“Hmm.” I shrugged and looked away.
The incident made me uneasy, but Nikka didn’t need to know that. She might have asked why I was so jumpy, and that was not a story I wanted to tell.
Nikka leaned forward, intent on making her point. “Totally intense. Like he knew you or something.”
“I don’t know anyone here except you and Tre,” I said, naming the San Diego police officer who worked security for Stefanakis in his off-hours.
“Maybe you just look like someone he knows. Or maybe it was love at first sight. You should go after him. Give him your number. If you’re going to make new friends, you could definitely do worse than him. He was… spectacular.”
Cold waves rippled over my shoulders. I shivered and shrugged off the chill. No making friends with handsome strangers. Letting Nikka into my life had been risky enough.
Nikka must have sensed my mood change. She frowned and tossed a couple bills on the table, enough to cover my check and a tip. We slid out of our booth and headed for the door.
“We should do this again,” she said. “Soon.”
No. No, we shouldn’t. Routines and habits and friends made a person comfortable. Comfortable people made mistakes like letting down their guards and trusting. Trusting opened the way for betrayal and broken hearts.
Chapter Three
“Faster,” said Tre Hobbs, my sparring partner. He raised a padded strike shield to chest height. “You’ve got to bring up that left. It’s not about technique right now. It’s about speed.”
I sucked in a deep lungful of air and caught my breath. The krav maga gym smelled like sweat and stale body odor—the perfume of hard work, pain, and tenacity. I nodded. Tre nodded back and readied for my assault.
Hit, hit, hit—left, left, right. I pounded my fists against the pad. Hit, hit, hit—right, left, left. Tre had me focused on my left strike, working to strengthen my weaker arm.
“Good,” he said. “Much better. Now, let’s see that speed again but with a little more control.”
“Uh,” I said, voicing my exhaustion.
We had sparred off and on for nearly half an hour and spent the last few minutes on intense upper-body work. I had maybe one round left in me before my arms melted to Jell-O and my lungs self-combusted.
“One more time, Sabrina. You’re fighting for your life. Exhaustion means defeat.”
After weeks of steady eating, routine sleep, and a semiregular schedule, my fire had mostly rekindled, but that stint of powerlessness had showed me the danger of depending on the fire as my sole weapon. My supernatural abilities were depletable resources. When the flames were gone, my fists and fierceness remained. Damned if I wouldn’t learn how to use them.
Two intense weeks of training among the Valkyries had knocked off the dust and awoken my survivor instincts, but I was far from mastering proficiency in combat. My so-called fight against Skoll had enumerated my many inadequacies, and Hati’s incineration was the result not so much of skill but of blind and incoherent rage.
I welcomed any tool, any asset that increased my odds of survival—no waiting for others to save me, no more helpless human. Fists, fire, or cunning, I would stand firm and retain a position of strength, even among gods and monsters.
I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath. Then I nodded but kept my eyes shut and waited for Tre’s assault. Tre used that technique, the blind attack, to hone my reaction time. “Your attacker won’t usually give you a warning,” he said the first time we had trained that way. “No ‘Here I come, better get ready’ speeches.”
Tre pounced, soundless and sudden, like a cat—one of the large panther varieties. He nearly knocked me off my feet when he shoved the strike pad against me, putting all his weight behind the assault. I stumbled and opened my eyes. Strike, strike, strike—left, left, right. Tre shifted toward me, and I struck again—right, left, left. The last hit fell short, and I faltered and fell to my knees.
“Oh,” I wheezed. “Oh, that’s done it. I’m just going to stay down for the night. Tell the staff to sweep around me when they close up.” To emphasize my meaning, I slumped to the floor.
Tre’s chuckle sounded like a grizzly growling. He reminded me of a large brown bear, minus all the fur. “I guess that’s enough for one night.”
“Maybe I should call in sick tomorrow. How can Nikka expect me to pull a beer tap or shake a martini?” I wagged a shoulder, and my arm slid to the floor. “See? Limp noodles.”
Still laughing, Tre shook his head and leaned over. He extended a hand to me. “You’ll leave a grease stain on the mat, and I’ll have to revoke your guest privileges.”
I snorted. “Okay, okay.”
Tony, the owner, kept his studio meticulously clean and threatened to kick out anyone who messed it up. It wouldn’t do for Tre to lose his membership because of me, and I couldn’t afford to train in that gym on my slim paycheck. Also, I tended to avoid membership forms—they asked too many personal questions.
I took Tre’s hand and let him tug me to my feet. “Can you meet me again tomorrow? I have to work, though, so it’ll have to be earlier in the afternoon.”
Tre’s brown eyes widened, and his mouth fell open. “What are you? A robot? Take a break. You’ve been at this for a week straight. Those ghosts you’re trying to fight will still be there when you come back.”
I blushed. “That obvious, is it?”
Tre shrugged, and his massive shoulders strained against his T-shirt. “It’s just the way it is with these sort of things. Most women aren’t proactive about self-defense. In my experience, they are reactive. They train to make up for the shortcomings they realized after it was too late.”
I crossed the room, grabbed a clean towel from the shelf, and dabbed at the sweat on my forehead and neck. “It’s not too late for me. But it was a near thing.” And that was the most I would say about it to Tre or to Nikka. Let them think what they would: abusive boyfriend, a random stranger attack. The possibilities were all as terrible and horrifying as anything that had happened to me in reality, but with the addition of that whole apocalyptic, end-of-the-world thing. Yes, let’s don’t forget about that.
“If you want, I can ask one of the other members to work with us next time,” Tre said. “It’ll be good for you to change your opponents from time to time.”
What I really needed was a sparring partner who fought on four legs. Tre should have lent me a German shepherd from his PD’s K-9 unit. “Makes sense,” I said instead. “Maybe we’ll do that.”
“Need me to drop you off at home?” Tre asked. The sun had set an hour before, and I lived several blocks away. Usually, we met in the afternoons before my shift at the bar, but I’d had the day off, and Tre had met me after he got off work.
“If you don’t mind?”
Tre nodded. “Just let me grab my things.”
At home, in the relative safety of my apartment, I bolted the door, threw the latch, and went to the shower for a long, hot scrubbing. Afterward, I stood before the fogged-up mirror and studied my ghostly shadow. I reached to wipe away the condensation but stopped and pulled my hand back. Nope, nothing to see here, folks. Skin and bones, some bruises from krav maga, eyes that reflected the many disturbing things that had happened to me.
