Shadow Flight (Shadow Riders 5)

Nicoletta ignored the fact that her head wanted to explode and her body felt as though it was in pieces. She knew it wasn’t. Her skin covered her bones. She had only to open her eyes and look, and she would see for herself. It was only in her mind, a trick. The mind was powerful. Vittorio Ferraro lectured her on that subject as he trained her on speed and how to throw a proper punch and kick with maximum power so that when she struck, she was focusing that strike on a tiny area, but the penetration was so deep that it could shatter bones or destroy organs inside the body.

Focus, little sister. The punch doesn’t stop at the surface. You want to penetrate, go out the other side. You kick through the obstacle, whatever it is.

How many times had he said that to her in his patient, soft, commanding voice? Vittorio never raised his voice. Never was exasperated or impatient. He pushed her hard, but he worked just as hard, giving her his time generously and repeating lessons when she asked him to go over a technique she wanted to improve.

Her lashes fluttered, protesting, a kind of terror seizing her at the idea of allowing light in, but she was determined to overcome fear. She was with Taviano for a reason. She didn’t want to be deadweight that he dragged around. She wanted to be a partner, useful to him. If that was going to happen, she had to open her eyes, and she had to do it now. She was going to use every lesson the Ferraros had taught her to get back on her feet and get over the effects of the shadow riding. If they could do it, so could she.

She opened her eyes very slowly, all the while hearing the sound of guns going off. She was afraid for Taviano and Clariss. That fear for them, more than anything else, helped her to overcome her own terror of her head exploding. Pain burst through her skull as the light pierced her eyes, but when she blinked rapidly, she realized that the shadows dulled the brightness to a dimmer gray, helping to mitigate the effect.

It suddenly occurred to her that every lesson in the Ferraro training dojo ended with sitting on the mats, legs tucked up, breathing deeply, meditating. The breathing was always the same, slow and even, and they corrected her breathing almost more than they corrected her fighting techniques. Taviano had used that same breathing to slow hers to match his. She used it now and kept breathing, just the way she’d been taught, and found she could recover faster.

The numbness in her body, the feeling of paralysis, lessened, as did the images in her mind that she wasn’t all there. She looked down, half expecting her skin to be gone, but there it was, covering her arms and legs. Her body was intact and that helped push away more of the sensation that she was no longer in human form. Breathing deeply, she pressed her hand against the wall of the warehouse, her first physical sensation. The contact with something solid really grounded her.

The gunshots continued, louder now, as she recovered, the sound ringing in her ears. She turned, back to the wall, heels digging into the concrete, and forced herself into a standing position, pushing up hard, using her unsteady legs and her hands on the wall. It felt good to find muscles, wobbly or not. She willed steel into her body. She was an asset, not a complication.

She was Taviano’s partner. She was born to be his partner. That had been her secret mantra for the last couple of years, when she’d been working so hard to overcome her hatred and loathing of what her step-uncles and Benito Valdez had done to her. She was not going to allow those men to take away what her parents had so lovingly provided for her for so many years. What Lucia and Amo had done for her these last few years. Or the opportunities the Ferraro family had given her—the training and education, the counseling and compassion.

She trained with the Ferraros and then went to work, all the while going over their instructions in her head, every movement, every single thing they said to her. She didn’t forget anything. That was another gift she had. She remembered everything. Sometimes it could be a curse, but in this case, it was a major help. The smallest detail was etched into her brain. She practiced in her mind when she couldn’t practice with her body.

At home, she gave Lucia and Amo her undivided attention, and then, the moment they retired for the night, she was in the garage, where she’d set up a gym, and she was training again, working on the speed bag, the heavy bag, and kicking and punching and practicing rolls and falls. She knew the Ferraros had trained from the time they were very young. She had a lot of time to make up, but she was determined to do it.