Hotbloods (Hotbloods #1)

“What do we do once we get there?”

“We’ll want to find you something to eat, maybe somewhere to get warm. We can take things as they come and see how it’s going. But before we do any of that, we’ve got some preparations we need to see to first.”

“Like what?”

“We’ve got a whole cache of weapons here that you’ve probably never encountered before.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You’re going to let me use them?”

“I’m not saying that—but if the situation comes up, I think it’d be good if you were at least a little familiar with them.”

I followed him over to the back corner, where a large metal toolbox sat, the sort a construction worker might have permanently installed in the back of a pickup truck. Navan opened the lid and stood there, staring down at its contents. I stood next to him and peered inside.

There wasn’t much that I hadn’t seen before, or at least some variation of it. There were boxes of bullets, two of the silver long-barreled pistols, something that looked like an assault rifle, a sword, and a stack of knives.

“What are these?” I asked, pointing to the knives. They weren’t regular-looking knives, like the kind you’d see in a kitchen—they were more like daggers, long pointed triangles with a slender handle and a hollow ring at the end.

“Those are throwing knives,” Navan said. “They’re very sharp, and you should stay away from them.”

“But you said you were going to show me how to use some of the weapons.” I reached out and ran my fingertips along the handle of one of the knives. There was something about it that seemed to be calling to me. “I want to try this.” Navan opened his mouth as if he were about to say something, but then stopped. “I’ll just ignore that look on your face,” I said.

His eyebrows shot up. “What look?”

“That look that says you don’t think I have any clue what I’m doing, and that I’ll probably end up hurting someone if I try to use this.” I picked up the knife I’d just been touching. “Do you know how to use these?”

“I do,” he said. “And that’s because it’s something that I’ve practiced. It’s not something that you’ll instinctively know how to use.” He held his hands up. “I’m not trying to discourage you. Well, maybe a little. I was thinking you might try something more like . . .” He looked at the weapons laid out in front of us. I waited, curious to hear what he thought I might be drawn to, but a second passed, then another, and it became clear that he didn’t know what to say.

“I get it,” I said. “You think I can’t do this, or that because I’m a girl or something I shouldn’t be handling a weapon. Well, let me try this thing out.” The knife had a nice weight in my hand. It felt balanced, like this was just the thing I should’ve picked up. I might’ve been nervous to hold the gun, or that samurai-looking sword, but for whatever reason, the knife just felt right.

“Easy there,” Navan said, reaching down into the box. He handed me the rest of the knives and pulled out the rifles and the sword. “Let’s go outside. These sorts of things aren’t meant for close quarters.”

Outside, the sun was just starting to rise, a glowing orange illuminating the pale blue sky. We crunched across the hard snow, heading toward a copse of fir trees. I followed Navan beyond the trees, into a clearing.

“While I doubt anyone’s going to randomly stumble upon us out here,” he said, “it’s better that we’re a little hidden from view. Now, you have those knives?”

“I do.”

“Why don’t you put them down over here. We’ll get to them in a minute. I want to first show you some self-defense moves. Hopefully, you won’t have to use them. But it will give me slightly better peace of mind if you know a couple basic things.”

“Sure,” I said, though I hoped I wouldn’t have to end up grappling with a shifter—the thought of having to touch one of those things made my skin crawl.

“On Vysanthe, we have a form of martial arts called Aksavdo. The closest thing you have here would probably be Krav Maga. Aksavdo is a military self-defense system, and everyone on Vysanthe is expected to master it by the time they’re eighteen.”

“Really?” I said. “That’s pretty cool.”

“Well,” Navan said, something of a chagrinned look on his face. “All the boys are, anyway.”

“That sounds a little less cool.”

“But plenty of girls on Vysanthe know Aksavdo. And I’m just going to show you some blocks and how to break certain holds. Again, I really hope that we’re not in the situation where you have to use it, but . . . just in case. Now, the problem with fighting a shapeshifter is they can change shape. When you’re fighting, you want to attack the most vulnerable areas, and if your opponent is constantly changing shape, that can certainly be a challenge. So that’s one of the main things when fighting a shifter—you must stay alert at all times. The eyes, throat, nose, groin . . . Those are the spots you want to go for. If the shifter is, say, in wolf form, and you manage to bash it on the nose, it’s probably going to be stunned and change back to its regular form, at which point it will be a lot more vulnerable. You saw that one in the alleyway—they’re ugly creatures, and they don’t have much in the way of natural defenses, except for their teeth. So I’m going to come up behind you—” Navan stepped behind me, his body pressed up against mine, his arm going around my neck. “Let’s just say you get caught like this. How would you escape?”

I strained forward, feeling his arm tighten against my neck. Then I tried dropping my legs out from under me, but my head couldn’t slide out from his grasp.

“No,” Navan said. “You’re not going anywhere, and that’s just giving me more time to lock the hold in. Grab my arm.”

I reached up and put both my hands on his forearm. “Good,” he said. “Now pull on my arm as hard as you can—you want to get some space between my arm and your neck.” I squeezed with both hands and gave his arm a jerk. “The moment you feel the pressure let up a little, turn your head so your chin is down—yeah, just like that. Now I can’t get the hold back in place even if you let go of my arm. And now, move this leg back behind me, like that, and sit down.”

“Sit down?” I asked, feeling as if we were playing some sort of bizarre version of Twister. I was trying to focus and do what he said, but the very fact that we were this close and his arms were around me was making it extremely difficult to concentrate.

“Sit right on down,” he said. “Just drop your weight.”

I did so, and he toppled below me, and I landed on him with a thud. “Good,” he said. “And at this point, you can use your elbows, your knees, your feet, and you want to look for whatever vulnerable spot you can reach.”

I twisted around to look at him, raising my elbow as I did so, gently touching his cheek with it.

“Like that?”