The Blood of a Nightlock

Chapter Ten

"What are we doing here?" I asked Mitchel as he turned off the blacklight in the Laster Stakes course and came back to me.

"Something cool." He responded as he handed me a glow stake and kept one for himself. "Virtual reality things."

"I don't know what that means."

"Watch." He said as he stared straight ahead.

After a few moments, a computer-generated vampire snuck out from behind one of the obstacles.

"What do you do?"

"You can do anything that you can do to a real person." He said. "You treat it like a real-life situation."

I stared at him.

"Try."

"I fight something that isn't there?"

He nodded. "It will register every hit and give you an accuracy and a damage result at the end."

"Shut up." I said as I turned to him with surprise.

"I'm serious. Try."

"This isn't a trick for you to make fun of me?"

He slid his eyes to me. "I'm not a very humorous person, Wren."

"That's true." I sighed as I stepped up to the computer-generated vampire. I swung and my fist connected. I pushed forward, fighting the computer and then staking it. "Wow." I whispered. "Why don't we use this for class?"

"It's only good every once in a while. Too much of it and the students start to rely on this as an example of what it's like out there. It's not, obviously. So if you do it every once and a while, it can be beneficial."

I worked with the computer for about an hour when Mitchel shut it down and we moved back into the gym. He showed me a few new moves to add to my spars. It was helpful and I was looking forward to more one-on-one lessons with him. Our first one was a success and I learned far more in one lesson with Mitchel than I had in any other training sessions.

"You did well today." He said as we left the gym.

"Thanks," I said.

"How are you feeling?"

I shook my head. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Well, even more reason why we're going to."

I sighed.

"Your Dad tried to do the right thing, Wren. He thought he was doing the right thing. We're human, we don't think anything bad is actually going to happen to us and sometimes we make a tough decision. Unfortunately, the one he made to wait was the wrong one."

"I'm more upset that he didn't tell me or I feel like I didn't know him at all than I am that she isn't my biological mother and I think that's pretty fucked up." I said.

"You were so close to him. I could understand that."

"I loved her." I said. "I still do. She is my mom. I just..." I shrugged. "I don't know, I didn't think he'd keep that from me."

"I get it." He said. "Being a parent is hard. They never do the right thing."

"That feels like the memo for just being an adult."

He nodded. "That's true too."

"I'd apologize for kiss number two, but I don't have it in me to care to apologize for my actions anymore."

He didn't respond.

"That's me addressing it." I said. "I'm just going to act like neither happened."