Doesn’t mean I don’t want to be able to kick his ass if I have to, though. The chance to learn martial arts from a vampire…that was way too good to pass up.

I know how to do the real kind of martial arts. I mean, I had karate until I was thirteen and decided I was too cool for it. So I know how to put on a gi and tie a belt and be formal on the mats. Turned out that was good, because the instructor—some dude named Vassily, with an Eastern European accent straight out of an old movie—wanted to start out that way.

I was okay the first couple of passes, when he got me up to spar. It was like fighting anybody else, no big thing, until he started using vampire speed and strength on me. I couldn’t help it; that made me angry, and anger kind of makes me forget the rules. I went for his knee. He hit me like a wrecking ball smashing a wall, and next thing I knew, I was shaking it off with a giant ache in my chest. I’d been lucky. He could have caved in my ribs and Swiss-cheesed my heart if he’d hit full strength.

Then don’t let him hit you again, loser. I could almost hear my dad’s voice, dry and mocking. He was dead now, but in my mind he was always there, always watching, and always judging. He’d hated vampires. I didn’t much like ’em, either. We’d always had that in common.

I didn’t think about walking away. I went back to the mat and bowed, and the second I got a chance, I attacked with everything I had. Full-on blitz. I knew I was going to get hurt, maybe badly, maybe killed, but I wasn’t going to be humiliated. Not by a vampire. No way in hell.

I got him. Hard. I could see the shock in his face, and the rush of rage, and as I stood there with the bloody taste of victory in my mouth, I actually wanted him to go for it, come get me, because, damn, I felt alive, actually alive…….

But he shut me down, said something I didn’t register, and bowed me off the mat. I don’t remember leaving or kneeling down. I just remember thinking, Next time, next time, next time, regular as a bell ringing in my head and drowning out every other thought.

I watched him go through the rest of the class. He didn’t hurt anybody else, but he could have. He wanted to; I could see it in flashes in his eyes. They’re all alike, you know. Hunters. Even Michael’s got it, though he hides it, and sometimes I pretend like I don’t see it, either. You have to be ready for them to turn on you.

Because if you’re not ready…somebody you love could get hurt.

I closed my eyes and imagined Claire. She always made me feel better. But although I could see her face, her smile, almost feel her presence, all I could think about was how easy it would be for them to take her away from me.

I couldn’t let that happen.

It occurred to me that what the vamp had said to me was that he’d see me later. Some kind of special class? Hell, yeah. I could do that. I needed to do that.

I needed to understand how to fight them, one on one, without help or weapons or hope.

Only the vampires could show me that.

Still…sitting there, hands on my knees, breathing fast, I couldn’t help but feel that even though I’d won, even though I’d done the impossible…somehow, I’d lost.

And it was first of a whole lot of losses.

Watching Shane kneeling there, so closed-in and so…cold, Claire felt a little sick. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like how he’d just fought, and she didn’t like how he looked afterward. Shane was usually happy after a fight, not…angry.

This whole thing is a bad idea, she thought. She didn’t know why, but she knew it was true.

“Hey,” said a low voice at her back, and Claire looked back to see Eve standing there. For the gym, she’d dispensed with the Goth makeup, but her tight T-shirt had a pink skull with a bow on it, and there were a skull and crossbones in rhinestones down the sides of her workout pants, too. She’d tied her straight black hair back in a shining ponytail. It was about as unadorned as Eve ever got, unless she was in disguise. “Did you see that? What the hell was that? Did Shane just go all Wolfman, or what?”

“I don’t know,” Claire said, and jumped down from the exercise machine. “But—”

“Boyfriend’s got issues,” Eve finished. “Yeah, no kidding. So, you came to spy, too?”

“Too?”

“Really, come on. Do you see me as the heavy-sweating type? So very not.” Eve looked her over critically. “And you aren’t, either, but you can pass for it, probably. Did they make you pay the ten bucks to get in?”

“Yeah.”

“This is so much less fun than I’d hoped. For one thing, nobody here is worthy of being ogled, and if they are, they’re way too sweaty. Or scary. Or both.” Eve gave a theatrical little shudder. “What do you say we do something else?”

“Like what?” Claire was still distracted by the sight of Shane, kneeling like a statue at the edge of the sparring space. He was still in that other world, looking off into the distance. Scary.

Eve gave her a slow, wicked smile. “Let me ask you this. Have you ever fenced?”

For a second, Claire thought she meant the traditional kind of thing, like hammering pickets onto rails in front of a house, but then she figured it out. “Oh. You mean with swords?”

“Exactly. If I’m going to sweat, I’m going to sweat in a cooler way. Follow me.”

“Wait. You fence?”

“I took it up in high school,” Eve said. “Come on, walk and talk, walk and talk. That’s a girl. Yeah, I had to have a sport, but I don’t like those icky team things. Fencing seemed retro cool, and plus, there were pointy things you try to stick into your opponent. It seemed like a good idea.”

Eve had clearly spent her time in the gym checking out every corner of it, because Claire had no idea there was another part to it, behind a door near the restrooms. Behind it lay a couple of racquetball courts (safely caged up behind clear plastic), and even an indoor tennis court; maybe the vampires had been craving it and couldn’t get out in the sun. But at the very back was a wood-floored room with racks on the walls that held swords, as well as neat stacks of white uniforms and those funky mesh helmets.

“Right. I wouldn’t start you out with a saber,” Eve said, moving Claire from contemplation of one particular row of choices. “Too whippy for a beginner. How about a plain old foil? You can only target from the neck to the waist; no double touches. Easy peasy.”

She grabbed a couple of the long, slender weapons and tossed one to Claire, who caught it. It felt strange in her hand, but not at all heavy. The blade was kind of square, and there was a round tip on the end. She made a tentative slashing motion with it, and Eve laughed.

“It’s a lunging weapon,” she said. “Hang on, let’s get you suited up before you start attacking anything.”

Suiting up sounded much less complicated than it actually was; by the time Eve had finished dressing her like a sword-bearing doll, Claire felt clumsy, hot, and claustrophobic. Between the thick padding and the tight mesh helmet, she had no idea how she was supposed to move, much less fight.

Eve had her own fencing suit, which she took out of a cheerful, skull-featuring bag of her own. Her outfit was black, with a pirate skull and crossbones where the heart would be. She looked dangerous. And a little bit crazy, even without the beekeeper helmet.

“Okay,” she said. “First fighting lesson is, we don’t fight, so stop pointing that foil at me. It’s not going to go off.”

Claire blushed and dropped the point down toward her toes. “Sorry.”

“No worries. You couldn’t hit me, anyway,” Eve said, and smiled. “I’m going to line up next to you. Just do what I do, okay?”

The first thing, apparently, was how to grip the sword properly. That took a while. Then there was lunging, which involved stabbing the sword out in a smooth, straight line while stepping out on her right leg in a deep crouch.