by Karen Lynch
“Show off,” I muttered, and he chuckled.
“You’ll get there. It just takes time.” He laid the weight on the floor again. “You’ve already come a long way for your second lesson.”
“Really?”
His eyes were sincere. “Yes.”
I looked at the sixty-pound weight. “I want to try it again.”
“You’ve done enough for now.”
“You don’t think I can do it.”
“I know you can’t.” He let out a small laugh. I opened my mouth to argue, but he shook his head. “You might not realize it yet, but this is more strenuous than it seems and you’ll feel it later. You don’t want to overdo it.”
“So, are we done training for now?”
He sat and pointed at the seats next to him. “We’ll take a short break, and then I want to try something new.”
I joined him, not sure if I wanted to know what he had in store for me. So far he had been careful not to push me too hard, but we had definitely moved out of my comfort zone. Still, I’d had more progress with my Mori after two days training with Nikolas than weeks with Callum. Despite Nikolas’s mood changes, I was more comfortable talking to him, and it felt like I’d known him a lot longer than three months.
“Can I ask you something?” I said after several minutes of quiet. “You know all about my life, but you never talk about yours. What was it like where you grew up? Where is your family now?”
He leaned back and rested his arms on the backs of the seats on either side of him. “I grew up in a military stronghold just outside Saint Petersburg. Miroslav Fortress is nothing like Westhorne. It’s surrounded by high stone walls and run more like a military base, although there were a number of families like mine there. My parents were advisors to the Council and very involved in planning military operations, so it was necessary for us to live there instead of in one of the family compounds.”
“It doesn’t sound like a fun place to live.” I couldn’t imagine spending my life confined by walls that blocked everything but the sky. The picture in my mind matched the one I had of the Mohiri when I first heard about them, of living in barracks focused on nothing but hunting.
“It was actually a very good life, and we had a lot more luxuries and conveniences than most people had at the time. Back then, even the wealthy didn’t have running water, indoor plumbing, or indoor gas lighting, just to name a few.” His eyes took on a faraway look as he recalled the details of his childhood. “My parents were busy and travelled a lot, but they were very loving, and one of them always stayed home while the other travelled. They pushed me hard in my training and schoolwork, but I knew they were preparing me for the dangers I would face when I became a warrior.”
“So, you’re an only child?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that explains a lot.” I smirked, earning a playful scowl. “Did you have many friends? What did you do for fun?”
“I had a few good friends over the years. Most families moved when the parents were transferred to other strongholds and others moved in. I don’t think I was ever lonely. I liked to watch the warriors train, and I spent a lot of time hanging around the training grounds. They all taught me how to fight and use weapons. By the time I started formal training, I was so advanced they had to place me with the senior trainees.”
Why did that not surprise me? “I bet your parents were very proud of you.”
His eyes shone with affection. “They were; they still are.”
“You said you were in Russia until you were sixteen and then your family moved to England. Why did you move if you all loved the compound in Russia?”
He looked surprised that I had remembered that detail, which he had shared with me back in Maine. “My sire was asked to assume leadership of a key military compound outside London when its leader was killed in a raid. We lived there for eight years before my parents were asked to help establish several new strongholds in North America. By then, I was a full warrior and I found the wildness of this continent appealing, so I tagged along.”
“Where are your parents now?”
“They went back to Russia about fifty years ago. My sire is the leader of Miroslav Fortress now. My mother was offered leadership of another stronghold, but she did not want to be separated from him. I see them at least once a year.”
“So, um, what do you do for fun besides killing vampires and bossing people around?”
His eyebrows rose, and I gave him what I thought was my most innocent look. “Come on, you have to do something for fun. Do you read? Watch TV? Knit?”
“I read sometimes.” He named a few books by Hemmingway, Vonnegut, and Scott, and it was no surprise they were all about war. He did not care for television or movies, and according to him the best decade for music was the sixties. I laughed when he admitted that he and Chris had been at Woodstock and I tried to imagine them in the bohemian clothes popular at the time. He said he was there because the event attracted a lot of vampires, and most of the attendees were too stoned or drunk or high on love to pay attention to them. I found it impossible to believe that Nikolas or Chris could go anywhere unnoticed, but I kept that observation to myself.
“By the way, why didn’t you tell me Chris was my cousin? What if I’d started crushing on him like every other girl back home?” Ugh.
The look he shot me was indecipherable. “You were spooked when you learned what you were, and I thought it was too soon to introduce you to your Mohiri family. If it makes you feel better, Chris didn’t know at first either.”
“Just promise, no more keeping things from me.”
“Ask me anything and I’ll give you an honest answer,” he said after a short pause, and it made me feel like there were important questions I didn’t know to ask.
“You ready to try something different?” he asked after we had been sitting for twenty minutes.
“Like what?”
He turned more toward me. “I’ve been thinking about what you told me yesterday about your power getting stronger. You were worried it might hurt your demon or another Mohiri, but I don’t think it will, at least not intentionally. The bazerats and lamprey demons were in their true form, which made them more vulnerable to your power.” He reached over and took my hand in his. “Our demons live inside us and are shielded by our bodies. I think that, and the fact that you also have a Mori inside you, is why your power is not flaring up right now.”
I held my breath as the truth of his words sank in. He was right; my power was not reacting to him at all. The only thing stirring in me were the tiny butterflies in my stomach from him holding my hand. Tugging my hand from his, I tucked it into my pocket. “Was that what you wanted to try?”
One corner of his mouth quirked. “Not quite. We know your power doesn’t react instinctively toward me, but I want to find out if you can use it against me consciously.”
“What?” I jumped to my feet and backed away from him. “Are you crazy? I could kill you.”
“You won’t.”
“You don’t know that!” An image surfaced of what had been left of the lamprey demon, and I shook my head. “You didn’t see what I did to that demon in Boise. If you had, you wouldn’t even suggest this.”
He stood but didn’t move toward me. “I saw the pictures our guys took before they cleaned it up.”
I took another step back. “Then why the hell would you ask me to try to do that to you?”
“I’m not asking you to do that.” He held up his hands. “Listen to me. I think your power reacts when you are frightened or in danger, and you don’t believe it, but you can control it. You were in mortal danger when the lamprey demon attacked you and you knew you had to kill or be killed, so you did what you had to do to survive. You may have been afraid when you were in here with the bazerats, but you never really felt like you were in real danger, did you? Not with everyone outside.”
I thought about how I’d felt when the bazerat had leapt at me. I’d been scared yes, but
afraid for my life? No. All I’d wanted was to subdue them, and I didn’t even know they were demons until after the task was complete.
“You’ve been using your power to heal creatures most of your life and you know how to manipulate it and how to release it in controlled bursts, right?” I nodded. “It’s the same power; you just used it offensively with the demons. I think you can learn to use your power as a weapon if you start thinking of it as one and the same.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek. I was pretty sure he was right about the power all coming from the same source, and I was excited about the possibility of learning to use it to protect myself. After all, what would be better than a weapon you could carry inside you?
But what if I tried to use it on Nikolas and I couldn’t control it? What if I hurt him or worse? The thought of him dying left me cold; the thought of me being the one to end his life sucked the air from my lungs, and I had to remind myself to breathe. “I can’t . . . I can’t do it . . . ” I wheezed, close to hyperventilating.
Nikolas moved so fast he was gripping my shoulders before I could react. His eyes softened to a smoky gray as they captured mine. “This really frightens you, doesn’t it?”
I could only nod.
“All the more reason for you to learn to master it. If you don’t, it will control you instead, and we both know how much you hate being controlled.” His lips curved into a small smile. “You trust me, right?”
I looked past his shoulder, wondering how he could ask that after everything we had been through. “Yes.”
“And I trust you with my life.”
My eyes snapped back to his and met his unwavering gaze.
“I trust you, Sara, and I know you won’t hurt me.”
“Yes, but – ”
“You were afraid to connect with your Mori at first, but you did it and now you no longer fear it. This is no different.” His hands left my shoulders and ran down my arms to take my hands and lay my palms against his chest. I could feel his slow steady heartbeat under my fingers, telling me with more than words how confident he was in me. “Start slow and see what happens. You can pull away anytime you need to.”
“Okay,” I agreed shakily. “But not here.” I was not going to take a chance of something going wrong so close to his heart. Lifting my hands from his chest, I took one of his hands in both of mine, acutely aware of the rough texture of his palm against mine. I opened my power and let it slowly fill my hands but didn’t try to push into him. He stood, unmoving, showing no signs he felt anything out of the ordinary.
“Do you feel anything?” I asked him, and he shook his head. I turned it up a notch and asked him again. Still nothing. More power pooled in my hands and they began to emit a soft glow. It was enough power to mend a dog’s broken leg yet Nikolas didn’t even twitch a muscle.
“Your hands feel warmer. What are you doing?” he asked, and I explained how I was directing power to them as I would for a healing.
I released his hand. “I don’t think this is going to work. I only know how to heal things, and I don’t know what I did to those demons.”
“Hmmm.” He stared over my head for a moment before he gave me a smile that made me wary. “Your offensive power only surfaces when there is a demon nearby, but it doesn’t sense my Mori.”
“That’s a good thing though, right?” At least I could rest knowing I wouldn’t hurt another Mohiri.
“It is as long as we keep our demons restrained, but what happens if we allow them closer to the surface.” Something in his voice made me nervous and I tried to pull away, but he grabbed my hands again
“Nikolas, whatever you are thinking is a really bad idea.” I gasped as his eyes began to shimmer like pools of liquid silver. I stared into them like a moth mesmerized by flame, and it wasn’t until my Mori came roaring awake and straining against its walls that I was able to break free of their spell. It was all I could do to restrain my own demon that fought to get closer to Nikolas’s.
It wasn’t until I had wrangled my Mori back under control that I realized it wasn’t the only thing that had awakened. No, no, no, I wailed silently as the first sparks of static crackled through my hair. I reached for the runaway magic and pulled it back inside me with more ease than I had expected. It felt wild and exhilarating compared to the tame healing power I knew so well, and for several seconds I was tempted to let it go free, to see what it could do.
Strength I didn’t know I possessed filled me, and I tore my hands from Nikolas’s and backed away from him. Surprise flickered on his face before he began to stalk me silently, his intent clear in his eyes. What the hell was wrong with him? Didn’t he realize how much I could hurt him right now?
“Nikolas, please stop,” I pleaded as he continued to advance on me. “I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Instead of answering, he blurred out of sight. A second later, I screamed as hands gripped my shoulders from behind. I knew it was him, but instinct took over and the power I had just reigned in lashed out at him. The Mori surged forward, and I cried out as I latched onto my power at the last second to keep the brunt of it from hitting him. I smelled ozone a split second before there was a crackling pop, followed by something crashing into the wooden seats behind me.
I spun around, and my heart stuttered when I saw Nikolas sprawled unmoving on the floor. “Nikolas!”
In seconds, I was at kneeling at his side, shaking him roughly. “Nikolas, wake up! Oh God, please don’t be dead.” He didn’t move, and I pressed my ear to his chest, swallowing back a sob when I heard his heartbeat and felt his chest rise and fall. I rose over him and peered at his closed eyes and slightly parted lips that made him look like he was merely sleeping. He was alive, but I had no idea what my power had done to him. My chest squeezed painfully until I could barely breathe.
His lids flickered open and his smoky gaze locked with mine, making the breath catch in my throat. Before I could find my voice, he gave me a lazy smile. “I said you could do it.”
“You jerk! You . . . you asshole!” I punched his chest hard and scrambled to my feet. Angry tears burned the back of my throat as I ran toward the door. To think I had been worried about hurting him. If I wasn’t afraid I’d actually kill him this time, I’d turn around and give him a real dose of my power.
“Umph!” I grunted when I ran smack into his chest. Too angry to speak or look at him, I tried to move around him, but he grabbed me before I could get past him.
“Sara, we needed to test your power to see if you can use it at will, and now we know.”
“At will?” I blazed at him. “I almost fried your ass! If I hadn’t pulled it back in time, you’d be singing a different tune. No, actually, you’d probably be dead.”
“But you did control it, as I knew you would. You want to know how I knew that?”
He let go of my arms, and I crossed them to keep from throttling him. “Please, educate me.”
“I know because if there is one thing I have learned about you it’s that you are incapable of hurting someone – unless they are trying to hurt you or someone you care about.” He gave me one of his infuriating smiles. “Then all bets are off.”
Feeling my anger abate under the force of his smile, I looked away from him. I used to watch Roland and some of the other boys back home using sweet words and boyish grins to charm girls, but Nikolas was in a whole different league. “You scared the hell out of me,” I said, unable to keep a note of hurt out of my voice. “I thought . . . ”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to frighten you, but the only way to get you to show your power was to expose you to a demon and to put you on the defensive. Now we know what you can do and we can work with that, and teach you to call on it when you need it.”
I shook my head fervently. “I am never doing that again.”
“Not that, no,” he replied calmly, ignoring my outburst. “We won’t have to try anything that drastic next time.”
“Next time? What par
t of never do you not understand?” I practically shouted at him.
His eyebrows rose. “So you refuse to use your power on me again, no matter what I do?”
“That’s right.”
“And how will you stop it?”
I knew he was trying to trick me somehow, but I couldn’t stop from asking, “What do you mean?”
“If I bring my Mori out again and come after you, what’s to stop your power from attacking me again?”
“I will stop it.”
“How?”
So much for his faith in me. “I just will, okay? I know what it is now, and I won’t let it get away from me again.”
He did not respond, and my words hung in the silence between us until the full meaning of what I’d said hit me. That sneaky bastard! He had planned this all along.
“So now that we have that settled, why don’t we try something easy that doesn’t involve throwing me across the room?” He looked entirely too self-satisfied for someone who had just gotten his butt kicked. “If you are up for it, that is.”
Damn him. He knew I would not back down from a challenge like that. I turned and stomped back to the center of the arena. “Fine, but don’t blame me if I knock you on your butt again. And you owe me for making me believe I killed you.”
Nikolas’s husky laughter followed me. “Okay. What do you want?”
I watched him walk toward me and smiled. “I need to go into town this week to pick up a bunch of stuff for Oscar before he gets here.” I had a suspicion Nikolas had never been inside a pet store, let alone picked out kitty litter. Maybe those muscles would come in handy.
His brows drew together. “Oscar?”
“My cat. Nate is bringing him when he comes for Thanksgiving.”
“Oh.” I could tell by his expression he had expected me to ask for something bigger than a ride to the pet store. Maybe next time I’d think up something more impressive.