“En garde!” I growled with a deep French accent as I jumped onto the arm of the couch.
“En garde!” Vlad repeated, using one hand to twirl his imaginary moustache as he mounted the couch.
Our blades met again and Vlad lunged toward me. “Remember, it’s not all about blocking. It’s about being aware and moving your body, too.”
Sophie Lawson: Sword Fighter was born to do this. It ran in her veins. Her fire-red hair trailed down her back like the blood of so many who had challenged her—and failed . . . is what I was thinking when I took that poorly calculated leap onto the coffee table.
Which broke.
I was so enamored by the sexy clang of metal on metal that the sound of pressboard furniture at decent prices splintering and cracking whooshed right by me. I lost my grip on the sword as I went down. I saw the edge of it fly past me, the blade catching on the light as it spun end over end.
“Knock, knock!”
“No!” Everything dropped into painstakingly slow motion. I lurched forward somehow thinking I could still catch the jeweled handle as it sailed over the chair. I drew my howl out as though the power of my voice alone could slow the weapon’s trajectory as it raced toward Alex’s head.
And then I heard the sickening sound of the blade stopping, lodging itself deep.
Nina clucked her tongue. “We are so never getting our security deposit back.”
I chanced a look up, the tension in my body coiled to the point of physical pain. “Oh, thank God!”
The sword was stuck deep, all right—about a half inch up from the peephole on our front door. A full two inches of the blade poked out of the door’s hall-side, and an inch from that? Alex’s throat. He looked at me with wide eyes—their cornflower blue was clouded with a twinge of terror, and overcome with anger.
“I brought you a peace offering because I felt bad about today,” he said between gritted teeth. “I guess I should have brought dessert, too.”
Nina and I spread out Alex’s Chinese spoils—Nina keeping her distance from the garlic pork, of course—while Vlad and Alex did their best to dislodge Excalibur from the door.
“On the plus side,” Alex said, “you do have a hell of a throwing arm, Lawson.”
I felt a burgeoning sense of pride.
Hey, it was something.
“I thought you were pretty clear on the ‘don’t throw your weapon’ thing after the last incident, though.”
My sense of pride was eaten by a flame of annoyance. “Oh. Did you mean I’m not supposed to throw any of my weapons? Silly me, I must have misunderstood. So hard to keep all these big, important rules in this pretty little head of mine.”
I waggled my head and Nina hid a smile behind a cupped hand. Alex just shot me an unamused glare while Vlad gripped the sword handle, steadied a foot on the door, and gave a herculean yank. When the sword didn’t budge, Vlad skulked to the closet, fished around a bit, and finally emerged.
He hung a dusty Christmas wreath on the speared sword.
“Done and done,” he said, wiping his hands on his pants.
We sat down at the table, Alex and me across from each other, Nina and Vlad working on their dinner blood bags at either end.
“So,” Nina started, her cheeks going hollow as she sucked down her dinner, “are there any updates in the heinous murder case?”
I tried to flash Alex a look—saying what, I’m not entirely sure—but he was elbow deep in egg rolls and chow mein and avoided me.
“No, nothing new.”
Nina shuddered. “Having some crazed killer on the loose like that just gives me the heebie-jeebies.”
“And it’s a total waste often pints.”
I stabbed a hunk of sweet and sour pork and grimaced at Vlad. He gave me a tiny half-snarl that suggested he remembered the human empathy training I shoved down his throat and backpedaled. “And it’s a huge tragedy for those chicks, too.”
“So you guys are pretty convinced it’s a murderer, then?” Alex asked, his eyes trailing from Nina to Vlad.
“As opposed to what?”
“A demon. Or you know”—Alex wiggled his fingers, offering the universal sign for oogedy-boogedies—“other stuff.”
Vlad tossed his empty blood bag and leaned back in his chair with an ineffectual shrug. “Doubt it.”
There was a beat of chow-mein-chewing silence until Nina poked me. “Anything interesting happening at UDA?”
I thought of my useless meeting with Feng. “Um, no, not exactly,” then crunched into an eggroll. “Oh, you know what? Dixon came in to see me.”
Nina visibly brightened, her chest swelling. “Really?” she asked, a single eyebrow cocked seductively, her I-knew-it smile tacked in place. “Did he ask about me? It’s nice that he worries, but he should know by now that he has absolutely no chance with me anymore. No way, that ship has sailed. But”—she brushed her glossy black hair over her shoulder—“I really can’t blame him for carrying the proverbial torch.” She flashed a bloodstained grin and my egg roll turned into a steel fist in the pit of my stomach.