The one certainty was my precognition. It always sharpened, whetted by and merging with the battle magic, giving me a split second before an opponent acted.
We saluted each other.
Walter attacked. Two moves in, I ducked under his sword and rammed the hilt of my waster into his spine, whirled, and landed a cut beneath his left arm. The wood edge hit so hard it bent his body. With a pirouette, I slammed my wooden waster sword into the side of his neck. Halted the cut before I damaged him. “Death blow.”
My magic wanted to keep fighting. I backed away. Held it close.
“If you could make a working from your fighting magic,” Walter said, “you would make millions.”
“Or Uncle Sam would disappear me into a lab and take it.” I didn’t quite sound like myself, my voice hollow and heavy inside my chest. “Millions would die. Hard pass.”
“Another round,” he ordered.
We bowed to each other.
Walter won that one by landing a blow that would have amputated my arm had his blade been steel. I was working the feeling back into my arm, riding the magic into submission, when he said, “Two swords and the proper Mithran forms of La Verdadera Destreza techniques.”
EJ and I were proficient in several different sword fighting disciplines, as was Walter, and part of his job was to keep us proficient and battle ready. I detested La Destreza, but I knew the futility of arguing and the necessity of practicing while I was riding my magic.
We walked to the sword rack, and each chose the paired wooden swords we preferred, the wooden weapon sets made by a guy Walter knew “in the hills.” EJ and I had never met the woodworker. Like all vampires, Walter kept his secrets.
Typical wooden Judoka were used for training in kenjutsu—the various cuts and blocks in Japanese sword fighting. The vampire version of La Destreza was always evolving, and these days had incorporated techniques from the Spanish, French, and kenjutsu, requiring the unusual Judoka we used.
Each Mithran Judoka consisted of one longsword that was a little shorter than a katana, called a bokken, and one shortsword, shaped like a vamp-killer, a curved long-bladed knife meant to be used for close-in work to disable vamps and behead them. Walter called it a tanto, though it wasn’t a typical tanto.
Our wooden Judoka sets were of finer-quality workmanship than the bastard wasters, hand-shaped from black ironwood, the edges blunt but hardened with fire. Well-balanced wooden practice Judoka were difficult to make. These were perfect.
While EJ had shown an early affinity and skill for hand-to-hand, my gift had been swords. I clearly remembered the time I landed a crotch lunge on my godmother’s Mercy Blade. It had been a proud day. I was eight. It was that small success that had set me on several paths and had led me here, to what passed for freedom: my own business and my own life, outside of our family coven and without a full royal protection detail. Unfortunately, it had also resulted in a checkered past, multiple bodies left on the floor of battle, that pesky price on my head, and a suckhead ex-husband.
Without taking our eyes from each other, we bowed, both swords crossed, upright between us. My magic seemed to have a life of its own, staring through my eyes at my opponent withcuriosity and bloodthirsty desire. My magic wanted Walter true-dead. I did not.
Walter attacked.
Before he even moved, I stepped back and braced my weight. Block, block, block. Lunge. Lunge. I whirled into the spinning, heavy arc of a death strike and stabbed into Walter’s gut. Spun out, my longsword hitting his neck. Whispering, “Death strike.”
“Beautiful,” Walter said.
Beautiful. I could almost feel my battle magic preen. Which was odd.
“Again,” he said, “and this time I’ll block the tanto strike.”
“You can try,” I said, again showing teeth, holding my magic close, but now more like a lover than a horse or dragon.
We started from the beginning. When we reached the moment when I had stepped into Walter’s arc, I stabbed.
His tanto came up, faster than I could react to the precog. It speared into my solar plexus. Pain shot through me like lightning. My breathwhoofedout. His longsword came down and touched my neck. “Two death strikes,” he said. “Your battle magic is stunning. You are as fast as a Mithran when it comes upon you.”
My magic still wanted to kill him.
To keep that from happening, I opened my hands, and the wooden swords fell to the fighting mat to either side. I dropped to my butt on the rubberized mat. Rubbing my neck and upper stomach, I said, “Okay.” Barely managing to keep a note of complaint and pain out of my voice, I added, “That freaking hurt.”
Scorn in his tone, Walter said, “It was supposed to hurt. Life’s best lessons hurt.”
My magic bucked at the taunting. I had to rein it in.
Deliberately baiting my control, he added, “Stop sniveling,you bratty urchin. Get up, and let’s walk through the moves so you can avoid being killed.”
My magic roiled through me, a fire-breathing dragon, far more deadly than the queen’s scarlet dragon, Longfellow. “Sniveling?” I asked, my voice snaky as her flying lizard. “Bratty?”
