Hotbloods (Hotbloods #1)(70)

“I do.”

“Why don’t you put them down over here. We’ll get to them in a minute. I want to first show you some self-defense moves. Hopefully, you won’t have to use them. But it will give me slightly better peace of mind if you know a couple basic things.”

“Sure,” I said, though I hoped I wouldn’t have to end up grappling with a shifter—the thought of having to touch one of those things made my skin crawl.

“On Vysanthe, we have a form of martial arts called Aksavdo. The closest thing you have here would probably be Krav Maga. Aksavdo is a military self-defense system, and everyone on Vysanthe is expected to master it by the time they’re eighteen.”

“Really?” I said. “That’s pretty cool.”

“Well,” Navan said, something of a chagrinned look on his face. “All the boys are, anyway.”

“That sounds a little less cool.”

“But plenty of girls on Vysanthe know Aksavdo. And I’m just going to show you some blocks and how to break certain holds. Again, I really hope that we’re not in the situation where you have to use it, but . . . just in case. Now, the problem with fighting a shapeshifter is they can change shape. When you’re fighting, you want to attack the most vulnerable areas, and if your opponent is constantly changing shape, that can certainly be a challenge. So that’s one of the main things when fighting a shifter—you must stay alert at all times. The eyes, throat, nose, groin . . . Those are the spots you want to go for. If the shifter is, say, in wolf form, and you manage to bash it on the nose, it’s probably going to be stunned and change back to its regular form, at which point it will be a lot more vulnerable. You saw that one in the alleyway—they’re ugly creatures, and they don’t have much in the way of natural defenses, except for their teeth. So I’m going to come up behind you—” Navan stepped behind me, his body pressed up against mine, his arm going around my neck. “Let’s just say you get caught like this. How would you escape?”

I strained forward, feeling his arm tighten against my neck. Then I tried dropping my legs out from under me, but my head couldn’t slide out from his grasp.

“No,” Navan said. “You’re not going anywhere, and that’s just giving me more time to lock the hold in. Grab my arm.”

I reached up and put both my hands on his forearm. “Good,” he said. “Now pull on my arm as hard as you can—you want to get some space between my arm and your neck.” I squeezed with both hands and gave his arm a jerk. “The moment you feel the pressure let up a little, turn your head so your chin is down—yeah, just like that. Now I can’t get the hold back in place even if you let go of my arm. And now, move this leg back behind me, like that, and sit down.”

“Sit down?” I asked, feeling as if we were playing some sort of bizarre version of Twister. I was trying to focus and do what he said, but the very fact that we were this close and his arms were around me was making it extremely difficult to concentrate.

“Sit right on down,” he said. “Just drop your weight.”

I did so, and he toppled below me, and I landed on him with a thud. “Good,” he said. “And at this point, you can use your elbows, your knees, your feet, and you want to look for whatever vulnerable spot you can reach.”

I twisted around to look at him, raising my elbow as I did so, gently touching his cheek with it.

“Like that?”

“Very good.”

I knew I was supposed to hop up so he could show me another move, but sitting there with him like that felt . . . truly wonderful. Like it was exactly the thing I was supposed to be doing, and in that moment, it was easy enough to forget that we were out in the middle of nowhere, doing self-defense training because we were in the middle of a potentially dangerous mission to locate shapeshifters. The cold air seemed to crackle between us and we were close enough to kiss. His gaze went to my lips, and my whole body tingled as I could have sworn I saw a flicker of longing in his eyes, but then he shook his head and was pushing me off of him, leaving me to wonder if I had just imagined it.

“All right,” he said gruffly, clearing his throat. “That was pretty good, but let’s try it a little faster now. Real time.”

“Right,” I murmured, jumping up and hoping I wasn’t blushing too badly.

We probably spent close to an hour working on different self-defense skills, and I was winded and a little sore when Navan said we could move on to the weapons. But I felt good, as though I had really learned something new, something that if I had to, I’d be able to remember and put to good use.

“So you seemed drawn to the throwing knives,” Navan said. “Why don’t we start with those.” He cast a gaze around and then pointed at one of the trees that had a swatch of bark missing, exposing the pale, smooth wood underneath. It was about twenty feet away. “Think you can hit that spot on the tree?”

“I’ll try.”

I’d never thrown a knife before, but there was something about it that seemed familiar. I squared my stance and looked at the spot on the tree, then lifted my arm and threw the knife. It rotated once and then stuck into the tree, a few inches above the spot where there was no bark.

Navan whistled. “Okay,” he said, “so clearly you’ve been keeping your identity as a professional knife thrower a secret from me.” He went over to the tree and retrieved the blade. “Your aim was only a little off, but for a first try, that was damn impressive. Try it again.”