Chapter 9

Melissa was on her back again, muttering words he had heard more than once during his time with the Calaveras. They sounded blood chilling then. Somehow, they sounded funny coming from her.

He offered her a hand to get up. She gripped his wrist without hesitation and stood up quickly. He was almost getting used to his body's sharp reaction to her touch. He knew he should be appalled by how bad she was at this, but in fact he was grateful. If she were any better, it would mean a lot more contact and he wasn't sure he could handle tumbling around on the ground with her. It was difficult enough not to think about making out with her when they were both standing and fully clothed. Rolling around in the grass in the middle of the woods… things would be a lot harder.

"Again?" she asked.

She let go of his hand but she remained close enough to mess with his senses.

"No, I think it's enough for this part," he said and after a look down her cleavage which he hoped passed unnoticed, he added, "You're going to need different clothes next time."

The remark seemed to surprise her for a moment, but she immediately lowered her eyes and stepped away. Chris wondered once more if her choice of clothes had been intentional after all.

"Let's try something else."

He got out the bow and arrows from the trunk of the care. He wasn't really expecting her ever to need to use it, but it never hurt to learn. Especially for someone with no innate talent for hand to hand combat, it would be safer to have some skills she could apply from a distance. Allison wasn't terrible on hand to hand, but her strength was definitely with a bow.

"Let's try to hit that tree," he told her, pointing to a thick tree about forty yards away. "See that big knot it about 5 feet from the ground?"

Melissa took the bow and held it as she had probably seen in movies. It turned out to be a pretty good posture. Appropriate for bow hunting and downright exquisite in terms of visual effect.

"Very good," he said encouragingly before putting his arms around her for some small adjustments. "You have to learn to calculate where to aim," he said.

He expected his body to react to the closeness and was prepared to ignore it. He was thrilled to notice her slight shiver. Her eyelids slowly drooped while he spoke. He fought the urge to grate his beard against her neck. But he couldn't help himself from teasing her just a little, whispering so close to her ear that his lips were almost touching her.

"If there's no wind, you have to aim above the target because gravity will act along the way. If there is wind, you have to take into account that it will affect the trajectory," he was just talking because he enjoyed pretending to have a reason to hold her in his arms.

Chris watched her how difficult it was for her keep her eyes open, noticed the fluttering of her eyelids when his breath touched her skin. He pulled himself together. Stepped back.

"Come on. Just look at the tree and hit it!"

She shook her head slightly, as if trying to dislodge something. Her shoulders and her neck tensed, then relaxed a little, and the arrow flew from the bow and hit the knot dead center.

"Excellent!" he exclaimed.

Melissa turned around beaming and just for a split second he had the feeling that she was about to jump into his arms.

"Yes! Oh thank God I'm not a disaster at this, too!"

"You are not a disaster," he assured her. "With practice, your self-defense skills will improve. Actually I'm quite pleased you didn't get hurt at all on your first lesson. Allison was so stubborn she nearly broke an arm. We told her it was broken and she wore a cast for a month just to get her to learn how to fall without trying to fight back."

The long look Melissa gave him stirred something in his depths. He remembered his daughter's training, he remembered the discussion with his wife and the decision to use this lie in her training. And behind the clean, sterile memories, there was the ghost of something else. It was a strange sensation. Like the itch of an amputated limb. Like he should have remembered something else. He felt something like a dull throb in his chest.

"Try again," he said, handing her another arrow.

Melissa repeated the performance, but did not react as enthusiastically at his praise.

"Good shot! Looks like you're a natural at this," he said and refrained from adding "like Allison."

She hit all the targets he pointed at, and when they finished the arrows in the quiver, they went to retrieve them. On route, he showed her the wolfsbane growing in patches, which was the reason he had chosen that particular spot for training. The wild growing plant was as much a guarantee as possible that no werewolves would bother them.

"Would you really kill Scott if you had to?" she asked.

She wasn't even looking at him when she spoke, knowing the answer. He considered lying to her, trying to reassure her. To get her to trust him enough to obey his commands if they would be in real danger. He weighed the advantages of a quick and small step forward, against the slower route and the long term gain.

"You know the answer. The question is, would you kill him if he starts hurting people?"

She ignored him, pulling an arrow from the tree. She went on to the next tree. They didn't talk all the way back to the car.

"I read the book you gave me. I can understand that you were raised to believe that once a human becomes a werewolf they are cursed to lose the fight with the what you call the monstrous urge. And I can see how good you are at compartmentalizing. So it's fair to tell you that I will give my life before losing faith in my son."

Chris sifted through the speech and decided that her answer was no. Or more likely, not yet. He was sure he had a very good image of this woman's moral compass and this answer was going to change if she saw just how dark and horrible things could get.

Starting with the next training session, they were no longer alone. Chris was fairly pleased about this. Having Mrs. Martin around helped him focus on the training and ignore his attraction to Melissa. The downside was that now he was sure that it wasn't just a general hormonal reaction, because he never felt anything special when he was touching Natalie Martin.

Having to deal with two permanent pupils, and the occasional participation of the Sheriff to their training sessions, Chris recreated his training room in the basement of the McCall residence.