Before either sound had faded, Matthew was in motion.
He was fast. Too fast. I stepped away at an angle to avoid his first strike, but he caught me with the second, a punch that barely clipped me and still sent me skidding. I should’ve gone with the momentum of the punch, let it carry me out of range, but instead I fought to keep from going down. All that did was make me an easy target.
I didn’t see the third punch; just felt the explosion of light, the sudden weightlessness of being, and the impact when I landed.
I spat blood, watched it mingle on the floor with all the rest. Paladin was already back across the pit where he’d started, watching to make sure I stayed down.
Fuck staying down.
I climbed back to my feet, mind racing. I had a slight reach advantage, but no way to use it without his speed and strength overwhelming me. The way he moved, first against the Viking, and now against me, spoke to his training. Real training, not the stuff I’d scraped together from late-night brawls, back-alley beatings and one close encounter with a screwdriver.
I couldn’t win. I definitely couldn’t win clean. So I needed to dirty this up.
This time, when Paladin came forward, I went to meet him. Wind whistled past my face as I slid under a punch that had still been almost too quick, and then I was inside his guard, far past the second punch that he threw towards where he’d expected me to be.
I spun like a corkscrew, dropping to one knee and throwing my elbow towards his kidney.
He blocked it. I don’t fucking know how, but he did, twisting impossibly and diverting my hit to the side with his forearm. Elbow to forearm, advantage should’ve been elbow, but I felt something pop in my own arm, even before his other hand came down to exert pressure.
I exploded back to my feet, thrust my free hand at his face, thumb going for his baby blues, and he threw me into the air and over his shoulders with that single fucking hand. I renewed my acquaintance with the wall, reintroduced myself to the floor, and donated a little more blood to the pool.
This time, Paladin didn’t wait. As I struggled to my feet, he was there, fist hammering into my right side like a steel wrecking ball. When I fell a third time, I donated more than just blood; half-digested remnants of eggs and bacon joined the gory stew.
Like I said, it doesn’t pay to overeat at breakfast. Not on Mondays. Especially not that first Monday.
I could hear the disgust in Matthew’s voice, as he looked toward the camera. “We’re done, Professor.”
Fuck being done too.
It was anger that got me back to my feet. Anger that drowned out the sharp pain in my side, and the harsh, strangled wheezing of my suddenly inadequate breath. Anger at the Academy, at this class, at Bard and his sanctimonious fucking speeches, at Matthew-fucking-Strich and his vid-star looks, at the fact that these sweats were practically the only clothes I fucking owned, and one set was now ruined for fucking forever.
“We are not fucking done,” I growled.
Paladin’s eyes widened, for just a moment, and then he came back in.
Anger got me through the first hit and the second.
Anger got me back off the floor the fourth time, the fifth time, even the sixth time, by which point Paladin’s fists were dripping with my blood.
Anger got me a strike that almost landed, my extended fingers grazing his throat even as he hammered yet another fist into my stomach, sending me to the floor for the seventh fucking time in I didn’t know how many fucking minutes.
That was when anger fled, taking with it the pain that it had almost hidden, leaving nothing behind but emptiness, cold and silent. I could feel the walls of the pit closing in on me, feel consciousness packing its bags as it prepared to follow anger right the fuck out that door in my mind. Try as I might, I couldn’t find the words or the thoughts or the emotions to summon it back.
Nor could I find the energy to be surprised when my body gathered beneath me all on its own, and I stood back up for round eight.
CHAPTER 20
Regaining consciousness always sucks. First, there’s the sense of confusion—where am I, what am I doing here, and on particularly fucked-up occasions, who am I? As the answers are just starting to make their way to the front of your brain, the questions cease to matter, wiped away by the world making itself known again through that sensation called pain.
This time was no different. My head was killing me, and every part of my body was rioting right along with it. Less pain than I’d have expected, less pain than I remembered from before I went out, but it sure didn’t feel good. I cracked one eye open and immediately wished I hadn’t. Regaining consciousness is bad enough, but waking up to find a ginger in your face? That’s a whole new species of suck, even before you add in that this particular ginger was singing under his breath. Voice like his would have put Alicia’s panties right back on, if you know what I’m saying.
If she hadn’t already been dead, of course.
Fucking Scarlet.
Fucking parents who took Alicia out of Bakersfield.
Anyway, the ginger. I don’t know what people thought of gingers before the Break. One theory holds that gingers didn’t even exist pre-Break, that they’re something Dr. Nowhere was in the midst of dreaming into existence when he woke up, leaving his last creation badly incomplete. And soulless. Totally soulless. I didn’t buy that theory—and not just because I’d seen pre-Break comic books starring a Cape
