The Return
Page 70

That didn’t sound good, but as he pushed open the door, I got my first look at the inside of a Covenant training room.
With wide eyes, I stepped further inside as Seth closed the door. Tile covered the floor at the entrance, but thick blue mats took up over half of the room. Three fleshy-looking dummies sat to our right, and as I walked up to one of them, I ran my finger along the deep slashes across the thing’s chest. There were cut marks everywhere—neck, arms, shoulders, legs.
“Sentinels use these for target practice.” Seth’s voice was so close that I nearly jumped. “They train mostly to fight daimons. As long as you have a titanium blade, if you get them anywhere on their body, it does the trick.”
“Stabbing people,” I murmured, shaking my head. The very idea of shoving a sharp, pointy object into someone wasn’t something I could comprehend.
One second I was staring at the dummy, and then the next I was staring up at Seth. He’d whipped me around that quickly. “Daimons are not people, Josie. That is your first lesson. There is nothing humane about them. They thrive on aether, and they are cruel, dangerous creatures.” His eyes flashed a fiery amber as he stared down at me. “You need to understand that.”
“Bad choice of words,” I said.
A muscle flexed in his jaw. “Do you understand, Josie?”
My heart turned over heavily. “I get it.”
I didn’t wait for him to respond. Turning around, I headed toward the mats as I unwound my scarf. When I got a good look at the opposite wall, I almost did trip over my own feet.
The entire wall was covered with stabby things.
Knives. Blades. Daggers. Swords.
Honest-to-God swords—like Samurai swords and something King Arthur might’ve pulled out of a rock.
I’d seen Seth with daggers and I totally got that they were the things that had inflicted the damage on the dummies, but seeing all of them up there was like reality had kicked me in the face.
“I’m not just learning how to defend myself,” I said, my gaze traveling over all the sharp objects. “I’m learning how to kill things.”
There was a beat of silence and then, “Yes. Are you still sure you want this?”
I drew in a shaky breath as my throat thickened. This was my life now. That was my reality, and it felt like the floor moved under my feet for a moment as I stared at the silvery dagger in the center, the one with the five-inch blade and thick, cross-style handle. Could I kill something?
The answer weakened my knees.
I had already tried to kill someone—or something. Hyperion. When I’d pulled that trigger and shot him in the back, it hadn’t been a love tap. God, what would my grandparents think of this? They were live-and-let-live kind of people. And they were dead.
A sharp pain sliced through my chest. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
A moment passed and then I felt his hand on my shoulder, turning me away from the wall of death. “Good news is, you aren’t anywhere near close to touching a single thing on that wall.”
I shot him a look.
“What?” His tone was light. “You’d end up cutting off five fingers and a foot if you started messing with those things right now.”
“Your faith in me is staggering.” I tugged off the hoodie, dropping it on the corner of the mat with my scarf.
He smiled as he stood in the middle of a thick blue mat. “The first thing you have to learn, before we can move onto anything, is how to correctly take a fall when you’re knocked down.”
“There’s a correct way to fall?”
His golden brows rose as his lips twitched. “Yes, there’s a correct way. And that way allows you to absorb the hit with minimal impact and also allows you to get right back on your feet.
And that’s the most important thing, Josie. If your enemy gets you on your back and keeps you down there, it’s over.”
“Okay.” I reached up, tightening my ponytail. “So that’s what I’m going to learn?”
“That’s what you’re going to start with, then we’ll end practice with running.”
My lips curled. Running? Ugh.
“You need to build up your endurance. That’s the easiest way to do it.” Seth stretched his arms above his head, back bowing. Joints cracked. “To take a landing correctly, you roll your hips in and keep your chin tucked down. This will cause you to take the fall on your upper back.”
I ran that through my head. Hips rolled in. Chin tucked. “I got this.”
A dubious look marked his expression. “All right.”
Shaking my arms out, I started to tell him that I was ready, but the next thing I knew I slammed into the mat. Pain exploded along my spine and across the base of my skull, knocking the air right out of my lungs. The overhead lights turned into a hundred dazzling stars before the corners of my vision darkened.
Uh oh.
Holy shit.
The moment Josie went into the air was the exact moment I knew I’d fucked up. So used to training with other halfs and Sentinels, I hadn’t checked myself. Even though she was a demigod and her body had to be resilient, her powers were bound and she obviously had never done any real fighting, so knocking her down like she was any other person I was training with was a fucking huge miscalculation on my part.
Holy shit, I fucked up.
Unease exploded in my gut as I dropped onto my knees beside her. A wave of muggy loathing wrapped itself around me. Thick, dusky brown lashes fanned her pale skin. I reached for her, my fingers hovering above her cheek. “Josie?”