“The first thing you need to learn about fighting is that there is nothing chaotic about it,” he said. “Nothing at all.”
“No?”
“Not if you’re good at it. Consider …” Stephen thought for a moment, searching for an appropriate analogy. “Consider a car chase in a movie. To the viewer, it appears highly chaotic, dangerous, and unpredictable. To the stuntmen involved in its creation, it’s simply a sequence of events, and reactions to those events. When car X moves right, car Y moves left, and so forth. It can still be dangerous, but only if mistakes are made. Just like fighting.”
Two nodded.
“When an enemy comes at a trained fighter, that training allows them to gauge dozens of factors and come to a decision. Of course, this does not supplant instinct. If anything, it relies on instinct. The best fighters perform with a kind of pure grace that’s impossible to describe. Each move flows from one to the other, the combination of training and instinct working together in perfect harmony. The training acts as a filter and allows the proper instincts to come through. When two of these fighters meet, the result is something beautiful, like a perfectly choreographed dance.”
“Are you that kind of fighter?” Two asked.
Stephen smiled and shook his head. “I am better than many … my sire chose well, but I am not among the elite. Jakob is a more natural fighter than I am, and there are others, both here and in America. I make up for it by keeping my body finely honed, and with raw aggression.”
“But you still use your training to filter your instincts?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“And you’re going to teach me to do that?”
Stephen nodded. “Eventually. First you have to learn the basics of the tools. Then we can worry about technique.”
“What are the tools?”
Stephen shrugged, looked out the window for a moment, turned back to Two.
“What can you use to kill a man?” he asked.
* * *
Stephen had spent another forty minutes or so discussing what he planned for Two’s basic regimen. She typically woke up a few hours before the vampires did, and this time would continue to be hers, as would be the last few hours before dawn. The latter was Stephen’s concession to Naomi. For the rest of the time, roughly six hours, Two belonged to Stephen. They would start with exercise and strength training, eventually moving on to hand-to-hand combat. Early on in the training he would also give her books to study, until her body was ready to stand up to more prolonged physical activity.
He didn’t expect her to become a brilliant fighter overnight, but he expected her to work at it every single day. It didn’t matter to him if she was tired, had a headache, was menstruating (it had taken six months for this particular sign of humanity to return to her), or whatever other excuse she might come up with. If Stephen felt Two wasn’t giving him everything she had, he was going to make her life even more difficult.
Eventually, he had told her, the training would lighten up a bit. The initial intensity served a twofold purpose. First, it would help whip her body into shape in a quick and efficient manner. Second, and probably more importantly, it would allow him to gauge her commitment to the work. Two expected to be miserable for several weeks, but she also intended to give it her all.
“Oh, Lord, Two … what did you do to your hair?!”
Two glanced up from her book and gave Naomi an apologetic smile. “I kind of asked Stephen to teach me to fight.”
Naomi looked pained. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”
“Nope, sorry.”
“Two, he’s going to kill you!”
“Nah … but he’s going to break me for a while.”
Naomi sighed, flopped down on the couch next to Two, and put her head in Two’s lap, looking upward. “You’re going to get all muscle-y.”
Two shrugged.
“I like you soft,” Naomi continued, tracing a finger along one of Two’s arm.
“It’s something I need to do, Naomi,” Two said. “I … it’d help me a lot if you were OK with it.”
Naomi sighed again, but said, “I understand. I just … don’t let him make you too hard. Not your muscles, but …”
Two smiled a little as Naomi’s voice trailed off. “I get it. I won’t. But I’m not always warm and fuzzy now, hon.”
Naomi rolled her head sideways and kissed Two’s navel where her shirt had pulled up. “I can think of a few places that are,” she said. Two shivered, but didn’t respond, running her fingers through Naomi’s hair. The vampire sighed, shifted, drawing herself up so that she knelt, straddling and facing Two. The two of them regarded each other for a moment.
She is so pretty, Two thought to herself. Naomi, forever seventeen, fit, and toned, with her perfect face and body, was probably the most physically attractive person Two had ever met. There were times when Two wanted not to be with her, but to be her. Sometimes Two would wake in the afternoon and just watch Naomi lying naked and asleep on the bed, her body an ocean of curves, supernaturally devoid of blemishes. Two couldn’t conceive of anyone, male or female, not wanting the vampire in those moments.
“Are you happy?” Naomi asked her, those big grey eyes wide and filled with concern. Two very nearly lied to Naomi in that moment, very nearly told her that everything was fine. Instead, she shrugged and gave Naomi a sad smile.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Naomi frowned, her eyebrows pulling tight. “I want you to be happy,” she said. “I want … I want to make you happy.”
“Naomi …” Two paused, trying to determine how best to explain the way she felt. “You do make me happy. This is all … it’s strange and confusing, and I’m not always sure we should be together like this. We don’t even know if I can be a vampire, and I’m still getting over Theroen, and I have so much other baggage … but you do make me happy. But even though you make me happy, that doesn’t mean I’m always, you know … happy.”
Naomi tilted her head, questioning, and Two sighed. “I don’t have the words.”
“Sometimes a sad person can laugh,” Naomi said after a time.
“Yes.”
“And they can still climax …”
“That is not the only way you make me happy,” Two said. In truth, there were times where even as her body was peaking, Two would think of Theroen and be filled not with joy but with an almost overwhelming sorrow. Sometimes even while lying in Naomi’s arms after sex, Two felt as alone as she had ever felt since Theroen’s death.
Naomi touched her face, searching with her eyes as if trying to look into Two and read her thoughts. “What can I do?” she whispered. “How can I help?”
Two looked away, suddenly near tears. “You can change the subject,” she said.
She felt Naomi’s eyes still searching, but couldn’t meet the vampire’s gaze. Finally, Naomi said, “Can I fix your hair?”
Two smiled, nodded, turned back to Naomi and gave her a quick kiss on the lips.
“I was waiting for you to ask.”
* * *
I’m going to hurt her, Two thought.
She was sitting in bed, the sheets pooled around her waist, her body bare and exposed in the dim room. Outside the day was just dawning, its light held back by the heavy curtains on the windows. Two could hear pattering against the panes of glass and assumed that the cold rain that had been falling for the better part of four days was continuing to inundate London. March was nearly over, but the winter seemed not yet ready to loosen its grip on the city.
Naomi had brought a chair into the bathroom and worked on Two’s hair for nearly an hour, styling it, washing it, restyling it, making small cuts here and there and chattering away. She had told Two stories of early America, of vampires that Two would never meet and events that Two knew of only through watching the History Channel. Naomi’s aura had washed over Two, strong and sensual, and Two had welcomed the respite from the melancholy she had been feeling. By the end of it, she had been warm and
wet and waiting for Naomi to finish so that they could go to bed.
“There,” the vampire had said at last, and Two, who had been resting with her eyes shut, looked into the mirror. The haircut was controlled chaos, urban and trendy, and Two had thought that yes, it looked very good. In a way, it suited her more than the long hair had. She had wondered if she would be able to style it without Naomi’s help and thought that probably with some practice she could manage.
“That looks great, Naomi. Like some of the girls at L’Obscurité. I just need a big pair of sunglasses and some of those jeans that only come halfway down my shins.”
Naomi had laughed and clapped her hands. “You would look adorable!”
“Oh, God no …”
Naomi had shrugged, bitten her lower lip, and favored Two with a wicked smile.
“Well, I think you’re adorable anyway,” the vampire had said, and then the two of them had been kissing, and standing, stumbling their way into the bedroom. In short order, Two’s carefully sculpted hair had become a tousled mess.
Eventually, Naomi had fallen asleep and Two had sat up, the aura and the afterglow of sex gone, her mind ready again to fear and worry and think itself into knots.
Beside her, Naomi shifted, rolled from her side to her back in an unladylike sprawl. Two glanced at her and wondered, not for the first time, why it was that the vampire community hadn’t made more of an effort to understand the blood that worked within them. There were few scientists, Naomi had told her, and most vampires were content to merely accept things as they were.
Two supposed there was some logic at work there. Too much understanding might lead to a cure, though Two doubted that most of the vampires she knew would ever willingly return to humanity. Still, some would, and if a cure was made available, it seemed inevitable that it would fall into the hands of a zealot – or a group of them, like the cult that Naomi said Thomas was a part of: The Children of the Sun. If these zealots got hold of a cure, they would use it on vampires whether it was wanted or not.
Two couldn’t understand that mentality. The vampires she had known were nothing like the parasitic, satanic creatures of legend. Very few vampires ever killed the humans they fed from, and those that were evil had not become so because of the change. They were simply evil the way men were evil. It was true that Eresh vampires had to kill, for a time. Two herself had done so, dropping at those times into a swoon breakable only by her chosen victim’s death, but could she not have confined herself exclusively to those who deserved it? Could she not have fed only from people like the first man from whom she had ever drank? The wife-murderer, the child-killer. Hadn’t he deserved it?
Or perhaps that was merely justification. Two had blood on her hands that could never be washed away. Little of it was innocent, but the blood was there just the same. Melissa’s, Samantha’s, Abraham’s … though this last she wouldn’t have cleansed from herself even if she could. Abraham had taken her entire life from her, a life she was still struggling to get back. She was here in this foreign land, among foreign people, beholden to the whims of others, because of him. She was here with a lover, yes, but her love was dead and buried.
I’m going to hurt her, Two thought again, and felt hot tears sting at the corners of her eyes. It seemed inevitable, this hurt. Naomi was opening herself to Two at an alarming rate, exposing layers of herself that were normally kept well-hidden. She wanted the same from Two, but Two couldn’t bring herself to reciprocate. Was she simply using Naomi? Would she, in the end, take the blood and run madly into the night? Part of her wanted just that: to make the change and then run as far as she could, away from the politics and the machinations of these ancient creatures. She wanted quiet, peace, and freedom. She wanted the time to let go of Theroen.
Part of her wanted this very much, but another part of her cared deeply for Naomi and didn’t want to see the vampire hurt. Two was trying desperately to fall in love with Naomi, because she knew that was what Naomi wanted to happen. Naomi wanted Two to love her, so that when the European council agreed to allow Two to become a vampire again, Naomi could make her a fledgling, and the two of them could build a life together. Two understood the appeal in this, but she didn’t love Naomi. She didn’t know if she ever would.
Sitting in the dark, next to her lover but still so alone, Two lay back and put her hands over her face. She did not weep but simply lay there, breathing deeply and waiting for sleep to come.
Chapter 24
Learning the Dance
In her time with Darren, Two had learned humiliation, despair, and the blissful, numb apathy of a heroin high. Theroen had taught her love, joy, and the pulsing ecstasy of the blood.
Stephen gave her only pain, and pain, and pain.
In the end, though, he gave her strength, and as this was what she had asked him for, Two felt that she could not complain. It took nearly eight months, but Stephen reshaped her body. He did it in a way completely unlike how Theroen’s blood had changed her. Stephen’s way was gradual – grueling and slow.
For the first two weeks, Two cried herself to sleep, thankful that she had gone to bed each night, exhausted, before Naomi had arrived home to see her in this state. There were times, especially early on, when she wanted to give up, wanted to beg Stephen to call it off. Please, she imagined saying. Please, it’s too much and I can’t stand it. She was taking more than a dozen Advil each day, for God’s sake, and couldn’t he please just let her skip the running for once, or the weights?
During these times, with Stephen running next to her, or standing over her as she lifted, Two would bite her lips to keep from speaking. She bit them, sometimes, until they bled, and she tried to focus on that pain instead of the pain she was inflicting upon the rest of her body. Stephen would see her doing this, and the bastard would smile. Two would glare at him, hating him, hating herself for asking him to do this to her. Stephen never once dropped his gaze, never once apologized, never once did anything but stare back with calm, detached amusement.
Slowly, things changed. Two stopped throwing up at the end of her runs. She stopped biting her lips until they hurt so badly that she was unable to kiss Naomi, much to the vampire girl’s relief. She stopped crying, and hating, and wishing it would end. Looking in the mirror one day, Two realized that she was in better shape even than she had been as an Eresh-Chen, though not so strong or fast. She was layered with muscle, toned in every way, not bulky but absolutely fit. She was stronger than she had ever been as a human. Faster. More agile. Even her reflexes and concentration had improved.
At last she mentioned all of this to Stephen one night, as he was spotting her while she lifted weights. His typical smirk had broken into a smile. He nodded.
“You’re in shape, real shape, for the first time in your life.”
“I was close when I was a vampire—” Two began.
Stephen snorted. “That’s not the same. The blood did that to you. You did this to yourself.”
“No, you did this to me.”
“Oh? I don’t recall taking your hands and making you lift. I don’t believe I ever held a gun to your head and ordered you to run …”
Two stuck her tongue out at him as she continued to bench press. Stephen laughed.
“Are you sorry, then, that you did this?” he asked.
“No.”
“And what about Naomi?”
Two rolled her eyes. “She was at first. Now, uh … not so much.”
“Stamina does have its uses.”
“Shut up.”
Stephen motioned for her to stop lifting and sit down on the floor. Two did so, and he sat down across from her, on a weight bench. He had converted the basement of their townhouse into an exercise room, complete with a treadmill, multiple sets of weights, and a stationary bicycle. He looked at her for a time, and Two met his gaze, waiting to see what he had to say. Finally, he spoke.
“The first and most important weapon is always the body. Always. Do you understand?”
&nbs
p; Two nodded. “I think so.”
“Then tell me why.”
This was not a lesson that he had taught her, not some saying to memorize by rote. What Stephen wanted from Two was an indication that she understood the meaning behind his words, and why he had pushed her so hard, changed her so much. Two thought for a moment before answering.
“Any other weapon is just an extension of the body, right?” she asked. “Even a gun.”
She thought for a moment that she saw something in Stephen’s eyes that looked like pride. He grinned. Nodded.
“Yes, even a gun. Speed and agility are key, but strength is important as well. You’ve all three now where before – let’s be honest – you had none.”
“Shoulda met me back when I was living on the streets, before Darren,” Two said.
“I imagine you were fast then, yes, and agile. But strong?”
“No, not very strong. Had to be fast and agile, though. Not a lot of work for slow pickpockets and clumsy burglars.”
“Were you ever caught?”
“Came close a couple of times. One guy on the L platform at Eighth Avenue had me for sure … grabbed my arm and hauled me right around in front of him. When he saw how young I was, he just took his wallet out of my hand and let me go. I ran.”
“Lucky,” Stephen said.
“I was really lucky for a long, long time,” Two mused. “Maybe all that shit with Darren was the payoff.”
“Call it luck, call it karma … call it random chance or probability shifts, it’s all the same shite,” Stephen said, and Two laughed. She leaned her back against the wall, still sitting on the floor, stretching her arms and legs.
“What now?” she asked.
“Your weapon, your body, needed sharpening. We’ve done that, so now it’s time to train you how to use it.”
“Ooh. Do I get to learn kung fu?” Two asked, grinning. Stephen merely nodded.
“If you’d like.”
“Oh. Wow. I mean … what are my options, I guess?”
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