Chapter Eight
We had been advised to sleep well and keep our bodies rested for our first day of training, but my mind didn’t seem to want to cooperate. No matter how comfortable the bed was, no matter that the air always seemed to be at the perfect temperature, I couldn’t stay asleep for more than an hour or so. My mind kept reeling back, thinking about my interactions with Jonah and what they all meant. If I managed not to think about him, I was thinking about his father instead, which was even more intimidating.
Ember had given me a knowing look when I had made my way back to our rooms, but she didn’t press me for information. She knew without even asking that there was far more going on in my mind than being called to the Legion, as if that wasn’t big enough on its own. I wanted to tell her, but I wasn’t ready to put it into words yet. Even I didn’t quite understand what was going on.
The next morning when we came down the wide staircase, the table in the common room had once again been laden with food. “Eat up,” called an Angel at the head of the table. Her dark hair was swirled into an intricate up-do, and she wore a long gown in deep purple. “You’ll need all the energy you can get before your training.”
“That’s Elise,” Ember whispered as she grabbed a plate and piled it high with sweet rolls, fruits, and a few pieces of bacon. “She’s in charge of this building.”
I glanced at the food, unsure of what I was even in the mood for. My stomach was still flipping from the previous day. “How do you know that?”
She smiled. “I met her yesterday afternoon after the ceremony. I decided to come back here and make myself at home, and the two of us talked for a while. She’s great.”
I noticed that the rest of the Angels in the building were women. They had split our living quarters up by gender. It made me wonder if Jonah and I had done something wrong when we had kissed in the alley. I shook my head; if it had been that big of a deal, then surely Michael’s own son wouldn’t be doing it. Or I would hear about it eventually.
Elise stood up and clapped her hands. “Listen up, ladies. This is a big day, so make sure you eat as much as you want. There will always be more, and you will find that this table is kept well stocked around the clock. You don’t want to be hungry while you’re training.” Her voice was clear and carried easily throughout the room. I once again wondered what kind of spell that was.
I picked at the biscuit I had taken. It was flakey and buttery, but I wasn’t interested.
“Also, the clothes that you were given when you arrived were necessary for the initial ceremony, but they are no longer required. Make sure you wear something that you’re comfortable in. I would suggest you choose something like you wore during your time on Earth. You’ll find plenty to choose from in your personal armoires.”
“Thank goodness,” I muttered.
“When you’re finished eating, you’re to go to your assigned arena. If you need any help locating it, just let me know.” Elise sat back down and resumed her breakfast.
“Good luck today,” Ember said. “Although, I doubt you’ll need it.”
“You never know. I’m sure there’s some stiff competition here.” I glanced around, wondering what everyone else’s kill records were.
“It isn’t a competition,” Ember reminded me. “We’re here to learn. I only hope that I can get through it all without making a complete idiot of myself.” She sliced open a grapefruit and sprinkled some sugar on it before taking a big bite.
“You’ll be fine. You’re a fantastic slayer, and you know it.” I rose from the table, unable to sit still any longer. “I think I’m going to get changed and head out of here, Em. I’ll catch up with you back here when we’re done, okay? Good luck today. Not that you need it. I love you.”
“I love you too, babe. Go kick some ass.”
I quickly changed, choosing to wear a pair of dark blue jeans, comfortable combat boots, a black tank top, and a leather jacket. Then it was time to head out.
As I made my way across the compound to the arenas, I felt much more myself than I had the day before. I’d had some time to get my bearings, and I had comfortable clothes like the ones I wore back home.
Arena One was the first one on the path. A grand archway carved of stone served as the door, and it opened onto a massive oval floor. Several other Angels milled about, marveling at the structure around them. The ceiling was composed of a thin material that allowed the light in, while keeping the weather out. The long side of the oval floor had rest areas with chairs and drink stations. Unlike the arenas I had seen on Earth, there was no seating for onlookers, save for one row of chairs about halfway up the wall. This was definitely not a spectator sport.
“Greetings!” called an Angel who stood at the center of the floor. “Come in! Come in!” He waved at me to come across the floor. “My name is Alijah, and I’m the trainer for Arena One.” He grabbed my hand and shook it heartily, a gesture that felt shockingly human.
Alijah didn’t look like much of a trainer. He was shorter than me, heavyset, and balding. I was used to Angels looking young and beautiful, ageless even, but he was altogether different.
“Don’t let my appearance fool you,” he boomed. “I can still throw down a demon just as well as anyone else can, and I’ve got plenty of magic left in these old fingers.” He wiggled his hands in the air, sending several bolts of Lightning shooting up toward the ceiling. “I think we’re waiting on a few more, and then we’ll be ready to start.”
I thought about Ember, wondering if she knew anyone else in her arena and how she was doing with her training. Unlike myself, who hadn’t even introduced myself to the seven or eight other men and women in my arena, I knew by now she would have already asked everyone else’s names, and would remember them. Only the training itself would make her nervous.
“Nice to see you again.” The deep voice over my shoulder made me smile. I turned quickly, and Jonah was there, standing so close that I had to take a step back. It was one thing to kiss in a shadowy alley, but I didn’t exactly want our team to know how I felt about him. At least not yet.
“Hey, Alijah.” Jonah raised a hand in greeting to our trainer.
“You know him?” I asked, curiously.
“Of course. He’s been a trainer longer than anyone else, which is why he’s in Arena One.”
I jutted out my chin stubbornly. “I thought you said you didn’t know anything about this place.”
He shrugged helplessly. “Okay, well that much I do know. But I promise I don’t have any more secrets. At least, not important ones.” I knew from the grin on his face that he was playing with me. I turned when our trainer addressed us once again.
“Welcome to Arena One. First, I’d like to start by going over a few basic things. First, I’ll show you a new skill or spell. You’ll each attempt it, and then you’ll be paired up to try it out in a simulated setting. This will help you understand when and how you should use it. And don’t worry, you won’t be fighting each other. You and your partner will be working together as a team to fight holographic demons.”
I nodded my understanding, and secretly hoped I’d get paired up with Jonah. Fighting alongside him had been amazing, and I couldn’t wait to do it again. I wanted someone by my side who wasn’t afraid to kick ass and take names, and that was definitely him.
“I should also let you know that there’s a reason you’ve been grouped this way,” Alijah continued. “The twelve of you are in Arena One with me because you’re at the top of the list of slayers in terms of skill and experience. You have shown your abilities on Earth, and you have been classified accordingly here at High Command. That’s another reason you won’t be fighting each other; I don’t need any injured Angels on my hands.” He shook his head and laughed. “Okay, everyone watch me.”
It was odd to see magic work in his hands. Alijah was so unassuming that he didn’t even look as though he belonged there. The leather jacket he wore had once been black, but had faded over time to a dull brown. His jeans were baggy and coming unraveled at the hem. The only thing that gave him away at all was that his boots had metal tips on the toes.
The lightning bolts I saw upon meeting Alijah were only the beginning. He lit up his fingertips like before, sending long blue sparks of lightning spurting out of them, but then he brought them together as though he was grasping the end of a rod. Fortunately, he kept his hand pointed at the ceiling, because the spark converged into one massive bolt that instantly shot a hole right through the roof of the arena. A brilliant patch of sun shone down on the floor.
“This particular spell is very handy for bringing down demons when they’re flying. It’s also nice for shooting them when they’re a short distance away. It keeps you protected, because you don’t have to get too close.”
Now that we were down to business, I no longer paid attention to Jonah. My focus was completely on Alijah as he explained how to concentrate the energy in the tips of the fingers, which produced a different effect than when it was brought about in the palms and created Holy Fire. I felt an itch run down the length of my fingers as I waited for my turn to give it a try.
Alijah looked at his audience, and it was clear that he was enjoying the expressions of awe mixed with the concentration on our faces. “It’s important to know that this will harm a demon significantly, but it will not kill them. You must still rely on your Holy Fire to completely eradicate them. You have come here already knowing the most critical spell of all. Holy Fire is the only effective way of not only killing them, but keeping them from coming back from the dead as well.”
I shuddered as I imagined dead demons reanimating later. It had been a problem in the olden days, before the Legion had figured out how to get rid of them permanently. Entire armies of demons had been slaughtered, only to come back to life. I’d read the accounts of the revived beasts marching once again on the Angels, their legs twisted and their arms hanging from their shoulders at odd angles. Their wounds didn’t heal, and yet they still managed to escape death.
“Form a line,” our trainer commanded. “I want you to do this one at a time, no early attempts, please.”
Single file, we tried the new spell as Alijah commanded. I ended up midway of the line, so I had a chance to watch some of the others do the spell, but didn’t have to be the very last. The first Angel in line was a short girl with a pixie cut who didn’t look like she was any older than eighteen. I expected her to fail, but she shot a fat shaft of light up into the air with ease.
The next Angel was a tall skinny man with a cloud of red hair. Again, very unassuming. I was starting to believe that you didn’t have to look like a slayer to be one. He screwed up his face in concentration, and it took him an extra few seconds to summon the Lightning to his fingertips, but he, too, completed the spell.
“Good job, Hasmal!” Alijah enthused. “Next!”
Jonah burned a hole in the ceiling adjacent to the trainer’s on the first try. “Nice, Jonah!” Alijah praised. “Next.”
It was finally my turn. The energy had started tingling in my hands as soon as I had seen Alijah perform the spell, and I knew I could do it. I concentrated my energy, feeling it flow from my heart and down my arm. I directed it past my palm, not wanting to make the mistake of sending it out the wrong direction. It buzzed and reverberated at the ends of my fingers, eager to get out. The light crackled as it shot to the ceiling, dancing around the holes that the others had made.
I curled my fingers slightly as I brought them together, summoning as much power as I could. The individual strands came together easily, sending a hot column of light and power and destruction. The force thrust my hand downward slightly as it blasted a hole in the roof and sent shards of the glasslike material down to the floor.
Alijah clapped his meaty hands. “All right! Good job! Next!”
I grinned as I stepped aside to join those who had already completed the task. If this was any indication of how things were going to go, then I was certainly going to enjoy my training.
“That was very good.” Jonah’s deep whisper reverberated in my ear. “Be careful that you don’t take down the entire building.”
I gave him a playful jab in the ribs with my elbow, and then it was time to be paired off. Alijah didn’t give us a chance to choose our own partners, but did it randomly. I scowled as Jonah was partnered with a skinny blonde named Hannah, and I was put with a woman named Trinity.
Trinity had long red hair, like mine but of a much deeper red. If we hadn’t been standing in sunlight, I would have thought she was a brunette. Her hair fell in glossy waves down to her waist, and it complemented her wide, blue eyes that tipped up at the corners, like a dryad. She had a generous mouth that always seemed to be curved in a half-smile.
“Hey,” she said as she approached me. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
I didn’t know quite what to say to that. “Nice to meet you.”
Alijah interrupted our introductions. “If you look around the room, you’ll see that it’s divided into six stations. The simulations will queue up automatically, and you’ll each have a different set of challenges and demons presented to you. Keep in mind that even though the demons aren’t real, your powers are. There’s nothing you can do to hurt this building, but don’t send your Lightning outside of your stations.”
Trinity and I walked to one of the stations on the shorter wall. A small black box set into the wall would be the source of the faux enemies. We stood at the ready, power crackling inside us. “So, you and Michael’s son, huh?” she asked just as the first demon appeared.
He was a small one with black eyes, an easy target. I shot Lightning at him with ease, only using one of my fingertips. It bowled him over and sent him sprawling on the ground, black ooze leaching out onto the floor.
“What?”
“You and the tall one. I had heard some rumors, but now I see it with my own eyes.” The next demon popped up directly in front of Trinity. It was too close for her to use the new skill, so she showered him with holy water. He clutched at his eyes and screamed, backing up just enough for her to try her hand at the Lightning again. She blew off his arm and then his leg, and then he disappeared.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The next one was a vampire, something I hadn’t been expecting. They were lowly creatures, used by demons for their own purposes, and I had imagined that our training at the Legion would be more advanced. Still, I dispensed of him easily.
“I see the way you look at each other, the smiles you exchange.” Trinity glanced at me, that half-smile saying so much more than her words were. “And I didn’t miss that dirty look you gave Hannah. It’s pretty obvious.”
We both stepped forward to battle the next demon, who was much bigger. I hadn’t seen one like it before, and I was glad it wasn’t real. He was taller than me, his long, leathery wings spread out behind him. By the time Trinity and I were done, he was nothing but a pile of goo. Fortunately, all the mess we were making disappeared just a few seconds later.
“There’s nothing going on.” She was right, but I didn’t know her, and I didn’t like the idea of anyone else knowing my business. Whatever Jonah and I had, or didn’t have, was between us. “What’s it to you, anyway?”
She shrugged, those slanted blue eyes sliding over to glance at me. “It’s nothing, really. I just like to call it like I see it.”
I nodded. Now that I could appreciate. Maybe being paired up with Trinity wasn’t going to be so bad after all.
* * *
But our pairings changed the next day when Alijah taught us a spell of a much calmer nature. “Sleep is important to any living creature. We need sleep to rest and keep our bodies healthy; in that manner, we are not much different than humans.” He paced back and forth in front of the assembled group, gesturing with his thick hands as he spoke. “But sleep also makes us vulnerable. If we’re out on a mission or traveling long distances in unsafe territory, what’s to stop demons from attacking us? We don’t always have the extra manpower for a guard, and even then, whoever does serve as guard won’t be at their best the next day.”
Over the course of my years as a slayer, I had managed to go for several days without sleep. It wasn’t the kind of thing that was very pleasant, and I always ended up paying for it later, but having a spell for it would have been so useful. I was beginning to see that the small amount of training we had each received before we had become slayers was almost nothing compared to what we were learning here.
“You all did very well with the Lightning spell yesterday, and your physical prowess when it came to kicks and punches was remarkable. I expected as much. But this spell is much different, as you’re turning your power in to yourself and sorting it out. It’s not the same thing, so don’t feel discouraged if you don’t get it the first time.”
I stood next to Jonah as I watched our trainer talk, thinking back to the spell he had taught me outside the bar for getting the alcohol out of my system. That, too, had been an internal spell, and he had mastered it easily. I only hoped that it would go so well this time.
“Can you imagine all the things you could do, if you didn’t have to sleep?” Jonah whispered as Alijah explained how to funnel the energy inside us. “The night is good for…many things.”
A shiver ran up my spine at his words. I was so sure he was talking about killing evil creatures.
Instead of letting us try individually, Alijah immediately paired us up. “This is something that’s much easier in smaller groups,” he explained. “You can perform the spell on yourself, or on your partner. But either way, you should feel a pulse of energy go through you when it is done properly. Trust me, you’ll be so awake, you won’t be able to close your eyes.” He began pointing fingers into the small crowd. “Hasmal, you’re with Hannah. Let’s have Jonah and Rumor, and then Trinity with Rachel.”
I didn’t even hear the rest of the pairings once I knew I was with Jonah. It was bound to happen eventually, and yet it sent a thrill of excitement through my stomach. The two of us walked in silence to one of the stations. There would be no holographic demons attacking us, but it separated each of the pairs so they could concentrate on each other.
“How would you like to do this?” Jonah asked as we turned to face each other. His eyes sparkled with mischief. “I can do you, if you’d like. Or would you rather do me first?”
I laughed and shook my head. He was going to make it impossible to concentrate. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “You don’t think you can do yourself?”
“Let’s get started,” Alijah called out.
“All right, let’s just give this a shot.” I raised my hands and pressed them to Jonah’s chest. I could feel his heart thumping, the source of all his Angelic Energy. I spread my fingers to get a better gauge of it, and the light he held there was remarkable. I furrowed my brow as I tried to sort it out.
Alijah had explained that to go without sleep, one needed to funnel the energy from other parts of the body. It could make other spells and powers weaker, but it was extremely useful in the right circumstances. The trick was to sort out the strands of energy and send them to the right place in his body. But there was so much inside his body to harness that I wasn’t sure how I’d ever be successful.
“You can do it, Rumor,” he whispered, hearing my thoughts or perhaps reading the worry on my face. “I know you can.”
Soon enough, I had sorted out the white-hot streak that normally came down his hands to create Lightning or Holy Fire. I moved my fingertips gently across the front of his shirt as I redirected it. Jonah gasped and I yanked my hands back, certain that I had done something wrong. I flinched, fearing the worst. But as I opened my eyes, I could see that his pupils were dilated far more than they should have been in the bright room.
“Whoa,” he breathed.
“Are you okay?” I asked nervously. Hurting Michael’s son was probably not a good way to earn favor in the Legion.
“I’m great!” he shouted. The other students turned to look at him, but he didn’t seem to care. “Here, let me do it to you.”
It was hard to slow my breathing down as he touched me. His palm pressed over my thundering heart. I tried to forget about the havoc his touch wreaked on me, instead concentrating on reining in the rapid pounding. His fingers stretched and moved, and I felt the strands of energy shifting around inside me as he worked, sending me through a range of energies and emotions. I wondered if I had done the same thing to him, but when he found the right thread and redirected it, that didn’t matter anymore. The cold rush of energy that Alijah had described, started in the pit of my stomach and shot up to the top of my head, exploding like a water balloon. My eyes fluttered open and stayed that way; blinking was an effort against the force that seemed to be holding them apart.
“Wow, I feel amazing.”
“I see that these two have it mastered!” Alijah said with a grin as he came to our side of the arena. “Excellent job. Now the real trick is to undo it. Try putting the energy back where you found it, if you will. Otherwise you’ll be up all night!” He gave a hearty laugh and moved off to one of the other pairs who seemed to be struggling.
I put my fingers back on Jonah’s chest, but he reached up and gently grabbed my hands. His thumbs rested on the insides of my wrists, bumping along to the tune of my heartbeat. “You know, we could always practice this spell later. You can undo it now, but it might be nice to spend a little extra time making sure we have it down.” His right hand ran lightly up to my elbow, to my shoulder, and then down to my waist.
The touch of his hand combined with the extreme awareness from the spell was almost too much to handle. I slapped both of my palms against his chest to bring him back to the present moment.
“We have work to do,” I growled. I tried to focus once again on the flow of his power, but his words were still distracting me. “Maybe later,” I whispered.