Drink Deep - Chloe Neill [55]
“You have to stop this,” he said into the silence.
“I don’t know how.”
“Then you must find someone who does.”
I looked over at him, there beside me, hair whipping in the wind. And as the wind rose, each gust stronger than the last, I watched him disappear behind the monster’s shadow, until there was nothing left of him.
Until I stood alone in the chilling wind beneath an empty sky.
There was no sound except the howling of the wind in my ears, and his screaming of my name.
“Merit! ”
My eyes flashed open. I was still in bed, warm beneath the blankets in my chilly room.
I pulled a pillow over my face and screamed into it, frustration pulling my nerves so taut I felt ready to snap. These dreams were killing me.
I’d always been a fan of ripping off the bandage—dealing with the pain all at once rather than suffering death by a thousand stings. These dreams were torture by a thousand memories: Seeing his green eyes, his face, all the while knowing the Ethan in my dreams was a weak facsimile of the man I’d known.
Maybe I needed more sleep. More vegetables. More exercise. Maybe I needed more Mallory and less vampire, more Wicker Park and less Hyde Park.
Whatever the reason, I needed a change. I threw off the blankets and hopped out of bed, then pulled on a long-sleeved T-shirt and yoga pants. My hair went up, and I headed downstairs for a workout session as long and brutal as I could make it. For a workout, I hoped, that would push the grief right out of me.
Vampires had a long history of martial arts work in a style that mixed swordcraft, defensive postures, and offensive attacks. We practiced those efforts in the House’s sparring room, a giant space in the basement that was prepped for combat. The walls were lined with wooden paneling and antique weapons, and tatami mats were spread across the floor.
I kicked off the flip-flops I’d donned for the trip downstairs and stepped onto the mat. The room was big and silent, and it felt strange to stand in the middle of it alone. I’d lost a workout partner in Ethan, and I hadn’t trained with Catcher since Ethan had taken over the job earlier in the year. I worked out with the House guards on occasion, but we were so short-staffed opportunities for long workouts and training sessions didn’t arise very often.
Silence, I quickly decided, wasn’t going to work tonight. There was a sound system in one corner of the room, and I flipped through the channels until I found an angry alternative song (courtesy of Rage Against the Machine) and turned up the volume. And then I returned to the middle of the mat, shook out my shoulders, closed my eyes, and got to work.
Katas were the building blocks of our martial arts work, short combinations of punches, strikes, kicks, and the like. Put them together, and you had a pretty fierce-looking demonstration of our skills. With the music pounding behind me, I used strikes, spins, and flips to push out the grief.
Workouts were tricky. Some days it was easier than others. Some days you felt light as air; some days you felt heavy as lead. Tonight was somewhere in between. It felt good to move, but I could feel the gnawing thirst itching beneath my skin.
I pushed through it. An out-of-shape Sentinel wasn’t going to do anyone any good. Given the trouble I often managed to get into, I needed to make sure my muscles were honed and my skills were fine-tuned.
After twenty minutes or so, the door opened, and Luc stepped inside. I pushed sweaty bangs from my face.
“I heard the music down the hall,” he said. “Getting in some exercise?”
When I nodded, Luc walked to the edge of the mat and looked down at the tatami. “There are nights when he seems more absent than others.”
The grief in his voice brought immediate tears to my eyes. I looked away to keep them from falling, but didn’t disagree with the heart-clenching sentiment.
“There are nights when the world is completely askew because