Huntress

Tris stumbled a little on the new arrivals, not knowing who they were.

I, however, was so completely shocked that I didn’t say anything for a full ten seconds. What were they doing in my house? Where was my dad? How did they get in? And most importantly, what the hell was I going to say now?

Holly must have seen the look of pure panic that I hoped Tris couldn’t.

“Oh hey, you’re home,” she said, in a tone so easy and familiar that I felt a modicum of relief and my brain began to work again. “Mark let us in, but he had to go back to work.”

Well, that was two of my questions answered.

“Right,” I replied, trying to sound natural. “That’s cool.”

Tris was still standing behind me awkwardly. Thinking as fast as I could on my feet, I turned and said, “Um, Tris, these are my cousins from Sydney... Alex, Liam and Harriet. Guys, this is Tris, my boyfriend.”

He gave a little wave. Alec, being a smartarse, raised his eyebrows and said, “Boyfriend, eh? That’s cute.”

“Not nearly as cute as you and James,” I replied sweetly, smiling a little vindictively. “Are you guys still together?”

He gave me a sour look. “No.”

“It was messy,” Lewis put in, laughter in his voice. “He cheated,” he stage-whispered behind his hand.

Despite trying not to laugh, I realised I had another problem: I didn’t want to have both Tris and my ‘cousins’ in the house at the same time for any length of time. That meant one of them had to leave, but who?

I knew who I wanted to leave.

Unfortunately, Tris was made uncomfortable enough by their presence – and my implied duty of hospitality – that he felt the need to leave. “I’m going to hit the road,” he told me quietly.

“It was nice meeting you,” Holly said, the picture of the friendly family relation.

He waved awkwardly, gave me an even more stilted kiss on the cheek and then went straight back out the door we came in.

I waited until I knew he was out of earshot before going, “Okay, what the hell are you guys doing here?”

They had the grace to look mildly guilty. “We came over for Lesson Five, and got bored, so we ate some of your food. Then we were about to give up and go back when your dad showed up.”

“My dad?” This was more than a little horrifying.

“Yeah, we told him we were friends of yours from school. He bought it,” Alec explained, which was only a little relieving.

“Still,” I said irritably, finally putting down my book and sunnies on the bench. “Risky, guys.”

Alec shrugged. “He went to work, said he wouldn’t be back until really late tonight, asked if we could pass on the message.”

His words made me profoundly tired. If Tris was gone, Dad wasn’t going to be back for ages and they were still here that only meant one thing.

“Do I have to?” I asked plaintively.

All three of them nodded in unison like they practiced it. I heaved a loud, overly dramatic sigh and went to get changed.

“So, what’s Lesson Five again?” I asked when I came back, dressed in a pair of dirty three-quarter-length black tights I’d run in a couple of days ago and a black singlet. I was barefoot, as usual, and reflected that at some point I’d need to learn how to fight in heels.

To my faint surprise, Alec looked at me scornfully and said in a tone to match, “What, you seriously can’t remember? I told you last time. You can be really thick sometimes.”

I was sure he hadn’t, and was a little confused. Had I missed it?

“Uh, ok,” I replied, frowning a little in confusion. “Whatever.”

The little comments kept coming as I stretched. ‘Lean over more’. ‘You’re in the wrong position for that stretch’. ‘Maybe if you listened, you’d know that one works better if you’re lying down’.

They were being downright obnoxious and it was getting on my nerves.

“Critical much?” I asked, straightening up.

Holly rolled her eyes, stretched her arms back and said, “Whinge much?”

A tiny bit stung, I kept silent this time and waited for them to start the lesson. I still wasn’t sure what we were meant to be doing, or what Lewis’ purpose was. He didn’t look like much of a fighter, for all his mythical powers.

“We’re going to go through all the same moves again, just to practise a bit. It should all be fairly routine by now,” Alec said, stripping off his t-shirt to reveal a white singlet marred by a few dark smudges.

This caused me to frown a little, because we’d only had a few of these ‘lessons’. It wasn’t routine, I still wasn’t used to this. But if he thought it should be easy, I’d try to get it right. I had been practising...

I strapped my hands and brought them up to my face just in time to barely block a punch aimed squarely at my jaw.

“Sloppy,” he commented. We sparred a few more times, each hit accompanied with some kind of disparaging look or noise. It was so unnecessary that I couldn’t help but scowl in annoyance and try to hit harder.

Next Holly took over and we concentrated on kicking. This time it was both of them critiquing me, and I wondered if they were doing it for Lewis’ benefit. They’d never been this serious or critical before.

Alec circled us, dodging flying limbs and correcting my posture with quick thrusts of his hands to my shoulders and waist. It was like being attacked by two people at once and quickly got annoying.

“Can you cut it out?” I asked as civilly as humanly possible. “My posture is fine.”

Alec made it plain he disagreed and reached in to raise one of my arms up a little higher, where I knew it was meant to be, but I was getting there. He couldn’t leave me alone for two minutes?

Lewis then spoke for the first time since we’d begun to fight. “You’re going to need to be better than this,” he said to me, and then turned to Alec. “You told me she’d be ready in time. I really can’t see it.”

“I thought there would be more improvement than this,” Alec said scornfully, and my pride was well and truly bruised. I was doing the best I could, wasn’t I? What the hell did they expect?

“She doesn’t have any of her mother’s grace,” Lewis said almost carelessly. “I really don’t know how Asp thinks we can pull this off.”

That hurt, too. A lump was beginning to form in my throat as I thought of the hours I’d spent practising these kicks, doing sit-ups or push-ups, running up and down the hill near our house and around the neighbourhood. Those had hurt, and now he was saying it was for nothing?

Holly didn’t slacken her pace or her vigour – if anything both increased. I had to fight to concentrate both on not landing her hits and not letting my eyes tear up.

“Come on, you can hit harder than that, can’t you?” Holly joined in. I’d just attempted to kick her in the abdomen with as much force as I could possibly muster and it hadn’t worked. She’d simply dodged and hit my foot away with her forearm.

“Not really,” I said through gritted teeth.

She finally seemed to notice that I was trying not to scream, but instead of being a little nicer, she looked at me contemptuously. “Jeez, Di, you don’t need to take it so personally.”

I couldn’t help but look at her incredulously and say, “What?”

“Settle, petal,” Alec said patronizingly. “We’re just being honest.”

The worst part wasn’t what they were saying, I realised. It was that they were saying it in the first place. I couldn’t figure out what I’d done to deserve this kind of treatment. Not to mention that I despise being told to ‘settle down’.

I didn’t – couldn’t – say anything. If I had, I knew it would be messy and I was trying so hard not to let it affect what I was doing. So I literally bit my tongue.

“Maybe she’s been spending too much time with what’s-his-face,” Lewis broke in lazily, once again ignoring the fact that I was right there.

“Tris,” I bit out. “And actually, I don’t.”

Alec smirked. “I dunno... I’ve been spending a lot of time waiting for them to stop making out. In fact, that’s all they ever do... boy’s probably dying of blue balls.”

I could feel the rope of my temper fraying down to the last threads.

“'S none of your business,” I grunted, blocking a hit from Holly, feeling physically ill from rage and fatigue.

“It is if it’s affecting your training,” Holly lectured me, still only lightly flushed.

“You should go for it,” Alec said suggestively, leaning into my ear and digging his fingers into the hollows of my shoulders near my neck in a way that I supposed was meant to be a massage. “You could do with a bit of loosening up...”

That was it.

“Fuck you!” I grunted loudly, turning as quickly as I was physically able and sinking my knee as hard as I could into his crotch. His eyes bulged and he sank to the floor, making wheezing noises, and I didn’t feel bad for a second.

It was that distraction which allowed Holly to land a hard uppercut to my jaw and I was on the floor too, seeing stars.

To my surprise, she didn’t follow it up with a kick, just stood therepanting and grinning. Alec, too was still wheezing, only now it sounded a lot like... laughter?

“What’s so funny?” I groaned, getting up onto all fours.

Holly collapsed onto the couch and started undoing the straps on her hand. Alec forced himself into a sitting position and pulled a twenty dollar note out of his pocket and handed it to Holly.

“That took a lot longer than I thought it would,” he said.

I wasn’t willing to let go of my anger that quickly. “What did?”

“You losing your temper,” Holly told me, folding the note and putting it in her bra with a victorious look.

Incredulous, I looked from one of them to the other. “That’s what that was? Trying to make me lose it to prove a point?”

“For training purposes,” Lewis threw in.

Now I lay on my back, knees up, trying to lessen the headache I could feel coming on. “Right.”

Alec got up and shuffled into the kitchen. He came back with three glasses of water, and handed me one. I took it gratefully and sat up on my elbow to drink it.

“If it makes you feel better,” Holly said, “you lasted a pretty long time before you lost it. And I don’t think Alec expected you to actually hurt him...”

At that, I couldn’t suppress a smirk. I got up, and flicked Alec under the chin as I went into the kitchen.

“I’ve already warned Alec that I know how to deal with him,” I said, a little suggestively. He spluttered and I laughed.

The kitchen tiles were cool under my bare feet, a welcome respite from the friction burn of the living room carpet. I refilled the glass Alec had handed me and pulled the ice tray from the freezer, taking the last cubes and putting them in a plastic freezer bag.

It was Lewis who spoke first when I re-entered the room, makeshift icepack resting on my jaw.

“You held out well when we were criticising you personally,” he started conversationally. “But you have a pretty clear weak spot.”

I nodded. “Tris.”

The other three nodded back in response. “I can’t help it,” I said, trying not to sound petulant.

“I get it,” Holly said. “But the thing is, if we know – even if we’ve been coming over and have now actually met him – you can bet other people know. Others who you don’t want to know about Tris.”

A sudden fear flared in my stomach and my hands became clammy. “They won’t hurt him, will they?”

“Not likely at this point.” Lewis was blunt. “But if you’re a threat, they might.”

The fear turned me cold, and I thought hard. Was it worth the risk?

Holly seemed to follow my train of thought. “Don’t do anything hasty. Wait a while, then see if the decision is easier.”

That seemed reasonable, although I was still worried. As much as Tris isn’t naive, and can take care of himself, this was a whole other ball game. No amount of living normally in the city would prepare you for something like the Masquerade, as I was now discovering.

“I’ll be fine,” I said, with more conviction than I felt. “I’ll just... I’ll just train as hard as possible. Then...”

Lewis raised his eyebrows expectantly.

“Well, I guess I'll figure it out, won't I?”