Bite Club

you.

Because if you’re not ready…somebody you love could get hurt.

I closed my eyes and imagined Claire. She always made me feel better. But although I could see her face, her smile, almost feel her presence, all I could think about was how easy it would be for them to take her away from me.

I couldn’t let that happen.

It occurred to me that what the vamp had said to me was that he’d see me later. Some kind of special class? Hell, yeah. I could do that. I needed to do that.

I needed to understand how to fight them, one on one, without help or weapons or hope.

Only the vampires could show me that.

Still…sitting there, hands on my knees, breathing fast, I couldn’t help but feel that even though I’d won, even though I’d done the impossible…somehow, I’d lost.

And it was first of a whole lot of losses.

Watching Shane kneeling there, so closed-in and so…cold, Claire felt a little sick. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like how he’d just fought, and she didn’t like how he looked afterward. Shane was usually happy after a fight, not…angry.

This whole thing is a bad idea, she thought. She didn’t know why, but she knew it was true.

“Hey,” said a low voice at her back, and Claire looked back to see Eve standing there. For the gym, she’d dispensed with the Goth makeup, but her tight T-shirt had a pink skull with a bow on it, and there were a skull and crossbones in rhinestones down the sides of her workout pants, too. She’d tied her straight black hair back in a shining ponytail. It was about as unadorned as Eve ever got, unless she was in disguise. “Did you see that? What the hell was that? Did Shane just go all Wolfman, or what?”

“I don’t know,” Claire said, and jumped down from the exercise machine. “But—”

“Boyfriend’s got issues,” Eve finished. “Yeah, no kidding. So, you came to spy, too?”

“Too?”

“Really, come on. Do you see me as the heavy-sweating type? So very not.” Eve looked her over critically. “And you aren’t, either, but you can pass for it, probably. Did they make you pay the ten bucks to get in?”

“Yeah.”

“This is so much less fun than I’d hoped. For one thing, nobody here is worthy of being ogled, and if they are, they’re way too sweaty. Or scary. Or both.” Eve gave a theatrical little shudder. “What do you say we do something else?”

“Like what?” Claire was still distracted by the sight of Shane, kneeling like a statue at the edge of the sparring space. He was still in that other world, looking off into the distance. Scary.

Eve gave her a slow, wicked smile. “Let me ask you this. Have you ever fenced?”

For a second, Claire thought she meant the traditional kind of thing, like hammering pickets onto rails in front of a house, but then she figured it out. “Oh. You mean with swords?”

“Exactly. If I’m going to sweat, I’m going to sweat in a cooler way. Follow me.”

“Wait. You fence?”

“I took it up in high school,” Eve said. “Come on, walk and talk, walk and talk. That’s a girl. Yeah, I had to have a sport, but I don’t like those icky team things. Fencing seemed retro cool, and plus, there were pointy things you try to stick into your opponent. It seemed like a good idea.”

Eve had clearly spent her time in the gym checking out every corner of it, because Claire had no idea there was another part to it, behind a door near the restrooms. Behind it lay a couple of racquetball courts (safely caged up behind clear plastic), and even an indoor tennis court; maybe the vampires had been craving it and couldn’t get out in the sun. But at the very back was a wood-floored room with racks on the walls that held swords, as well as neat stacks of white uniforms and those funky mesh helmets.

“Right. I wouldn’t start you out with a saber,” Eve said, moving Claire from contemplation of one particular row of choices. “Too whippy for a beginner. How about a plain old foil? You can only target from the neck to the waist; no double touches. Easy peasy.”

She grabbed a couple of the long, slender weapons and tossed one to Claire, who caught it. It felt strange in her hand, but not at all heavy. The blade was kind of square, and there was a round tip on the end. She made a tentative slashing motion with it, and Eve laughed.

“It’s a lunging weapon,” she said. “Hang on, let’s get you suited up before you start attacking anything.”

Suiting up sounded much less complicated than it actually was; by the time Eve had finished dressing her like a sword-bearing doll, Claire felt clumsy, hot, and claustrophobic. Between the thick padding and the tight mesh helmet, she had no idea how she was supposed to move, much less fight.

Eve had her own fencing suit, which she took out of a cheerful, skull-featuring bag of her own. Her outfit was black, with a pirate skull and crossbones where the heart would be. She looked dangerous. And a little bit crazy, even without the beekeeper helmet.

“Okay,” she said. “First fighting lesson is, we don’t fight, so stop pointing that foil at me. It’s not going to go off.”

Claire blushed and dropped the point down toward her toes. “Sorry.”

“No worries. You couldn’t hit me, anyway,” Eve said, and smiled. “I’m going to line up next to you. Just do what I do, okay?”

The first thing, apparently, was how to grip the sword properly. That took a while. Then there was lunging, which involved stabbing the sword out in a smooth, straight line while stepping out on her right leg in a deep crouch.

It hurt. A lot. In fact, after about ten of those, Claire was gasping for breath and sweating; in about fifteen, she was ready to cry. Eve stopped after twenty, but it seemed like she could have gone all day.

“I had to put all this on for that?” Claire muttered, as she pulled off her helmet. Her hair was soaked with sweat and sticking to her face. “Seriously? Nobody even waved a sword at me!”

“You have to get used to the weight and moving in it,” Eve said. “Suck it up, newbie.”

“You’re enjoying this.”

“Yeah, well, a lot. I had to do it. You should, too.” Eve winked. She moved off to a padded pole that had a red circle marked on it, and practiced some lunges on her own. Her sword point landed in the circle every time.

Claire spun around at the dry sound of hands clapping. She hadn’t heard anybody come into the room, but there he was, dressed in white fencing gear, with a sword in one hand and his helmet tucked under his arm. Oliver. He looked leaner and harder in the uniform.

Next to him, also dressed in white, was another figure. Amelie. The Founder of Morganville had never seemed so small before; the clothes she wore tended to enhance her height, as did the high heels. But like this, Claire realized that Amelie wasn’t much taller than she was, and was very slender. In the fencing clothes, she could have passed for a boy, except for the feminine curves of her face.

“You’re coming along, Eve,” Amelie said. Eve broke off her lunges and stood very straight, sword point down. “I remember when you first began your lessons. I had to give personal approval for anyone who practiced those types of martial arts.”

“Yeah, well, it’s been a while since I was competitive,” Eve said. “Hey, Ollie.”

“For that,” Oliver said, “you may step onto the piste.”

“I didn’t come to fight.”

“You’re dressed for it. What is that—a foil? Nonsense. You’re more suited to an épée.” Oliver snorted and took another weapon from the wall, which he threw in Eve’s direction. She grabbed it out of the air with her left hand. It had a deadlier look to it, Claire realized; more like a triangular blade than the square base of the foil. Still had a tip on it, but it looked like a tougher thing to master.

Eve shrugged and tossed the foil back to Oliver, who put it on the rack. “All right,” she said, and cut the weapon—the épée—through the air with a hissing sound. “Your funeral, dude.”

Oliver bared his teeth in a grim smile and put on his helmet. “I doubt it,” he said.

Eve put on her helmet, too, and stepped into the narrow path marked on the floor. Claire moved back to stand by Amelie, who watched with an intense, focused expression on her pale face. As Eve and Oliver raised their