“That’s great.” He beamed at me.
“The fact that I’ve got a roommate and not a husband is great?”
Eli’s smile died on his lips and I regretted my words instantly.
“Well, no—” He shoved his hand back through his hair, a nervous gesture.
“Eli, relax, I’m messing with you…”
His smile widened once more but it wasn’t as bright as it had been moments before. Clearly, everything I did made him skittish. But if that were true, if he was as afraid of me as he seemed to be, then why had he volunteered to come?
“Thanks for the ride,” I said, pushing open the car door.
“I guess I’ll see you in the morning,” he said hopefully. “Megan said you were teaching a class.”
“She did, did she?” I ran back over all the classes I’d agreed to tutor but my exhausted brain was too sluggish to pinpoint the exact one he was talking about. “Well, she’d know, she’s in charge of the scheduling.”
“Great, I’ll see you then.” He sounded suddenly upbeat. If things continued, he was going to give me emotional whiplash.
With a smile and a non-committal nod, I climbed from the car, trying to ignore the look of disappointment that flashed in his eyes. Just because I’d agreed to run the class, didn’t mean it would actually happen. If Division 6 called in the middle of the night and said they had something, then there would be no class in the morning but I was far too tired to attempt explaining that to him, especially when he seemed so thrilled about the prospect of seeing me again.
The car rolled away over the gravel and out onto the main road. I stood on the porch and watched the red taillights disappear before I pushed my key in the door. I needed sleep and a shower. The morning would arrive all too quickly and after the day I’d had, I knew I was going to need all the rest I could get.
Especially, if I was going to hunt Carmine down and make her pay for the innocents she’d slaughtered.
Chapter 24
The morning arrived all too soon and I sat blearily behind the wheel of the Land Rover. I’d parked outside the studio, watching the slushy raindrops as they hit the windscreen. I was still working up the energy to slide out of the warmth and cross the pavement to the door.
It was going to be freezing inside. The mere thought of warming up in the frigid air almost saw me drive away.
A little cold never killed anyone, Jenna. The pep talks had stopped working a long time ago, but that hadn’t stopped me from doling them out whenever I thought I was slipping a little too much.
Division 6 hadn’t called during the middle of the night and I didn’t know whether to be glad or concerned. It was one of two scenarios. Either Carmine and her undead minions hadn’t snatched and murdered another hapless victim, or we were far too slow and just hadn’t found the body yet. I was definitely hoping for the former, the thought of always being behind where that psycho-bitch was concerned made me grumpier than usual. And a grumpy Jenna was definitely someone to be avoided, and she was definitely not the person you wanted teaching an advanced class of martial arts where there would be plenty of sharp weapons on hand.
Why did you agree to do this again? Oh right, classes pay the bills and keep the lights on.
Groaning, I flicked off the engine and pushed open the door. Cold seared me, momentarily sealing the air inside my lungs and a choked whimper slipped past my lips.
“Not a morning person, either?” The familiar voice drifted across the road and my eyes snapped open.
“Not a cold weather person,” I quipped back, locking the car before I turned to face Eli. I’d wondered if he would show up, and now that he was here, there was a part of me, a very small part of me, that was actually happy to see him.
He jogged across the road toward me. His copper coloured hair slicked back from his face was darker than I remembered, almost bronze under the street lights. He drew closer and I realised it wasn’t darker, it was wet. Probably from the shower, I surmised, lazily appraising him. Either that, or he’d been standing outside so long waiting for me that he’d been soaked through. Judging by the relative dryness of his grey t-shirt and hooded sweatshirt, I was willing to bet he’d come straight from the shower.
As he drew even with me on the pavement, I found myself having to look up into his face. It was a strangely intimate moment and I instinctively took a step backwards, my ass hitting the side of the Land Rover.
“Sorry, I’ve got a thing about my personal space,” I said, raising my hands and halting him in his tracks. For a moment he stared at me confused before he shrugged.
“I get that,” he said. “I can’t stand elevators, being crammed into such a small space with so many strangers—” He shuddered and I found myself relaxing.
It was strange, when I made a fuss over my personal space, people usually couldn’t wait to ask me what my problem was. Their curiosity was an endless source of irritation for me, but Eli just seemed to accept it.
“You know you don’t have to turn up early, right?” I pulled the keys for the studio from my pocket and started for the door.
“I know, I just like to warm up and get used to the space before it’s full of other people.” His answer was oddly close to my own feelings on the matter.
Nodding, I let him inside, flicking on the florescent lights as I moved about the reception area.
He didn’t follow me like I thought he might and I watched him read the bulletin board from the corner of my eye as I booted up the computer and turned up the thermostats.
“You can go up.” His gaze flickered to mine. “If you want to,” I added hastily.
He nodded and disappeared up the stairs, leaving me to stare after him.
There was something about Eli that made me relax, his presence almost familiar, which was impossible. I’d never met him before he’d turned up in the doorway of my studio, but there was no denying that when he was around I found myself letting my guard down. It was something I hadn’t even managed to do with Grey and that perturbed me.
Not that I really thought I should let my guard down with Grey, either. He was all about Division 6 and I couldn’t shake the paranoid little voice inside my head that whispered of how he would turn me in if he knew the truth about what I was.
Of course, I couldn’t know that for certain but I wasn’t willing to put it to the test, either. That little voice in the back of my mind had saved my ass more times than I could count. It had gotten me through my darkest days as Kypherous’ plaything, trusting it was simply instinctual at this point.
Jogging silently up the stairs, I peered in through the gap in the door. Eli stood in the centre of the room, eyes closed, arms hanging loose by his side, his gear bag next to his feet.
Was he meditating? He definitely wasn’t warming up.
He rolled his shoulders back and let his head loll back on his neck.
Maybe he was having some sort of seizure?
I shifted, hoping for a better view but the wooden step creaked underfoot and Eli’s head snapped up, his eyes searching the space.
“Sorry it took so long,” I said, stepping out of the stairwell.
“It’s all right.” He cast a furtive glance around at his surroundings. “I was just getting a feel for the space.”
I said nothing as I headed for the storage closet and retrieved my gym bag.
“So how did you come by this place?”
The question seemed innocent enough, and from the corner of my eye, I watched as he started to stretch.
“I needed something to do after I bought the house. Running this place seemed like a good idea at the time,” I said.
“It’s not a good idea anymore?” Pausing his stretches, he bent down and pulled a water bottle from his bag.
“It’s pretty important to me,” I said, carefully choosing my words, “but with the work I do for Division 6, I’m not sure how I can make the time to teach and... keep up with the job.”
The problem the studio posed had been p
laying on my mind ever since I’d agreed to work for Division 6 again. I loved it here, loved working with the people that came through the door. Some were simply looking for a new hobby but it was the others, the ones who came here afraid and hurting that kept me coming back. I knew what it was to be terrified, to fear for your own life. And I’d learned the only way to stop the fear from keeping me locked in my house and hiding under the bedcovers was to channel it into an ability to defend myself. It didn’t solve everything, the fear was something I would always live with, but it had given me back my confidence and most days that was enough to help me get by.
Nothing would change the truth. Monsters were real and they weren’t all of the supernatural variety. But it didn’t mean I or the others like me needed to live in terror. We could and we would fight back.
“Do you get enough people in to make it worth your while? I mean, it seems like a pretty small place. I wouldn’t have thought there’d be a huge demand for these kinds of classes.”
“You’d be surprised,” I said dryly, stepping into the bathroom to change.
I listened to his soft footfalls as he continued to warm up. His questions had put me on edge and my body burned with nervous energy. Not exactly the best way to start a class. If I didn’t burn some of it off, I’d end up running the humans into the ground.
Exiting the bathroom, I crossed to the storage cupboard and pulled two sparring sticks from within.
“Let’s see if you’re cut out for this class,” I said, my tone harsher than I’d intended. It seemed fitting that Eli would be the one to help me clear my head.
“You said there’d be no audition,” he said with surprise. Pushing away from the wall, he caught the staff in mid-air as I tossed it to him. It was a practiced grab and it did nothing to allay the unease curling in my stomach.
“I changed my mind.”
A grin spread across his face as he twirled the stick, flicking his wrists over and back with the ease that came from habitual training.
“I thought you said you were looking for a place to train?” I circled him slowly, keeping my attention on the movement of his body.
“I am,” he said mildly, tracking me.
“Doesn’t look like you need any training.”
“Practice makes perfect,” he said.
Shit…
He swung the staff up into a wide arc, bringing in it down in a bone jarring blow that sent reverberations charging up through my arms as I blocked the attack. He parried my answering thrust and we moved through the space, exchanging blows back and forth, neither side giving or gaining ground.
I held back, watching his body carefully, cataloguing each movement. He grew in confidence each time he blocked an attack. Did he know I was holding back, keeping my strength and speed under a tight rein, only letting enough seep through to match his pace.
I swung my staff around and he hopped out of reach, his own staff cracking through the air. The only problem, I realised, was that he, too, appeared to be holding back. Despite trading blows for a good ten minutes, Eli wasn’t even breaking a sweat, which for a human was most unusual. The competitive grin he’d started with had only grown wider, and as I blocked another of his attacks, he let a whoop of joy escape.
“You’re as good as I hoped you’d be,” he said, lunging forward in an attempt to drive me back across the room.
“You’re holding back,” I said, feinting to the side and drawing him out so that when I closed the gap between us I swept his legs out from under him with a kick.
He dropped to the wooden boards with a thud, his eyes widening in surprise as I pressed the butt of my staff to his chest, pinning him in place.
“Woah—” he said, his knuckles whitening around the end of the staff he still held in his hands. “You didn’t say this was full contact.”
“Holding back isn’t how we do it here.” I deliberately kept my tone measured.
Stepping back, I let him hop back to his feet, his wary gaze tracking my movements as I started to circle him slowly.
“Good.” He rolled his shoulders, his smile slowly returning. “And just so we’re clear here,” he said, “I’m not the only one holding back.” He cocked an eyebrow at me, daring me to respond, baiting me to rise to the challenge he’d just laid out as he began to twirl the staff once more.
This time, I didn’t wait for him to come for me. My staff crashed into his, the rhythmic crack of the wood as we clashed the only noise in the silent room. I picked up speed and Eli matched me, parrying my blows as quickly as I could land them.
“Stop holding back, Jenna,” he growled, his chest rising and falling in rapid succession. Sweat beaded across his forehead and his t-shirt was beginning to darken.
A grunt of surprise tore from my lips as he landed a kick to my midsection and drove me backwards across the floor. He swept low with the staff, and I narrowly avoided having my legs taken from underneath me, dancing back out of reach by a hair’s breadth.
Eli’s expression was grim as he followed me. Gone was the smiling, happy guy of moments ago. Determination shone in his eyes as he gritted his teeth and attempted to beat me into submission.
“For a preternatural, you’re far too slow,” he said, and I couldn’t decide if he was trying to goad me into really letting go or if it was a genuine observation.
“How would you know? You said you didn’t know of any other preternaturals.”
“I—”
The sharp ring of a cell phone caused me to falter and he drove his staff into my ribs with enough force that if I’d been human he’d have broken more than one. The air rushed out of my lungs with a painful whoosh and I doubled over. Using his advantage, he flipped the staff and brought it down on my spine.
His knee rushed toward my face and I straightened despite the sting of his blow across my back. Hooking my staff behind his raised leg, I jerked him forward and off his feet.
Eli twisted the upper half of his body in mid-air as he slammed the staff into the floor. It was a poor attempt to prevent me from taking him to the floor again. I kicked his staff, sending it spinning from his hands. He hit the ground on his side with a grunt of pain.
Pressing my staff to his chest, I pushed him onto his back. His eyes were dark with rage as he pushed against it, fighting to climb to his feet.
“Who trained you?”
“Does it matter?” He actually sounded bitter. Had he actually thought he could best me?
“You said you’d never had any dealings with the supernatural world before now,” I said mildly, pausing long enough for him to nod. His chest heaved against the end of the staff as he fought to catch his breath.
“I haven’t.”
“That’s a lie.”
His colour heightened, but before he could protest I cut him off.
“I’m sorry, but whoever trained you definitely wasn’t human.”
“Just because I beat you, doesn’t mean I was trained by some mysterious supernatural being.” He spat the words before shoving the staff away from his chest. “Not everyone in the world is like you.”
Rolling to his feet, he met my gaze head on. He held an arrogant tilt to his chin as he squared his shoulders.
“You’re just sour because I got past your defences,” he said. “After all, I’m only a lowly human, I can’t possibly be better than you at anything.”
I studied him silently, choosing to hold back the scathing remark that sat right on the tip of my tongue. I wasn’t wrong about him. I’d seen him move, watched the way he fought, and there wasn’t a chance in hell that he’d been trained by someone human. Whether he chose to accept the fact or not, well that was another matter entirely.
“Look, believe what you like, Eli, but I’m telling you the truth. No human taught you to move like that…”
“What, then?” The anger receded, leaving genuine curiosity in its wake.
It didn’t make sense, how could he not have known his trainer wasn’t human?
“If I
had to guess, I’d say shifter of some sort. Definitely not fae, they’re way too arrogant to try and pass themselves off as martial arts teachers. And anyway, the vast majority are just untrained assholes. They rely on the fact that they’re stronger and faster than their opponents to beat them. There’s no art to their fighting style, no efficiency. Just pure brute force—” I left out the part where the fae tended to favour magic over ever actually getting into a physical altercation.
If they could use their abilities to overcome their enemy without ever having to get their hands dirty, then that was the path they chose.
Leprechauns were the only ones among the fae that I’d found had a genuine knack, not to mention the skill, for fighting. Tall and athletic, with a competitive streak a mile wide, they didn’t adhere to the typical stereotype of being drunken Irish imps with a penchant for a good barroom brawl. Far from it.
Instead, they preferred to channel all of their aggression into sports. Hurling, Gaelic football, and in more recent times rugby were just some of the contact sports they were known for. Not that it didn’t mean they couldn’t down a few pints and knock the crap out of each other if the party became a little too rowdy. It’s just it wasn’t their typical fare.
No, if you picked a fight with a leprechaun then you needed to know how to handle yourself or they would rip you apart without so much as a thought.
“I thought the shifters stayed in packs,” he said, “kept to their own.”
“Some do but it’s much easier for them to blend in with the human population. Most humans would struggle to pick a shifter out of a crowd.”
“I thought their animal instincts made them dangerous?”
“No more dangerous than an armed human.” I turned away from him, carrying the staff over to the wall.
“But they’re stronger and—”
“Yeah, but they’ve got incredible control. They’re not usually dangerous until they decide to shift. It takes a huge amount of energy to change and it’s at that moment when they’re human side is at its weakest.”
Stakes and Stones Page 19