Friday Night Bites (20 page)

 

Time passed, the grounds quiet and empty around me. Since the night was waning, I dog-eared and closed the book and uncrossed my legs. As I stood, I glanced up at the back of the House. A figure stood at a window on the third floor, hands in pockets, facing the garden.

It was a window in Amber’s former room, the Consort suite beside Ethan’s, the rooms he’d cleaned out. She was gone, and so was the furniture; I couldn’t imagine that anyone but him would be in the room, much less staring into the garden.

I stood there for a moment, book in my arms, watching his meditation. I wondered what he thought about. Did he mourn for her? Was he angry? Was he embarrassed that he hadn’t predicted
her betrayal? Or was he ruminating on the things that had happened tonight, worrying about Nicholas, Celina, and whatever war she might be leading us into?

The horizon began to purple. Since I had no urge to be caught in the sun, reduced to ashes because I’d been curled up with a paperback in the garden—or spying on my Master—I returned to the House, occasionally glancing up at the window, but he never changed position.

Peter Gabriel came to mind, his lyric about working just to survive. Ethan did that. Day in and day out, he kept watch over more than three hundred Cadogan vampires. We were a kind of kingdom, and he was the lord of the manor, the figurative and literal Master of the House. Our survival was a responsibility that fell upon his shoulders, and had since Peter Cadogan’s death.

It was, I realized, a responsibility I trusted him with. Ethan’s biggest fault, at least so far as I was aware, was his inability to separate that responsibility from everything else in this life.

Every
one
else in his life.

And so, on a night in late May, I found myself standing on the lawn of a Hyde Park mansion of vampires, staring up at the stone-framed visage of a boy in Armani, an enemy who’d become an ally. Ironic, I thought, that I’d given up one ally today, but gained another.

Ethan ran a hand through his hair.

“What are you thinking about?” I whispered up, knowing he couldn’t hear me.

Where was a boom box when you needed one?

I woke with a start, sitting straight up in bed. The sun had finally set, allowing me the few hours of consciousness I’d be afforded each day during my first summer as a vampire. I wondered if life would be different in the winter, when we had hours and hours of darkness to enjoy.

On the other hand, we also had lake-effect snow to enjoy. That was going to make for a lot of cold, dark hours. I made a mental note to find a warm spot in the library.

I got up, showered, ponytailed my hair, and put on the training ensemble I’d been ordered to wear today. Although I wasn’t officially on the clock, and had Mallory’s not-going-that-far-away party and a follow-up date with Morgan to look forward to, the Cadogan guards and I were scheduled for a group training exercise so that we could learn to be better—or at least more efficiently violent—vampires.

The official workout uniform was a black mid-torso sports tank with crisscrossing straps and snug hip-waisted, yoga-type pants that reached mid-calf. Both, of course, in black, except for the stylized silver C on the upper left-hand side of the tank.

It might not have been a terribly interesting ensemble, but it covered a lot more skin than the outfit Catcher forced me to wear during his training sessions; sand volleyball players got to wear more clothing.

I slid on flip-flops for the walk downstairs, grabbed my sword, and shut the door behind me before making my way through the second floor to the main stairway, and then up to the third.

Lindsey’s door was open, her room as loud as it had been two days ago, an episode of
South Park
now blaring from the tiny television.

“How do you sleep in here?” I asked her.

Lindsey, in the same outfit as me, her blond hair in a low ponytail, sat on the edge of her bed and pulled on tennis shoes. “When you’re forced unconscious by the rising of the sun, it kinda takes care of itself.”

“Good point.”

“How was your date with Ethan last night?”

I should have known that was coming. “It wasn’t a date.”

“Whatevs. You’re hot for teacher.”

“We were in the library.”

“
Oh
, nookie in the stacks. Figures you’re the type to have that fantasy, grad school and all.” Her feet clad in running shoes that had seen many, many better days, she hopped off the bed and grinned at me. “Let’s go do some learnin’.”

 

Downstairs in the Operations Room, Lindsey and I took a peek at our folders (empty) before filing toward the gigantic room at the end of the hall. This was the Sparring Room—the place where I challenged Ethan during my first trip to Cadogan House. It was high-ceilinged and boasted fighting mats and an arsenal of antique weaponry. The room was also ringed by a balcony, giving observers a firsthand view of the action below.

Today, thankfully, the balcony was empty. The room, however,
was not. Guards milled about on the edges of the fighting mats, and a pissed-off-looking sorcerer stood in the middle in white martial arts-style pants, the circle tattoo blue-green across his abdomen. In his hands was the handle of his gleaming katana, overhead lights glinting from the pristine blade.

I was behind Lindsey and nearly stumbled into her when she stopped short and gave a low whistle in Catcher’s direction. She glanced back at me. “Speaking of being hot for teacher. He’s still dating Carmichael, right?”

“Very much so.”

She muttered an expletive that drew a chuckle from Juliet and a low, possessive growl from Luc. “That is a damn shame.”

“Can you at least pretend to be professional today?”

Lindsey stopped, glanced back at Luc. “You show me professional, and I’ll show you professional.”

Luc snorted, but his expression was gleeful. “Sweetheart, you wouldn’t know professional if it bit you on the ass.”

“I prefer my bites in other places.”

“Is that an invitation?”

“If only you were so lucky, cowboy.”

“Lucky? Hooking up with me would be the luckiest day of your life, Blondie.”

“Oh,
please
.” The word was spoken with such sarcasm that she stretched it into a couple of syllables.

Luc rolled his eyes. “All right, you’ve had your fun, now get that ass on the mat, if you can spare us a few minutes.” He walked away before she could respond, moving around to wrangle other guards into position.

At the edge of the mats, as we peeled off our shoes, I gave her a sideways glance. “Torture isn’t kind.”

She gave an acknowledging nod, smiled back. “True. But it sure as hell is amusing.”

When we were barefoot, we stepped onto the mats and did
some perfunctory stretching, then moved back to the edge and stood in a line before Catcher. We descended to our knees and sat back in the
seiza
position, left hands on the handles of our swords, ready to listen.

When we were ready, Luc moved to stand beside Catcher, hands on his hips, and surveyed us.

“Ladies and . . . ladies,” Luc said, “since the sexual harassment has already started, I assume you’ve recognized that we have a special guest. In two weeks, we’ll be evaluating you on your katana skills, memory of the Katas, ability to execute the moves. In lieu of kicking each other’s asses, enjoyable as that would be for me, Catcher Bell”—he inclined his head in Catcher’s direction—“a former Keeper of the Keys, is going to show you how it’s done. As Cadogan guards, and under my auspicious leadership, you are, of course, the best of the best, but he’ll make you better.”

“
Top Gun
,” I whispered to Lindsey. We’d started pointing out Luc’s ubiquitous pop culture references, having decided that because he cut his fangs in the Wild West, he’d been entranced by movies and television. You know, because living in a society of magically enhanced vampires didn’t require enough willing suspension of disbelief.

“He’s no longer a member of the Order,” Luc told us, “but a civilian, so no need to salute him.” Luc chuckled to himself, apparently amused by the throw-in. A couple of the guards laughed for effect, but mostly we groaned.

Lindsey leaned over. “You called it. Nice ass,” she whispered, “but original, he ain’t.”

I was proud that Luc at least rated a “nice ass.”

Catcher stepped forward, and the gravity of his gaze—which landed consecutively on each of us—shut down the snark immediately.

“You can jump,” he said, “but you cannot fly. You live at
night, because you cannot stand the sun. You are immortal, but a splinter of wood, carefully placed, will reduce you to ashes.” The room went noticeably silent. He walked to the end of the line, began slowly pacing back. “You have been hunted. You have been exterminated. You have lived, hidden, for thousands of years. Because, like humans, like the rest of us, you have weaknesses.”

He raised his katana, and I blinked as the blade caught the light, gleamed. He stopped in front of Peter. “But you fight with honor. You fight with steel.”

He took another step, stopped in front of Juliet. “You are stronger.”

Another step, and he was before Lindsey. “You are faster.”

He paused before me. “You are more than you were.”

My skin pebbled with goose bumps.

“Lesson number one,” he said. “This is not
swordplay
. Call it that around me and risk the consequences. Lesson number two. You’ve been lucky so far—you’ve had peace for nearly a century, at least amongst the Houses, but that’s gonna change. Celina’s out, Celina’s narcissistic, and Celina, maybe now, maybe later, will do damage if she can.” Catcher tapped a finger against the side of his head. “That’s the way she operates.”

He lifted his katana, held it horizontally before him. “This is your weapon, your safety net, your life. This is not a toy,
capiche
?”

We nodded collectively.

Catcher turned, walked to another edge of the mat, and picked up the sheath for his katana. He sheathed the blade, then grabbed two
bokken
—wooden training swords that roughly echoed the shape and weight of the katanas—and came back again. He spun one
bokken
in his hand, as if adjusting to its weight. The second, he pointed at me. “Let’s go, Sunshine.”

Damn, I thought, not eager to be the focus of Catcher’s lesson,
especially in front of an audience, but I stood up and unbelted my own katana, then bowed respectfully before stepping into the middle of the mat. Catcher handed me the extra
bokken
.

“The next time we do this,” he told the band of guards, who all looked a little too eager to watch me fight, “we do it blindfolded. Your senses are all good enough that you should be able to fend off an attack even without your visual acuity. But today”—Catcher bladed his body, one foot before the other, knees bent, both hands around the handle of his sword—“you may use your eyes. Standing position,” he ordered, indicating that I could defend his attack without having to rise and act out the unsheathing of my sword.

I mirrored his stance, two sword lengths between us,
bokken
raised over our heads.

“First Kata,” he said, just before striking down in front of me. My muscles clenched beneath the breeze of the slicing wood, but he didn’t touch me. I responded with my own downward slice, my movements smooth and fluid. I was no Master, but I was comfortable enough with the Katas, the building blocks of katana sparring. It was the same idea as basic ballet positions—you learn the fundamentals, and the fundamentals give you the working knowledge necessary for more-complicated moves.

When we’d completed the first Kata, we went back to our starting position, then worked through the remaining six. He seemed generally pleased with my work, at one point stepping back and making me repeat the final three Katas against an invisible opponent to check my form. He was an exacting teacher, with comments about the angle of my spine, the placement of my fingers around the handle, whether my weight was appropriately distributed. When we were done, and after he’d made comments to the group, he turned back to me.

“Now we spar,” he said, eyebrows arched in challenge.

My stomach sank. It was easy enough to hide multiple vampire
personalities when I was wearing fancy clothes or walking around the block. It was going to be a lot harder in the middle of a sparring round when a wooden sword was being aimed at my head. That was just the kind of thing that got
her
attention.

I blew out a breath and bladed my body again, my sword before me. I wiggled my fingers, adjusting their positions on the blade, trying to keep my heart from racing in anticipation of the coming battle.

No. Correction: battles.

Between me and Catcher, and between me and
her
. The vampire inside.

“Ready. Set. Fight,” Catcher said, and attacked.

He came at me with his arms raised, and brought the katana down in a clean, straight slice. I pivoted out of the way, bringing my own sword horizontal and swinging it around in a move that would have sliced his belly open. But for a human, Catcher was fast, not to mention nimble. He spun around in the air, his body at an angle, and avoided the slice of my
bokken
.

I was so impressed with the move—it looked like something Gene Kelly might have done, it was his brand of defying gravity—that I dropped my guard.

In that instant, he nailed me.

Catcher followed through with the spin, a full 360-degree turn, and brought his own
bokken
, the inertia of his body weight behind it, across my left arm.

Pain exploded. I threw out a curse and clenched my eyes against the pain.

“Never drop your guard,” Catcher unrepentantly warned. I looked up, found him back in the starting position,
bokken
bladed. “And never take your eyes off an assailant.” He bobbed his head at me. “You’ll heal, and you’ll probably have worse injuries than that when it’s all said and done. Let’s go again.”