Off The Grid (Kindred Series-3)

Off The Grid - 10

aim

            Remy picks up another knife and flings it at the target she wants to work off some anger and confusion.  God, her mind is a muddled mess and this is very unlike her.  She narrows her eyes and checks her target.  She’s off center and to the left.  What is going on with her, she never misses.  She varies her throw, underhanded, side arm, just wrist, full arm throw. 

            “You are good,” says Stefan.  He picks his way easily down the trail that leads to their training area.  It’s about half a mile from their home, a small woodless clearing, surrounded by thick pines that hide them from spying eyes.  There is a small camper off to the far side where sometimes Remy goes to think or when her mood is too dark for company.  Other times the camper serves as a wicked playground for Remy and traveling men who don’t want to take a girl back to their hotel room.  She looks him over.  His dark hair mussed from sleep, but his eyes are wide awake.  Seems her future husband can at least have a few beers with her brothers without it affecting him. 

            “I practice a lot.”

            Stefan edges towards her, but doesn’t touch her even though by all accounts he is allowed to touch her.  “My grandfather told me about you.  You came to the Roma almost 9 years ago?”

            “Yup.”

            “Your mother was of our blood?”

            “I didn’t know her, but far as I can tell that’s true – had a Rom last name, family traced back to a tribe in Florida.  And, from birth certificates and such.”  Remy takes aim and launches another knife at the target, this time it finds it intended home.  All this, of course, is true. But her Roma family thinks it is a made up tale.  Some things Remy needs to keep to herself.  Her birth, Fritz, the dreams.

            “Most brides are pure,” says Stefan.  There is an edge to his tone.

            Remy turns, looking him over with hungry eyes.  “You’re going to have to understand that I’m not your typical bride, Stefan.  I’m doing this for Lena.  She’d married you and you didn’t have kids, it would have been a dark shame on her, and her soul.  Instead, I’ve vowed to take her place, but I’m not a blushing bride that’s going to gasp in delight when you drop your jeans.”  Her eyes shift down his chest and then his belt buckle smiling.

            Stefan’s face brightens and he laughs.  “No!  I know that, I’m not typical stock, Remy.  I see how the old ways have stifled us, held us from being a true power.  I want a new world.  I still think we need our lines to be pure, to fight the fight for good, for the church; to rid the world of the demons, but I do think some of the things need to change.”

            Remy grimaces.  “You better not let C hear you talking like that.”

            “He hears it all the time,” says Stefan, taking a knife from her pile.  He flips it in his hand.  “I tell him all the time.  I think it’s one of the reasons that he sent me here, sort of an exile.  The Roma are the odd ones of our tribe, they stay put, they don’t move.  Even in Miami, where I lived for a time, we moved all the time, from one part of the city to another.  You have roots.”

            “And you want the roots?” asks Remy.  She feels something bristling in her soul, could he be different?  A knife clutched in her hand, she crosses her arms over her chest.  Could he be someone she could trust, as she trusts the Roma?

            “Yes,” says Stefan, flinging the knife at the target and coming very close to Remy’s last hit.  “A tree is strong when it has deep roots; the branches leave the trunk but are attached.”