Chapter 12 #2
"Get. UP," Sydney shouted into her face. She was bent at the waist, screaming at Kiera, and around Kiera her friends became restive, starting to shift, to look at each other, and to look pleadingly at Kiera.
Sorry, she thought at them. I can't do this.
With a studied calm she didn't feel, Kiera looked Syd in the eye and said, "I'm not in your seat.
There's no assigned seating and we were here first tonight.
If you want to be by this fireplace, we can shift our chairs to make room.
" She subtly underscored "our chairs," which was probably her mistake.
Because before she could get to the next part, If you'd like to join us which she didn't even want Sydney to take her up on, the other woman had yanked her out of the chair by the t-shirt she wore and was snarling into her face as she dragged Kiera closer.
"I didn't ask for your opinion."
"Good," Kiera said, and hated that her voice shook. "I wasn't giving you my opinion."
Sydney's eyes were wide, the rage inside them so evident and so mixed with crazy that only someone as seriously crazy as she was – or maybe as Kiera was quickly becoming – would have kept going.
Kiera kept going.
"That wasn't opinion. It was fact. We can sit anywhere. So can you. If you want this chair that badly, ask me nicely. Maybe I'm too warm over here. Maybe I'll move. Maybe I'd move just to be nice."
Sydney was looking at her like Kiera was speaking Martian. And abruptly she didn't care what Syd understood or didn't, or whether the girl was borderline and mentally ill. She was cold now, tired, angry and tired of being scared.
"Or if you're totally incapable of understanding an olive branch when it's extended to you – or even what the expression means, I guess – then fuck you, Sydney. Go away. We don't want you here."
The blow came out of nowhere. Kiera hadn't considered that a human being could move that fast, but Sydney was motivated.
It was a roundhouse punch, something Kiera should have blocked in her sleep.
She had never taken a martial art but her brother had and he'd evolved along the belt rankings, teaching Kiera along the way without intending to.
He had first used her as a target, theory being that he would stop each kick or punch just short of making contact.
Theory sucked, but Kiera learned to take a punch. She didn't like taking punches, though, so she learned how to block.
Once she learned to block, William realized it might be more fun to spar than to just have an unmoving target.
He began sparring with her and Kiera, after complaining to her mother, who was busy, and her father, who didn't think it a bad idea Kiera learn some ways to fight, began sparring in response.
She never joined a class or dojang, never got a belt, never picked a style, never even wanted to do any of those things.
But because William didn't necessarily rein himself in when he sparred with her and definitely didn't manage to control every punch when she was a target, Kiera learned to roll with the punches which, apparently, was one of those clichés based in truth.
She also learned not only how to block.
But how to punch.
The roundhouse Sydney threw came from the left, because Sydney was left handed. An advantage for sneak attacks or even just getting punches in, because the majority of people anybody fought were right handed.
The punch connected with her temple on the left side and Kiera felt that initial bee sting of shock, the slapped feeling of adrenaline breaking all at once, and she rolled with the punch, the instant she felt the pain start up.
She let the blow drive her down to her right, her energy collecting as she absorbed the blow and came back, using Sydney's energy against her.
She came up pistoning her right fist, not a roundhouse like Syd's that the other girl might have blocked if she had any kind of training, but a straight, fast punch the way William had taught her.
Her fist flashed out, connected, snapped back to her side and both hands were up in defensive position.
Sydney didn't bother with another punch.
She launched herself at Kiera, going all in, scratching, grabbing for hair, screaming as if she were the one being flayed alive while Kiera did nothing to attack but backed up, held her ground, gave ground, held her ground, blocked, blocked, tried to control.
And when the attack didn't wane, when Sydney kept screaming and coming at her and when it became evident that the lot of them could kill each other on this floor for all any kind of Vampyren intercession was going to take place, she hit Syd one more time.
She dropped her to the ground.
Sydney screamed, holding her broken nose. Blood spurted and the crowd around them, Kiera's roommates who'd been trying to stop it and Syd's crew who'd been trying to egg it on, all backed up hurriedly.
Now there was the sound of pounding, the footsteps outside their floor on the metal fire escape stairs, the sound of the matron startled up from her deep snoring sleep, the women who hadn't been in the common room, all of them running.
Kiera was grabbed from behind, her hands restrained, arms through hers and behind her back, half Nelson even after her hands were zip tied and she shouted, "I'm not resisting you!" but that didn't stop it.
Sydney was pulled up by hair and back of shirt, dangled so her blood dripped straight down, not splattering any of the Vampyren who stood around them.
The bored looking guard studied Kiera for a second, gave even less consideration to Sydney, and said, "Kill them. Make the others watch. I don't want a repeat."
Kiera's breath left her in a rush, like she'd been punched. Her heart beat so hard and so fast and so out of control she guessed she'd have a heart attack before they could do anything at all to her.
One guard, standing behind the shift leader, put a hand up to stop the one beside him. "She's Prince Loren's, leader."
There was a snort of disgust from the guard leader and he turned back, his glare going equally to both Sydney and Kiera.
"Which one?"
She'd never been on this side of prejudice, but she'd been at the council meeting with Loren and so had this guard.
She remembered him, from the fullness of his beard to the new ring he had pierced in his ear, as if he'd come to Earth, found one thing he liked, attained it and now was ready to go back to spreading joy through the Universe.
She hadn't liked him then, either.
"I am," she said. Her head ached fiercely and she wanted to kick the Vampyren guards for being useless when they were actually needed. If everyone here was such prime breeding stock, why the hell didn't they take care of them?
"I am!" Sydney shouted from the floor.
Kiera thought the leader looked ready to shoot them both and let Loren complain if he liked, but instead he looked at the guards, who looked as flustered as men their size could.
Michelle, unexpectedly, stepped forward. Her voice shook, but she identified Kiera and girl after girl then did the same.
Up to and including Sydney's crew.
The leader looked at Kiera like he was trying to figure out why there was any kind of fuss about her, then he nodded and said to the other guards, "Kill the one on the floor. Burn the body."
And he was out of the room before the gunshot finished echoing.