Dhampirica

XVIII

LORD DANTE ROSE UNUSUALLY EARLY on Sunday morning. Yvanna was surprised to find that he had not wasted any time in hiring a personal trainer to teach him self-defence. Ironically, Yvanna was the one who wanted to sleep in a little more. After the troubling conversation she had last evening, she found herself lying restlessly in bed for most of the night, awake in quiet thought. But as she heard Lord Dante's eager footsteps hurry down the hallway at 6:00AM, she could not help but follow. 

The instructor, Javier, was a well-built, curly-haired man who had his own training center in Chicago city. But at Lord Dante's request, he traveled out to conduct a one-on-one trial session here. Too sleep-deprived to do any training of her own today, Yvanna watched on the sidelines as they took the center space in the gym and began their session. Javier went through his meticulously constructed plan to teach Lord Dante self-defence, starting with risk assessment, conflict resolution, and finally learning how to block and evade and incapacitate using Krav Maga techniques.

Yvanna spectated with keen interest they went through some of the basics of each element of Javier's plan. When the hour was up, Lord Dante collapsed on the ground, utterly exhausted.

"Good work today," said Javier, offering him a hand up, which Lord Dante accepted. "Feel free to contact my office again if you want to continue the training. By the end of the course, you'll be a master of self-defence."

When he left, Lord Dante turned to Yvanna, smiling and somewhat breathless. "Well, what do you think? That was a pretty productive session. I feel like I learned a lot already."

Yvanna got to her feet and handed him his water bottle, but did not reply.

He took a drink and then frowned. "You don't agree," he observed.

"I didn't say anything."

He looked at her pointedly. "You didn't have to. I can see it on your face."

"Am I that easy to read?" she asked him, brows furrowed. They began walking back to their rooms.

He scoffed. "Hardly. Quite the opposite, in fact. But I've realized something as of late — you're not much of a liar. Or you just don't like lying to me. Whatever the reason, you don't do it. But you also don't want to risk offending me, so you usually just stay quiet."

She could not find any reply to his words, and so she stayed quiet still.

"So," he said, stopping to face her. "What do you think? Honest opinion only."

"Well... I suppose I don't agree..." she answered after seeing his earnest expression. He waited for her to continue, and so she added, "I think his plan is good, and Krav Maga is definitely useful, but you should probably do some strength training as well. Your stamina is severely lacking. Whenever you carry something heavy, you're quickly exhausted. You're a vampire, so you're naturally stronger than other dhampiri and, of course, humans, but that won't mean anything without effort. Also, self-defence is useful, but the best self-defence is to make sure there's no one there to attack. Incapacitating is good; killing is better."

She saw his blank expression, and immediately stopped talking. "Sorry. That was too forward of me."

He shook his head, breaking himself out of whatever state her words had left him in. "No, that was really illuminating. Though, I'm not sure about killing people..."

"I understand," she said. "It's not your job to do things like that anyway. That's why I'm here."

He smiled, but it was tinged with sadness. "I want to learn things like that, though. I might not like killing, but after what happened to us, I realized that it's important to be prepared." He glanced away. "I just wish I didn't have to have so many nightmares about it... about the people I killed."