Excerpt from Deceived

“He sleeps naked!” I shrieked.

Patrick stopped talking and every head in the room turned towards Fiona and I. Oops, perhaps a bit louder than I intended. She giggled next to me while I wished the floor would swallow me whole.

“Gwen Sparks, up front,” Patrick ordered.

My stomach plummeted. It was like I was in junior high all over again—would he have me write my name on the chalkboard? With angry footsteps, I stomped up to the front of the room. Patrick looked like a general you’d find at any army base; shaved blonde hair, square face, brown eyes, and muscles that tried to escape his shirt. Once I was standing in front of him, he crossed the tree limbs he called arms and glared at me.

This is ridiculous I’m twenty-six years old! Why do I feel like I’m twelve?

“As much as everyone is interested in finding out who ‘sleeps naked’, I will not tolerate you disrupting the class. You will be my partner to demonstrate the lesson today.” Patrick’s face was hard and the caterpillars he called eyebrows, pulled together as he scowled. Fiona giggled a few rows back, but she covered it as a fake cough; the strong urge to use magic to tie her shoelaces together teased my thoughts.

“Today we will be practicing three different maneuvers,” Patrick continued, addressing the room again. “The first will demonstrate what to do if you’re being attacked. You will pair off. One will be the attacker and the other the victim.”

I bet I can guess which one I’ll play.

“Gwen, you will play the victim, and I’ll attack you.”

Ding, ding, ding! What do I win, Johnny?

While I was having a sarcastic conversation in my head, Patrick disappeared. Everyone’s head swiveled in different directions as they looked for where he went. As his intended victim, I was scared. Patrick wasn’t the type to pull punches. Being made an example out of at seven in the morning was a bitch.

Air whooshed behind me. I turned too late and was knocked across the padded practice mats—hard. I lay on the pad for a few seconds as I regained my breathing. Patrick stood over me with a satisfied smirk.

“You always have to be aware of your surroundings people. Vampires are quick and stealth; you won’t see them coming.” He offered a hand to help me up, but I ignored it and stood on my own. Patrick snorted at my childish snub and continued to speak to his soldiers. “So how do you anticipate a vampire if you can’t see them?”

A few hands rose in the air, mainly woman who cared more about getting his attention than getting the answer right. He was cute, if you liked the “I’m Tarzan, you Jane” attitude. I wouldn’t be surprised if he used a club to hit woman over the head and dragged them back to his cave.

“We could use a beckoning spell so vampires are always on our radar,” one woman said. “You know, because that way they couldn’t hide from us.”

“Wouldn’t that spell also make it so we were on their radar?” Patrick asked.

The woman’s cheeks turned a nice shade of red. “Yeah, I guess it would.”

More hands rose in the air, but he ignored them and turned towards me instead.

“Gwen?”

“What?”

“Do you know how to spot a vampire?”

“They’re the ones with the fangs?” A few people laughed at my sarcasm, but Patrick didn’t look amused.

“Give me ten,” he ordered.

“Ten what?”

“Pushups.”

Ah hell. “Seriously?” Someone needed to tell this dude we weren’t on an army base.