The training began as an unmitigated spectacular disaster.

  The vast, echoing floor of the abandoned cannery became their arena. Cold air, thick with the smell of rust, filled the space. Weak, grey daylight, filtering through grimy holes in the roof, illuminated swirling clouds of dust. A grim, depressing place to try to save the world.

  Their equipment proved pathetic. A collection of makeshift gear, scavenged from their garages and a local hardware store. Their plan, such as it was, came from Ted's mind, formulated from a hundred superhero movies and comic books.

  “Okay,” he’d said, his voice attempting the confidence of a battle-hardened general but mostly revealing a scared kid playing pretend. “Rule one of being a superhero: know your strength. We need to figure out your limits, Frankie. We need to quantify this.”

  Their first task seemed simple. A test of strength. They dragged a heavy, waterlogged wooden beam from a collapsed section of the roof and set it up on two rusted oil drums. A makeshift punching bag.

  “Just… hit it,” Ted instructed, standing a safe distance away, a notebook and pen in his hand, ready to record the results of his terrifying experiment. “Don’t go all out. Just a tap. Let’s see what happens.”

  Frankie stood before the beam. Thick and solid, studded with rusted bolts. A normal person would break their hand on it. Frankie no longer counted as a normal person. She took a deep breath, the cold, stale air filling her lungs. The blood from the stolen bag still hummed in her veins, a low thrum of power that made her feel jittery and strong.

  The memory of sending the homeless woman flying returned to her. The effortless, shocking burst of force. She tried to replicate that feeling, but smaller. A fraction. A tap.

  She pulled her fist back and punched the beam.

  Not a tap.

  The sound was not the dull thud of a fist hitting wood. An explosion. A sharp, violent CRACK that echoed through the cavernous space like a gunshot.

  The wooden beam did not just splinter. It disintegrated. It exploded into a shower of wet, rotting splinters and rusty dust. The force of the blow sent the two heavy oil drums flying backward. They crashed into a piece of machinery with a deafening clang of metal on metal.

  Frankie stood there, her fist still extended, staring at the space where the beam had been. Her knuckles registered no pain. No sensation at all.

  Silence.

  Ted stared, his mouth hanging open, his pen frozen over his notebook. Dee Dee, offering moral support from the sidelines, just whispered, “Whoa.”

  “Okay,” Ted said finally, his voice a shaky squeak. He scribbled something frantically in his notebook. “Okay. Note to self. Super strength: check. Control over super strength: zero.”

  Frankie looked at her hand. Icy dread crept into her heart. She had not even tried. The power had just… happened.

  The next test was speed.

  “We saw how fast you were on the water,” Dee Dee said, her voice full of a nervous, forced cheerfulness. “And how fast Jax was. You have to match that.”

  The test was simple. Ted stood at one end of the long factory floor. Frankie stood on the other side. A maze of rusted, derelict machinery filled the space between them.

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  “Just run to me,” Ted said. “But try to… you know… not run into anything.”

  Frankie nodded, her jaw tight. She could do this. An athlete. She knew her own body. Or, at least, she used to.

  She took a deep breath and focused on Ted, a small figure at the far end of the vast room. She thought run.

  The world became a blur.

  Not like running. Like being fired from a cannon. The factory floor did not pass under her feet; it was ripped away from beneath her. The maze of machinery was not a series of obstacles; it was a smear of brown and grey.

  She could not seem to regulate her velocity. She could not steer. A missile without a guidance system.

  She tried to dodge a large, rust-eaten conveyor belt, but her legs over-corrected, sending her sprawling. No dodging. She slammed into it sideways, the thick, cold iron frame biting into her shoulder with a sickening crunch that echoed in the cavernous space. The impact reverberated through the entire machine, a metallic shriek of protest, and left a deep, person-shaped indent in the flaking rust.

  The pain was a bright, hot flash, gone almost instantly, replaced by the thrumming, healing power of the curse. The physical pain was nothing compared to the recent spike of shame and frustration.

  She tried again. This time, she aimed for a wide-open space, a clear path through the junk. She pushed off, and again the world dissolved into a blur. The wind shrieked past her ears, a high-pitched whine that intensified with her speed. She overshot her target by a good fifty feet, unable to slow down, and crashed into the far wall of the cannery, hitting the corrugated metal with a sound like a car crash. The impact rattled her teeth, and the acrid scent of ozone filled her nostrils, a sharp tang of burnt metal and dust. Her board, screaming in protest, skittered out from under her, leaving a scraping groan against the wall. A sharp pain shot through her left hip as she crumpled to the ground, the rough concrete scraping against her skin.

  The litany of failures continued. Each one more frustrating, more terrifying, than the last. Strong but clumsy. Fast but reckless. She tried to practice staking, using sharpened pieces of wood they had whittled. The rough wood scraped against her palms, and the faint scent of pine resin clung to the air. Each forceful thrust ended in either a disheartening whimper of wood against empty air or a splintering crack that sent dust and splinters flying, stinging her eyes and speckling her dark clothing.

  Her enhanced senses, which should have been an advantage, provided a constant source of distraction. The drip-drip-drip of a leaky pipe from the floor above became a maddening, rhythmic torture. The faint scuttling of a rat in the walls was a scratching, skittering noise that made the hair on her arms stand up. The low, incessant hum of the distant power lines was a grinding drill in her skull. Focus became impossible.

  The curse had given her the tools of a predator, but she had the finesse of a wrecking ball.

  After an hour of this humiliating, terrifying failure, she gave up.

  She stood in the middle of the floor, surrounded by the evidence of her incompetence—dented metal, shattered wood, her ragged breathing echoing in the silence. She had tried to rip a heavy metal door off a locker to use as a shield. She had ripped it off its hinges. She had torn the thick sheet metal in half with her bare hands, the jagged edges like razor blades.

  She looked at the ruined door in her hands. She looked at Ted and Dee Dee, watching her with wide, fearful eyes from a safe distance. No longer looking at their friend. They were looking at a wild, unpredictable animal.

  And in that moment, something inside her broke.

  The frustration, the fear, the shame—it all came crashing down on her. A sob, raw and ugly, tore its way out of her throat.

  The pieces of the metal door crashed to the floor, each clang a hammer blow against her ears. She crumpled, not slumped, onto the cold, grimy concrete. The world narrowed to the rough texture against her cheek, the metallic tang of fear, the ragged, searing gasps of her breath. Each sob tore through her, a raw, guttural sound clawing its way from her chest. Her muscles locked, trembling, as if trying to hold her shattered self together.

  If she could not even hit a stationary target, how could she possibly face Jax? If she could not control her speed, how could she fight a crew of fast, experienced vampires?

  Not a warrior. Not a hero.

  A danger. A danger to herself, a danger to her friends, a danger to everyone.

  The power inside her was not a gift. Not a weapon.

  A bomb she could not defuse. And eventually, it would go off and destroy everything she loved.