Muscle Memory - Emma Cole, John Stoker

When Emma Cole snaps back to awareness, her hands are stained with blood. 
Her former partner is lying underneath her, thrashing feebly, hands pressed to the bloody slashes on the side of his neck. The red is pooling under him, warm and tempting. She could tear his hands away and suck the life from his veins so, so easily.
But she shouldn’t.
It’s the first training session she’s successfully mastered both flipping over someone pinning her down and ending the move with her stake positioned to be driven through her attacker’s heart. Her legs are still wrapped around John Stoker’s waist, her fingers clenched on the stake hovering an inch above his chest.

He’s grinning at her, proud.

She’s his first trainee since his transfer to Chimera, and she’s doing well. Progressing fast, mastering the skills and physicality that will keep her alive in the field. She’s a credit to his performance.

But she knows he doesn’t care about that.

He’s proud of her because he sees her as a friend and a partner.

“Nice work.” He reaches up to push the stake aside. “Hope you never have to use this one, but that shouldn’t mean you don’t learn it well. That split second of muscle memory could save your life.”
It didn’t. Nothing could have prepared her, could have prepared any of them, for facing a member of the First Circle. 
But it just might have saved John.
Because that move was a part of the real Emma Cole. Muscle memory enough to crack through the walls Arion has been building in her head between who she used to be and what she is now. Enough to stop her from finishing the job she started with her claws at John’s throat. 
A job Arion desperately wants her to finish.
A pain like the hangover from hell is building in her head, behind her eyes, like someone has grabbed her brain and squeezed it in their fist as tightly as they can.
She’s not following the script.
Arion thinks he can force her to. And when he realizes pain isn’t going to convince her, he’s going to override every part of the real Emma Cole still left in her until she’s just a shell under his every whim, doing his dirty work.
He turned her. He most likely killed Adam. But he isn’t stopping there. Arion doesn’t like unfinished business. He doesn’t intend to leave until he’s destroyed everyone with the audacity to come after him.
He doesn’t like to lose.
But tonight, he’s going to.
Finish the job. Kill him, my child, and join me. 
“Get. Out.” Emma hisses aloud. You’re not welcome here. She’s not sure that will do any good, but she never did give Arion permission to be inside her brain.
I made you. I can unmake you.
Fine then. Do it. Then come kill him yourself instead of being a coward who hides behind the faces of his friends. 
She knows why Arion wants her to do this. John wouldn’t hesitate to stake the ancient vampire, but Emma is someone he knew. Someone he trusted. Someone he was willing to kill to protect. And to die to protect.
His hesitation almost cost him his life.
She knows without a doubt that if she attacks again, even if he manages to stake her, it will be the end for them both. 
Get out of my head. You don’t control me.

Foolish child. You’re barely a week old. You cannot hope to challenge me. I have centuries on my side.

And you’re a damn drama queen. She knows that line. It’s something Dracula said in the book John’s ancestor compiled, the record of the people who defined hunters as they’re known today. The people whose legacy he’s part of.
And her too.
And if there’s one thing she remembers from that book, it’s that even a vampire’s influence can be turned against them.
I’ll finish the job, alright. I’ll find you and I’ll find a way to kill you.

Fledglings can never kill their sire.

Oh, but that’s where you underestimate me. I was a hunter, Arion. I know better than to ever work alone. Maybe I can’t kill you, but I can find people who can. And lead them right to you. When they come for their own fallen teammate, I will show them exactly where you are. 

They’ll kill you first, for what you have done to him.

They want you more. If they stake me afterward, so be it. But if I die, I’m taking you with me.
The connection goes dead in a white-noise static, like the radio in John’s car hitting the edge of a station’s reach.
Emma collapses onto the concrete, half on and half off John’s body, with a keening gasp. 
“Em?” John asks, weakly, struggling to sit up with his hands still holding his blood inside him the best he can. She can hear engines, tires, brakes screeching. His SOS was routed to the nearest patrols. They’re coming to get him like she knew they would.
She can’t lead them to Arion now.
And despite her bravado, she doesn’t really want to die.
Not yet.
She strips off the black leather jacket she’s been wearing since the hunt where she died, the Chimera’s head embroidered on it stained with blood and earth. 
She presses the inner lining to John’s neck, repositions his hands over it, and then scrambles to her feet and bolts into the darkness, leaving the last pieces of her life as a hunter behind her.
It’s time to find out who Emma Cole is as a vampire.