Lilith dipped deftly to the left of Luce's sword, spun around, then came back from below with her own, clashing against Luce's. The two blades slid against each other until they reached a midpoint, then held. Luce had to put all her strength into stopping Lilith's foil with the pressure of her own. Her arms were shaking, but she was surprised to nd she could hold Lilith back in this position. At last Lilith broke away and backed o . Luce watched her dip and spin a few times, and began to gure her out.
Lilith was a grunter, making tons of e ort- lled noise. It was a bit of misdirection. She would make a huge noise and feint in one direction, then whip the point of her foil around in a high, tight arc to try to get past Luce's defenses.
So Luce tried the same move. When she swung the tip of her sword back around to get her rst point, just south of Lilith's heart, the girl let out a deafening roar.
Luce winced and backed away. She didn't think she'd even touched Lilith very hard. "Are you okay?" she called out, about to lift her mask.
"She's not hurt," Francesca answered for Lilith. A smile parted her lips. "She's angry that you're beating her."
Luce didn't have time to wonder what it meant that Francesca seemed suddenly to be enjoying herself, because Lilith was barreling toward her once again, sword poised. Luce raised her sword to meet Lilith's, turning her wrist to clash three times before they disengaged.
Luce's pulse was racing and she felt good. She sensed an energy coursing through her that she hadn't felt in a long time. She was actually good at this, almost as good as Lilith, who looked like she'd been bred to skewer people with sharp things. Luce, who had never even picked up a sword, realized she actually had a chance to win. Just one more point.
She could hear the other students cheering, some even calling out her name. She could hear Miles, and she thought she could hear Shelby, which really egged her on. But the sound of their voices was woven through with something else. Something staticky and too loud. Lilith fought as
ercely as ever, but suddenly Luce was having a hard time concentrating. She backed up and blinked, looking into the sky. The sun was obscured by the overhanging trees--but that wasn't all. A growing eet of shadows was stretching forth from the branches, like ink stains extending right above Luce's head.
No--not now, not in public with everyone watching, and not when it might cost her this match. Yet no one else even noticed them, which seemed impossible. They were making so much noise it was impossible for Luce to do anything but cover her ears and try to block them out. She raised her hands to her ears, which made her sword tip skyward, confusing Lilith.
"Don't let her freak you out, Luce. She's toxic!" Dawn chirped from the bench.
"Use the prise de fer!" Shelby called. "Lilith sucks at the prise de fer. Correction: Lilith sucks at everything, but especially the prise de fer."
So many voices--more, it seemed, than there were people on the deck. Luce winced, trying to block it all out. But one voice separated from the crowd, as though it were whispering into her ear from just behind her head. Steven:
"Screen out the noise, Luce. Find the message."
She whipped her head around, but he was on the other side of the deck, looking toward the trees. Was he talking about the other Nephilim? All the noise and chatter they were making? She glanced at their faces, but they weren't even talking. So who was? For the briefest moment, she caught Steven's eyes, and he lifted his chin toward the sky. As if he were gesturing at the shadows.
In the trees above her head. The announcers were speaking.
And she could hear them. Had they been speaking all along?
Latin, Russian, Japanese. English with a southern accent. Broken French. Whispers, singing, bad directions, lines of rhyming verse. And one long bloodcurdling scream for help. She shook her head, still holding Lilith's sword at bay, and the voices overhead stayed with her. She looked at Steven, then Francesca. They showed no signs, but she knew they heard it. And she knew they knew she was listening too.
For the message behind the noise.
All her life she'd heard the same noise when the shadows came--whooshing, ugly, wet noise. But now it was di erent. ...
Clash.
Lilith's sword collided with Luce's. The girl was snorting like an angry bull. Luce could hear her own breath inside the mask, panting as she tried to hold Lilith's sword. Then she could hear so much more among all the voices. Suddenly she could focus on them. Finding the balance just meant separating the static from the signi cant stu . But how?
Il faut faire le coup double. Apr?s ca, c'est facile a gagner, one of the Announcers whispered in French.
Luce had just two years of high school French to go on, but the words touched her somewhere deeper than her brain. It wasn't just her head understanding the message. Somehow her body knew it too. It seeped into her, right down to the bone, and she remembered: She'd been in a place like this before, in a sword ght like this, a stando like this.
The Announcer was recommending the double cross, a complicated fencing move in which two separate attacks came one right after the other.
Her sword slid down her opponent's and the two of them broke away. A moment sooner than Lilith, Luce lunged forward in one clean intuitive motion, thrusting her sword point right, then left, then ush against the side of Lilith's rib cage. The Nephilim cheered, but Luce didn't stop. She disengaged, then came straight back a second time, plunging the tip of her foil into the padding near Lilith's gut.
That was three.