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“Obviously, a lot of this will come instinctively,” Hudson said as I followed him around to the back of the house. “But instincts aren’t good enough when our lives depend on us using our abilities to their fullest extent.”
Jax stayed inside, so I assumed he planned to use cleaning up after breakfast as an excuse not to mingle with his ex. I sighed. Maybe it would be good to burn off some of this frustration before we crossed the infernal threshold, anyway.
“I’m extra strong, extra fast, all my senses are amped up… Anything else that will be useful in the infernal realm?”
“Have you ever been compelled?” Hudson asked.
My mind instantly went back to how Ty had forced me to do his bidding. How helpless I’d felt. How terrified I’d been that my coven would never know what had happened to me. How I’d tried everything I could think of to break free of his overpowering grasp.
“I’m not sure how that will help us.”
“Just in case you ever need it,” Hudson said.
“Try it on me, huntress,” Nico suggested.
I faced him by the door and met his magenta gaze.
Hudson zoomed over beside me, and the air displaced by his sudden movement made my hair flutter to the side. “You only need to catch his eyes for a moment. Then tell him what you want him to do.”
I gazed into his eyes and said, “Clap your hands five times.”
Nothing happened.
“It’s harder to compel a fellow vampire,” Hudson said. “You really need to exert your will over him. Imagine him doing what you told him.”
I stared at Nico, with his arms crossed. I imagined him uncrossing his arms, then raising his hands, and clapping them as I said the words, “Clap your hands five times.”
I felt something go from me to him, like I’d snagged him with a little hook on the end of a string. This time, his arms came uncrossed, but then he rolled his shoulders and shook off the compulsion. The connection between us faded like I’d only imagined it.
“Again,” Hudson urged.
It reminded me so much of a professor we’d once had at the academy, that it broke my concentration. I turned to him and said, “Do you ever think they’ll have a training academy for vampires?”
“In our dreams,” Nico muttered.
Hudson didn’t reply, just waited for me to refocus.
So I turned to Nico again, letting my eyes bore into him. I imagined my will like a net instead of a tiny string. The net fell over him, tangling around his body, encasing him in my vampire magic.
“Clap your hands five times.”
This time his hands jerked up and came together five times, the sound cracking out loudly on the quiet street. Then he grinned as my compulsion fell off of him.
“Nice job!” Hudson pulled me in for a kiss.
When he let me go, I grinned at him. “If I’d been allowed to kiss you after lessons at the academy, I might have learned faster.”
“Next up,” he said, relentless. “Speed. You have to get used to reacting much faster when objects around you are blurring by and things come up unexpectedly. Remember to focus on all your senses, not just sight, while you’re running.”
“What should I do?”
“Up for a run?” Hudson asked Nico.
“If I get to have a hot huntress on my heels, sure,” he smirked over at me.
Hudson turned to me. “Chase him around the house. That’ll help you learn to corner. Running in a straight line is easy, but cornering at a high speed? Not so much. Once you’ve got it, I’ll introduce some variables.”
I grinned and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Aye, agent in charge, sir.” Then I ran toward Nico. I streaked toward him much faster than I’d anticipated, and nearly bowled him over when I tried to come to a stop in front of him. I miscalculated, and my body met a wall of hard muscle at a high speed.
