I kept my shield in place. “It’s a lot like the visualization exercises I’ve done since I was a kid. Only harder.”

His expression was unreadable. “So you really want me to unleash the beast? I’ll warn you, I don’t have the kind of control the big man does.”

I was apprehensive, but I was curious, too. “Is that what you call it? The beast?”

Cooper’s pupils waxed. “It’s what I call it. The beast, the black beast that rides my soul.” He gave me a grim smile. “Do you know why we’re cursed with our beasts, pretty Daisy?”

“Honestly?” I said. “No, I don’t. I didn’t think anyone truly understood it.”

“Ah, well, if you’re being technical, no.” Cooper shrugged. “How we exist and why, whether there’s some purpose to it or it’s a mere accident of fate. But the beast . . . I understand the beast.”

I lowered my shield a fraction. “Tell me.”

“Because we were forged in death at the pinnacle of our existence.” Cooper looked past me into the distance. “Half saint, half sinner, facing death in a howling storm of rage or fury, despair or defiance, passion or hatred. We died filled with a blaze of terror and hope, not knowing if we were going to meet God or the Devil himself, and we woke to find ourselves cast back into the mortal world, lying in the stink of our own shit. But you know what? We want that moment back. We crave it. We ache to go back to that one terrible, horrible, glorious moment. And we can’t. We’re trapped. Outcast. And the eternal hunger rides us like a beast, claws gouging us like spurs.” His gaze returned to me, clear-eyed and steady. “So we fill the void with whatever we can.”

“Oh.” The word came out in a whisper. I had a feeling I wouldn’t have a problem with thinking of Cooper as a teenager after this.

“Now you know what you’re asking for,” he said to me. “Do you still want it?”

“I need to learn.” I held his gaze. “Are you still willing to help me?”

“I am.”

I flexed my left hand around the buckler’s grip, holding its image in my thoughts. “Let’s do this.”

Cooper turned his beast loose and came at me hard. A ghoul’s attack is a difficult thing to describe because it’s not like anything else you’ve experienced. That void, that hunger, exerts a profound tidal pull on everything inside you, everything you feel, trying to suck out your innermost emotions and devour them, leaving emptiness in their wake.

And I understood immediately what he meant about not having Stefan’s control. When I’d sparred with Stefan, he’d kept his beast on a short leash. His attack was tight and focused. Cooper’s was all over the place, swarming me.