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“You’re not the most encouraging instructor, you know that?” I opened my eyes to find him standing over me with his hand outstretched to help me up.
“There’s a fine line between encouragement and letting you get away with shit that could get you hurt or killed. Now get up.”
I rolled my eyes but placed my hand in his. “I can’t believe you’re an angel,” I muttered under my breath. “I would have thought they’d have better manners.”
“No, but we do have excellent hearing,” he said, pulling me to my feet. “If you want polite, ask God if he can send you someone from the first order.”
“I think I’d rather keep you—bad manners and all.”
“Well, that’s a relief. As flattered as I am, I’ll still take you down in about five seconds.”
“Jerk.”
“Is that really the best you can do, baby girl?”
And then I was falling backward. I let out a curse as I hit the mat harder this time. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.” He smirked down at me.
“I want to.” I made no move to get up from the floor, ignoring Nate’s offered hand.
He knelt beside me. “I know this isn’t your favorite part of training, but honestly this is one of the most useful skills you can have when fighting demons. They like to throw people around. Only a very select few demons use blades, and those are the ones you have almost no chance against.”
“Wonderful,” I moaned.
“You don’t have to do this. The whole point of me being here is to protect you from anything that comes after you.”
“No. I need to be able to protect myself.” I shoved to my feet. “Let’s go again.”
Nate rose slowly. I could see the conflict in his eyes. He wanted me to be able to protect myself, but I knew he hated the idea of me fighting. I could feel the difference between today and when we trained last week. It was one thing when he was training me to fight lesser demons. Now that Dantalion had shown up, everything had changed for him.
We spent the next hour practicing takedowns, blocks, and attacks.
“All right, that’s enough for today,” Nate said.
I didn’t argue with him. My clothes were soaked through with sweat, and my limbs felt heavy with exhaustion. I headed to the showers without another word.
Nate was waiting for me when I came out of the locker room with my gym bag slung over my shoulder. He took the bag and laced his fingers with mine.
“Are you having second thoughts about teaching me how to fight?” I asked when we got home.
“I don’t think you want me to answer that.”
“You are.”
“Not exactly. I do want you to be as capable as you can be, but I need you to stay out of any fights with Dantalion. No matter how much we train, I don’t want you anywhere near him.” He ran a hand through his blond hair and dropped onto the couch. “We should talk. Now that we know it’s him who’s been sending demons after you, we can try to get ahead of him. Come up with a plan instead of just reacting.”
“Okay…” I moved to sit beside him. “What do we need to talk about?”
“I need to know everything you can remember about the night you killed Valac.” His eyes met mine, and I could see the apology in them for asking me to relive the night that started all this.
I swallowed. “When I came into the parking lot, the angel was already bleeding. Valac said she wasn’t going to survive and something about his father and a guy stealing a key. The angel said Valac was never going to find him. And then Valac saw me. I shot him, and then it’s all kind of a blur. The angel gave me the stake and told me to aim for the heart. I don’t really know how I managed to kill him. After he was gone, the angel gave me a leather bracelet and said it belonged to someone named Carter. I didn’t get the chance to ask her more before she vanished.”
Nate frowned. “Can I see this bracelet?”
I’d hidden the bracelet deep in a drawer with the stake after that night, but unlike the stake, I hadn’t taken the bracelet out since then. I brought the circle of braided leather back out to the living room and handed it to Nate.
The bracelet looked and felt normal to me, but Nate jerked as soon as the leather touched his skin, as if it had zapped him.
