Page 81 of Choice of the Cat (Vampire Earth 2)
"Sorry," he panted. "Didn't mean to make you the monkey's uncle."
"What's that?
"A monkey's uncle!"
"Can't hear you, Valentine, speak up."
"Uncle!"
"That's better," she said, rolling off him.
He took a deep breath, still goosey with the half-drunken, half-hungover sensation.
"Ghost, how do they do it?"
"Do what?"
"Change us like that."
He shrugged. "I've wondered about that myself. Some of the Wolves used to say they were just awakening something already inside us. I was talking to a cabin mate named Pankow one time, and I remember he took a gas lamp that was barely on, just a flicker, and turned it all the way up. It hissed and roared and lit up the whole room. He said that's what the wizards do, they just 'turn up the heat.'"
Valentine wondered if he could share his fears with her, as well. He looked at the healing wound on his hand. "But the bigger the flame, the sooner the gas runs out. You swap heat and light for longevity. It worries me. I haven't met many elderly Hunters."
She shook her head, flour cascading off her face. "Gimme a break, Val. You know how long the average Cat lasts in the KZ? Two or three years. Ask Welles-she'll confirm it. Me, I'm already well past my 'lifespan.' I'd like to switch subjects.
"Now that you've been tuned up, it's time to start training. We'll be cutting a lot of corners. I'll try to fill in the holes on the road."
"Okay, Sarge, what's next on the agenda?"
She began to dust herself off. "Sarge? David, as a courtesy, Cats are treated as captains by the other ranks in Southern Command. So you got promoted after all. But rank doesn't mean much to us. As far as the agenda goes, you're going to get some food and sleep in you. Then we're going to run your ass ragged. When I drop, Welles will take over. So you take it easy while you can."
Over the next weeks, Valentine decide that Duvalier held an epic grudge against him for the flour bomb and wanted to see him lose life or limb if at all possible. When she was unavailable to personally torment him, Dix Welles made sure he sweated.
He had to carry the sword everywhere, to ridiculous extremes like the shower and the toilet. If Duvalier caught him exiting the head with a dog-eared copy of Reader's Digest instead of his sword, he got to spend the rest of the day running up and down the mountain. He learned a few basic stances, cuts, and thrusts from Duvalier the first day, then practiced them endlessly, first with a wooden replica until he got the motion right, and then with the naked blade. One day Welles took him outside and had him climb up the sharply slanted lodge roof, and draw, swing, and move with the sword back and forth across the narrow peak, carefully straddling the top as he fought wind and momentum.
He took bundles of twigs, wrapped them in old rags, soaked them, and then attached them to poles. The target was then placed on a gimbal-mounted teeter-totter. He tried to hit it while Duvalier, at the other end of the ten-foot plank, made it dodge his blows. She succeeded in knocking him over with it more than once. When she wasn't bashing him with straw men, she was doing it herself, in fencing duels with wooden swords. She struck like lightning, and more than once laid him out with stars in his eyes.
Even when he was off his feet, he had to read. Poisons, explosives, powders both natural and chemical that blinded or sickened. Acids and bases. A grizzled old Cat, toothless and bent, lectured him on how to sabotage everything from tank engines to hydraulic brakes to a backyard water pump.
He learned to climb and fight with his claws. Duvalier taught him to always keep them in the pockets of an old overcoat, so that all he had to do was slip his hands in to become armed. He clawed, climbed, and parried with them until they felt like old friends, but that wasn't good enough. Duvalier had him practice with them until they felt like a natural extension of his body. A couple of the other Cats-in-training shook their heads and privately made fun of Duvalier's fixation with them.
"Waste of time," one of them said at dinner. "You end up using them one fight out of a hundred, I've been told."
Welles overheard and stiffly turned on the other Aspirant. "That one time in a hundred he'll be alive. And you won't."
Ryu appeared now and then and took Valentine in order to work his mind. First Valentine had to reduce his aura at rest, and as the days progressed, he had to do the same while running or climbing, or even practicing with his sword. He'd learned the basics of hiding lifesign from an old Cat named Eveready the summer after he'd been invoked as a Wolf. Now he was learning from the Lifeweaver who had taught Eveready.
Valentine could satisfy Ryu at rest, but in action, the Lifeweaver upbraided him again and again. One afternoon, as he crossed a rock-strewn creek under the Lifeweaver's eye, Ryu lifted his arms, the signal to stop. "You're still in your own mind, David."
The obvious joke about "the perfect Cat is always out of his mind" had to be bitten back-again.
"You're not a Kurian. You don't need it to survive. How can you sense it?"
"Aura is a lot of things, David. Thought, emotion, sensitivities, fear. I am able to perceive these to an extent. So can you, by the way. There's more to intuition than guesswork. Sometimes I can read you as easily as you read printed words."
"Sorry. I saw a fish dart away."
"Forget about your empty stomach for a while."
