you how to feel about your dad, but I’m very familiar with family betraying you.” She made a face. “With people proving they aren’t who you always hoped they’d be. If Dr. Talbot’s as crooked as these people here, who armed another vampire so he could kill Sasha’s pack, then I say he isn’t worth worrying over. You can’t control that. You can only control what you do.”
In a whisper: “Mia, do you want to be here?”
Friend, Anna had said. And a relatively new one at that. Mia had the sense that, no matter what she said, she wouldn’t be disappointing her. That she could take a moment, and be honest – so that’s what she did.
She closed her eyes, and took a deep breath; tried to parse her gut instincts of panic and doubt out from her emotions. Those were human instincts; the instincts of the Mia who’d ridden horses for a living, and who’d thought she wouldn’t go on living much longer. The Mia who’d never allowed herself fantasies of a husband and children; a Mia who knew better than to hope or wish.
She let out a breath and opened her eyes. “I didn’t think I’d live past New Year’s,” she said, and Anna looked at her encouragingly. I thought that I could maybe ride a little longer, and that then I would die slowly, painfully, in a hospital bed with wires coming out of me, bald and–” She bit her lip, unable to finish.
Anna petted her knee like she would a distressed animal; it was inordinately comforting.
She looked over at Val, standing with arms crossed, one hip cocked to the side, smiling delightedly as he watched his wolf spar with Nikita. “I love my job,” she said. “I love my horse. I love working for Donna, and I’ve been learning so much. I know I won’t ever go to the Olympics like she did, but it’s good. It’s fun.
“But Val…I didn’t ever think I could have that. That I could have someone. That it could be like it is with him. I didn’t think I’d get the chance to go on an adventure.”
She looked at Anna again. “I’m not just here because I think Val needs me, or that I owe him for giving me the chance to live.” As she spoke the words, she felt the truth of them all the way down to her bones, and it settled some of the constant turmoil she’d been living with. “I’m here because being with him is the wildest, scariest, most impossible gift that I never could have imagined. It’s strange as hell, and I get frightened – but I want to be here. I do. It’s just…”
“A lot,” Anna finished, smiling softly. “Yeah. It is.” She gave Mia’s knee a last pat and sprang lithely to her feet. “Well, then, you’d better get a little more badass, huh?” She offered her hands again. “Come on: I’m not good with a sword, but I’ve got a few ninja moves that come in handy.”
This time, Mia let herself be pulled to her feet. “That thing you did to the guards back at Virginia…”
“Oh, you liked that?” She laughed, a wicked gleam in her eyes. “Alright then, young grasshopper, let’s get to work.”
~*~
“Lanny?”
He’d been nervous at first, heart pounding as Trina accepted the knife and squared off from Kolya. The first few movements had left him leaning forward on his toes, biting his tongue to keep from growling and throwing himself between his mate and the man coming at her with a knife. But as he’d watched, fighting his instincts, he’d seen that Kolya, for all that he was freshly alive again, had no intention of getting his blade anywhere near Trina. Once he got over the worry, and could just watch, he could admit that the guy was damn good.
Trina had an athletic build, and he knew she hit the treadmill, and lifted weights, and went to one of those kickboxing classes every so often to stay sharp. Had passed all her mandatory self-defense classes with flying colors. She moved well, quick and balanced, but she wasn’t used to wielding a knife, and Kolya was just – well, he was a freak.
Lanny had seen the Nutcracker once, when he was a kid; one of his cousins had been a sugarplum and he’d, admittedly, been a little shit and bugged his mom for gum or candy through most of the performance. But he’d caught a glimpse or two, between fighting over the armrest with his brother, and he’d seen the way the dancers got up on their toes and spun, and spun, defying gravity.
That was Kolya. Like touching the ground was optional; even the slowest spin, the gentlest pantomime of a strike, seemed to float. His body moved in ways that Lanny’s own never could, no matter that he was a vampire, and Kolya a mortal – one that had died before, no less. It was a shame, Lanny thought, that the Cheka had scooped the guy up; he should have been on a stage somewhere, under hot lights, defying gravity to standing ovations.
He turned at the sound of Jamie’s voice, and found him standing with hands fidgeting together nervously, brow furrowed.
“What’s up, ladykiller?”
Jamie groaned, and covered his face with his hands, which Lanny couldn’t help but laugh at. “I didn’t kill them. I just…”
“Gave all of them that sweet, sweet lovin’?”
“God, don’t say it like that.”
Lanny clapped him on the shoulder. “Shit, kid, what’s there to be so embarrassed about?”
Jamie sighed, and pulled his hands away, his gaze miserable. “I don’t – I’m not–” He gestured down the length of his body. “Look at me.”
“I am, and you look way too uptight for someone who got laid by four chicks last night.”
The miserable look turned into a glare. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“You had some fun. Don’t worry so much.”
He didn’t look convinced.
“Look, they were willing, right?”
He blushed. “Very.”
“Then don’t beat yourself up.” He gave him a little shake, and some of the tension bled out of him. “Whatcha need?”
He t
ook a few breaths, composed himself, and looked miserable in a different way. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Okay, I’m gonna stop you there, because nothing good happens when somebody says that.”
“Lanny, I’m serious,” he said, and his tone took the last of Lanny’s joking mood.
He nodded. “Alright.”
“I’ve been thinking about all that’s going on. All of this.” He gestured to the sparring matches happening in front of them. “I’m not sure – I don’t think I have a place here. I’m just dead weight.”
Lanny hadn’t expected him to say that – but a moment later realized that he should have. You guys are all I have, Jamie had said days ago, somber, urging him to confess to Trina. Sometimes, in the midst of prisoner princes, and tsareviches who’d watched their families get gunned down, and lying playboys who’d been experimented upon, kids raised in laboratories…it was easy to forget that there were different kinds of trauma. Less remarkable, maybe, but no less real. No less painful.
He felt a tug in his chest that he refused to call panic, but which propelled him to say, “Whoa, hold up. Don’t say that. What? Of course you’re not.”
“Lanny,” Jamie sighed. “What in the world do I contribute to this pack?”
“Tons!”
“I don’t fight, I’m not that good at compelling, I have no helpful contacts. I was an art student before this, which is zero-percent useful right now, and, let’s face, fangs or not, I’m still pretty much scared of my own shadow.”
“Hey.”
“Name one useful thing I do.” His brows lifted, challenging.
“You got us the video in Virginia.”
“I put a flash drive into a computer.”
“Yeah, but we needed you to do that. That was useful, cause I was busy trying to keep fucking Dracula from eating Nikita’s lunch. So. That’s one. And this morning–”
“This morning I got thrown on the ground, and the best I did was trip a guy.”
“Which is a guy no one else had to throw hands with.”
Jamie pulled a disgusted face. “Oh, please. Face it: I’m just collateral damage. I’m this loser who sleeps on everyone’s couches because you all feel guilty about what happened to me, and turning me away would weigh too heavy on your consciences.”
Golden Eagle (Sons of Rome Book 4) Page 54
