Page 142 of Night's Reckoning
“Your body is both a weapon and a liability. You are stronger than most, but your control is still developing. You are vulnerable during the day. Guarding yourself in daylight will be your greatest challenge and your first priority.”
The wall of swords gave way to a corner full of training dummies, blocks, wooden staffs, and even a few devilish-looking whips. Ben felt like he’d been cooped up for months instead of weeks. He desperately wanted to flex his new power and beat the stuffing out of a few of those dummies.
Zhang continued. “But most of all, you must come to understand your amnis, for the air is both surrounding us and within us. It is not matter but space that forms the tapestry of all things. And when you truly understand and are the master of space, you will be more powerful than a vampire of any other element.”
Ben ran his hand along a straight-edgedjian, reaching for the leather-wrapped hilt.
Zhang said, “Let us begin.”
Ben turned and squared his shoulders at Zhang, only to see his sire sitting in the middle of the training room, cross-legged on the ground, with a small table and a board game set in front of him.
Ben blinked. “Wh-what is that?”
“The game is called abachee, and it is a general’s game. My father, who was a great warlord, taught the game to me, and I will teach it to you. This”—he pointed to the board—“is the true beginning of your education.”
Ben’s shoulder fell. “But…”
Zhang’s eyes were all amusement when he glanced at the sword. “The sword comes last, Benjamin. Right now we will work to train your mind.”
Ben let out a long breath.
It’s going to be a very long year.
* * *
Two nightsafter she’d left Penglai Island, Tenzin came to rest in the cave of the Eternal Goddess, high in the Himalayan Mountains. The air was crisp and turning colder each night, but prayer flags whipped in the wind, flapping their petitions to the heavens and to her.
She checked the altar in the cave where she had once spent centuries resting, and took the time to taste and appreciate the food that had been left for her, knowing it was a gift of the people in the valley and she should not ignore it.
Tenzin gathered the food and left the prayer scrolls, flowers, and candles behind, flying to her home higher in the cliffs that overlooked the broad, sweeping valley where a river cut through the mountains, creating a fertile pocket in the middle of the wilderness.
Green fields and birch forests filled the river valley, and arching bridges and narrow passes connected the small village to the outside world.
Spare white lights marked where each stone house stood. Some of them had radios and televisions now. A wireless tower had been built only a few years before, putting mobile phone technology within reach for the village. Tenzin could use her tablet in the valley, though the signal didn’t reach up to her home in the mountains, for which she was grateful.
YouTube was simply too addicting.
Despite the incursions of modernity, her home remained unchanged. It was the stone house she’d built with her own hands centuries before. The home she had shared with Nima. The place where her soul rested most quietly. The place where she found peace.
Now she was more grateful for it than she’d been in a millennium. Her mind felt new and burgeoning. She was a snake shedding her skin. A blade emerging from the tempering fire.
She was her sire’s weapon, newly forged, lying in wait for the time when she would rise and touch the heavens.
Her fifth life was upon her.
For the first time in thousands of years, Tenzin lay down in the mountains and dreamed of flying. Through the forests of red birch trees. Over wide oceans of grass and across the midnight desert.
Tenzin slept and she dreamed.
Epilogue
“Idon’t think you’re putting the door together correctly,” Tenzin said. “Did you read the instructions?”
“I don’t need any bloody instructions,” Gavin muttered. “It’s a fucking glass house, not a nuclear reactor.”
“If you can’t put a glass house together, I think a nuclear reactor is a bad idea.”
“I’m not getting— Just hand me that screwdriver and be quiet!”
