The Shaede met my height almost exactly and had a lean and wiry build rippled with muscles. He looked lethal, and that was a huge thing for me to admit. His clear blue eyes glowed in the faint light. Hair the color of spun gold was pulled back at the nape of his neck and tied with a length of leather cord. Dressed in an antiquated getup, he looked like a cross between Legolas and Robin Hood—and was just young enough to pull it off.
A cold smile that would have surely frozen flames midflicker danced across his hardened face, showing a glimpse of the killer in him. Absent was any spark of humor, and in its place, only cruel calculation and intelligence. He was a frightening creature, and I instantly liked him.
“You’re fast,” he remarked. “But your stealth isn’t much to brag about.”
“I was asked to be here,” I said, minding my p’s and q’s. “I didn’t expect to be walking into a trap.”
I relaxed my stance, slid the saber into the scabbard. A huge mistake. Before I could say Screw me sideways, I was flat on my back, staring at the laces of the Shaede’s boot. They were brown, by the way.
“You should assume that every room you enter, whether invited or not, could be a potential trap.” He pressed his boot tighter on my throat. “And never let yourself be seen.”
“Point . . . taken,” I said through rasps of breath.
With a reluctance that made me rethink coming here at all, he lifted his foot from my neck. He held his hand out. The smile faded, and from the look on his face, he’d just as soon eat a dog-shit sandwich than help me up. So, in an effort to rack up some brownie points, I declined the offer, and pushed myself up off the floor.
One corner of his lip twitched. A good sign.
“I’m Raif,” he said.
“Darian.” I used a tone to match his in its coolness. I decided he would respect aloofness more than he would a chummy greeting. I was right.
“So, you’re what all the fuss is about?” The question didn’t ring with Anya’s condescension. Rather, humor, or at the very least, amusement. I really wanted to know what he meant by his comment, but I wasn’t so stupid as to actually ask. “I’m told you are an assassin and your targets have only been humans. Is that right?”
Hmm. That got my attention. Apparently, my skills weren’t going to be used to take out Joe Schmoe down the street. A challenge. Exciting.
“That’s right,” I said, wanting to finish with So what? But since I wasn’t interested in tasting the sole of Raif’s boot, I swallowed those two tiny words.
The cold smile crept back onto his lips. “This’ll be fun.” His blue eyes glowed bright for a fleeting moment. “You’ve got a lot to learn. I hope you’re ready.”
And with a movement faster than any I’d ever seen, even from Xander, Raif drew his sword and struck.
I spent the better part of five minutes in retreat. Raif pressed forward, and I parried his blows without striking a single offensive maneuver. His relentless pursuit had my back bent more than once as I tried unsuccessfully to throw off the weight of his sword. I fought with two hands wrapped around the hilt of my saber, while Raif needed only one.
He twisted and turned, dissipating into a breath of dark air. “You are a poor excuse for a warrior!” he shouted. “You aren’t worthy of the name Shaede!” I ducked and jumped back as he swung his sword and followed with a fist. “You are slow, clumsy, and untrained! You are weak and pathetic; I wouldn’t honor you with a warrior’s death!”
I stumbled and rolled, coughed and labored, and never once had the presence of mind to make my body insubstantial. He had me against the ropes time and again. My mind raced to stay even a half pace ahead. In midswing, he paused, and lowered his sword.
“You’re going to have to do better than that if you want any chance of success in your mission,” he chided, taking an easy step back. His eyebrow quirked and he said, “I thought you were a fighter.”
“So?” I said, through gasps of air.
“So . . . fight.”
My temper surged and I rushed him. I pushed myself beyond my limits, thrusting the saber at his face and then swiping low at his knees. He deflected my attacks easily, but I wasn’t moving backward any longer. Confident and strong, my second wind came faster than I expected. I mimicked his movements, learning as we went. I shifted from shadow to my solid form with fluidity, seeming to travel through time itself, popping in and out of thin air. I met him blow for blow and once almost knocked him off his feet. Refusing to quit, I pushed myself until I thought I’d break under the pressure.
Only when Raif stopped and lowered his blade did I know we were done for the night. “Not bad,” he said with the barest touch of humor. “But not good either.” He sheathed his weapon and left me standing alone in the dark with orders to return in two nights’ time. There were no heartfelt words of congratulations, no offerings of a job well done. Not a whisper of who—or what—I was intended to kill.
I felt like I’d been run over by a bus, trampled by an elephant, and dragged behind a jet boat going Mach 10 over rocky river rapids. Until this point, I’d been self-trained in the art of assassination. I had no experience in combat. Common sense and my preternatural skills were what made me good at my job. Raif had thrown all of my arrogant misconceptions of myself on the floor and stomped them—hard. He’d worked me up one side and down the other.
Tyler showed up at my apartment just as I was dressing my wounds. I’d have to seriously reconsider my open-door policy with him. Since our impassioned kisses, he’d grown bolder, or at least more confident in his off-work-hours status with me. And Tyler was very stubborn.
I used my dining room table as a makeshift triage station. I’d already disposed of the torn spandex shirt I’d been wearing and tossed the pants as well. Perching on top of the table in a tank top and underwear was not a good way to get Ty to calm his libido.
His eyes looked like they were about to jump out of his head—like a cartoon character’s after he’s seen a pretty girl. But it only lasted a second once he noticed the bowl of bloody water and my sliced skin.
“Hell, Darian! What happened?”
Ass-tired and scored like a marinating steak, I wasn’t sure I wanted to exert the effort to recount the details of my Ultimate Fighter training session. “It’s no big deal. I’m fine; I’ll heal. Our boy from the other night has arranged for me to receive some job training à la a medieval warrior. I guess I’m not up to snuff.”
I grabbed the soaking rag and wrung the pink-tinged water from it. That’s as far as I got. Tyler didn’t waste a second to wrangle it from my grasp. He didn’t speak. He didn’t even look me in the eye. With gentle swipes, he tended each and every wound, rinsing the rag and starting all over. When he was done, he dried the excess moisture from my sliced skin and covered each cut with gauze, taping it in place. It took a half hour at least to dress the deeper cuts, and another fifteen minutes or so for him to check the various scratches that would be gone before I woke in the morning. I didn’t protest or argue; just simply let him do what he had in mind to do.