Map of Fates (The Conspiracy of Us 2)

He let go and I backed up a step, two.

“What else?” he said.

I shoved my hands in my sweatshirt pockets. “The femoral artery. On the Internet, it said you’d bleed out really quickly from there.”

A smile flashed across Stellan’s face. “Very quickly,” he agreed.

“It’s in the upper thigh,” I offered.

“The very upper thigh,” he said, his grin growing. Before I could stop myself, I was staring at his very upper thigh. He shifted his weight purposefully.

“I won’t make you touch that one,” he said. “But suffice it to say, similar problems apply. Though there won’t be as much muscle protecting it, it’s usually covered by clothes, which are actually quite difficult to stab through. And besides that, men tend to have very good reflexes against attacks to that area.”

My eyes flicked involuntarily back to that area. He might as well have a glowing neon sign on his crotch. “Right,” I said quickly. “I guess I should have realized that.”

Stellan was still grinning. “You Americans are so puritanical. I’m teaching you how to kill somebody and you’re being a tough little soldier about it, but I mention a man’s crotch in a completely nonsexual way and you can’t look me in the eye.”

“I don’t think you’ve ever said anything in a completely nonsexual way,” I retorted.

“Innuendo is all in the interpretation, kuklachka. So that says rather more about your mind than mine, doesn’t it?” He cocked an eyebrow.

I was not going to let him goad me. “So when are you actually going to teach me something? All you’ve told me so far is that nothing I know will work.”

Stellan plucked his wooden knife out of the sand, then tossed mine to me. “That’s the most important thing there is to learn,” he said. “It’s hard to kill or gravely injure with a knife when you don’t know what you’re doing and can’t physically overpower your opponent. That’s both a bad thing and a good thing.”

I remembered the club in Istanbul. I’d asked him why he used a knife. It takes more effort to kill with a dagger, he’d said. Guns make it too easy.

“So why even learn?” I said.

“You know more than you did an hour ago, don’t you? Now you might not make the mistake of trying to stab someone in the groin.”

I stabbed out with my stick and knocked him on the arm.

“Good,” he said. “The joints are a fine place to strike. A good hit to the elbow will throw your attacker off-balance.”

He held out his arm, showing me the vulnerable space inside his arm. For the next half hour, he tutored me, and by the time the sun had risen fully over the bluff, I was dripping with sweat.

“You’re making progress,” he said when we stopped for breath. “Better than when you were practicing with Jack.”

I bristled, but it didn’t seem like he was accusing, or taunting.

Stellan picked up the package he’d taken from the boat, and when he peeled back the white paper from one edge, I was definitely not expecting to see a rack of raw ribs.

“Toughening me up by feeding me raw meat?” I asked warily.

“It’s not for eating.” Stellan set the ribs on a large, flat rock. “Stab it.”

“Excuse me?”

Stellan picked up my knife, slipped off the sheath, and handed it to me. “Stab the meat.”

“Why—”

Stellan took my hands, the knife clutched in them, in his. “Do you remember stabbing me at Notre-Dame?”

I nodded hard. We were escaping the wedding. We had to make it look like Stellan hadn’t just let us get away, and I remembered it too well. The initial cut where I broke his skin myself, like pricking a water balloon until it burst. Then when he grabbed my hand and stabbed the knife farther into his shoulder, and I could feel the muscle ripping under my hand. I shuddered.

“That’s what I thought,” Stellan said. “This will help.”

He led me to the slab of meat. “Remember what you know about the grip,” he said. “Try to loosen up. Let your shoulders go. And then . . .”

He stabbed into the meat and then pulled my hand back, and the knife came out sticky.

I swallowed. “Isn’t the actual stabbing the easy part? I don’t have to practice this.”

“Okay, show me,” he said.

I stabbed out at the meat, and even I could see all my form go out the window. I did it again, defiantly, and the knife barely glanced off. I sniffed.

“Have you never cut meat before?” Stellan said. “Are you a vegetarian?”

I shook my head.

“Pretend it’s a steak you’re making for dinner. Start by slicing off a piece. Whatever you need to do to get comfortable with it.”

I scowled up at him, but he shrugged. He was serious. I faced the hunk of meat. “Okay,” I whispered. “Okay.” I stabbed at the meat.

I hit a rib.

“That’s why stabbing in the heart is so difficult,” Stellan said. “Now try again with better form. Don’t rush.”

I frowned and stabbed the meat again. This time my blade sank deep into the muscle, and I thought for a second that I might throw up.

“Do it again,” Stellan said.

I did.

“Again.”

I did it again. Just meat. I could be cooking this for dinner. Don’t think of it as a person. Don’t even think of the animal it came from. It’s something in your kitchen. I stabbed it again. And again, and again. I was hitting muscle consistently now. The revulsion pulsing through me was cut in half, then half again, and then I could barely remember feeling like the meat was anything else, and I was able to really think about holding the knife correctly, and how to stand.