Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls by Steve Hockensmith Page A

intensity. Lydia and Kitty, meanwhile, were stifling grins, and even sweet Jane had a wicked gleam in her eye. It had been a hard time for them all, with many a tear, and Elizabeth would’ve been glad for the chance to give them some amusement if she hadn’t been so mortified.
    “Then the right arm,” Hawksworth said. “Like this.”
    He stretched his other arm out straight over Elizabeth’s shoulder, then bent it back, back, back until it was wrapped around her neck. Her whole body was pressing into his now, from her head to her heels. It almost felt as though he were a heavy cloak draped over her, or a bed upon which she was lying.
    “Then,” he said, “you squeeze.”
    The pressure on Elizabeth’s waist and throat grew, escalating from (she had to admit) pleasant but discomfiting to simply uncomfortable. Instinctively, she tried to squirm, to loosen the grip ever tightening around her, but Master Hawksworth was too strong.
    “The quarry cannot move . . . not even to draw air,” Hawksworth said. His head was so close to Elizabeth’s she could feel his breath blow over her ear as he spoke. “You can see why in some traditions this method goes by another name: the Python’s Embrace.”
    He went on talking, but Elizabeth could catch only the occasional word—“. . . hold . . . minute . . . black . . .”—over the buzz growing ever louder in her ears and the pounding of her own heart. She could see the expressions on the other girls’ faces begin to change, their lascivious glee dying, eyes growing wide. The whole room began to go gray around the edges, a dark circle on the periphery of her vision tightening until Elizabeth seemed to be looking down a long tunnel with her sisters at theend. And then even they faded away, and all she could see was a distant smear of gauzy light.
    “. . . sleep . . .,” she heard Hawksworth say. “. . . death . . .”
    The light began to go out.
    Elizabeth wouldn’t let it.
    She brought her right knee forward, then kicked her foot back and up with all the strength she had left. It was a variation on the Fulcrum of Doom her father had taught her. The Axis of Calamity.
    It found its intended target.
    “Oooo!” Elizabeth heard Hawksworth say very, very clearly indeed, and the Python or the Panther, whichever, let her go, and she stumbled forward gasping for breath.
    Jane was instantly at her side.
    “Lizzy! Are you all right?”
    “Yes . . . yes, I think so.”
    With each lungful of air, Elizabeth’s world widened and brightened, until at last all the grayness was gone. And this is what she saw: Hawksworth bent over, head hanging low, hands in a most undignified arrangement. Mary was beside him, bending over to try to look him in the face.
    “Master? Do you require aid?”
    His first reply came out as a squeaky wheeze. Then he squeezed his eyes shut, took in a deep breath, and tried again.
    “I am in no more pain than I deserve. Go. Find your father. He can take over your training while I . . . meditate on this.”
    “Master,” Elizabeth said.
    She started to ask what had just happened, if something had gone wrong, but she stopped herself. The student was not to question the master’s actions. She started, then, to say she was sorry for panicking, but she stopped herself again. A warrior doesn’t apologize.
    Oh, how was she ever to truly
talk
to this man?
    There was only one thing she could say, so she said it.
    “How many
dand-baithaks
?”
    “For you, Elizabeth Bennet?” Hawksworth said. “None. The fault was not yours. I let myself become . . . careless.” He turned away and began hobbling, hunchbacked, toward the darkest corner of the dojo. “We will resume the Way of the Panther in one hour. Until then, leave me.”
    The girls bowed and began to file outside. Elizabeth left last, lingering in the doorway, unsure if there was more she still might try to say or more she longed to hear. Hawksworth settled himself, ever so slowly, into a stooped, cross-legged