The next room Victoria took me to was a gym. The centre of it contained a boxing ring where a man and a woman, well, a teenager, were sparring.

Neither of them wore gloves. They were practising blocks, throws, kicks and locks. The man was well built with toned muscles, in his early thirties at most. The girl looked seventeen, maybe eighteen years old. Pitch black hair tied back in a ponytail, slim and didn’t have any noticeable muscles.

She was dressed in black, a figure-hugging tank top and sports shorts. Her eyes were deep blue, and she appeared to be Italian, or at least from the Mediterranean area. If she was a vampire, I couldn’t see anything that gave it away. She just looked normal.

Okay, she looked hot-normal, but that was all.

She was easily besting the older guy again and again, forcing him to yield repeatedly, and was definitely enjoying the workout. She was fast, her slim body far stronger than you’d have guessed.

I gawped as she spun and tossed the guy around the ring with supernatural speed and strength. The guy could barely get her in a hold, and couldn’t keep her in it. Nine times out of ten, it was the guy slamming the mat with his palm to concede. She might have appeared normal, but she moved, kicked and punched faster than anyone I’d ever seen.

I’ll be honest, the first time I laid eyes on Alice, my mind went “Oh, well, hello there…”

Victoria and I watched them for a few minutes, then Victoria called Alice over.

“This is Ethan,” she said.

“Hi. Alice. Nice to meet you, I’m sure,” she winked at me then turned to Victoria, “So this is the freak, right?”

“Alice!” Victoria scolded. “I’ve told you not to use that term.”

Alice grinned at me. “I only say these things to wind her up. Don’t take it personally. You want to spar?”

She gave me a flirtatious look with her blue eyes.

For the second time that day, I thought I was going to have a heart attack.

Looking more closely, I noticed faint flecks of bright red in her green irises - the only sign she wasn’t quite ‘normal.’

“I, um, I don’t spar or anything. I mean, you’re really good at that.”

My attempt at a compliment felt lame, but Alice smiled nonetheless.

“Thanks. I took kickboxing at my dad’s insistence, so that helps, but the rest of it is all in the turning. Faster, stronger, better in every way.

She frowned, then muttered, “I mean, if you overlook the issue of, you know, trying not to kill anyone in order to survive.”

“Right,” I replied.

I tried to take her last line in my stride, but my mind was teeming with questions. Instead, I said; “I’ve never even been in a boxing ring before, to be honest.”

“Oh, we can work on that,” Alice nodded. “Come on, jump in. Martin here is almost done for today, I think.”

Martin nodded in a good humoured way.

“I don’t mind being bested by a vampire, but does it have to be a teenage girl vampire?”

“Oh, stop whining,” Alice bantered back. “You know you love it, really.”

Martin rolled his eyes, picked up a towel and mopped his forehead. Alice stretched out a hand, inviting me into the ring.

“Not yet,” Victoria said. “I want to run Ethan through some exercises.”

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“Sure,” Alice replied, “Martin, you're back up.”

Martin mock groaned and returned to the centre of the ring. Alice got back to beating up her sparring partner.

“Down boy,” Victoria said.

“What? I wasn’t staring.”

“You were staring.”

Okay, fine, so I was staring. Victoria didn’t miss a trick.

“Come on, let’s see what you can do,” Victoria said, indicating a weight bench.

“What do you mean?”

“I want to see how strong you are.”

“It doesn’t work like that. I only get strong when I’m angry or scared, when I feel some extreme emotion. Then it’s like this fire inside me that sort of takes over.”

“Yes, understood, but we need to establish a baseline. So we can tell what’s normal for you before your powers activate.”

“Right, that makes sense.”

Victoria directed me to a changing room, and I put on a plain t-shirt and shorts that were provided. For the next couple of hours, Victoria had me lifting weights, testing my arms and legs. Then she had me do a series of press-ups, none of which I did at home. My mum had pretty much drilled into me that violence was never the answer, so I’d never gotten into anything beyond the occasional run or cycling to keep fit.

Victoria placed some patches on my forehead and chest to measure my heart rate, blood pressure, brain activity and so on.

“Below average strength,” she said, “for your age and height. You should work out more. Okay, now let’s see what you can really do.”

We walked back to the middle of the gym, and Victoria helped me put on a pair of boxing gloves and a padded headguard. It was the first time I’d ever tried them on. I felt ridiculous. Victoria clapped twice and told Martin to change places with me. Feeling reluctant, I climbed through the ropes as the other Martin left the ring, and I stood face to face with Alice.

Unlike me, she had no gloves and no headguard. I was standing in a boxing ring with a drop gorgeous black haired seventeen-year-old who was, realistically, about to kick my ass.

“Ok,” Victoria said, “I want you to hit her.”

“What?”

“I want you to hit Alice,” Victoria said.

Alice grinned at me and raised her bare fists, pacing around me.

“What? No! I’m not going to hit a girl!”

Alice stopped for a second.

“Ethan, I’m seventeen years old,” she said, then resumed her attack stance.

“That doesn’t make it any better!” I replied, gloves dangling by my side.

Quick as lightning, Alice gave me a sharp kick in the ribs.

“Ow! Hey!”

“Come on, Ethan,” she said, “Don’t be boring.”

She rained a quick series of light punches and kicks on me.

“Ow! Hey – ow – would you stop – ow – ouch – please stop hitting me?”

“Nope,” Alice replied with a grin as she brought a kick to the side of my head that sent me spinning to the ground. I could tell she was holding back.

“Hey, stop that, come on!”

“Ethan,” Victoria said, “You’re being beaten up by a girl.”

“Yes, thanks Victoria, I had noticed that!”

My cheeks were burning with humiliation. I was conscious I was being made a fool of. I got angry, and as I did so, the fire returned.

“Come on, Ethan, you can’t hurt me,” Alice said as she jabbed a couple more times at me.

I glared at her, gritted my teeth and threw a punch in her direction. At the same moment, Alice stood stock still. She could have dodged my clumsy swing, but she didn’t. I caught her on the side of her face and she went down hard.

“Oh my god! I am so sorry!”

Alice, lying on the mat, spat blood and grinned, “Now that’s more like it.”

I had used nothing like my full strength, and nowhere near the force with which I’d tried to hit Major Wilson. It had been a lot though. I was terrified I’d hurt her. Instead, she jumped back up and landed another kick on me.

I saw red.

“That’s right, Ethan, get angry,” Victoria said.

I lifted my gloves up into my approximation of a boxing stance and took this seriously. Alice kept jabbing at me and I tried to connect, jabbing and swinging as she danced around me. She kept ducking and dodging out of the way, making me more frustrated and angry. Then, when she could see I was wound up, she let one of my wilder blows connect.

She slammed down onto the mattress hard.

“Damn,” she said, “The kid is strong. Maybe stronger than me. He should be able to bench press 500 pounds at least based on those punches.”

“Interesting,” Victoria said. “He can barely do 130 when he isn’t agitated.”

The mixture of emotions going through me at that moment was intense. I stepped back and breathed, waiting for the fire to die down, waiting for me to return to feeling normal. ‘Agitated’ was putting it mildly. These emotions and the powers that came with them scared me, as if the more I gave in to the anger, rage even, the more they threatened to overwhelm me and take control.

Plus, I’d just been called a kid by Alice, which seemed a touch unfair. She was only a year older than me, after all.

Then I realised maybe she wasn’t. For all I knew, she could be a hundred years older than me.

“Alright, enough. I get angry, I get stronger. We already know this.”

Alice sat up. I knelt down beside her. Despite taking two punches to the face, there was no sign of bruising.

“Are you okay? I hope I didn’t hurt you.”

Alice grinned at me, and for a second I saw fangs that hadn’t been there before. Her eyes darted straight to my neck for a spilt second, then to the floor.

She brushed her hands across her teeth and scowled, stepping back. Her fangs retracted. It seemed I wasn’t the only one dealing with some kind of self-control issues.

Then she smiled and threw Victoria an ironic glance. “My, this one is such a gentleman, Vicky.”

“Isn’t he just?” Victoria smiled back. “Something to eat?”

For a split second, I thought she meant me.