Recovery

Messing with the B*tch Now

Urdu

Urdu didn't give in to her anger very often. And in the months she had been back with Tim and Sam, she had begun to doubt that she could feel anything strongly at all anymore. She had been encased in a sort of numbness that had dulled her emotions and dragged her down into an exhausted emptiness. Urdu only felt the love of her mates with any great intensity, and sometimes she lost even that in the haze of her depression.

She knew Ryker was an asshole.

He had always been an asshole, though Tim had said that he had evened out over the preceding months. That he had matured and become a half-decent person when he wanted to.

But Urdu was left with the same arrogant derision that she had known before, and his dismissal of her had done something that the careful, loving protectiveness of her mates had not yet managed to accomplish. It cracked through the despair and loss that she had been feeling and sparked her anger so completely that she felt... like herself.

Like Lucifer's General, a force of nature that could level a planet if she wanted to.

The staff was in her hands without her consciously pulling on her power and she attacked Ryker with swift brutality. The brief moment of herself faded as she moved, and though it didn't completely disappear, she was reminded that things had changed. She had been inactive for long enough that she wasn't as strong or as fast as she would have liked.

She didn't have her power, either. Nor did she have her eyesight.

But Urdu could hear his heartbeat picking up as she put him on his heels and forced him to strain to keep up with her. Even out of shape, even half-broken, even blind. Ryker was a decent fighter, had improved even in the time since she had last sparred with him, but he was scrambling on the defensive as they moved back and forth across the mats.

She could hear his movements, be it the shift of his clothing or the sound of his footsteps. The staves singing through the air, telling her where they were and where he was intending to take them. And what she couldn't see, her magic filled in, allowing her to sense or see the room in a way that differed from eyesight, but still capable of telling her what she needed to know. Urdu scored hits, not as many as she would have liked, but the smell of vampire blood filled the air soon enough.

Spinning her weapon, she landed a bruising blow across his thigh that sent him stumbling backwards, grunting loud enough that she was able to bring her staff up and crosscheck him to the face, sending him flying backwards.

The smell of genuine pain hit the air, causing her to grin. She heard him land on his feet somehow, followed by the sound of him wiping his face, most likely smearing the blood that was running freely now. "Lucky hit."

Around her, the students murmured, commenting on the speed, the ferocity of the fight.

Urdu spun her staff and shrugged. "You have enough?"

Ryker launched into his own attack then, snarling and pushing her back on the defensive for the span of several moments, before she reversed the momentum and launched into another punishing barrage of blocks and hits, sweeping Ryker's legs out from under him with her staff and launching him into the wall with a kick. This time, he hit the wall and landed on his knees on the ground. She could hear the difference, just as surely as she could hear him stumbled back to his feet.

"Is that all you have? I know pensioners that hit harder than you." Ryker's tone had that cocky edge to it.

And she heard him spin his staff into a low guard, shifting his stance to favour his one leg.

Her last hit must have hurt him more than she had realized. Not that she felt bad for the man. It was nearly impossible to feel pity for the asshole in front of her. She moved in once more, grinning at the challenge of the fight, feeling her own body labouring to continue.

A vampire had natural stamina, but normally she wouldn't have an issue. But she didn't see it as a drawback. It wasn't a sign of her weakness. In this moment, the burn of her muscles and the sudden flare of pain when Ryker managed a hit proved to Urdu that she was alive.

And she was capable of being alive, being more than a shell.

Urdu laughed as she launched into a brutal series of attacks that wound up with Ryker on his back, and her standing over him with one foot on his throat and her staff pressed over his heart.

Silence stretched around him, despite the fact that they had an audience. For a moment, they appeared locked in place as Ryker struggled to draw in enough oxygen to speak, groaning in pain as Urdu added more pressure to the staff.