by Kimbra Swain
He growled slightly in frustration and caught himself, “Then perhaps you can tell my why you are holding back?” he said flatly.
My eyes shot up to his, and he locked my gaze. How in the world did he know I held back my skills? That was impossible. I had played this to the hilt. His instincts were phenomenal, but I didn’t think they were that good. “I don’t know what you mean,” I denied as truthfully as I could. But I felt like a fly caught in a web. The spider closed in on me for the kill.
“I’ve watched you. I know you are holding back,” he stopped and waited for me to explain myself. Crap. I hadn’t planned for this. Especially at this stage of the process. While impressed with his observation of me, it frustrated me, because I couldn’t understand out how he had picked up on it. I had tried to make sure I only used the most basic of fight sequences and mostly defensive at that. But he knew I was a far better fighter than I led him and everyone else to believe. I could see it in his eyes. He knew very well that I pretended to be helpless.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Duarte. I know I’m failing. But I really am trying my best. Please excuse me.” I jumped up hurriedly. I grabbed my tray and dropped it off at the wash station. I slipped out the side door. The door closed behind me with a click, and I rushed to the nearest corner and ducked behind it to see if he would follow me. I waited for a second with my back against the wall breathing heavily. I laughed at myself because my anxiety and adrenaline reached a peak, because I had been caught in my lie. I took a deep breath to compose myself, and closed my eyes. When I opened them, he stood before me with his arms crossed. “Oh, bloody hell,” I said startled that he was there. I almost lost grip on the British accent that I concealed so that I could play the part of a wayward American teenager. I hadn’t heard him when he approached. The sneaky bastard. A male student rounded the other end of the hallway from the barracks and saw us standing there. I don’t know what he thought, but he turned on his heel and scurried back the way he came. Duarte stepped closer to me. He wasn’t going to let me bolt again. His dark eyes flicked to an almost yellow color, and it caught me off guard. I knew about his abilities, but he didn’t know I knew about them. He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they were the dark green color I expected them to be.
Tadeas Nahuel Duarte was a shifter. Everyone has heard the stories of Werewolves and other shifting creatures, and for the most part, they were all just stories. Some of the details were just myth, but these shifting baddies did exist in our world. Duarte came from a long line of Mayan Jaguar Guardian shifters. He was born in a village in Guatemala to a mother with no husband. The village people beat her to death for her sins, and they threw him as an infant into the jungle. Fortunately, some passing missionaries found him and they took the infant back to the nearest Catholic Church, where he a Guatemalan family adopted him. They returned him to the church just after his sixth birthday. The priests kept him at that point and raised him to one day take orders as a priest in the church. There are years in his past where I have no definite information on what exactly happened to him. But instead of taking orders, he fell in love with a local girl and proposed to her. Before they were married, he shifted for the first time and tragedy replaced his source of hope. He was in his late teens. It was late in his life to shift. Most shifters change for the first time during puberty, much like when wielders manifest magic. He should have shifted before that time, but I had no records indicating that he had prior to killing his fiancée. Eventually, he came to The Agency, and has thrived here even since as an instructor.
Generally, a village would welcome the arrival of a guardian shifter. Most of the time they would be paired up with the local magic wielder, in this case a shaman, and the pair protected the village from all sorts of entities that might seek to harm its inhabitants. I never found the true story of why they cast him out as an infant, but he was born in a time when missionaries were starting to infiltrate some of the outlying villages in the Central Americas, and I have to think the two things might be related. Perhaps the village felt like their newfound faith didn’t support the tradition of a guardian. Perhaps there was no shaman to take him in. Either way, it started a long sad story for the beginning of Duarte’s life. He had overcome it here in the training center. He had made something of himself. I knew by watching him over the past 2 years that he wanted that same victory for every single student that came into his training.
I didn’t have a lot of time to decide how to handle this. I started asking the questions to deflect, “Why do you think I’m holding back?”
“I don’t know why. Please enlighten me,” his frustration edged his voice. This was not going well for me. He could have me removed from the program immediately if I didn’t handle this correctly, and all the work I’d done up until this point would have been for nothing. I may have ruined any chance to recruit him to my cause simply by lying to him. He stepped closer, and left no room between us. I shivered at how close he was to me. Get your head on straight Abigail Davenport, I told myself.
I closed my eyes tightly. I couldn’t look at him. I think I might have instinctively flinched like I intended to run, but he slammed his hand against the concrete wall not allowing me to move to my left. I hadn’t planned on running, but I couldn’t get out of it now. “I’m sorry,” I stammered.
“Stop fucking apologizing and answer me, Rachel.” He had used my first name outside of class. Instructors never used first names. He slowly lost patience with me.
“I meant, not why, but how do you know I’m holding back?” I stammered through the sentence because he intimidated me.
“Rachel, I’ve been here in Boulder for over 20 years teaching students. I’ve seen a lot of washouts, especially in those early days. But I have never once seen someone like you who purposefully let herself get beat to a pulp on a daily basis. Is it some sort of weird kinky thing? Or some sort of self-loathing? I don’t know, but I know you are capable of a lot more than you are letting on. A whole lot more.”
This little speech made me think he grasped at straws. One last ditch effort to figure it out. That he really didn’t know I was holding back. It admired him for caring enough to push me this hard. That he would step out of the norm to confront a failing student in the effort to better their lives. I had no doubt his intentions were of the truest nature. He wanted me to succeed. It wasn’t simply because he had such a flawless record that could be broken. It was because he didn’t want to see any of us thrust out on the streets with nothing. The tension between us couldn’t have gotten any thicker. I didn’t know how to respond. I think he took my indecision as fear and stepped away from me. I opened my eyes and looked at him. His eyes pleaded with me to give him some explanation. But I took the opportunity to get away and think things over, “I promise,” I said, “tomorrow will be different.” I turned as fast as I could and hurried toward the bunk room. I shot a glance back at him as I turned the corner, and he had put his hand back on the wall almost as if he held himself up. It was quiet but I heard him mutter, “It’s your last chance, Rachel.” My steps stuttered for a moment, but I picked back up my pace. Tears welled up in my eyes. I was just playing the part, right? The poor helpless runaway who couldn’t fight and was about to be kicked back on the streets. Rachel cried. Not Abigail. Oh hell, I hated this. What in the world was I thinking getting myself in this position? Perhaps grandfather was right.
I rushed to the nearest training room, and slipped inside as quietly as possible. I tried to compose myself. Occasionally I’d find a couple making out or sometimes more, but training rooms were unlike the other areas, since they were restricted to training only. The Agency didn’t care what you did in the dorms or the closets or the bathrooms as long as it was consensual and not in a training area. Thankfully, the room was empty. I didn’t bother to turn on the lights. Even with my magic bound up, I could still feel the room by memory. All the training rooms were the same. Large empty spaces with a central training mat and hardwood floors
on the outside. I stepped three paces and felt my footing change to the mat. I took my shoes off and sat down on the mat with my legs crossed. I took deep breaths to calm myself from the confrontation with Duarte. I was not much for meditating, because my brain always worked overtime. I needed to organize my thoughts, and decide if he truly had some instinct that I held back or if he just grasped at straws. It would make a difference in how I responded tomorrow in order to stay in the class and reach my ultimate goal in recruiting Duarte for my purposes. I came to the conclusion based on his frustration and his attempt to corral me in the hallway he was desperation. In the next few days, if I showed a little improvement each day then maybe he would settle down and not get worked up enough to kick me out.
I stood up and took several steps to the center of the mat. And in the darkness, I started repeating all the forms I knew, and had learned in my lifetime. Concentrating on them would clear my head, prepare myself for the day tomorrow, and decide how to approach what I’d do.
As I entered back into the cafeteria, I picked my tray up from where Miss Bennett sat and approached the instructor’s table. Several of them gave me incredulous looks. Meredith didn’t though. She looked slightly pained. I sat down and after a few minutes of trying to eat in the silence, I gave up and headed back to my small apartment on the second floor. I was halfway up the stairs when Meredith entered below and called out to me, “Tadeas, wait up.” I slowed my pace and allowed her to catch up. Meredith was a friend. Most of the instructors and I didn’t get along, but she was different. We had tried some years ago to have a relationship beyond friends, but I feared ever having that kind of connection with anyone ever again. Consequently, I broke it off. I could tell it hurt her feelings, but we agreed to remain friends because frankly this life gets rather tedious, and seeing these kids come through here year after year gets to be tough for anyone to handle alone. She and I had been here the longest of any of the other instructors. Both of us had been offered other positions in the Agency, but I could never see myself sitting at a desk or out in the field considering my shifting abilities. “What is it with you and this one?” she asked. She knew me all too well, in that it really bothered me when one washed out.
“I don’t know, Mere. I keep trying to put my finger on it, but she’s holding back. She’s hiding something. She’s good at hiding it, but I watch her every single day and the ability is there. She’s just not using it. And I just don’t understand,” I explained as I opened the door to the 2nd floor, and allowed her to pass through ahead of me into the empty hallway.
“Just let her wash out. You know if you put her on the streets she will be killed or worse the moment she’s put out there. It’s our jobs to make sure we send the best students we can to the proxies. You shouldn’t send one that’s going to immediately cause problems for a proxy.”
I waved my hands at her as if I could push her logic away like swatting at a fly. She grinned at me waving my hands around.
“Stop, Meredith. This is serious.”
“I know it is. And I know I don’t have to tell you what your job is. Hell, it’s my job too. Granted you are much better at it, than I.”
She fished for a compliment, I obliged, “Don’t say that. You have your own way Meredith, and it is very effective. Your students are great.”
She twisted her face slightly, and I knew that tell-tale sign. “What are you hiding from me? What is it with you women?” I teased using the word that would poke her feminist sensibilities.
“Whoa there, buddy, don’t suppose because we are friends, I’m gonna let you pull than chauvinist bullshit on me,” she teased me unabashedly now.
I couldn’t help but laugh at her. But she was hiding something. I waited, it hadn’t worked with Rachel, but I knew it would with Meredith. If a man wants a woman to tell him something, all you have to do is be silent. Eventually she will spill it, although Rachel proved me wrong on that count. Meredith would spill what she knew if I gave her a moment of silence.
“Fine. There is no sense in holding back, because you won’t let it go. Speaking of which I’m surprised you let her off the hook so easily tonight.”
“I didn’t let her off the hook. I followed her into the hallway. She could report me for misconduct.”
“But she won’t.”
“But she won’t,” I affirmed, “and I told her tomorrow was her last chance or she’s out.”
All the humor left her eyes. “You didn’t?” she questioned.
I could only hang my head. I had never threatened a student with a washout. Especially this early in the process. We had weeks to go, but I was tired of being bamboozled by whatever game this girl played. “I did,” I replied.
“Well, I be damned,” Meredith said with a full on southern drawl this time. She was from one of those hot, humid states in the south of the U.S. “Tadeas Duarte finally grew a pair of balls.”
“Shut up, Meredith.” I was done with her too, at this point. I reached for the knob to my door, and she placed her hand on mine.
And in a quiet, light tone she said, “Hey, look. I know you are tired and frustrated. I’m just trying to get you to loosen up a bit. Can I come in for a minute?” she added.
I hated to let her in my room. Every time, she came in things would get tense, and she would get upset. There was some unwritten expectation about letting a girl in your room that led her to believe that there was more there than friendship. One of the guys tried to explain it to me. “Duarte, if a girl asks you to come into her room, don’t you expect certain things to happen with that kind of invitation?”
“Hell no. I don’t expect anything,” I told him. He laughed at me, and replied that it was the reason I wasn’t getting laid anytime this century. That wasn’t the reason, but at least he had the timing right. I had a few short meaningless relationships in the past couple of years. Well, like 2, but it just wasn’t for me. I couldn’t be serious with anyone. I feared that would I’d hurt her, or maybe I was too afraid of living with a reminder of the past. I relented, “Yes, you can come in, but only for a minute.”
She knew I was timid about it, but had asked anyway so maybe she really had something to tell me. She walked over to my couch and plopped down. “Now tell me exactly what she has done or said to make you think she’s holding back.”
I stood in the center of the small room thinking. Our apartments weren’t huge, but they were nice. We did spend most of our time here. The room featured neutral soft carpets, and I had added a large recliner and the couch. Both were a comfy worn leather. A flat screen tv recently replaced the old tube model I had previously, but I didn’t have time to watch much of it. When classes were in, I taught, ate and slept. When I didn’t have classes I tried to get out of the compound and enjoyed good food and drinks. I visited new places within a day's drive. I also did a little hiking and fishing from time to time. Something my adopted father liked to do when I was very small. I never fully understood its value as a child, but as an adult, getting outside where there were no sounds except the forest around you was comforting and refreshing. The beast inside me appreciated the wildness of it.
“When she is sparring, it is like she purposefully does all defensive moves.”
“That’s not all bad. Maybe she thinks it’s her best chance to survive.”
“No. That’s not all. I see her movements. She has these slight reactions to strikes that should develop into counter strikes, but she doesn’t complete them. She forces the defensive move.” I ran my hands through my hair. It started to get too long and curl on the ends. I hated it, and I needed a trim as soon as possible. “I can see her muscle reaction. I can see the move about to play out, but she doesn’t do it. She knows what to do and isn’t doing it.”
“Maybe she’s afraid of hurting someone,” Meredith offered.
“I don’t think so.” I sat down on the couch next to her, with my elbows on my knees and my face in my hands. It was maddening. I couldn’t figure for the life of me what she was d
oing. Because I was a shifter, a predator cat, reading muscle reactions is where I saw the opponent’s moves before they started. And where I finished any opponent off. I could almost read every single move my opponent would make just by watching the muscles shift under their skin and by pure instinct. It’s crazy, but I swear at times I can smell the move before my foe makes it. And I could see Rachel coiling her muscles to strike only to shift to defense or drop the strike altogether and get her lights punched out.
“Well, you are right. She is hiding something.” Meredith said flatly, “And if you really want to know what it is, we have to go spy on her.”
I looked at her stunned. She had been hiding something from me. “Spy on her. I don’t want to spy on her, Meredith. I probably scared the crap out of her just now, and she’s somewhere crying.”
“I doubt that,” she said as she stood up and offered her hand to me. I took it, and she pulled me to my feet and led me back out into the hall. We went down the opposite flight of stairs back to the backside of the training rooms. She put her hand up on each observation room door as we passed. Finally stopping at the observation room for my main classroom, she held her finger up to her lips telling me to be silent, and stepped into the dark room. People from the Agency would come down to see new recruits or critique our teaching methods. It had a double-sided glass that looked like a mirror on the other side. Everyone knew it was a window. We really weren't hiding anything. The curriculum would change slightly from time to time, but generally we taught kids to survive on the streets, and a lot of those survival skills were spent in hand to hand combat training.
I looked into the darkness of my training room, and I could see Rachel’s outline going through forms in the darkness. She wore the same clothes from the cafeteria, and she was barefoot. I had seen her do forms before. She was awkward and her movements were not precise. Most of the time she just looked like she was drowning. But not now, in the darkness I could see her muscular frame move with ease and precision. The precision of a highly trained martial artist and fighter. “What the hell?” I murmured.
