Joss stood without speaking, wondering what else he’d seen on TV that was real. Were there really werewolves? Monster clowns? Shape-shifters? The possibilities were both endless and frightening. After all, if one thing existed, why couldn’t they all?
“But your best defense is this little number right here.” From within his jacket, Abraham pulled a small book. Its cover was rich, brown, worn leather. Embossed on the front were the initials S.S. “This is your field guide. It contains every protocol, every rule, every regulation put forth by the Slayer Society. If you have a question, this book contains the answer. It’s a Slayer’s most valuable tool. It’s also where you’ll make notes about vampire encounters—there’s a journal section at the back. Once a year, you’ll get a fresh copy. Keep up on those notes. The Society deems every bit of information to be extremely valuable.”
“Now,” Abraham said, a shadow passing over his face—one that sent a cruel chill down Joss’s spine, “shall we begin?”
Joss was about to ask what they would be beginning exactly, but there was no time. Abraham lunged at him, grabbing him by the throat. As Joss gasped for air, clutching his fingers, Abraham seethed. “When you’re out there on your own, no one will come to your rescue. No help will come. You’ll be on your own, fighting against an almost impossible foe. Defend yourself, Slayer.”
Before Joss could ask how, Abraham shoved him back by the throat and Joss fell to the ground, almost howling from the pain in his back, coughing wildly, trying desperately to get air into his lungs. He stayed there, crouched in the undergrowth, until his coughing had subsided, then looked up at his uncle, whose eyes were filled with pure disgust.
“Defend yourself. Because this time, I will not stop, just as our enemies will not stop. These monsters won’t cease in their attack just to spare the life of a young boy. They kill all humans—young and old. Grandmothers, infants ... they are evil incarnate, and we are mankind’s only hope of protection. If you won’t defend yourself, how can you be counted on to defend the entire world? Now defend yourself!” Abraham shot his arm forward, aiming for Joss’s throat. He connected, but this time, Joss managed to wriggle from his grasp before he could get a good grip.
Joss rolled away from him, his back screaming, and hurried to stand. His throat ached, but he wouldn’t give Abraham the chance to grab it again if he could help it. He faced his uncle, eyeing him down, wondering what Abraham would do next, or how far he would take this lesson of defense. Would Abraham go so far as to put his life in danger?
He examined his uncle’s face for a moment before nodding. Yes, he thought. Abraham would kill him before he’d let Joss leave a coward.
Without warning or words, Abraham flew across the clearing and attacked Joss, punching him in the gut, the side, the jaw. He hit Joss solidly in the center of his wounded back, sending Joss all but crying as he fell to the ground. “They know your weaknesses. They can read your thoughts. And they will exploit both.”
Abraham raised his fists again, and Joss’s heart raced. He panicked, curling into a ball, as if by closing in on himself, he might escape his uncle’s attack somehow. Then he held his arms up in front of him, trying his best to block the skilled blows.
Neither helped.
Abraham growled as he beat bruises into Joss’s flesh. “Show me what you’re made of, Slayer. Defend yourself!”
Pain shot through Joss’s side as Abraham’s fist connected again, and Joss cried out, forgetting about the wounds on his back entirely. He was almost certain he’d cracked a rib that time, and was definitely convinced that Abraham wasn’t about to stop. Like he’d said, he’d continue ... just like a vampire would continue. Joss swung his arm back, balled up his fist, and brought it forward as hard and fast as he could manage. His knuckles grazed Abraham’s jaw, but just barely. He swung again, this time with the left, and connected. Abraham rubbed his jaw and stepped back. There was no emotion on his face.
“That’s it for today.” Abraham turned and moved down the trail, leaving a blinking, confused, wondering Joss behind.
Joss looked around at the clearing, blinked some more, and hurried to catch up with his uncle. “What do you mean? We’re done?”
Abraham’s steps didn’t even slow as Joss reached his side. “For today, yes. I suggest you grab some lunch.”
Joss rubbed the aching muscles of his lower back as he walked. The last thing he wanted to do was to question his uncle’s methods, be he didn’t really feel like he had much of a choice. “But ... Uncle Abraham ... what exactly was the point of that?”
Abraham sighed. “I set out to teach you a lesson today, and it’s clear you’ve learned it. So we’re finished. For now.”
They’d reached the bottom of the hill and as Abraham stepped up on the porch, Joss said, “What was the lesson, exactly?”
“You had to come to understand that your opponent will never stop unless you fight back. And you did.”
Joss bit the inside of his cheek absently. It seemed to him there were probably better ways of teaching someone that lesson, but he couldn’t argue with ageold traditions that had apparently been proven time and time again. Still, the urge was in him to do just that.
Abraham met his eyes, a look of approval on his normally stern face. “Get some rest, and prepare for a long day tomorrow. I suspect that lesson won’t come as easily.”
14
THE LIES WE TELL
Use more black, Joss. Otherwise you look less like the forest and more like the Hulk.” Paty’s tone had a hint of laughter, but Joss could tell she was doing her best to keep it contained.
Joss dabbed his fingers into the black crème and rubbed crude lines onto his cheeks. Paty’s camouflage was flawless, but when he looked in the mirror, all he saw were several colors smudged all over his face in no particular order, like a kid who’d gotten into his mother’s makeup. He sighed heavily, hoping the lesson would soon be at an end. “Is this all there is to camouflage? Playing dress-up?”
As soon as the words had crossed his lips, he regretted them. Luckily, if Paty had felt the sting of insult, she didn’t let it show. Instead, she smiled and handed him a moist towelette. As he rubbed the greens, browns, and black from his face, she said, “Actually, the most important aspect of camouflage is hiding our sounds, and at times, our scent.”
He reached for another towelette, having destroyed the first, and said, “How do you do that?”
Paty began gently removing her makeup as she replied. “Well, to hide our sounds, we learn to be light on our feet, watch where we step. Scent is a bit more complicated, especially when keeping our scent hidden from vampires. They can smell our blood, determine that we are human, even detect our blood type. So we can only mask it so well.”
“How?”
“You may regret asking.” Paty sighed, capping the small dishes of makeup as she spoke. “Suffice it to say that death helps to mask it.”
Joss furrowed his brow, confusion filling him. “I’m not sure I get your meaning.”
“How can I put this delicately?” She sighed again, this time looking to the ceiling of the dining room, as if the answers were written there. “I can’t. So ... the truth, then. Gross as it may be. Basically, if you rub yourself with a dead animal, it throws vampires off your scent.”
Joss’s stomach turned slightly, nausea seizing him. “That’s disgusting.”
At this, Paty chuckled. “Well, there’s always dung, but it doesn’t work as well. Besides, you’d be amazed what you’ll resort to when a monster is hunting you and closing in.”
He mulled this over for a bit, wondering if she was right. What was it like to be hunted? Would he be desperate and afraid? Would he resort to methods of hiding that he currently deemed beyond his limit of tolerance?
He was still mulling this over when Abraham opened the back door. “Joss. Outside. We have hand-to-hand combat to practice.”
Paty muttered something—something about beating a lesson into Joss—but when Abraham flashed her a certain look, she packed up her camouflage tools in silence. She moved out of the room quickly, without a further word. Joss was sorry to see her go. Despite his frustration with applying makeup, he’d been really enjoying their time together. But Abraham was waiting, an expectant look on his face.
Something told Joss that the longer he kept his uncle waiting, the worse his training would be.
That night, Joss stumbled down the hill in the darkness, his ribs screaming, his mouth filling with the sick, metallic taste of blood. He spat on the ground twice, but still couldn’t get the taste out of his mouth. It was hard to navigate the dark woods, but somehow, he managed to find the cabin’s back steps. With a groan, he stepped up onto the worn wood, pausing only when he unexpectedly heard a voice—Kat’s voice—in the darkness. “Joss? Are you okay? Oh my god, what happened to you?”
He turned slowly toward her, images filling his head of just what had transpired to put him in this state. He’d been called to training early in the day, and Abraham had begun working him over, stopping only to catch his own breath. They’d fought for hours, until Joss had passed out from the pain, and then Abraham had started in again, and again, until Joss had become convinced that he would die if his uncle didn’t stop. Abraham’s final words to him before he’d released Joss from the torment he called training, had been, “Now you’ve learned how to take a beating, what it feels like to truly hurt. Because we’ve covered two lessons, you can have tomorrow off.”
And Abraham was right—Joss had learned his lessons. He now knew exactly what pain was, and how unmerciful someone could be if they wanted to. And he knew how to take a beating, which really wasn’t something he could take credit for. For one, Abraham had refused to let him leave. For two, every time he considered making a break for it, Cecile’s face would grip his imagination, and he’d turn back to face his uncle head-on.
Lessons learned, if not entirely engraved upon his being.
“Joss? What happened?” Her eyes were so full of concern, so wide and fearful of whatever it was that had hurt Joss in this way. He could barely stand to look at her. He didn’t deserve her pity, or her friendship.
“It was a mountain lion, Kat. Just another stupid mountain lion.” He turned and opened the back door, then shuffled inside, all the while wondering where Sirus kept the bandages.
To her credit and Joss’s relief, Kat didn’t follow him inside. There was also no sign of the other Slayers as he rummaged through the medicine cabinet, looking for something to clean and cover his wounds. After knocking over several jars, bottles, and small boxes, he located a small tin of Band-Aids, a tube of Neosporin, and a little brown bottle labeled IODINE. Part of him was almost certain the Neosporin would be the right choice for all of his scrapes and cuts, but he could vaguely recall his mother using iodine on his knee when he’d scraped it learning to ride his bike a few years before. After putting everything neatly away, he left his choices on the counter, and took a long, hot shower. The water burned on his skin and felt like knives on his wounds, but it was healing somehow to feel that pain. Maybe there was something to that whole purification ritual after all. Maybe Joss was learning the right way to be, and in that, he might just find the strength to go on, and to find peace.
After he was clean, he turned off the water and stepped out of the shower, patted himself dry ever so carefully, ever so gently, and slipped his boxers back on. Then, loading his arms with his dirty clothes and medical equipment, he moved silently through the dark house and up the stairs to his room, where he changed into some fresh pajama bottoms and began cleaning his wounds. With a growling curse, he learned very quickly that iodine might clean your wounds, but it also feels like acid is eating its way through your flesh. Not to mention the delightful added bonus of dyeing your skin bright orange. With a grumble, he tossed the small brown bottle into the wastebasket and reached for the Neosporin. Gently applying it to the scrapes and cuts on his legs, arms, and chest, Joss counted to himself. Forty-three. There were forty-three visible wounds that he could find on his body, and who knows how many more on his back.
And every one was worth it. Each scar, each bruise was simply a check mark on the list of things it took to become a Slayer. Joss was determined to move down that list as quickly as possible and to grit his teeth through every pain.
There came a soft tap on his door and Joss lifted his head, speaking just as softly as the sound that had invaded his nurse work. “Come in.”
Sirus pushed the door open and poked his head inside, his eyes moving quickly over Joss’s injuries. “Kat mentioned you weren’t feeling well. I thought maybe you could use some assistance.”
Joss tightened his jaw. He didn’t want anyone’s help. In fact, all he wanted was to show his uncle that he was perfectly capable of taking care of himself, even after taking a beating like that. “No thanks. I’ve got it.”
A look of immediate doubt crossed Sirus’s eyes, but he didn’t give voice to it. He merely asked, “You were out all day without any breaks. Are you hungry?”
Moments later, Joss was at the dining table, where Sirus had placed a large bowl of chili in front of him. He may be perfectly capable of tending his own wounds, but the fact was that Joss hadn’t eaten anything since early that morning, and his stomach had been rumbling its protests all day.