Page 36 of Ravenous

Food was no small thing. Game grew scarcer each season, and everyhunting trip meant venturing farther beyond the protection of the ravines.

The day of his family’s murder, he and his older brother and parents had embarked on one to stock up for the winter.

He recalled his father proudly saying to his mother, “As fast as these boys are growing, we need to fuel them with extra game.”

Instead, my family was the hunted.

The thought sparked his Berserkerage, heat crawling under his skin. He tamped it down with effort. Otherwise he might execute this vampire then and there.

Emilia swiped her trembling bottom lip with a shaky hand.

“For Wóden’s sake, are you going to cry?” he snapped. “Of course you are. Weak!”

Between faltering breaths, she gasped, “No…crying.” Yet a blood tear tracked down her cheek, gleaming pink in the light.

He’d seen those same tears leak from the severed heads of vampires he’d killed; the memory sharpened his disgust. “Is the sun affecting you, or just a lifetime of idleness?”

“Don’t know…never been in the light this long…think it’s just the…climb.” The rocky trail required technical skill she didn’t possess, and the sun glared down on the snow-dusted stones, which hindered even an immortal’s vision.

“Beg for mercy,” he said. “I might grant it on your first day.”

Her chin rose a fraction. “N-next?”

It took him a second to answer. Grit? From her? “You’ll build your pathetic upper body strength.” He pointed to a dead alder nearby and said, “Cut it down with your sword.”

Her unfocused amber gaze followed his hand. “Yes. Very good.” She didn’t move. “Here I go,” she murmured, as though her mind believed she’d already started.

At last she staggered over, dragging the tip of the blade through the snow like a broken limb. She gritted her teeth, raised the weapon, and swung. The vibration rattled her until he could all but hear her fangs clattering. She’d likely never even brushed her own hair, much less felled a tree. She swung again, again, making laughable progress.

Probably because that sword was a single edge, and she kept striking with the spine.

I could correct her.

And miss this?

Blisters burst on her palms; red spread across the hilt. Yet she kept going until her knees hit the snow.

And still she swung.

He had a brief thought of the maiden mother of the first Valkyrie, the one who’d fallen to her knees but kept fighting against all odds until Wóden and Freya had rescued her.

His face flushed. Comparing this pitiful creature to a female sacred to all Berserkers?

Swinging…swinging…swinging…

A few ravines over, the forge smiths clanged their anvils in an alternating beat to Emilia’s efforts.

For fuck’s sake, vampire, figure out that sword.

Damn it. Training accidents did happen, especially with an exhausted novice. He told himself he didn’t care. He wanted her gone. Dead, even.

But curiosity coiled tighter than hate. All morning, her weakness had been on display, yet so had her resolve, both evenly matched.

Did other vampires possess her determination? Shouldn’t he learn as much as possible about her kind before she tumbled off a cliff or stabbed herself?

At last he growled, “Stop.”

She drooped forward to rest her head against the trunk. “Just need…little break.”