IN WHICH OUR HEROINE IS SENT TO THE PRINCIPAL'S OFFICE
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."
I muttered a choice curse about "my assailant," but bladed my body again and adjusted my grip on the handle of the bokken. My biceps throbbed, but I was a vampire; I'd heal.
It was part of our genetic deal.
He may not have been a vampire, but he was good. I was fast and strong, but I didn't have either his natural knack or his experience at sparring. I was also injured. And I was trying, as hard as I could, to fight without fighting. To tamp down that coursing rush of adrenaline and anger that would bring her to the surface - in front of a crowd of combat-trained vampires. And loosing a half-formed vampire into the world, and in front of an audience, couldn't be a good thing.
But it was a tough line to walk.
As a newbie vamp, and a former grad student at that, I was still just reacting to whatever Catcher threw at me: spinning to get out of the way or slashing my own sword down when he failed to block rather than carrying out my own plan of attack. He was moving too quickly for me to both react defensively and take offensive strikes of my own, although I tried. I tried to analyze his moves, tried to watch for weaknesses.
The longer we sparred, the harder that analysis became.
With each arc of my bokken, each slash and spin, my limbs loosened and my mind relaxed, and I began to fight back.
Unfortunately, the second I began to really fight back, to let the adrenaline rush me and let my body dance with the bokken in my hands, the vampire inside began to scream for release.
As I spun, bokken before me, she stretched through my limbs, and my eyes fluttered with the sensation of it, like warmth spilling through my veins as she moved. The warmth was fun enough - it was hard to come by in a vampiric body - but then she went a step too far.
Without warning, she pushed forward and took control, as if someone else had stepped inside my body. I watched events play out before me, but it was she that moved my arms, that prompted my sudden speed and agility. Speed and agility that were unmatched even by a sorcerer whose expertise, whose magical raison d'etre, was weaponry.
She had little patience for the maneuverings of a human. Where I'd fought defensively, she advanced, slashing at Catcher and forcing him around and backward nearly to the other edge of the mat. It played out like a movie before me, as if I were sitting in a theater in my mind, watching the fight happen.
When my bokken grazed the side of Catcher's head, millimeters away from skull and scalp, the thought that I might have hurt him, and severely, pushed me - pushed Merit -
back through. I blew out a breath as I spun away from another strike, forcing her back again.
When I'd sucked down oxygen and glanced back at him again, I found something unexpected in his eyes. Not reprobation.
Pride.
There was no fear that I'd nearly taken a swipe at his throat, no anger that I'd gone too far. Instead, his eyes shone with the thrill of a man in battle.
I think that look was almost worse. It thrilled her, that pride, that eagerness in his eyes.
It terrified me. I'd momentarily loosed her, and I'd nearly concussed my training master.
That math was pretty simple - the vampire was going to stay repressed.
Unfortunately, although repressing the vamp decreased the chance that Catcher would lose a vital appendage, it also decreased my ability to keep up with him. Just like Yeats predicted, things began to fall apart. The parts of my brain that had been focused on fighting back and keeping her down now also had to think about how close I'd come to taking his blood, to battering the man who was trying to prepare me for combat.
And expert in the Second Key or not, Catcher was tiring. He knew how to use the weapons, sure. How to and where to swing his bokken for maximum effect. But he was still human (or so I assumed), and I was a vampire. I had more endurance. What I didn't have - when I was struggling to keep myself together - was any skill at sparring. Which meant that even if he was tiring, I was getting worse. I endured his criticism, humiliating as it was. But the shots were harder to take.
Twice, he swung his bokken around in a kind of halfhearted arc. Twice, I got whapped with it. Once across my left arm - which still burned from the last contact - and once across the back of my calves - a shot that put me on my knees in front of my colleagues.
"Get up," Catcher said, motioning with the tip of his bokken. "And this time, at least try to move out of the way?"
"I am trying," I muttered, rising off my knees and blading my body again.
"You know," Catcher said, slicing forward with the bokken in a series of moves that backed me to the opposite side of the mat. "Celina isn't going to give you a chance to warm up. She isn't going to pull her punches. And she's not going to wait while you call for backup."
He half turned, then brought the bokken around in a sweeping move like a backhanded tennis shot.
"I'm doing," I said as I avoided one strike and tried to maneuver my way back to the near side of the room, "the best" - I swung my katana, but he stopped it with his own steel - "that I can."
"That's not good enough," he bellowed, and met my bokken with a two-handed strike that whipped the wood from my sweaty hands. As if embarrassed by my clumsiness, the bokken flew, bounced on the mat once, twice, and finally came to a rolling stop.
The room went silent.
I risked a glance up. Catcher stood in front of me, bokken in one hand, skin damp from his exertions, bewilderment in his expression.
I wasn't interested in answering the question in his eyes, so I bent over, hands on my knees, my own breathing labored. I wiped sweaty bangs from my face.
"Pick it up," he directed, "and give it to Juliet."
I walked over to where the bokken lay, bent down and picked it up. Juliet stepped forward, and after a sympathetic glance, took it from my hand. Assuming I'd been dismissed, I turned away and rubbed sweat from my eyes.
But Catcher called my name, and I glanced back to meet his gaze once again. He searched my eyes, scanning my irises in a preternatural way I'd come to expect of the answer-seeking sorcerer. Seconds passed before his focus sharpened and he was looking at me again, instead of through me. "Is there anything you need to tell me?"
My pulse pounded in my ears. He had forgotten, apparently, that we'd broached the subject before, that I'd tried to talk to him about my malfunctioning vampire. I was more than happy to keep it that way. I shook my head.
I could tell he wasn't satisfied by that, but he looked at Juliet and prepared to fight.
Catcher worked Juliet through the same seven katas, her moves practiced and precise, the daintiness of her form belying her skill at wielding the lengthy weapon. When he was done with her, he asked us for critiques. The guards, at first with trepidation and then with confidence, offered their observations of her performance. Generally, folks were impressed, thinking that an enemy's underestimation of her slight form would work to her advantage.
Peter was also given a workout before Catcher called the session to an end. He ended with a few parting comments and generally avoided eye contact with me, before shaking Luc's hand, pulling on a T-shirt, grabbing his weapons, and leaving the room.
I gathered my sword and stepped into my flip-flops, intent on catching a post-training shower. Lindsey walked over and put a hand on my arm as she toed into her shoes.
"You all right?" she asked.
"We'll see," I whispered back as Luc crooked his finger at me.
"Ethan's office," was all he said when I reached him. But given the irritation in his voice, that was plenty.
"Should I shower first? Or change?"
"Upstairs, Merit."
I nodded again. I wasn't entirely sure what I'd done to deserve a visit to the principal's office, but I was assuming my performance during training had something to do with it.
Either they'd been impressed by the minute or two I'd allowed the vampire to take control, or they'd been unimpressed by the rest of it. Or, given the shots I'd taken and the fact that I'd actually dropped the bokken, actually offended by it. Either way, Catcher and Luc would have had questions, and I assumed those questions had been sent upstairs.
Scabbard in hand, I trotted up to the first floor and headed for Ethan's office, then knocked when I reached the closed door.
"In," he said.
I cracked the door and found him seated at his desk, hands clasped together on the desktop, gaze on me as I entered. That was a first. It was usually the paperwork that had his attention, not the vampire at the door.
I shut the door behind me and stood before him, stomach fluttering with nerves.
Ethan made me stand there for a good minute, maybe two, before speaking. "Word travels."
"Word?" I asked.
"Merit," he began, "you stand Sentinel for this House." He looked at me expectantly, eyebrows raised.
"That's what I hear," I dryly responded.
"My expectation," he continued without comment, "the expectation of this House, is that when you are asked to improve your skills, to strengthen your abilities, you do so. Upon request. Whenever you are asked, whether during your one-on-one training or in front of your colleagues."
He paused, apparently expecting an answer.
I just looked back at him. I could admit that I looked sloppy out there. But if they'd known the workout I was putting myself through, I guarantee they'd have been impressed.
"We've talked about this," he continued. "I need - we need - a functioning Sentinel in this House. We need a soldier, someone who will put out the effort that is required of her, whose dedication to this House does not falter, whose effort and attention are always given. We need a vampire who gives of herself, entirely, to this cause." He adjusted a silver stapler on his desk, aligning it with the silver tape dispenser it sat next to.
"I would have thought, given the fact that we'd trusted you with respect to the Breckenridges, the raves, that you understood this. That you wouldn't need an elementary lecture regarding the level of your effort."
I looked at him, managed not to offer up the bruise that had blossomed on my left arm - fading but not yet gone - as obvious evidence of my effort. Of my concerted exercise in self-control.
"Am I making myself clear?"
Standing there before him, sweaty in my workout gear, sheathed katana in my hand, I figured I had three choices. I could argue with him, tell him I'd worked my ass off (all evidence to the contrary), which would probably prompt questions I didn't want to answer. Or, I could come clean, tell him about my half-baked vampire problem, and wait to be handed over to the GP for handling.
No, thank you. I opted for choice number three.
"Liege," I acknowledged.
That was all I said. Although I had things to say about his own trust issues, I let him make his point, and I got to keep my secret.
Ethan looked at me for a long, quiet moment before lowering his eyes and scanning the documents on his desk. The knots in my shoulders loosened.
"Dismissed," he said, without glancing up again.
I let myself out.
Once upstairs again, I showered and donned clothes that were decidedly not within the Cadogan dress code - my favorite pair of jeans and a short-sleeved, long- waistedred top with an off-center scooped neck. I had a date with Morgan and a not-going-that-faraway party for Mallory to attend. The neck-revealing top was very appropriate for a date with the vampire boyfriend.
I applied gloss and mascara and blush, left my hair down around my shoulders, slipped into square-toed, red ballet flats, then grabbed my beeper and sword - both required accessories for House guards - and locked my room behind me. I walked down the second-floor hall and rounded the corner.
As I took the stairs, I lifted my gaze from the treads to the boy ascending the other side.
It was Ethan, suit jacket over one arm.
His expression showed a kind of vague male interest, as if he hadn't yet recognized exactly whom he was checking out. Given the change from sweaty, post-workout Merit to pre-date Merit, not surprising that he didn't recognize me.
But as we passed, when he realized it was me, his eyes widened. And there was an incredibly satisfying hitch in his step.
I bit back a smile and kept walking. As I strolled through the first floor and out the front door, I probably looked unconcerned.
But I knew I'd always remember that little hitch.
