Which meant I’d better get used to them. Killing Mithrans was how I made my money.

The mat where I had practiced last night was gone and the floor, damaged by my claws, had been sanded. Someone had taped a large fighting circle on the polished wood away from the scratched area. Grégoire stood inside the taped circle, waiting. Not impatiently. Calmly. But somehow there was a big evil grin about his whole stance, as if he was itching for the chance to hurt me. Oh goody.

“Let us see what you remember from your last session,” he said, stepping out of the fighting circle. He pointed with his long sword. “Begin with your feet.”

I placed my feet in the proper positions, straightened my back, bent my knees as if I were sitting on a tall stool, and held my weapons in the first form. With his sword tip, Grégoire lifted my long sword and moved it closer in front of my body, making my body angle sharper, bladed, so as to make a smaller target. His sword tapped my arm holding the short sword and altered the angle of my elbow.

“Better,” he said. “La Destreza, the Mithran version, is fluid, flowing like water over rounded stones, liquid and graceful.” He moved his sword in a full circle, from pointing at me to his left, across his body, up even with his head, down to his right, farther down, around again at knee level, up to his left again, and back to his starting point. If it had been a bare-handed move, it would have defended against two punches, a kick, and a third punch. His sword indicated that I should try.

As best I could, I mimicked his moves. “Again,” he said. And then, “Again, right elbow not locked, but loose”—he demonstrated—“thusly.” He watched me and said, “Better. Again. Faster.”

From there, we moved into another movement. And I started to sweat.

Grégoire slapped my butt with the flat of his blade as I turned in the second movement, and at the same moment, as if he had three hands, Grégoire tossed his mask to the side. His golden hair flowed out, long and loose and glistening in the too-bright overhead lights. “Elbow out,” he demanded, blue eyes dancing in what looked like delight. “Feet move thusly. No, no, no. Thusly.” A perpetually fifteen-year-old, utterly beautiful, sword master and sadist. “Yes, now faster. Turn and turn and sweep and cut and lunge and lunge and lunge . . .”

Until I was so tired I could barely lift my arms, even with Beast adding speed and strength to my human limbs. Finally, when my breath was fast and painful and loud in the room and the audience had dwindled at the lack of blood spilled, Grégoire yawned.

Bored.

Sleepy.

In the middle of his yawn I dropped the short sword and pulled the throwing knife in my sleeve. Flipped it at Grégoire. While it was still in the air, I spun another at him. And the third. With his sword he batted each away with a ting-ting-ting. And finished the yawn with a grin that let me see why this vampire was the best fighter in the entire U.S. He had been nothing like bored. The yawn was to tempt me, to lure me in. Grégoire was having fun. Vicious, venomous, nasty fun.

Inside me, Beast growled, the sound coming from my mouth. She rose in me fast, staring out at him. In a single heartbeat, the orbs of his eyes went scarlet, centered with wide, black pupils. He attacked. Lunging, lunging, lunging, his sword circling like the blades of a fan, razor-sharp, cutting at me. His fangs dropped down; his talons pierced through the fingertips of his gloves. He was totally vamped out. Lunging, cutting, lunging, his long sword a spinning blade of death.

I had only the long sword, the short sword still at my feet. I danced back from him fastfastfast, my blade circling through his, my feet finding balance only after my padded white uniform had three scarlet, bloody rents in them. I felt no pain, not yet. But the stink of my blood and anger filled the air. I growled again. And I lunged back. Again and again, faster, drawing on Beast’s power and speed. Circling my blade, my dull club of a blade.

The words of my very first sensei came back to me. “Everything is a weapon, Jane. Your fingers, your forehead, a pencil behind your ear, a paper clip. Everything can be used to defend and attack.”

I drew on Beast’s power and let my body slide into the fluid motions of the Spanish Circle. As if I had all the time in the world, I reversed my motions, taking the second movement to a backhand, both of my hands finding the hilt. Whirling. I slammed the dull edge of the sword against Grégoire’s shoulder with everything I had in me. Stepped back and lunged again, while he staggered. I swung the weapon like a baseball bat, letting the weight of the dull sword pull itself around. And smashed it against Grégoire’s knee. The joint buckled. Up, over, I let the momentum of the non-weapon carry itself around and against his neck, deliberately above the gorget. I heard the thump of the weapon hitting and a snapping crack. Grégoire’s head knocked to the side at a sharp angle and he followed it, flying across the floor to the side and crumpling.

I stood over him, watching him on the floor, my breath heaving. “Like that?”

“Yes, my Enforcer.” Leo’s liquid tones came from behind me. “Exactly like that.”

•   •   •

I had actually hurt Grégoire. Hadn’t killed him, not with the battering of a dull blade. But I had broken something. Something important. With a terrible sinking feeling, I realized that I had, maybe, broken Grégoire’s cervical spine with my practice blade. Beast’s power drained out of me and out of my eyes, leaving me weak. I stepped back, away from the fighting circle, and tossed the head shield to the floor.

Leo had gathered him up, and now Grégoire’s head was resting on Leo’s lap, his golden hair spread over Leo’s legs and across the wood floor. His limbs were unmoving and limp, his black shirt ripped open to reveal his pale chest. Grégoire was gasping like a human, his eyes filled with bloody tears, yet his eyes had bled back to human blue irises. Leo was bending over his friend, his black hair hanging down over Grégoire’s golden blond, the strands mixing. Leo looked pale, his skin with a slightly bluish tinge, and I remembered that he had been bitten by the light-creature. Leo hadn’t healed as quickly as Gee DiMercy. And Grégoire didn’t appear to be healing at all.

I had wanted to prove something. I didn’t like what I’d proven. The bruise on Grégoire’s neck was spectacular, totally unlike any bruise I had ever seen on anyone, human or vamp. It was purple in the center, a long, narrow, deep purple indentation just below where the skull and neck came together, in the shape of my weapon’s blunt edge. The bruise around it was swelling, spreading, blooming like a scarlet flower, the blood beneath his skin flooding like petals. Like a fuchsia flower beneath the white, white skin.