other hand grabbed my shirt and yanked me down to her level. Smiling, she planted a kiss on my lips, then looked me in the eye.
“When the lights went out, I knew it was you.”
“Well, Levi is always saying bring enough gun. So I did, sort of,” I answered.
“Werewolves are incredibly tough. Next time, black out the city,” she said, giving me one more quick kiss before heading out the door. She was wearing black leggings and a heavy green sweatshirt and her lithe stride trapped my eyes.
“And I know you’re looking at my butt,” she said without turning around as she pushed the glass door open. The guard looked amused at her comment, glancing my way with raised eyebrows. I grinned back at him and shrugged, then headed upstairs.
Chapter 7
Six in the morning is a really stupid time of day for a class. Any class. It’s a horrible time of the day, made worse by the fact that in order to get there on time, you actually have to get up at like five-thirty.
About forty of us sat around the floor of the gym, waiting for our instructor, who walked in precisely at six o’clock. Wearing pressed khaki tactical pants, black combat boots, and a sprayed-on black t-shirt, he looked ridiculously alert and competent… and dangerous.
“Ah, my little lambs. On your feet. Now,” he said, never raising his voice yet somehow sounding completely badass.
“This is our first day, so you get an easy one. The only easy class we’ll hold. Wednesday, I expect you all in workout clothes, not street clothes, as we’ll begin to learn some combat skills after a light warm up that I learned in BUD/S. But today, since you showed up dressed in everyday clothes, we’ll conduct a little exercise. Everybody drop a squat on the floor.”
Having just climbed to our feet, we all basically collapsed back to the hard concrete.
“The difference between mankind in all his forms and the rest of the animal kingdom is our big brains. It’s what sets us apart from the predators of the prehistoric world. Somewhere along the way, some of us became more predatory than others. So tell me, lamblings, what’s gonna keep a big bad supernatural predator from munching down on you succulent little morsels?” he asked, thoroughly creeping me out. Lamblings?
“I’d like to see the predator that would try and chew on me,” Delwood said right on cue.
“Well boy, I can think of a half dozen off the top of my head that are either bigger than you or outnumber you.”
Oddly enough, Ashley was nodding but stopped when she saw me looking her way. She gave me a little shrug and turned back to watch Mr. Jenks. He in turn made eye contact with both of us, our little exchange fully noted.
“Miss Moore here has seen just such creatures, have you not?” he asked her.
“Yes sir,” she said.
“And how would Mr. Singer here stack up?” Jenks asked, pointing at Delwood.
“Ah, about a mouthful sir,” she replied, looking first at Jenks, then Delwood, and finally the concrete floor in front of her.
“A mouthful, she says. And she’s right. The biggest individual in this academy and he’s no more than a mouthful. So what protects us? What keeps us alive?”
“Our ability to talk or negotiate?” Ashley asked.
“In your specific case and where you have been, that works. But how would the rest of us fare?” he asked her.
She glanced around, her gaze on Caeco last, before coming back to him. “Some would be okay, I think.”
“And why do you think that?”
“I don’t know… maybe because they seem really prepared, really capable,” she said.
“Ahh. Prepared. Anyone know what the Latin word parabellum means?” he asked.
“To prepare for war,” Caeco said.
“Exactly, Miss Jensen. To prepare for war. That, little lamblings, is what will separate you from the meat. Now, the whole purpose of this class is to prepare you, essentially, for war, with the hopes that you never need it. That will mean learning new skills, exercising those soft bodies, and most of all, preparing your brains. You need to be aware of your surroundings at all times, watching for dangers and thinking what your responses will be to those dangers. But let me ask you this… do you walk around naked?”
The class all looked confused, finally muttering out a disjointed series of no’s.
“Right. You go out with shoes on your feet,” he said, holding up one combat boot, then using it to nudge Erika’s high-heeled gold glittery wedge. He