Chapter Four #2
Eli Younger was Alex’s older brother and both had been uncles to us when we were young: Uncle Alex and Uncle Eli.
But Eli had changed when we left the queen’s household, and not simply because he was the no-longer-human guy in charge of overall security for the queen’s house and grounds, training, her armory, the queen herself, her extended clans, family, and friends, and was known to one and all as the queen’s right hand.
In the years since I was known as Angie Baby, Alex had become a hardass.
Eli had become a block of stone masquerading as a biological entity. The war had damaged them both.
EJ and Walter went through the move several times and then began to refine it for when an opponent was in a slightly different position, or heavier, or shorter.
Adding a thumb into an eye. A fist to a temple.
And then they began to work through how to defend against the move.
It wasn’t popcorn-worthy. But it was entertaining, especially when they went back at it, sparring move for move, block for punch, at full speed and strength for EJ and a fair portion for Walter.
After half an hour, EJ held up both hands and backed away, breathing as if he’d just been used as a boxing bag.
My brother was surely covered with bruises.
Walter dropped to the floor and lay there, needing to breathe, a rarity for the vamp.
His heart must have actually beaten a few times during the match.
Walter’s sparring matches were always intense, sometimes leaving EJ or me needing to be healed by vampire blood, which was a much faster method than using healing amulets. Though Walter on the floor was a new one.
I couldn’t help myself. I dropped my workings and clapped. Slowly. Conveying both sarcasm and amusement. “Good work, children. You look like you both need a medical center.”
“I think I’m dying,” EJ gasped. He bent forward and held himself upright by putting all his upper body weight on his hands, braced on his knees.
“Scoot out of the way,” I said to my brother.
“Now that Walter’s all warmed up, I may as well get in some sword practice.
” I strode across the room while a soft voice inside my brain suggested this course of action wasn’t exactly wise, considering my mood.
I ignored it. Royal protocol and royal restrictions were in my life again and I didn’t like it.
I couldn’t go dance, so I’d fight instead.
From the weapons wall, I chose a wood waster and tossed it at the vampire.
From his place on the floor, Walter snagged it out of the air, vamp-fast.
Wasters were shaped like swords and would leave bruises and break bones but would seldom kill, unless they were used for blows to the neck or head. Anything above the shoulders or to the groin was off-limits in practice matches.
I walked toward the vampire, taking a two-hand grip on my own wooden weapon, one built to mimic the weight and balance of a bastard sword.
I liked bastard swords, I liked sparring with Walter and, despite my better judgment and dislike of having a one-man protection detail forced on me, I liked Walter himself.
Not that I ever told him so, after that one attempt to be friendly.
EJ had never once been interested in being Walter’s pal, but I was stupid enough to always want more from the people around me.
EJ stood slowly, moaning. “Oh, dear God,” he grunted. “That’s going to leave a bruise.”
“More than one,” I said, my eyes on the gorgeous vampire in front of me. Walter’s dark skin glistened, and his eyes had gone bright and amused.
“Go get an ice bath, kiddo,” I said to my brother.
“I thought you were going to yoga,” EJ said.
“Tried it. I need more tonight.”
“Ice bath, Evan Junior,” Walter commanded, his eyes never leaving me.
I grinned, showing teeth. It was a vampire challenge, even when a human with no fangs did it.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m going,” EJ said.
I watched both Walter and EJ as my brother limped to the kitchen and poured ice from the large-capacity ice maker into a ten-gallon bucket.
The ice pulled him into an unnatural position, but he didn’t look totally incapacitated as he limped into the gym’s recuperation area.
That space consisted of a single ice tub, a two-person hot tub, a small steam room, and individual bathrooms, each with a shower stall, sink, and toilet, and enough space to change clothes.
EJ closed the door on us, leaving us alone.
Walter assessed my face, rolled to his feet, and assumed a stance similar to mine. He gripped his weapon. “Bastard swords for three rounds,” he said.
“I nearly beat you with my bastard last time,” I warned with a taunting smile. “You nearly lost your cojones.”
“Nearly doesn’t count in battle, Little Angelina.”
Walter attacked.
The clack of his waster against mine echoed off the bare walls.
Lunge, cut, cut, cut, lunge, block, block, block.
Clacks echoed, overlaying each other. Faster.
I let myself fall into the rhythm of fighting.
Ignored the strain on my wrist, hands, and shoulders from the torque of my moves, the concussion of his parries, my body balanced and feet spread a little wider apart than was standard.
“Touch,” I said, landing a blow on Walter’s side. I danced back. Lifted my sword in salute.
“Touch for a Mithran vampire. Mortal blow on a human,” Walter said, saluting me back.
“Not fighting a human,” I said. “Fighting a bloodsucker with an agenda.” Without waiting, I attacked again.
He blocked my attack and danced back, then forward. “Bloodsuckers with agendas are deadly creatures. Beware.” Ten seconds in, he lunged.
My breath shot out as a groan. My gut exploded in pain. A quarter inch deeper and I’d have needed surgery to repair a damaged abdominal wall. I managed to inhale, though it hurt like a dump truck had crushed me into a brick wall.
Between one heartbeat and the next, the world opened out to me: magic, energy, light everywhere.
Exhaling, my magic flowed through me. With that breath, bright swirls of color traced along my limbs and churned in my core like small cyclones full of lightning and deadly winds.
Battle magic. Almost impossible to access, unpredictable, volatile, capricious as storm winds.
I didn’t fight the magic down as I should have.
Instead, I used part of the power to stop the bleeding in my bruised stomach, used it to lessen the pain, took the power into me, much like the way a knight took the reins that guided a war-horse.
I inhaled, feeling the power dance a little before it settled.
Weapon down, I shook out my shoulders and arms. This was dangerous. If I lost control of battle magic in a sparring bout, that would be bad. I had given in to it only once and I had been deadly, flawlessly brutal, a precise, vicious, killing machine.
Amused, Walter said, “Death blow.”
I met Walter’s dark eyes.
“I see,” he said, recognizing what had happened. “Finally. Under control?” he asked.
“Yeah. Need a sec.” I saddled the magic, controlled it, pulled it tight inside me. Reset my grip. My magic settled into me. It felt as if I were riding a dragon. “Yeah,” I repeated.
Walter and I had been working for years to bring my battle magic to the surface so I could learn to use it safely.
I had made some progress. Not enough. When it rose, people died.
That made me loath to draw it into me. My battle magic appeared at haphazard times, and not always when I needed it most. It—I—was dangerous, undependable, and unpredictable.
The one certainty was my precognition. It always sharpened, whetted by and merging with the battle magic, giving me a split second before an opponent acted.
We saluted each other.
Walter attacked. Two moves in, I ducked under his sword and rammed the hilt of my waster into his spine, whirled, and landed a cut beneath his left arm.
The wood edge hit so hard it bent his body.
With a pirouette, I slammed my wooden waster sword into the side of his neck.
Halted the cut before I damaged him. “Death blow.”
My magic wanted to keep fighting. I backed away. Held it close.
“If you could make a working from your fighting magic,” Walter said, “you would make millions.”
“Or Uncle Sam would disappear me into a lab and take it.” I didn’t quite sound like myself, my voice hollow and heavy inside my chest. “Millions would die. Hard pass.”
“Another round,” he ordered.
We bowed to each other.
Walter won that one by landing a blow that would have amputated my arm had his blade been steel. I was working the feeling back into my arm, riding the magic into submission, when he said, “Two swords and the proper Mithran forms of La Verdadera Destreza techniques.”
EJ and I were proficient in several different sword fighting disciplines, as was Walter, and part of his job was to keep us proficient and battle ready. I detested La Destreza, but I knew the futility of arguing and the necessity of practicing while I was riding my magic.
We walked to the sword rack, and each chose the paired wooden swords we preferred, the wooden weapon sets made by a guy Walter knew “in the hills.” EJ and I had never met the woodworker. Like all vampires, Walter kept his secrets.
Typical wooden Judoka were used for training in kenjutsu—the various cuts and blocks in Japanese sword fighting. The vampire version of La Destreza was always evolving, and these days had incorporated techniques from the Spanish, French, and kenjutsu, requiring the unusual Judoka we used.
Each Mithran Judoka consisted of one longsword that was a little shorter than a katana, called a bokken, and one shortsword, shaped like a vamp-killer, a curved long-bladed knife meant to be used for close-in work to disable vamps and behead them.
Walter called it a tanto, though it wasn’t a typical tanto.