It’s not like I really had a choice. It was either him, or me and Quinten. I promised him that I would get us both out of this alive, and I keep my promises. Quinten comes first, always.
Could I kill again if I had to?
I thought about Quinten and how helpless he would be without me there to watch his back. How many other partners would stand by his side like me? If I had to, if it was a choice between Quinten’s life and someone else’s, I’d put more importance on his life. He was my closest friend, and my future mate, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I couldn’t live without him.
The door opened, without so much as a knock, and one of the vampire guards walked in. He had a disappointed frown on his face; he obviously hadn’t been expecting to find me dressed.
He jerked his head toward the open doorway. “Come on,” he said gruffly. “Let’s go.”
The guards led the two of us back to our little holding room and Tyler looked up when he entered. His eyes about popped out of his head when he saw Quinten behind me. “Holy shit, you made it!”
I shook my head sadly, stifling a sob, and walked over to the cot that was mine. I collapsed onto it, closed my eyes, and curled up as tightly as possible. I heard Quinten slide into the bed next to mine.
“How bad was it?” Tyler asked quietly.
“She had to kill a little boy. She refused, and The Champion shot him over and over again until she finally relented. She broke his neck. It was faster and far less painful than what he would have gotten otherwise.”
“Ah hell, dude. That sucks. I’m sorry.”
“How did your first fight go?”
“It wasn’t that bad. We were fighting people older than us. They were pretty arrogant. My partner actually did the killing. Anyway, how did you do?”
I pictured Quinten’s shrug. “Not as bad as I thought. Alanna did most of the work though. If it had just been me and him, he would have most definitely come out on top. But, with Alanna there, we probably had it easier than a lot of newbies.”
Tyler sighed. “It’ll get easier as you go. I’m not sure yet if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. But if it’s any consolation, I think you two will be the front runners throughout this whole thing.”
“Great,” Quinten muttered, lying back on his cot.
“Hey Tyler?” I asked.
“What is it, sweetheart?”
“What happens to the partners who win the whole thing? The partners that never lose. After all of the other pairs are defeated, there’ll be one team left, right? What happens to them? Are they released?”
Tyler didn’t answer, and I rolled over and looked at him.
“Tyler? What happens?”
He sighed. “The winning partners have one final fight together.”
“Who do they–?”
“Each other.”
I gasped. “You mean that if Quinten and I were to win this whole thing, we’d have to fight each other to the death.”
Tyler nodded sadly. “Sorry you guys, but only one of you can be the winner. To be honest, I don’t think there are a lot of people here that could live with themselves after winning this sick game.”
“Well, what happens to the winner?” Quinten asked.
Tyler shrugged. “Nobody knows. I think that the winner is forced to fight The Champion.”
“How old is he?”
“Rumor has it he’s like eight hundred years old or something. That makes him one of the oldest living vampires on the planet. If you can call it living, I guess,” he admitted. “I don’t know much about vampires and werewolves and other stuff. My girlfriend didn’t get a chance to tell me before we broke up.”
I looked at him. “So, you knew about their existence before coming here, but you don’t know any of the details?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I mean, I know the myths and stuff, but I don’t know the facts. My girlfriend could go out in the sunlight, which always surprised me. I thought for sure she’d burst into flame and turn to ash or something.”
“Then how did you know about Roger Mason?” I asked, remembering his reaction to the name.
“Dennis did a lot of explaining to me after we got paired up together. He told me about some of the horrible things that he’s done over the years, and yet your kind idolizes him for being a monster. At first, all I could think was that he was trying to pull my leg or something.”
Quinten snorted. “I know what you mean. When Alanna first told me what she and her family were, I didn’t believe her, at all. It took her a while to convince me she was telling the truth, but I’m glad that she told me.”
“Even though you ended up here in this hellhole because you’re a part of her world?” Tyler asked.
“Yeah,” Quinten said. “I can never regret the time I’ve had with Alanna, even if it turns out to be a lot shorter than I’d originally planned.”
“Man, you guys are perfect for each other,” Tyler said, grinning.
“Yeah, we are,” Quinten agreed, taking my hand in his.
“So, what happens to us tomorrow?” I asked. “Do we just get the day off to lounge around our charming little prison cell?”
Tyler nodded. “Yeah, pretty much. Everyone either catches up on their sleep, or they practice for their upcoming match. Speaking of sleep, you two should probably get some shuteye.”
I turned around, putting my back to everything in the room, and closed my eyes.
That night, the nightmares were worse than they’d ever been.
Chapter Twelve
“Alanna? Alanna, wake up, please.”
I groaned. Surely it had to be much too early to wake up? I opened my eyes and sat up on my bed, blinking at the unfamiliar surroundings. It took a minute for everything to come back to me. Where I was, what I was doing there, and who I was with.
Quinten was sitting on the edge of my cot, and his warm hand was gently shaking my shoulder.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“You’ve been crying in your sleep for the last hour or so. I didn’t want to wake you, but you just sounded so terrified that I had to do it.”
I scanned the surrounding darkness around us, trying not to show how embarrassed I was, and noticed that Tyler and the others were all staring at me. “I woke everyone else up?” I asked surprised.
“Don’t worry about it, Alanna. What were you dreaming about?” He asked, rubbing my back soothingly.
I closed my eyes tightly as the dreams all came flooding back. “I used to have nightmares about my mother’s death, but this was so much worse than before. There were so many different things, all going on at once. There were all of these bodies lying around, stacked on top of one another. They were all children, and their throats had been cut.”
Quinten sighed, and he pulled me closer to his chest.
“Their eyes were wide open and they were staring at me. I was standing on top of the pile of children, and I had a bloody knife in my hand. Then I saw that little boy, the one that I killed yesterday. He called me a monster, and he kept asking me why I’d killed him.
“He was a rotting corpse, and they all kept pulling at my clothes, and my hair, and my body. They were all wailing for their parents to come and save them. It was so horrible,” I sobbed, clutching Quinten’s shirt. I pulled him closer, and he stroked my hair gently.
He allowed me to gently sob into his shirt until I was ready to continue.
“Then the dream changed, and I saw my mom get ripped to pieces.”
I felt him tense up. Quinten only knew that my mother had been killed; nobody had ever told him how it all happened. The only people that knew the real story were myself, Ray, Jax, and Ilene. Everyone else thought it had just been a psychopath.
“Alanna, what happened to your mother?”
I was aware that everyone else in the room was listening, and I tried not to feel self-conscious about telling Quinten the story of her death.
I was crying into his shirt still, and I pulled away to wipe
my eyes with the back of my hand. “I was sick, so I stayed home from school that day. Mom went to the store to get me some medicine and something for lunch. I asked her to go; if I hadn’t, she wouldn’t have gotten caught on the way back.”
I took a deep, painful breath, and sighed. Quinten didn’t rush me, though he must have been dying to get some answers about the event that left Ray and our family devastated for years.
“A vampire caught up to her on her way home. I wasn’t there, but I know what happened. The police officer who found her body was an old friend of hers, one of her closest ones. She knew all about the supernatural world, and she was able to convince her partner that it was a madman. I heard her tell my dad later though that mom’s body had been found in pieces. The vampire ripped her to shreds…while she was still alive.”
I looked up at Quinten.
“We couldn’t even have an open casket. The police officer told Ray that there wasn’t much left,” I said, ashamed at how weak and pitiful I sounded. “Dad identified the jewelry that they found on the body. It was her wedding ring and the bracelet she always wore; Ilene and I had made it for her for Christmas one year. It was my fault that she was killed!”
Quinten rubbed my back comfortingly. “Alanna, it wasn’t your fault that she died. If it had been Ilene that was sick, or Ray, she would have gone to the store for them too. You can’t blame yourself for that. If you want to blame someone, blame the vampire that took her from you and your family. He’s the real monster here, not you. Remember that.”
I pulled away from Quinten so I could look up at him. “You really think it wasn’t my fault?”
He nodded firmly. “Of course I do. I wouldn’t lie to you, Alanna. What happened to your mother was awful, and I would probably have blamed myself too, but it was not your fault. You have to believe that.”
I nodded and wiped my face again. “I know, it’s just…I haven’t dreamed about her in so long. Seeing that boy’s body brought back all of these old, horrible memories that I thought I’d forgotten a long time ago.”
“Alanna, you know it’s not your fault that that boy is dead. The Champion,” he sneered at the word, “forced you to do it. Under normal circumstances, you would have never even considered killing anyone, let alone a child.”
“What makes you so sure? When I go out running with Ray or Ilene, we’ll kill deer on occasion. We eat raw meat. I don’t really feel any regret at killing an animal.”
“That’s not even remotely the same thing,” he argued. “You eat that deer. You don’t kill it for fun. Well, Ilene might have, but not you. And that deer is not a living, thinking, feeling child.”
I sighed. “Right.”
“Alanna–”
“I’m fine, go back to sleep.”
I rolled over, away from him, and he finally moved back to his own cot. After a few minutes, his breathing slowed, and I could tell that he was asleep again. I envied him in that moment; I would have given almost anything to be able to fall asleep so easily.
Instead of sleeping, I stayed awake a little longer, thinking about everything that he’d said, wondering if I could believe him.
Is he right? Should I not blame myself? Ilene obviously blamed me. Does Ray blame me too?
No. Ray would never blame me for mom’s death. If he did, it wouldn’t have been possible for him to love me as much as he did. He knows that it was the vampire’s fault, not anybody else’s.
I tried to get back to sleep, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t drift off. Finally, I gave up, and crawled into the cot next to Quinten. He groaned softly and pulled me closer, before settling back.
I closed my eyes, and prayed for a dreamless sleep to take me.
*****
I spent the next morning trying to teach Quinten some more moves, hoping that we’d be able to survive our second fight. But, after a while, we had to stop. Quinten didn’t have the stamina that I did, and he needed to rest.
When lunch came around, after we finished eating our crappy food, Tyler took a seat next to us. “Are you guys going to train today?”
“We just got done practicing a little, but there isn’t a whole lot of room to train in here,” I said, looking around. With six people in it, there was no way we could really move around without hitting each other.
“There’s a gym a few rooms away. In a few minutes, the vampires will come and unlock the door, and they’ll take us there if we want.”
“How come they didn’t offer us that option two days ago? Before our first match? What if that little bit of practicing could have made all the difference?” I asked, outraged that they would refuse us the opportunity to practice before our first fight.
“They do it every couple of days. Two days from now will just be a lazy day, a chance for us to recuperate after our fight. Then two days later, it’ll be another training day. So, are you guys gonna go or not?”
I nodded and looked over at Quinten, who was still choking down his hard jerky. “What do you think? Should we train?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, we might as well. If the two of us are going to stay alive, I could use as much training as I can get.”
“Good answer,” Tyler said. “You want to stay in shape. Every little bit of training helps.”
A few minutes later the door unlocked and opened, and the two vampires guards came in, armed with their dangerous cattle prods. “Alright, everyone that’s heading to the gym, get a move on!”
I helped Quinten out the door, trying to ignore the snickers that came from the guards, and we followed everyone else down to a large gymnasium filled with different types of training equipment. In one corner was a large mat that was used for wrestling. There were dummies used for boxing practice, weights for lifting, and machines to work on our lower bodies.
“There probably isn’t going to be much for me to do in here, is there?” Quinten asked.
“I’ll help you train, don’t worry about it.”
He sighed, but he didn’t argue. As we walked to the corner to be alone, I looked at him. He was frowning, his entire body was tense, and his shoulders were slumped in defeat. He didn’t expect to survive this.
And even worse, he expected to bring me down with him. No matter what, I couldn’t let that happen. I would not let Quinten blame himself for what might happen in this war.
I spent the first hour teaching Quinten a basic kick and helping him practice it. He wasn’t bad, as long as I made enough noise for him to track each of my movements. If I remained silent, he missed, and got frustrated. That only succeeded in making him even worse.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Tyler watching us. He shook his head and returned to his own training. He still believed that I was making a huge mistake in keeping an eye on Quinten during our fight. He was convinced that that was what would get me killed, but I disagreed.
Quinten wasn’t as useless as everyone else obviously thought. He may not have been able to see, but I knew for a fact that he would never abandon me if things turned bad during a fight. I could count on him more than anyone else here, and I wouldn’t have traded partners even if I’d been given that option.
After the kick, I decided to test Quinten in a little friendly sparring match. “Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you,” I promised. “I just wanna see how you’re coming along.”
He nodded once. “I trust you.”
I cracked my knuckles and swung at Quinten’s head. Amazingly, he brought up his arm and blocked the blow. He turned his body, and kicked out with his right foot. I jumped back and circled him. He listened for my footsteps and managed to keep his body facing mine.
I jabbed at his midsection and he missed the block. He staggered back a few steps, rubbing the spot I hit. “Ouch.”
“Quinten I am so–”
He dove in, catching me off guard. He tackled me to the ground and worked to pin my arms above my head. I looped my leg around his and rolled, using my entire weight. I straddled his waist and placed my hands on hi
s chest, forcing him down to the mat beneath us.
“You cheater!”
He laughed and, for one second, we forgot where we were. We forgot about the fights, about Roger, and about everything. In that moment, I was almost happier than I’d been in days. It felt like it was just the two of us, and everything else fell away.
Then an old, dark, violent voice cut right through that happiness, and everything came crashing back down around us.
“Alanna, I’d like a bit of your time, if you wouldn’t mind?”
I looked up to see The Champion standing over us. The smile on his face made my insides twist painfully, and I swallowed rapidly to avoid being sick all over the gym mat we were practicing on. Something about those eyes, which were busy staring at me, sent shivers up my spine.
Quinten helped me to my feet and assumed a somewhat protective stance in front of me. “What do you want with her?”
He sneered at Quinten. “That is none of your business. If I wanted to divulge my reasons to you, I would,” he said, turning to me. “Alanna? A moment?”
What choice do I have? He’s probably not above killing Quinten just because I angered him.
I nodded and wiped my shaking hands on my jeans to rid them of the nervous sweat that covered them. I followed him out into the hallway and was surprised at the lack of guards. “Sir–”
“Please, call me Eli.”
I stared at him, dumbstruck. I was sure that I must have heard him wrong. “Eli?”
He nodded once. “I was born quite a few years ago, which I’m sure you’ve gathered. I’m almost nine hundred years old. My given name is Elias, but during this more modern of times, I’ve simply shortened it to just Eli.”
I continued to stare. He was tall, with long white-blonde hair and almond-shaped eyes that were an icy blue color. He was such an old, dangerous, extraordinary vampire. He’d probably killed thousands of people in the centuries that he’d been alive, he hosted the Arena Wars, and yet his name was Eli.
I almost giggled.
He seemed to sense my amusement. “You find my name amusing?”
“You’re pure evil. I guess I was expecting something darker and more mysterious, like Drake, or Hannibal.”
Arena Wars Trilogy Page 14
