Scarlet Night (Limited Edition) (17 page)

“
S
o what should our next step be? If we wait too long we may find ourselves too late to stop what’s coming.” Zane growled as he sat at the desk with Serena and Zoey. Zoey was quieter than usual—seeming preoccupied and distant to the business at hand—and he turned to her, pausing for a moment to wait for her attention to shift. When her vacant stare remained, he shook his head and moved on. Without being certain that something was wrong he wasn’t about to bombard her with questions.

Not yet anyway.

“We need to make a plan of action. Those damned dogs will be coming soon, I’m sure!” he shook his head, “Keith’s an impatient prick, and his hold over the mutts will only last so long before they turn on him too.”

Zoey’s eyes shifted at the mention of the therions and she sighed, nodding,
“Well, before we can do
anything
, Serena needs to be trained.”

“Hey! I can fight!” Serena glared and
ignored Devon as he chuckled inside her mind.

Zoey blushed and nodded, “It’s not that you’re not strong—nothing could be farther from the truth—but your methods
are
, while impressive, unconventional. It’d be better to put them to the test in the safety of a training course rather than in the middle of a battle when it can mean somebody’s life.”

Zane tur
ned to Serena and offered a gentle smile and she felt Devon’s anger flare up from his gaze. He clearly didn’t like the way Zane watched her. He was still fuming over his inability to protect her the other night from Keith and being forced to watch as the vampire-beast saved her instead.

Serena had been
right; she would need to find a body for him sooner than he thought. He wouldn’t be able to stand being nothing more than a shadow much longer.

He watched
Zane more carefully and grinned. Serena
did
seem drawn to him, and there was no denying that she’d liked it the one night when he’d taken control of him. Thinking of that night—the way Serena had felt under his stolen touch and her response to something other than his voice—he became more and more certain of what had to be done. While he was thankful for Serena’s loyalty to him, he knew it would only last so long before the need for something more drove her into the arms of another.

And
that
was something he would not allow!

“Zoey
is
right, Serena. Though you’re clearly very skilled, your combat approach is too chaotic. Somebody with Keith’s level of control and training would find an opening in your attacks too quickly. You’ll need to train more.” Zane nodded, standing and motioning for her to follow, “Let’s go.”

Still scowling over their words, Serena stood and stepped through the doors with him.

Catching up to Zane, they walked side-by-side in complete silence as she was led through the levels of the clan’s headquarters and, finally, into a large training room that occupied most of the building’s basement. Serena looked around at the immense room, taking in the white padded walls and racks adorned with weapons that seemed to stretch on endlessly. The array of blades and bludgeons, staffs and spears, and just about any fashion of axe she could hope to raise over her head for a killing blow brought a grin to her previously sunken face. The collection was a thing of dreams!

Well…
her
dreams, at least.

“I a
m
SO
not going easy on you!” She smirked and followed after him further inside the training room, “First moment I get, I’m taking off a finger!”

Zane raised an eyebrow and turn
ed his entire body to face her, “You sure you’re ready to spar against me? You may have got me the other night, but to be fair, it was never my intention to bring you in damaged. Now—with a med-staff handy and enough synthetic blood to heal anything not fatal—I have no reason to be gentle.”

“That’s fine with me!”
she turned away and scoffed, “I
like
it rough! Besides, how tough can you be? You
were
just injured and laid-out.”

He shrug
ged out of his shirt and smirked, his fangs already extended in excitement, “Don’t worry about that, little lady. I heal fast.”

Serena
took in the view, finally getting a good look at his tattoos in all their glory. Under the evenly-spaced and all-revealing lighting of the training center she could make out every intricate trace of the tribal patterns that covered most of his torso. A memory of her lips tracing the designs from the night Devon had possessed him surfaced and she bit her lip, suppressing it as fast as it came.

“Stay
focused! A distracted mind is a mind that’s eager to be destroyed! And I can already see that you are elsewhere! If your father taught me anything, it’s that you can’t let your emotions run rampant in the battlefield,” Zane scolded as he grabbed two sparring sticks and tossed one in her direction.

Serena glared and grabbed the staff in midair with her aura and drew it to her hand slowly as she dropped
into a fighting stance. Keeping the blunt tip of her weapon aimed at her opponent, she grinned at him, “what’s the matter; afraid to give me something sharp?”

“We wouldn’t want Daddy’s little girl to hurt herself on her first day of classes!”
Zane smirked and immediately charged her straight-on, holding his staff at one end and letting its length trail after him as he rocketed towards her. As the distance between them rapidly dwindled, he pivoted and went to swing at her; bringing the entire length around in a wide, hissing arc with all the momentum he had gathered.

Seeing his direct approach, Serena smirked and vanished. As the end of the staff broke through the air where she’d been standing a moment ago, he growled.

Of course the girl knew how to go into overdrive!

And that meant she would try to…

He brought the staff around and held it behind him—letting the length run parallel with his spine—in time to deflect Serena’s attempt to attack him from behind. The thunderous impact of the two weapons coming together filled the room and was quickly absorbed into the padding as Zane spun to face her.

But she was already gone again!

He smiled at her tenacity as he pushed himself into overdrive. As his vision shifted to accommodate the new speed, he spotted her as she sprinted in a semi-circle to try and take him from the side. Spinning around to deflect her attack and came in with the opposite end in an attempt to catch her behind her leading ankle, only to have her move that foot in time to avoid the strike…

… and drive it into his stomach.

The force from the kick was enough to knock him back, but Zane was able to stay both on his feet and in overdrive as she came at him again. As the vicious attacks continued, both held strong against the other, the combined force of their strikes straining the staffs and filling the room with a prolonged roar of supernatural battle. Another strike was thrown and blocked and both of the weapons gave out under the other’s force and as the wood tore apart their fragments and splinters froze in midair—frozen in the mortal time-stream while the two supernatural beings sparred—and hung there as if mocking their lost weapons. Neither of them deterred, they darted through the bits of wood with their fists balled and ready. Two punches landed simultaneously and the room slipped back into normal time as the two were knocked out of overdrive and across the room until they came crashing down onto the unforgiving hardwood floor.

Zane
groaned and rolled to his knees, struggling to stand up, and when he’d finally gotten to his feet, grabbing his shoulder in pain. Wincing from the contact, he glanced at the floor and let out a heavy sigh at the sight of the massive crack that he’d put there when he’d fallen; two perfect indents showing where his back and shoulders had broken through.

He silently thanked Gregori for his vast wealth and the assurance that the damage would be easily repaired.

The sound of metal straining caught his attention and he looked towards the opposite side of the room in time to see one of the weapon racks—loaded with a series of Oriental swords and daggers and cracked in half down the middle from Serena’s fall—start to come unhinged. As he watched the collection of weapons start to shift, he watched as a short sword slipped free and stabbed into the floor several inches from Serena’s head.

And the rest were sure to follow!

Growling, he fought through his own pain and dizziness and rushed towards her, pushing his already-drained body into overdrive and struggling to maintain the superhuman speed as the room slowed around him long enough for him to snatch her body from the floor and hurling them both out of range of the slew of razor-sharpness that rained down behind them.

Zane
groaned and blinked against his worn-out body’s blurring vision and saw Serena below him; pinned to the floor by his body.

Biting his lip at the compromising position, he hurried to pull
himself off of her, hopingthat she hadn’t gotten the wrong ide
a
or that he hadn’t done any damage in falling on top of he
r
. The sound of another crash reverberated in Zane’s ears and he gritted his teeth as a second wave of falling weapons rang out and startled Serena into an upright position; holding her chest and coughing as she tried to catch her breath.

Zane sighed; at least she was safe.

He dropped his head to look at her, she was breathing softly and her chest lifted and fell in slow breaths. He chewed his lip as he realized he was staring at her chest still and turned his attention to her face. Her dark bluish-purple gaze was pulled into his and he frowned, realizing he’d been caught. She smirked and licked her lips. Realizing he was being teased, Zane looked away and growled.

“Like what you see
?” She smirked.

“I was...
I was just trying to help you; to
save
your dumb ass from getting sliced to shit!” He glared, “And, for the record, no. I
don’t
like what I see! I prefer my women to have
tits
!”

Even filled with anger and embarrassment, h
is mismatched eyes were so beautiful. She’d caught him and he
knew
it; knew it and was
pissed
about it! She smiled to herself. She knew just how to get to him. Knew
exactly
what buttons to push.

Which worked to her benefit, because he was
hot
when he was angry.

While s
he’d known that her teasing would get him riled, she had not anticipated her own body’s response to his piercing gaze. Even then, in the midst of celebrating her own victory against his emotions, she felt tingles along the length of her arms at the memory of his stare.

Trying to move past her own thoughts, she dusted herself off and cleared her throat
; “so what the hell happened, anyway?” she asked, motioning to the condition of the room.

“A lot...” he turned his attention and pulled back, “an
d the expensive kind of ‘a lot’, at that,” he sighed, pushing his hair from his face.

She chuckled at all the damage and gave Zane a look,
“Blah blah blah! I see my father’s legacy lives on within you.” She sighed and stretched out, shaking her head, “Bastard
always
bitched and moaned about cost! ‘This costs this’! ‘That costs that’!” she growled, “Just another reason why I left in the first place. It was
all
that the old man could talk about; the only thing I’m sure he
thought
about! Well,
one
of the only things at least,” she added quietly.