"That's all?" I asked.
She leapt toward me. I dodged - just barely - and tripped over my own feet in the process. Hastily, I righted myself.
"Well," she said in a voice that almost sounded sarcastic. "As you seem so keen on reminding me, I haven't seen you in five years. I have no idea what you can do."
She moved on me again, and again I just barely kept within the lines in escaping her. That quickly became the pattern. She never really gave me the chance to go on the offensive. Or maybe I just didn't have the skills to take the offensive. I spent all my time defending myself - physically, at least. Grudgingly, I had to acknowledge to myself that she was good. Really good. But I certainly wasn't going to tell her that.
"So, what?" I asked. "This is your way of making up for maternal negligence?"
"This is my way of making you get rid of that chip on your shoulder. You've had nothing but attitude for me since I arrived. You want to fight?" Her fist shot out and connected with my arm. "Then we'll fight. Point."
"Point," I conceded, backing up to my side. "I don't want to fight. I've just been trying to talk to you."
"Mouthing off to me in class isn't what I'd really call talking. Point."
I grunted from the hit. When I'd first begun training with Dimitri, I'd complained that it wasn't fair for me to fight someone a foot taller than me. He'd pointed out that I'd fight plenty of Strigoi taller than me and that the old adage was true: size doesn't matter. Sometimes I thought he was giving me false hope, but judging from my mom's performance here, I was starting to believe him.
I'd never actually fought anyone smaller than me. As one of the few girls in the novice classes, I accepted that I was almost always going to be shorter and slimmer than my opponents. But my mother was smaller still and clearly had nothing but muscle packed into her petite body.
"I have a unique style of communication, that's all," I said.
"You have a petty teenage delusion that you've somehow been wronged for the last seventeen years." Her foot hit my thigh. "Point. When in reality, you've been treated no differently than any other dhampir. Better, actually. I could have sent you off to live with my cousins. You want to be a blood whore? Is that what you wanted?"
The term "blood whore" always made me flinch. It was a term often applied to the single dhampir mothers who decided to raise their children instead of becoming guardians. These women often had short-term affairs with Moroi men and were looked down on for it - even though there wasn't really anything else they could have done, since Moroi men usually ended up marrying Moroi women. The "blood whore" term came from the fact that some dhampir women let men drink blood from them during sex. In our world, only humans gave blood. A dhampir doing it was dirty and kinky - especially during sex. I suspected only a few dhampir women actually did this, but unfairly, the term tended to get applied to all of them. I had given blood to Lissa when we had run away, and although it had been a necessary act, the stigma still stayed with me.
"No. Of course I don't want to be a blood whore." My breathing was becoming heavy. "And they're not all like that. There're only a few that actually are."
"They bring that reputation on themselves," she growled. I dodged her strike. "They should be doing their duty as guardians, not continuing to fool around and have flings with Moroi."
"They're raising their children," I grunted. I wanted to yell but couldn't waste the oxygen. "Something you'd know nothing about. Besides, aren't you the same as they are? I don't see a ring on your finger. Wasn't my dad just a fling for you?"
Her face turned hard, which is saying something when you're already beating up your daughter. "That," she said tightly, "is something you know nothing about. Point."
I winced at the blow but was happy to see I'd struck a nerve. I had no clue who my dad was. The only bit of information I had was that he was Turkish. I might have my mom's curvy figure and pretty face - though I could smugly say mine was much prettier than hers nowadays - but the rest of my coloring was from him. Lightly tanned skin with dark hair and eyes.
"How'd it happen?" I asked. "Were you on some assignment in Turkey? Meet him at a local bazaar? Or was it even cheaper than that? Did you go all Darwin and select the guy most likely to pass on warrior genes to your offspring? I mean, I know you only had me because it was your duty, so I suppose you had to make sure you could give the guardians the best specimen you could."
"Rosemarie," she warned through gritted teeth, "for once in your life, shut up."
"Why? Am I tarnishing your precious reputation? It's just like you told me: you aren't any different from any other dhampir either. You just screwed him and - "
There's a reason they say, "Pride goeth before a fall." I was so caught up in my own cocky triumph that I stopped paying attention to my feet. I was too close to the red line. Going outside of it was another point for her, so I scrambled to stay within and dodge her at the same time. Unfortunately, only one of those could work. Her fist came flying at me, fast and hard - and, perhaps most importantly, a bit higher than the permissable according to rules of this kind of exercise. It smacked me in the face with the power of a small truck, and I flew backward, hitting the hard gym floor back-first and head-second. And I was out of the lines. Damn it.