Bite Club Page 0,18

but I wasn't going to be humiliated. Not by a vampire. No way in hell.

I got him. Hard. I could see the shock in his face, and the rush of rage, and as I stood there with the

bloody taste of victory in my mouth, I actually wanted him to go for it, come get me, because, damn, I felt alive, actually alive.......

But he shut me down, said something I didn't register, and bowed me off the mat. I don't remember leaving or kneeling down. I just remember thinking,Next time, next time, next time,regular as a bell ringing in my head and drowning out every other thought.

I watched him go through the rest of the class. He didn't hurt anybody else, but he could have. He wanted to; I could see it in flashes in his eyes. They're all alike, you know. Hunters. Even Michael's got it, though he hides it, and sometimes I pretend like I don't see it, either. You have to be ready for them to turn on 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 usuallyhappy 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 wasthat ? 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. Youfence ?"

"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