In the weeks that followed, my nights settled into a routine. I would wake up at sundown, grab my sword and find Kanin in the office. For a few hours, he would lecture me on vampire society, history, feeding habits, strengths and weaknesses. He would ask me questions, testing my knowledge of things I’d learned the night before, pleased when I remembered what I was supposed to. He also insisted on teaching me math, writing down simple and then more complex equations for me to solve, patiently explaining them when I couldn’t. He made up logic puzzles for me to struggle through and gave me complex documents to read, asking me what they meant when I was done. And though I hated this, I forced myself to concentrate. This was knowledge, something I might be able to use against the vampires someday. Besides, Mom would’ve wanted me to learn, though I wasn’t sure when long division would ever come in handy.
While I worked, Kanin read, shuffling through documents, sometimes bringing in more boxes of papers to sift through. Sometimes, he would read an entire stack of paper, carefully setting each aside when he was done. Sometimes he would only glance at a pile of documents before crumpling them impatiently and shoving them away. As the days passed, he grew more impatient and agitated with every sheet he crumpled in his fist, every wad he threw across the room. When I got up the nerve, once, to ask him what he was looking for, I received an annoyed glare and a terse command to keep working. I wondered why he hadn’t left the city yet; the vampires were obviously out there, looking for him. What was so important that he would risk staying down here in this dark little ruin, going through endless files and half-burned documents? But Kanin kept me so busy with learning everything he thought was important—vampire history and reading and math—that I didn’t have the time or brain capacity to wonder about other things.
And really, I could respect that. He had his secrets, and I had mine. I wasn’t about to go poking around his private life, especially when he didn’t ask me anything about my past, either. It was sort of an unspoken truce between us; I wouldn’t pry, and he would keep teaching me how to be a vampire. Anything that didn’t have to do with survival wasn’t that important.
After midnight was my favorite time. After several hours of straining my brain, getting bored and irritated and feeling as if my head was about to explode, Kanin would finally announce that I could stop for the night. After that, we would make our way to our floor’s reception area, which he had cleared of debris and chairs and broken furniture, and he would teach me something different.
“Keep your head up,” he stated as I lunged at him, swinging my sword at his chest. At first, I was a little worried, fighting him with a live blade. It shocked me, how quickly I could move, so fast that sometimes the room blurred around me, the sword weighing next to nothing in my hands. But Kanin made it clear that he was in no danger, after the first lesson left me crumpled in my bed for the rest of the night, bruised and aching, freaky vampire healing or not.
Stepping aside, Kanin rapped me on the back of the head with a sawed-off mop handle, not lightly. My skull throbbed, and I turned on him with a snarl.
“You’re dead,” Kanin announced, waggling the dowel at me. I bared my fangs, but he wasn’t impressed. “Stop using the blade like an ax,” he ordered, as we circled each other again. “You’re not a lumberjack trying to hack down a tree. You’re a dancer, and the sword is an extension of your arm. Move with the blade and keep your eyes on your enemy’s upper body, not their weapon.”
“I don’t know what a lumberjack is,” I growled at him. He gave me an annoyed look and motioned me forward again.
I gripped the hilt, relaxing my muscles. Don’t fight the sword, Kanin had told me on countless occasions. The sword already knows how to cut, how to kill. If you’re tense, if you only use brute strength, your strikes will be slow and awkward. Relax and move with the blade, not against it.
This time, when I attacked, I let the blade lead me there, darting forward in a silver blur. Kanin stepped aside, swatting at my head with the dowel again, but I half turned, catching the stick with my weapon, knocking it aside. Pushing forward, I let the sword slide up toward Kanin’s neck, and he instantly fell backward to avoid being cut in the throat.
I froze as he rolled to his feet, looking mildly surprised. I blinked at him, just as shocked as he was. Everything had gone by so fast; I hadn’t even had time to think about my actions before they were done.
“Good!” Kanin nodded approval. “You can feel the difference now, can’t you? Let your strikes be smooth and flowing—you don’t have to hack at something to kill it.”
I nodded, looking at my blade and feeling, for the first time, that we had worked together, that I wasn’t just swinging a random piece of metal around the room.
Kanin tossed the dowel into a corner. “And, on that note, we should stop for the night,” he announced, and I frowned.
“Now? I was just getting the hang of this, and it’s still early. Why stop?” I grinned and brandished the sword, shooting him a challenge down the bright metal. “Are you scared that I’m getting too good? Is the student finally surpassing the master?”