He was a predator after one thing, and like an idiot, she'd let herself forget that.
Levi took one step toward her, and then another. A third. He was right in front of her, close enough to touch. His nostrils flared.
Levi lowered his hand to hers and took it in his palm. Then he brought it to his lips like a gentleman from an Austen novel. But instead of kissing her hand, he licked it, his tongue darting out once, his eyes remaining on hers.
"Lesson one. Your blood is your most powerful weapon. Use it well."
And on that note, he walked away, heading to a door left of the staircase.
Chloe learned to breathe again.
"Right. Can we elaborate on that lesson? It doesn't make much sense to those of us who aren't blood-sucking monsters."
"Get your ass over here, Miller."
The door led to a vast and mostly empty space with mats on the floor and training equipment scattered on the walls. The average Olympic gym had fewer toys.
Two vampires were sparring at one end of the room. Chloe watched with rapture as they moved fast and gracefully. She recognized them from the tower; the assistant and the woman had been rather amused by her outrage over being offered a coat.
Soon, the woman had the dark-skinned man on his back, and they stopped.
Chloe could have clapped. But the next moment, they were both gone.
“What the hell! Where did they go?”
At her side, Levi replied, “They’re on patrol duty about now. This was just a quick training break.”
Damn.
"You guys do take the whole training thing seriously."
"Yes. For one, our kind get relentless and it helps to focus our energy. But mostly because we have to fight for our lives every other century. Whoever wins is often whoever had the most training."
Which disqualified her.
"So how do I win?"
"You don't," he replied, point-blank.
"You give the best pep talk."
"Your goal isn't victory—not right now, not at your level. It's survival. You have friends. You have a guard. You have divine mojo in your bloodstream for the next few months."
She wondered how he knew about that. Chloe hadn’t even told Mikar, feeling like it was huntsmen business she shouldn’t share unless necessary. She was going to ask, but Levi continued, "The likelihood of any enemy having you to themselves for more than five minutes is practically nonexistent. The primary goal of your training is to teach you how to last five minutes against anyone."
She hated to admit it, but he made a lot of sense.
"All right. What does my blood have to do with that?"
"Most sups will smell it miles away. That makes it a liability, and also a weapon. You openly bleed anywhere within a mile, Mikar will follow the trail. But you may also use it against your opponent. They'll be focusing on trying to get to the blood—it may not even occur to them right away that they could simply rip out your throat. If your hand bleeds, they'll want your hand."
"So I can distract them," she said, catching on.
Levi inclined his head. "Precisely."
She nodded. "All right. Then what?"
"Then, you try to punch me."
She wasn't going to lie—at first, the prospect held some appeal, but she soon realized it had been a trap.
She drew her fist to the left, aiming for his shoulder, but he blocked, grabbed her wrist, and twisted it behind her back.
"Not bad. You need to be faster, and aim for the face—unless it's a feral, you want to stay as far as possible from the teeth. We'll get to that. Arms higher, use the other one to protect your face."
He let go of her wrist and took a step back.
"Again."
Two hours later, she really wanted to punch him. She was sweating, panting, and the man didn't even have the decency to look winded.
"Again!"
"If my arms fall off, it's your fault."
And her legs. And her lungs. Did she even have lungs?
She practiced the move he'd just shown her, a lower version of a skip-axe-kick, for the twelfth time, and the asshole casually stepped aside, effortlessly avoiding her.
Chloe dropped to the floor.
"Just give me five, okay?"
She was begging, and she wasn't even sorry. To her surprise, instead of admonishing her, Levi walked toward a fridge tucked in a corner of the room. He pulled out a bottle of water and handed it to her.
"Thank you."
"You're doing well, you know. Better than expected."
She rolled her eyes. "For a puny human?"
Levi shrugged. "For anyone. The art of violence is never easy, and particularly not at the start."
The art of violence. That certainly fit the way he moved.
"Would I have a chance, then?"
"Right now, no." At least he was no liar. "But give it time. All it takes is keeping your enemy out of range for one move, and then the next, and the one after that."
That sounded too simple.
"What were you saying earlier about the ferals? Those are the crazed-types we saw in London, right?"
A nod. "They're a different entity altogether. At this point, it's hard to even think of them as vampires."
Chloe frowned. "Mikar said they were sick vampires."
"In a way, yes, but there's no known cure. The ferals cannot stop themselves from gorging on blood. They bite and drain anything—vampire, human, shifter, demon, god, you name it. In most cases, they just kill their victims. But when they bite vampires, it's worse. They infect us."
Chloe grimaced. "So you could go all fangy?"
He snorted. "They'd have to get to me first." The lightheartedness disappeared fast. "They're too mindless to pose much of a threat to someone like me. And too slow. But their greatest strength is that they travel in packs. If you see one, there'll likely be a hundred on its heels. Against a vampire, you stand your ground and buy yourself time. Against a feral, don't hesitate. Run. Climb out of the way if you can. Hide. Use whatever artifice might fool a simple dog relying on its instincts."
She took in everything he shared, letting herself understand the implications. In the end, she only said one thing.
"Vampires are a lot faster than me."
He shrugged. “Your adrenaline will kick in. And muscle memory will help. More than you know. It's a wondrous thing. One day, you’ll wake up and know all these moves. You’ll know how to block, fight, lunge faster. You’ll be able to anticipate your adversary's next move with just one hint."
Chloe wrinkled her nose. "I can't imagine getting to that point."
Especially against him. Levi grinned, extending his hand to help her up.
"Again."
A Blood Stone
Her schedule got considerably more challenging; in addition to her usual classes, she took an hour of endurance with Professor Beaufort each morning, and learned to climb with Jack, who was a slave driver. Despite the wind, he insisted on practicing out of doors. The Institute training room had a perfectly good climbing wall, but it apparently wasn't good enough for Sir Sadist of Sade, who preferred to make her scrape her hands on the steep, calcareous walls of a hillside in the Wolvswoods.
On Thursday, she was told to head to the main gym.
The woman waiting for her was dark, sensual, beautiful, and mysterious. Her brown hair had red streaks in the sunlight, and while most of her features pointed to an Indian heritage, she had a dusting of freckles on her nose and green eyes that sparked with gold near the center.
Chloe didn't think she'd ever seen a more beautiful woman in her life.
"I'm Greer."
An unusual name Chloe had only heard once here. "As in Greer Vespian?"
"That's it."
She whistled, impressed.
She didn't know what she'd expected, exactly—someone a little more like Blair and Gwen, feminine, bubbly—but at a glance, Chloe would have pegged Greer as a huntsman. She had the look of a well-trained fighter and the analytical eyes of someone who knew how to put an adversary on their ass thirteen different ways.
"I've had some of your potions. You rock."
It was hard to tell under her ochre skin, but Chloe would have sworn the witch blushed.
"Thanks. I try. All right, so, I heard you've just taken up training."
Chloe winced. "Last weekend."
From her grimace, Greer seemed to understand her plight.
"Well, take it from someone who's been through this—sparring, running, obstacles; they'll make you strong. But without the basics, your body is just a list of limbs you don't really understand."
Chloe was ready for more torture. She was determined to never again feel as hopeless as she had in London, and if this was what it took, then she would go the distance.
"Right. What are we doing?"
Half an hour later, Chloe moaned in relief. Greer had made her lie on her back on a yoga mat and move her knees down to the floor on her right side while her head was turned the other way. Every single bone and muscle in her body thanked her for it. She was shown a few different twists and stretches to reconnect with her tense limbs, and when they were done training, Greer also handed her a bottle of gold liquid.
"That's to soothe your muscles. External use; just rub it after your bath every night like a moisturizer."
"What's in it?" Chloe asked, pocketing it.
Greer shrugged. "You know, essential oils, eucalyptus. Mostly magic, though. A mushroom that only grows at the very tip of a stiff cliff, flowers that must be picked on a blue moon, the raw heart of a…"
Chloe held her hands up in surrender. She didn’t need to know whose heart she was ingesting. "Got it. No questions asked. If it helps, I'll use it."
The witch laughed. "Wise. Keep practicing, and I'll see you next week, same time?"
No way Chloe would miss that.
By the end of a long week, she was glaring every time her eyes fell on Night Hill, seeing it as the source of all her troubles. She was certain that if Levi had let Mikar, or basically anyone else, train her, every part of her flesh wouldn't feel like it had been beaten repetitively.