Хлоя Нейл - Twice Bitten

Margot stuck out her tongue at Lindsey.

“You’d miss us terribly,” I reminded her. “And you’d miss Luc.”

She got quiet.

“I’m not responding to that,” she finally said.

Margot, Katherine, and I grinned at one another, figuring that was answer enough.

Ethan was already in the Sparring Room, already in his gi pants and a white jacket belted with a purple sash. He was barefoot in the middle of the tatami, unsheathed katana in hand, sparring with an invisible opponent. He thrust the sword behind him, then turned and pulled it back, wrenched it upward, and swung it around his head. When the sword was down again, he executed a butterfly kick, legs flying parallel to the ground, the tip of the sword following, a deadly punctuation to the move. He was fast enough that speed blurred his movements, making him a haze of white and gleaming steel amidst the antique weapons and wood of the room.

He was a thing to behold, was Ethan Sullivan.

He fought alone for two or three more minutes, then came to a stop on his knees, katana raised before him.

I pulled off my Cadogan T-shirt, then stood at the edge of the mat.

He lifted his verdant gaze to me, and we stood there for a moment just watching each other.

Ethan shook his head. He rose to his feet, then moved toward me. “You have an audience, Sentinel,” he said by way of warning, as if there’d been a risk of my taking him right here on the Sparring Room floor. I humphed. I’d said no to him before. I could do it again.

But that didn’t mean I was thrilled to be on display again. I lifted my gaze to the balcony. It wasn’t as bad as an “audience”—only a dozen or so vampires in the seats—but that was a dozen more than I needed. “Awesome,” I muttered. I began to slip the katana from its scabbard, but he shook his head.

“No need to unsheath it. You won’t need your sword.”

I slid it home again, then looked at him in confusion. We were supposed to be picking up where Catcher and I left off. Since I clearly needed to work on my sparring technique, I had assumed that was where we’d pick up. Now I was just confused.

Ethan resheathed his own sword and placed it on the mat, then outstretched his hand. When I handed him my scabbard, he did the same to it. Then he stood again and tilted his head, gesturing to someone behind me. “Luc, if you please.”

I hadn’t realized Luc was in the room, so I turned around to say hello. But before I could find him, the lights went out—literally. The room was suddenly pitchblack.

“Ethan?”

“We’re working on a different skill today,” he said, his voice moving away.

I squeezed my eyes closed, hoping that would help me adjust to the darkness, then opened them again when I heard his footsteps move closer. Because I was a predator, my vision was better than it might have ordinarily been in the dark, but I still couldn’t see much.

That was how he caught me with a low kick that sent me sprawling across the mats.

“Sullivan! What the hell?” From my new spot on the floor, I blew the ponytail from my face and pushed up on my hands. I stood up, keeping my body bladed, my hands before me, my knees soft, in case he pounced again.

“You must learn, Sentinel, to anticipate.”

I rolled my eyes. The first time I’d fought him, he’d used all the Matrix moves. Now he was working Star Wars for techniques. He really did not have an original training thought in his head.

“And how do I anticipate?” I asked him.

“We’ve discussed your senses having improved after you completed the change.”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t know how good his vision was, but I wasn’t going to give away my position and give him another easy shot. Still, I could hear him moving around me, slinking around in a circle like a big cat preparing to attack.

“You’ve been working over the last week to tune out the ambient noise. To manage the increased sensitivity in your hearing, your sight, your smell. Certainly, that much awareness can be a distraction. But you are vampire. You must learn to utilize all your senses, to use that noise, that information, to your advantage.”

I heard the whip of his pants as he kicked. I ducked down just as the cotton whistled over my head.

Then I heard the pat of his feet when he touched down again.

“Good,” he said. “But don’t just defend. Fight back.”

I heard him pace away. I rose again and assumed the basic defensive position again. If I became a member of the Red Guard, was this how Ethan and I would find ourselves? Battling each other under cover of darkness? Not quite enemies, but not quite friends? I’d been putting off my decision about the Red Guard. It was probably time to give that some thought. . .

But not before I took this opportunity to kick his ass.

I heard him walk around me, circling again, waiting for his moment to strike. Could he hear as well as I could? Were the lights on for him, metaphorically, because he could detect my movements?

Well, either he could or he couldn’t. It didn’t matter; it was my turn to move. He circled counterclockwise, two or three feet behind me. I waited until he was at six o’clock, then shifted my weight, raised my left knee, and stuck out with a fierce back kick.

I might have hit him had he not completely anticipated the move and dropped down beneath my kick. By the time I’d made it around and brought down my kicking foot again, he was up and spinning out with a low roundhouse. I had no time to react, and just as he’d done the first time I challenged him, he knocked my feet right from under me.

I hit the mat again.

“Again,” he said into the darkness.

I silently mouthed a curse, but I got up again. This time, I didn’t wait for him to prepare. When I could hear him in front of me, I turned my hips and aimed a roundhouse kick at his head. I missed, but I heard him stumble backward, feet tripping across the mat as he dodged the move.

“So close,” I murmured.

“Too close,” he said back. “But that’s better. You’re listening for movement, which is good. But that’s not all you can do. Luc,” he said again, and my heart tripped a little, wondering what else he had in store. Binding my hands together? Flooding the room with water?

Luc answered back a second later, this time with sound. A cacophony of noise—barking, talking, screaming, honking, clanking, chirping—began to pour into the room. It was completely deafening, the bass loud enough that I felt the vibration in my bones, in my echoing heartbeat.

Ethan didn’t even give me a moment to adjust. He punched, but he’d misestimated my location, and his fist glanced off my shoulder. Of course, he was still a Master vampire, and the strike still hurt. Had I been closer to him, he’d have broken bone. I wondered if the sound was distracting to him, too.

A second later, he was in my head.

You cannot rely only on sound, he said. You must quiet the noise, be able to feel an enemy beside you, be able to fight even in utter darkness.

How am I supposed to learn that? I asked back, shifting my weight from front to back as I waited for him to strike again.

You are a nocturnal predator, he said. You don’t need to learn how. You just need to learn to trust yourself.

I was on my way there, I hoped.

I took a moment and closed my eyes. Technically, that was pointless, given the depth of the darkness in the room, but it helped psychologically, like I was actively working to shut out the din. My eyes closed, I focused on the noise and worked to build up my mental blockade.

But I didn’t have time to get it done. He was on me again. This time, he punched forward not to injure me, but to taunt. His fist hit my left shoulder, but before I could throw him off, he was gone. Then his heel hit my back—not with enough force to knock me down, but with enough force to push me. I stumbled forward, arms waving as I tried not to trip over my own feet.