Chapter 25 : Final Summer
The stake formed in one point eight seconds.
I counted in my head as the blood shaped itself, hardened, became lethal. Not fast enough. A vampire could cross twenty feet in that time, rip my throat out before the weapon was ready.
But it was faster than last month. Faster than last week. Progress.
The Lockwood ruins were quiet in the pre-dawn darkness, the only sounds my breathing and the distant call of birds beginning their morning routines. I'd been training here for two and a half months, and the forest had learned to ignore me.
I released the stake, let the blood splash back into the metal bowl, and tried again.
One point six seconds.
Again.
One point five.
The motion was becoming automatic—reach for the blood, shape the construct, harden the edge. My brain had built new pathways over the summer, carved by repetition and necessity. What had once required intense concentration now felt almost natural.
Almost wasn't good enough.
I shifted to projectiles. Three stakes forming simultaneously, hovering in the air, waiting for targets. The training dummy I'd built from scrap wood stood twenty feet away, chest painted with a rough approximation of a heart.
Throw.
The first stake went wide, embedding itself in a tree three feet left of the target. I grimaced and tried again.
The second stake hit the dummy's shoulder. Closer.
The third stake punched through the center of the painted heart.
One out of three. Pathetic.
But better than yesterday, when it had been zero out of five.
I reset the exercise. Form, aim, throw. Form, aim, throw. The morning crept toward dawn as I worked, each repetition building muscle memory, training reflexes that might someday keep me alive.
By the time the sun crested the treeline, I'd improved to seven hits out of ten. Killing accuracy against a target that held still.
Vampires didn't hold still.
I took a break, sitting on my usual fallen log, and ran through my mental inventory.
Hemomancy: Stage 1, Control 5 out of 10. Reliable stake formation in under two seconds. Three constructs maintained simultaneously. Ten-meter control range. Five minutes of sustained combat before fatigue.
The numbers were better than they'd been in June. Two months of daily training had pushed my abilities to their current limits—limits I couldn't break no matter how hard I tried.
Combat assessment: Defensive capability only.
The honest truth was brutal. Against a fledgling vampire, distracted or weakened, I might survive. Against Stefan Salvatore, with a century and a half of experience? I'd be dead before the first stake formed.
Against Damon?
I didn't want to think about Damon.
A hawk circled overhead, riding the thermal currents that rose with the morning heat. I watched it for a moment—predator watching predator-in-training—and something passed between us. Recognition, maybe. The acknowledgment of hunters who knew their place in the food chain.
I wasn't at the top. Not even close.
Time for the reality check.
I stood and sprinted toward the tree line, pushing Matt's seventeen-year-old body as fast as it could go. The undergrowth blurred past, branches whipping at my arms, lungs burning with exertion.
Thirty seconds later, I stopped, gasping.
I'd covered maybe a hundred meters. A vampire would have caught me in five.
You can't outrun them. You can't outfight them. You need to be smarter.
The summer had taught me that lesson repeatedly. My powers were tools, not solutions. Vervain was protection, not immunity. The only way I survived what was coming was through planning, allies, and the willingness to fight dirty when fighting clean wasn't an option.
I gathered my supplies and headed back toward the truck. The blood bags—five now, 2250 milliliters carefully accumulated over the past weeks—went into the cooler. The stakes went back into their hidden caches. The evidence of training disappeared, erased as always.
The drive home was quiet. Two weeks until senior year. Two weeks until Stefan Salvatore walked through the doors of Mystic Falls High. Maybe three weeks until Damon followed.
I was as ready as I could be.
Which probably wasn't ready enough.
But the sun was warm, and Caroline was expecting me for lunch, and the hawk had found its prey somewhere beyond the treeline.
Life continued, even on the edge of disaster.
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