“It’s not what I’m running from, its what I’m running to.”
“I don’t like the sound of that. Are you in trouble?”
“I’m not, but someone I loved once was… and I’m going to make sure it never happens again to anyone else.” Amelia replied determinedly walking over to a punching bag and pulling her hands up to prepare to go into another combination.
“If this is what I think it is, I’m not sure you’re ready. You and I have been working at this for three months, and while you are a dedicated and a fast learner, you’re only just now a little better than proficient. Don’t get me wrong, you’ve got potential, you can take any everyday hood by storm - but you’re not ready to take on any serious opponents. Besides, I’m obligated as your teacher to point out that I didn’t spend all this time teaching you so you could go out and waste your life on some vigilante quest.”
“It’s not a waste, it’s just something I have to do. So, I’m going to have to work with what I do have. I don’t have time like I did when I started this. If I’m going to go through with what I am planning, I’m going to have to make my move in the next few weeks.”
“Make it a month.”
“Why?”
Hitome sighed, “I’ll teach you wakizashi. Japanese short sword. We’ll spend our time left together training you in the style, so you have a better chance against whatever you’re fighting. Your work on your arms with the punching bag should give you power behind a sword swing - and if you’re going to insist on fighting it’s better to keep space between you and your opponent. Swords allow that.”
“Why would you do that?” Amelia asked warily.
“Because I like you - and I think you’re in over your head. But it seems you’re determined to go out and get yourself killed - and I want you to survive whatever comes next. Next week, on the day we would be here working the bag, meet in the dojo. I’ll bring the blades.”
Amelia smiled gratefully, “Maybe one day we can sit down for a drink, I’ll be able to tell you why this has all been so important. Thank you.”
Amelia showed to her first wakizashi lesson tense and excited, she bounced on her feet to stretch her calves and waited for Hitome. After a few minutes Hitome came in carrying silk wrapped bundles tied with ribbon. One was red and the other gold. She set them on the floor and looked to Amelia.
“First, respect your weapon. Take the red bundle and open it out. Memorize its weight, balance and feel. Introduce yourself to the blade that may be the only thing between you and an enemy one day.”
Amelia reverently bent and picked up the red bundle, then carefully slipped the blade from the crimson folds. Inside a sheath of black lacquer and gold inlay was revealed, the inlay was in the shape of a dragon curling around the sheath. The leather of the pommel was a wrap of red leather and marked with black braid. Oddly the sheath looked new - but the handle was slightly worn. “This almost looks freshly forged.”
Hitome smirked. “It’s actually 300 years old. I did tell you to take care of your sword so it would take care of you.”
“I couldn’t take such a blade - it’s an antique. I probably shouldn’t even be handling it. Isn’t there something cheaper - newer?” Amelia asked, chewing on her bottom lip.
Hitome shook her head, “Older forges were better at the layering process of Japanese steel. This is the best weapon for a real fight.”
“But surely this means alot to you - I couldn’t take your blade.”
Hitome unfurled the gold silk, baring a filigreed blade even more ornate. “Oh, that’s not my blade. This is my blade. It was a gift to a famous Diajmo in the 11th century. The one you hold was my training blade from my years in monistary - I feel better giving you a blade I know intimately myself than one I have not already learned.” Hitome pulled her sword from its sheath and gestured for Amelia to do so as well. “First lesson, defense,” she said holding the blade to shield her vulnerable points. “I want you to come at me, in any way you’d like, and you are to watch how I respond.”
Amelia pulled her blade free, a motif of flame burnished into the blade. She set the sheath down carefully and considered Hitome’s stance. Perhaps she could treat the sword like a stiletto knife. She waited until Hitome seemed to be confused by her immobile state then rushed her. Skidding down onto her knees she tried to cut her blade up at Hitome’s side as she passed underneath. Immediately Amelia popped up from her skid and went into a defense. Hitome loosened her stance and turned to look back at Amelia.
“You have experience already?”
Amelia shrugged but stayed tense for surprise attack.
“I would call your style more like street brawler with big blade - but we can work with that. Come at me again and this time I’ll go on the offensive as well. I want to see what you know and how you move. We’ll build from there. Now, come!”
The more Amelia followed Gianni, the more he made her ill. He was a cruel asshole, he killed and abused with a nasty smirk and twinkling eyes. Oh, he was a handsome devil. But his wavy chin length chestnut hair and almost delicate pretty looks hid a sociopath. Night after night, Amelia found herself tense with the need to step in on the bastard and protect those he preyed upon. But she knew, in hunting, it wasn’t about saving one person from a small injury. It was about taking the head off the snake to make sure it never bit again.
So she watched Gianni’s every move, a malicious shadow dogging his footsteps and memorizing his crimes. There would be a reckoning coming, and coming soon. Amelia comforted herself with this knowledge.
During the days, Amelia fought with Hitome or practiced wakizashi on her own, and every day she grew stronger and more able to control the weapon.
Amelia’s practice with the punching bag and work with weights actually had made wielding the sword easier, the weight of it was light in her hands. The yoga and martial arts gave a dancer’s smoothness to her already slight frame. Sparring with Hitome was never easy, but eventually Amelia started getting closer to winning every few matches.
Amelia learned through surveillance of the Italians that every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday night, Gianni went out to his biggest bareknuckle fight club with his favorite whore of the week - usually a scrawny underage teenager so frightened of him she would be shaking in her revealing scrap of sequins.
At the halfway point of every fight, he and his ‘lady’ always went out to have a snort of blow, and a bit of ‘fun’ in the alley behind the club. The poor girl cowered and sniffled through the whole thing. It was at this point that Amelia decided she would strike. For those fifteen minutes, Gianni was exposed and alone without anyone but his paramour - the best opportunity she was going to get.
At the close of Hitome’s month it was time, Amelia felt ready. She would go in on the following Wednesday night, and take Gianni on.
The day before Amelia was going to go after Gianni she practiced feverishly with Hitome. And at the end she finally fought Hitome to a solid stand off.
Hitome smiled as she lowered her sword and wiped the sweat from her face. “Ok, I think I feel better about letting you go off to do whatever this random act of vengeance is. At least with a sword you’ll be further out of reach from your opponent than if you were fighting hand to hand.”
“I didn’t say I was going for revenge.” Amelia said carefully.
“You didn’t have to,” smiled Hitome. “It was obvious. Just don’t keep going - one fight, kill the enemy - don’t try to be some half assed Katana figure.”
Amelia smiled and slumped to prop her hands on her knees. “Can I borrow this sword?”
“You can have it, it was given to me by my sensei when I first started training. But there is a condition. You must continue to practice, either with me or someone else. Because while I’m alright letting you go, you still need work, and I really would like to think I haven’t seen the last of you.”
Amelia smiled and sheathed the sword, “I promise to come back alive, Hitome.”
“You better.”
&nb
sp; Chapter 22
The night before her attack Amelia spent watching Kristoff. She sat across from his building on a roof, kicking the heels of her combat boots with her sword across her lap, sharpening it absently with a stone. Amelia wondered why he hadn’t seen her in all the time she’d stalked him. But she suspected there was a good chance he had known all along and just let her follow him around. He was probably figuring she was just a love sick puppy. Amelia smirked, Kristoff’s protective instincts had led him to underestimate her. He’d never know about her plans and subterfuge until after she’d taken out Gianni.
That night, when Kristoff went out to the clubs, Amelia left him early and went back to her apartment and trained. She would win this one and be that much closer to her sister’s revenge.
Amelia woke to her alarm at sunset and wrapped her hands and wrists with boxing tape, it wasn’t a set of leather vambraces, but it was better than nothing. She pulled on a pair of black skinny jeans and one of her black tank tops. But then she changed her mind.
Reaching underneath her pillow, she pulled out Kristoff’s shirt and held it to her nose, it still - just barley - smelt of him, she’d wear this for good luck. Next she strapped her sister’s hunting dagger to her thigh and the sword to her back. Finally, she covered it all up with her motorcycle jacket. She needed to be on the rooftop above Gianni’s club’s back door before the club opened.
The metro was teeming, everyone grouchy and tired from midweek blues. Amelia stood in the back of the car, leaning against the door to watch them. Could she have been one of them at one time? At first she’d thought so. Now she wasn’t as sure. No, she’d never be truly gifted at hunting, but she would train well enough to make it through. She had the drive to succeed - the hunger to push herself as hard as she could make her body go, and the need to take care of those unaware of the world parallel to them.
Amelia looked about at the faces around her, they would never know about the death lurking and stalking them at the borders of their eyesight. But she knew, and in knowing it became her responsibility - no matter how bad at it - to do something. Stuffing her hands into her pockets, Amelia broke away from her contemplative stare and waited for her stop. But when it came, she made sure to look at the faces surrounding her one more time.
She wasn’t just fighting for Mona, she fought for those living falsely secure lives around her so they would not become victims as well.
By the time Amelia reached her perch over the alley, Gianni’s thugs were starting to open up the club. She’d have several hours to wait before the first fight would start - and then longer until the fight would pause. Crouching on the top of the building beside the club Amelia watched in tense silence. Amelia knew the time would go by rapidly, and her nerves rushed through her body like a freight train sparking on its rails.
Amelia watched the mortals who came for the illegal fights surreptitiously filtering in. In the last weeks Amelia had broadened her definition of monsters from vampires to include certain humans. She wasn’t even sure - after seeing the bloodlust in some patrons’ eyes - that they weren’t one and the same anyway. Amelia watched them slither into the club with visceral disgust. Soon the sounds of the barker for the fight vibrated through the walls of the busted brick building announcing the main fight. Amelia tensed like a spring. Bouts in a fighting ring went quickly, and she had to be ready right when Gianni came from out of the alleyway door. She would have only a few minutes before his goons would be looking for him once she attacked. It had to be a quick kill.
Something she still wasn’t sure she could handle.
It seemed as if only seconds later, the half time bell rang, and Amelia crept to the edge of the roof and took ahold of the fire ladder. Suspended above the alley like a spider Amelia waited for the club door to open, let out Gianni, and close his thugs in. In the space of a breath he came out with his date staggering behind on sky high heels.
Amelia sucked in a breath and with a kick of her steel toes, Amelia she set the ladder loose, plummeting to the end of its latch the metal sparking as it went. She held on for dear life, then when the ladder came close to where it would be jerked to a stop, Amelia drew her sister’s blade and leapt down on top of Gianni in one move.
The moment she fell seemed suspended in time, seconds were frozen into hours, air solidified to heavy water. Amelia landed on Gianni and used her momentum to drop her sister’s dagger into his back. The young girl who had been with him screamed and went running off in her stilettos like a lame pony.
But Amelia realized in a single second that she’d made two fatal mistakes. One: She’d missed Gianni’s heart. And two: The girls’s scream would bring Gianni’s guards. As Amelia realized this, time resumed and Gianni reared back to fling her hard into the wall of the opposite side of the alley. Leaving the knife as a loss, Amelia reached behind her and drew her wakizashi. Immediately she took to her toes and pushed forward with a cutting swing of her sword at the approaching Gianni. But he just walked to the bleeding edge of the blade’s arc, side stepped her, stopped, and seemed to consider. Amelia dropped back into a crouch and then sprung to the ladder, used her grip as a pivot and kicked off the wall. She dove back at Gianna in his momentary pause. At the last moment he blurred across the alley and her wakizashi only caught his cheek.
Blood dripped from the thin slash as they eyed each other calculatingly. Gianni quickly wiped away any consideration with a smirk. As Amelia watched, the deep cut closed without a mark.
The moment clarified into a suspended breath as Gianni suddenly darted toward her in a smudged flash. Amelia raised the sword and waited for his attack. But in the distance she heard Gianni’s goons coming, called to the scene by the hysterical girl. Amelia tucked her body and rolled away from the vampire at the last second. She came up from her crouch behind Gianni, her classes at the dojo seeming to be well on their way to saving her life. When the vampire spun and went back at her, Amelia ducked and went for the underneath of Gianni’s chin, for a head shot. But Gianni grabbed the wrist holding her blade, just as the tip of the point penetrated his neck, and he grinned at her. Tossing her away one handed.
“Amelia Dagda, how unexpected. The failure of the Dagda clan.” Gianni taunted. Amelia rose to her feet. Amelia crouched and looked for an opening. Insultingly, Gianni stopped and crossed his arms over his chest thoughtfully. “You didn’t think this out very well, did you?” Amelia jumped on top of an old dumpster and balanced on it to look down at him. Gianni’s guards burst through the door of the club, ready to take her down.
Suddenly she realized she’d made a grave mistake - one she often lived by - she’d underestimated her opponent. Well, if she was going to die, she’d might as well follow through with the cliche, and take Gianni with her.
Gianni waved them off. “I don’t need you,” he said to them without looking away from Amelia. “Go find Giselle - the bitch ran off.” As his retinue went the way the young girl had run, Amelia narrowed her eyes at him.
“You’re disgusting.” She spat out.
Gianni cocked his head. “I’m a vampire, you’re a xenophobic witch, things are just never going to work out with that mix.”
`“No, were you human, you’d still be a monster. Enslaving teenage girls for your whim? Pedophile.”
Gianni’s eyes slit shut. “What a nice vocabulary you have there. I can see your point. You’re in your twenties. I think that’s well beyond legal don’t you think?”
“I’m already spoken for, sorry.” But as Amelia spoke, she realized he’d been drawing out the time, and just as he telegraphed his intent to dart out and pull her ankle off her perch and throw her down, Amelia leapt across the alleyway and kicked off the other side to come up behind Gianni again. This time she shoved with the blade up and into his back, trying to navigate around his ribs to get even closer to his heart. She felt when the blade slide far enough to reach, just nicking where it needed to go. Gianni gasped sharply then roared yanking the wakizashi free of her grip and tearing
the blade out. He threw it away with such strength that it embedded into the bricks beside her head and wavered. The stab wound bled fiercely and Gianni bent for a moment in pain before he straightened back out, glaring at her.
“I’m tired of dealing with you, it’s been tedious trying not to damage you in this process, but some things are unavoidable.”
Amelia darted for her sword, knowing that without it she was lost. She reached it and tried in vain to tear it from where it was buried in the brick. Gianni, however, reached her in seconds, yanking her back into his bruising grasp. Amelia kicked and bucked her head into his connecting her skull with his nose. He ignored her and plucked the her sister’s hunting knife from where it had fallen, unaffected by her struggle. He brought it up to her face, so that he held it before her eyes. “You’re sister’s dagger, how appropriate. I should never have sent that home with her.” Realizing what Gianni had admitted to, Amelia’s screamed and her struggles became wild and mindless. She’d finally found her sister’s murderer, and it looked like he’d be hers as well.
Gianni seemed non-plussed with her fight. “You aren’t as good as she was. But I guess you know that.” He said in mock sympathy. “Now, now,” he continued as if they were having a conversation, “You’re not bad either. I must say you’re better than I expected. It will be nice not having to dispose of you as I did your sister, she said nothing of letting me keep you …” He leaned down and licked her throat slowly as if readying to bite her, and his tongue on her skin made her prickle and her stomach clench. Just as Gianni positioned his teeth over her neck Amelia found herself dropped painfully to the ground.
Looking around to see what had happened, she saw something she never would have expected, Kristoff burying a dagger in Gianni’s side.
“RUN! Amelia - Now!” He growled over his fight with Gianni. Amelia staggered to her feet.
“I’m not leaving you, you … scene stealing asshole! This is my fight!” She yelled, darting to the wall to yank her sword free. Behind her she heard the pound of running feet.
A Guide to Vampire Hunting: ...and other failures (Alchemy Inc. Book 1) Page 14