Аманда Хокинг - Wisdom

Getting drunk off human blood and using living beings to do it didn’t sit well with me.

I turned to head out when Olivia spotted me. She’d been on the far side of the room, lounging on a faux bearskin rug. Before I made my escape, she called my name and scrambled to her feet, nearly tripping over someone in her race to stop me.

“Alice! I’ve been waiting for you!” She ran to greet me, and she didn’t seem drunk at all. If she had been, I would’ve left right then and there.

“Yeah, I can tell.” I scanned the room, looking as disapproving as possible.

“I would’ve called you, but you know how I feel about cell phones.” Olivia waved her fingers dismissively. “I’ve found someone for you train with.”

“Can I come back tomorrow to meet them?” I asked.

The room filled with the fresh scent of blood, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a vampire bite into a guy’s neck.

“You’re already here.” Olivia put her hand on my arm. I could pull away, but I sighed and decided against it. “Shall we go to the roof?”

I followed Olivia up the stairwell to the roof, and she whistled Ode to Joy. Olivia pushed the door open to the roof, and the blast of icy winter air filled the stairwell. When we reached the roof, I saw Violet at the edge of the roof, admiring the view.

“What the hell is she doing here?” I froze.

“She’s going to train with you,” Olivia smiled.

“She can’t…” I wanted to pull Olivia aside but Violet had already seen us. “This is highly inappropriate, Olivia.”

“Nonsense.” Olivia brushed off my concern. “Violet and I were talking, and she’s had to master a lot living on the streets. We had a practice fight today, and she’s good. She’ll give you a taste of what fighting a real vampire would be like.”

“But Olivia-” I started but she cut me off.

“You needed more help than I could give,” she said simply.

“I know that I wanted to train, but I don’t ‘need’ help.” I watched Violet walk around the edge of the roof and pick up a long metal pipe, a part broken off an old antenna.

“Oh, but sweetheart, you do,” Olivia touched my arm. “You’ve got that draw to you, and I’ve seen it in a few vampires before. It always gets you in trouble.”

“Draw? What the hell does that mean?” I asked.

“It’s something in your blood. I don’t know why it happens, but I understand little of why things happen.” She looked at the cityscape. “You’re like a beacon of light, and other vampires are moths. Not all of them are affected as strongly as others, but we all feel it, to some extent.”

“What are you talking about?” I demanded.

“You sound ready for a fight,” Violet smirked and flipped the pipe over her shoulders, moving like a ninja with a bo stick.

“No, I’m not,” I shook my head. “I just wanna know what she’s talking about.”

“Train with her.” Olivia gave me a serious look. “She’s better than I am.”

“Are you ready?” Violet asked, even though I clearly wasn’t.

Olivia backed towards the stairs, and I took a step after her. When I did that, Violet appeared next to me, flicking the pipe in front of me so fast, it nearly hit me in the gut.

“What hell are you doing?” I asked.

“I wanna see what you can do.” She shrugged and flipped the pipe again. I bent backwards, as if doing the limbo, and nearly missed it striking me in the chin. “Nice reflexes.”

I heard the door swing shut, and I looked back to see that Olivia had gone downstairs. I broke my attention from Violet for a second, and the bo struck me hard across the head.

“Pay attention,” she commanded.

Once the blinding pain in my skull stopped, along with the tingling as the fresh gash healed, I growled and dove at her. I didn’t want to be training. I wanted to know what the hell Olivia meant, and I didn’t even really trust Violet. I tended to hate people that hit me in the head without warning.

When I lunged at her, she easily moved out of the way. I’d seen vampires move faster than her, like the lycan Stellan who’s speed was something that bordered on teleportation. But Violet had a quick grace that made me blink my eyes to be sure she was really gone.

Then she was behind me, nearly striking me in the back, so I leapt into the air, doing a back flip before landing on the roof. I’d actually never done that before, at least not reflexively. I wanted to take a second to admire how bad ass that was, but Violet charged at me again.

“It’s not fair that you have a weapon!” I shouted as she swung the rod out, trying to swipe out my legs, but I jumped up over it. She moved to stab at the air, so she’d hit me if I jumped again, and I dropped to the ground, lying flat on my belly.

“Who said life was fair?” Violet shot back, and I narrowly rolled out of the way. She drove the pipe into the roof, and if I hadn’t moved, she would’ve impaled me through the stomach. I leapt up to my feet and knew I had to launch a counter attack, or this would just keep going.

I ran to the edge, and she threw the pipe like a spear, aiming it so it would hit the center of my back. I ran forward and jumped up, landing with my feet on the railing at the edge of the building. I pushed off and leapt backwards, feeling the pipe as it grazed the back of my calf before soaring off the building.

I flipped backwards and stretched my feet out in front of me. Violet moved, so instead of my feet colliding with her head the way I’d hoped, I merely kicked her in the chest. I landed on her, but I didn’t even pin her down. She had me flipped over onto my back, one of her hands gripping my shoulders.

Raising my feet up, I pressed them into her stomach so I could push her off me. She moved her hand back in swift movement, grabbing something from the back of her jeans.

I started to kick her off, then I felt a sharp pain in my chest as she poked something in it.

I looked down and the saw the pointed edge of a titanium stake pressed above my heart, hard enough to stain my shirt with blood.

“What the hell do you want?” I asked, my breath coming out in rasps. Terrified adrenaline pulsed through me, but I wasn’t sure that I could get her off me before she drove the stake through my heart.

“I wanna make sure you don’t get caught off guard like this again.” Her violet eyes held mine, looking at me solemnly, then she got off me.

“What the fuck was that?” I jumped up, holding my hand over my heart. I had no serious injury, and the small wound would heal within minutes, but for a second there, I’d been certain she was gonna kill me.

“You’ve got good reflexes, and I think you have some real strength under there,” Violet said, ignoring my confusion and rage. She brushed the dirt off her clothes and smoothed out her shirt. “But you need to think more, be less impulsive. You need to plan out your attack. Have you ever played chess?”

“Once and I suck at it,” I said. “But you nearly killed me!”

“I didn’t come anywhere close to killing you.” She rolled her eyes. “If I really wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.”

“So what were you doing then? That’s not training! That’s like… attempted murder.” I fumbled for a biting comeback, but it didn’t faze her at all.

“I want you to remember that. What it felt like believing you would die. If you really feel it, really own how horrifying it is, you’ll make sure that you never feel that way again.”

Violet pointed at me using the stake, and that didn’t really make me feel any better.

“I already don’t want to die. I’ve been in shit before. I know what it’s like to fight your life,” I said. “You didn’t need to do that.”