As soon as I was warmed up—his words, warmed up, more like sweating like a horse—we sparred. The next six hours were a blur. Okay, maybe not really six hours, but it felt like it. I was dripping with sweat when the sparring-practice session was over, and yes. I was sore.
Beast was elated. Beast likes long claw, she murmured to me. More.
“No more,” I gasped, wiping the sweat from my eyes. “I’m done.”
“Accepted,” Gee said, dropping his practice blades. “Tomorrow we will practice the same moves, study three more, and then spar for thirty minutes.”
“Yeah?” I brightened. “I can do thirty.”
“Excellent. Today you managed only twelve,” Gee said, swatting me one last time across my butt. Hard.
“Owww. What was that for?” I asked, rubbing my backside.
“For being so very out of shape.”
“Me! Bleeding and bruised all over, but not out of shape.” I pulled on my Beast and skinwalker magics, a small tug of gray energies, to help me get out the door. I am not out of shape.
Eli laughed. Evil man. But he took my weapons, which now weighed about forty pounds each, and carried them, along with my discarded leathers, toward the door. Out of shape? It had been a while since I lifted weights with the Youngers, but out of shape?
Just as we reached the hallway door, a prickle of danger danced along my skin, burning through the drying sweat on the damp, elastic fabric of my clothing. I stepped in front of Eli and grabbed the long sword from his lax grip. “Gun,” I whispered.
He didn’t argue or ask questions. He slapped a nine-mil into my hand and pulled his own weapons as I whipped my eyes across the gym. People were everywhere, three pairs on the sparring mats, Leo and Gee together, Grégoire and Bruiser together, Del and a young vamp named Liam, all with blades, sparring. What I was feeling wasn’t coming from them.
“What?” Eli asked, his voice dropping low, his body tightening all over, the way an animal pulls inward just before the pounce.
Heat and light danced into the room, tingling on my skin. My body flooded with adrenaline, my eyes darting everywhere at once. Something was coming. Coming fast. “Magic!” I shouted. “Leo! Gee! Bruiser! Beware!”
There was a glint across the room, a glistening brilliance, yet no one looked up. At the back door, the light-being flowed through and into the room, snaking along the ceiling, a sparkling hint of rainbows and shadow. I pointed. “Lillilend,” I said.
Eli grunted, not disagreeing, but not able to see it in the gray place of the change where energy and matter might be the same thing. Moving as one, we dashed back toward the center of the room. Eli holstered his gun and pulled blades. I realized he was right. You can’t shoot something made of light. Or you could, the same way you could aim and pull the trigger at the sun. But you weren’t gonna do it any damage.
I wasn’t sure what good blades would do either, but between one step and the next, I shoved the useless gun into my waistband and accepted a vamp-killer from my always-armed second, fourteen inches of silver-plated, razor-edged steel to back up the practice weapon’s blunted steel. Most magical beings had an aversion to some sort of metal, and I thought the lillilend’s metal allergy was to steel.
The lillilend sped around the room, fast as an eyeblink, its body tight against the ceiling, hissing with anger. Eli released the useless bundle of my leathers and leaped over the pile it made without breaking stride.
Just ahead, the sparring partners raised weapons and bladed their bodies as if we were the danger. “Above!” I shouted, pointing.
Overhead, the light-being whipped around the vents and fixtures, wings spread, like something Disney might have envisioned if he’d taken a dose of LSD, backed up with a serving of psilocybin mushrooms, and a quart of tequila. It flashed into the visible range, a rippling of light and shadow, with human-shaped head, rows of shark teeth that glinted like pearls, transparent wings in all the colors of the rainbow, and a frill around its head in copper, brown, and pale white. Its body was vaguely snakelike, with iridescent scales the color of tinted glass and thick smoke and hints of copper. It smelled like green herbs burning over hot coals and the tang of fish and water plants. The thought came out of nowhere—Dragon of Light . . .
It dove. Snapped at Leo. He raised his weapons, executing one of the whirling moves Gee had used, his sword whipping and stabbing. Beside him, Gee stood still, his eyes and mouth open wide, his blades lowered, pointing at the floor. The lillilend dodged Leo’s whirling blades as if they were stuck in park and bared its fangs. It struck. Biting down on Gee, fangs entering front and back across his left shoulder. Bruiser raced in, ramming the stunned Mercy Blade to the floor. The light-dragon released him and the small man landed on one knee, dropping his swords, still staring up. I caught a glimpse of his face in something like reverence or awe, his eyes a luminous blue with a funky, oily shimmer that moved, like heat rising. And blood on his chest that appeared iridescent, not red. Almost faster than I could follow, the magic light-thing reared back and dodged in again, this time extending a black tongue and flicking it at Gee. Tasting his blood.
At vamp speed, Bruiser and Leo went back-to-back, standing over Gee, as if they’d fought this way before, many times. Their blades sang and cut in perfect synchrony, holding the creature away.
“Jane,” Bruiser shouted. “Do it! Change!”
For a span of heartbeats I had no idea what he meant; then I remembered. Bruiser had fought the light-dragon, or one similar to it, once before. In the gray place of the change, as I—as Beast—ran away. It was one of many things we hadn’t talked about.
I pulled on Beast and she shoved me aside, sliding down my arms and legs in a move that was painful beyond anything I could remember, my flesh feeling as if it had turned inside out and spat my bones to the floor. So fast. A burning-cutting-boiling pain arced into the air, stole my breath, and shredded my skin. Eli yelped and leaped away. I screamed, the half-human, half-cat scream splitting the air. Everything around me slowed to a crawl as the gray of my skinwalker magics erupted from inside me. This was the battle timing that many soldiers report, where their senses go into overdrive and everything happens with an intensity and speed that isn’t part of the normal human experience.
My arms sprouted tawny pelt; my fingers flashed with pain as they altered shape and claws pierced through the tips. Beast claws. My head whipped back, my face exploding outward, bones cracking.