He returned my squeeze once before letting go. “Do not die in the culling, Charlie. I will be very unhappy, and I’d hate to have to start hurting the ash who hurt you.”
He would do it too. I could see it in his eyes. He was not happy about me going into this battle. But tradition was tradition, and not even a Quorum member could save me now. I was going to have to save myself.
Chapter 6
The next ten days passed in a blur of training, blood hunger, and ass-kickings. And straight up, Ryder was doing ninety percent of said kicking. I was getting a little bit better at fighting, but if my fellow ash fought anything like Ryder, I was a dead woman. I was starting to wonder if Ryder was punishing me for the revelations that day with that doctor, where she’d spoken of the anomalies in my blood. He’d been riding the shit out of me since then – pun intended – determined to turn me into a ninja freak show, and he was dragging my aching butt out of bed all hours of the day and night to do it.
A week ago we’d started weapons training, though Ryder only trained me on one weapon, the samurai sword. He thought it gave me the reach I needed on these big tall ash males. I told him it was stupid to teach me to use one weapon, especially if we had no guarantee that I would get the sword in my fight. He had said to shut up and do what he said because he had a plan.
The culling was tomorrow. One final day of training. And I was flat on my ass again.
“I can’t freaking levitate, Ryder. If you throw another fucking knife at me, I swear to the vampire gods I will find out where you sleep and I will sneak in and fill your bed with spiders – the kind that bite and kill.”
The enforcer halted himself mid-throw. Apparently he thought I lacked proper motivation to tap into my supposed power of the fourth house of the Originals. I thought he lacked a freaking soul, and was determined to kill me before I even made it into the culling.
“Charlie, you have more than a little untapped potential. I see it rarely, but it’s there. I’m struggling with a way to break down this wall of clumsy incompetence you hide behind. The culling starts tomorrow, and if you don’t deal with your shit you’re going to die.” His broad chest heaved in and out as if he was struggling not to completely lose his shit on me.
Wait, had he called me clumsy and incompetent? What a bastard. I was trying my best. A surge of emotion knocked into my chest, tightening it before it rose up in a burning wave of righteous anger. I was so going to rip his arm off and beat him to death with it. That would show him who was clumsy. I flipped to my feet and leapt forward, ready to strike. The movements came easier, and I was finally starting to understand why he’d drilled them into me day after day. In sparring I could hold my own now, even with Ryder, but I still lacked deeper technical training, which would be impossible for anyone to gain in such a short period.
I generally came at him front on and quite aggressive, but this time I did something different. I swung into his face, and right before I would have hit him, and he would have blocked me, I dropped down to my knees and drove both of my closed fists into his gut.
The shock reverberated up my arms and my hands ached instantly. There was not one ounce of fat on Ryder. Hitting his abs had been like smashing my fists into a wall. But I had hit him, and hard enough to stumble him back a little. I then swung one of my legs out, and ignoring the current pain in my knuckles, kicked out and smashed into his knee, hitting from the side and collapsing it in on itself.
The entire attack had taken no more than three seconds. I was fast. Ryder had been trying to get me to take advantage of my speed, and I was finally hearing his words. As he hit the ground, I dived across the long length of his body and straddled him, before slamming my fist down into his nose. He shifted his head at the last moment, and I knew he could have halted my movement – I saw that in his black and silver gaze – but he let me hit him, and it was this knowledge which stopped me from slamming into his face again.
We stared at each other, my breath heaving in and out as I fought for control. I knew I needed blood. I’d been trying to stretch myself out longer between feedings. But I was at the end. I wanted to bite Ryder so badly my teeth and gums were actually aching.
His expression was almost gentle as he stared up at me. “There is a wild strength in you, Charlie. You have beauty and brains. You need to figure out how to bring that all together. If you do that, there is no one who could stand against you.”
Those soft words brushed against me, and for a fraction of a second his eyes flashed pure silver. I realized then I was still straddled across his muscled form, and needed to move now. I blinked a few times, but my body didn’t seem to be responding.