“Who is it about then?” She narrowed her eyes.
Twyla hadn't seen me react to Varick's presence. And I was suddenly grateful for that.
“It's hard to explain.” I gave her an innocent look, then fought to change the subject. “But I'm done playing by the rules.”
Twyla considered my words. “I'd still rather be here than back in the shiny land that is the U S of A.”
“How can you?” I shook my head, disbelief no doubt written all over my face.
Twyla tongued her lip ring. “All us girls damaged society and society cast us out. I'd rather be here, fightin' for somethin' every day, even if it's the simple satisfaction of survivin'.”
“What did you get arrested for?” I asked, my voice low. I was tense, sensing something bad from her expression.
Twyla cracked her knuckles, a shadow passing through her eyes. “I hurt girls. A lot of them.”
“Killed them?” I breathed, ice devouring my bones.
She nodded slowly. “I ain't got a sob story, if that's what you're lookin' for. I was aware of what I was doin'.”
“Why did you do it?” I tried not to give away my onslaught of discomfort around her, shifting so an extra inch was put between us.
Twyla gazed calmly at me, an emptiness in her eyes where regret should have been. “Same reason we're killin' Vampires now, I guess. Entertainment.”
I inhaled, fighting the look of disgust on my face.
“Not my entertainment.” She blew out a breath. “Though by the end I was so dead inside I don't know if I was capable of feelin' pity any more.”
I waited for her to elaborate, unsure if I wanted to know more.
Twyla kicked her heels against the edge of the bed. “See, my daddy raised me as a fightin' girl. But my big brother was always the best at boxin'. Daddy poured everythin' into his trainin'. But when he hit his teens, everythin' changed.”
“What happened?” I urged.
Twyla gazed at the wall, her eyes void of light. “My brother's body just... gave out. Muscular dystrophy. You ever seen someone you love waste away like their body ain't even theirs any more?”
I shook my head, a cold stone falling into the pit of my gut.
“Yeah, well. It ain't pretty. Daddy was always good to him. But he still wanted his boxin' champion so he focused his efforts on me instead. And I was good, Selena, honest to god. You couldn't have beaten me easy.” She rested her elbows on her knees, looking thoughtful. “Anyways, it turned out Daddy had a lotta debt. He kept it hidden from us right up till the day he died, just after I turned eighteen. I'd been trained to take on the world. I was gonna be a goddamn star. And suddenly that dream came crashin' down before my eyes.”
“I'm sorry,” I muttered.
She clenched her jaw, fixing me with a stare. “I'm not lookin' for pity, girl. Like I said, this ain't a sob story. It's just life. Makin' plans is the best way to make god laugh, ain't that how the sayin' goes? So yeah, I was left up shit creek, with no money and a brother who could barely lift a spoon to eat his mornin' cereal. So a year later I'm waitin' bars and workin' every hour of the day god gifted me. And I hear these guys talkin' one night, braggin' about some street fight they'd attended in town. I ain't dumb. I knew street fightin' was illegal, but then they start talkin' 'bout the money they made bettin' and I'm thinkin' 'this is it, this is my answer'. So long story short, I track down the arena – it was beneath this dirty-ass club in town - and I start makin' okay money. I was rusty as hell, but after a year I was makin' enough to support me and my brother. Things were actually good for a while.” She gave a small smile. “But then this guy shows up at the club every night. Starts watchin' me. And a few weeks later, he offers me somethin' I couldn't refuse. Tells me I could make in one night what I make in a week if I fight for him. We were doin' okay, me and my brother. But there were bills to pay, not just rent and gas, but hospital bills. And this guy wanted one night. That was it. So I took up the offer.”
“And did you make the money?” I asked, leaning in closer.
She nodded grimly. “A few days later I drive to the address he gave me and turn up at some farmhouse in the middle o' nowhere. There's nearly a hundred trucks all parked up outside and music blarin' like you wouldn't believe. In his basement, he has this cage made out of chicken wire and concrete. And I'm thinkin' 'all I gotta do is fight'. But when I'm put in the ring with this big girl...” Her eyes glazed over, the memory clinging to her. “She was blonde, broad shouldered, nothin' but a pick of fat on her. I remember these scratches up her arms...” She tongued the ring in her lip for a moment. “It was like the first time I saw a Vampire. She came at me so fast, all I could do was react.”
My stomach lurched at the memory of the first time I'd been forced to take on a V. It would never leave me.
“Didn't take long before I knew she was tryin' to kill me. And it didn't matter how much trainin' I'd had at that point. When you're fightin' for your life, all bets are off. No rules, no referee. It was me or her. And somehow...” Twyla shrugged.
“You won,” I rasped and she nodded.
“I got paid. I went home. I didn't feel much of anythin'. Kinda hollow inside.” She laid a hand over her chest. “That space never really filled up again. I didn't go back, not for a while anyways...” She cleared her throat, not looking at me when she said, “My brother's heart gave out a few months later. Died, just like that.” She snapped her fingers and I felt the sound cut through to my soul. “And that was when I realised...people die. Every day. Good people, bad people. Don't matter. So I went back to that club. And I kept killin'. Kept tryin' to fill that space with somethin'.” Darkness consumed her expression and I could almost feel that emptiness inside her sliding over me. “One day the cops show up, close it all down, take me in, the rest is history.” Silence hung between us and she seemed entirely lost to some memory. When her eyes refocused on me she tilted her head to the side and said, “You've still got that thing inside you that I'm missin'. Don't lose it, girl. It don't grow back.”
I dropped my head, unsure what she meant, unsure if I wanted to know.
I picked at my robe. “So you never feel like fighting back? Don't you want to leave the games?”
Twyla eyed me curiously. “I know this life. It ain't nice, but it's familiar.” She considered it for a minute. “But ya know? I'm getting' a little tired of bein' everybody's pawn. Sure would be good to know what free feels like again.”
I lowered my voice to a tiny whisper. “What if we could?” I lifted a brow, keeping my expression neutral as she took in my words.
A smile curled up the corners of her mouth. “Why d'ya think I came here after I saw your little F-you video?”
I bit my bottom lip to hold back a smile. “What about the other girls? Do you think they'd help come up with a plan?”
“I don't see why not, seein' as you've already got quite the followin'.”
“What do you mean?” I frowned.
Twyla stood, ignoring me as she walked across the room to the mini-bar and took out a miniature bottle of champagne. Twisting the cap off, she poured us two glasses into the plastic cups that had been left on the vanity unit.
“You really don't know?” She returned to me, handing me a glass.
She tapped hers to mine but I hesitated to drink. “Know what?”
“You know you can watch the games on your tablet, right? Any girl who's played before...their game can be watched on there.” She gestured to my tablet with her drink.
Something cold stirred inside me. Marie. Everyone would know. Everyone would see it. Even I could watch it if I wanted. Relive it. See what all the spectators saw. I felt the blood trickle from my face, one drop at a time.
Evidently my expression gave away what I was thinking, because Twlya stepped closer and said, “From what I've watched of the games so far, you're the only winner who tried to help the others. The only one who didn't sell someone out. Didn't lose her goddamn humanity.” She grimaced, her
hand trembling around her cup. “Thing is, I lost mine a long time before anyone put me in front of a V. And so did ninety nine percent of the other girls here. But you...” She stepped closer, sipping her champagne. My own cup seemed fused to my palm; I couldn't look anywhere but into her earthy eyes.
“You don't belong here.”
“No one belongs here,” I found my voice and it was spiky with rage. “I killed a girl-”
“An accident,” she said immediately. “It ain't the same as killin' with intention. Everyone here knows what you are.”
“And what's that?” I asked through a snarl. I wasn't any different. No girl deserved to be here, no matter what they'd done. We were still human. We still deserved an ounce of dignity.
“You're hope.”
The dryness of my tongue called for the champagne. I took a sip to avoid answering and the bubbles fizzed down my throat. Her words were too much. They placed too much responsibility on my shoulders. I'd done nothing more than they had: survived by the skin of my teeth.
“Twyla-” I started but the words died in my throat as another knock came at the door. Twyla moved to answer it, opening the door and finding Thames and Veta crowded in the door frame.
“We saw the video.” Thames shot me a wink. “When does the revolution begin?”
Jameson
Cass was my Polaris. The North star had guided me and my crew home a thousand times in the past. Now, I couldn't see the stars, laying in a cage beneath ground. So I found a new star. One with scarlet hair and full lips I liked to daydream about. Only problem was, Polaris had never had the kind of attitude she had. Polaris didn't talk back. Polaris only watched, silently. And I admired it as it admired me. Yep, the stars admired me. Everyone admired me. Women admired my body and men admired my ability to make anyone fall in love with me. But Cass was a challenge. Under any other circumstances, it would have been easy. I would have had her eating out the palm of my hand like every other woman I'd set my sights on in the past.
Why was I so focused on this when I was taking part in death matches daily? Probably because it was what I was best at. And the second I won Cass over, was the second I'd find a new challenge to take my interest. I knew I was fickle. Knew I was the kind of lowlife girls complained to their mother's about. But my nature was to hunt, catch, consume, repeat. I'd never fantasised about marriage and kids, being the good little husband, sticking by one woman for all eternity. All that Romeo and Juliet bullshit – wait, didn't they die? - no, I was a free man for all eternity. And I. Loved. Women.
Right now, I loved one woman in particular. Alright, love was a little strong. Infatuated, obsessed. It always died the second I won them over, though, spent a night with them. Then I'd be sailing at dawn into the sunrise without a care in the world. I needed my dawn, and I wouldn't give up until I got it. That's where my fulfillment came in to the equation. Screwed up? Definitely. Did I care? Not in the slightest.
Cass was sitting on the stone bench we were each gifted with – they really put money into our furnishings, these Helsings. She barely moved a muscle. Although I knew she was a Vampire, she reminded me more of a cat. Quiet, solitary, perfectly poised. She always seemed to be considering something that she'd never divulge to me.
“Cass?” I tried for the third time since I'd returned from my last fight. A tube of Larkspur had been left on my bench and I was currently rubbing it into the claw marks on my chest. Cass hadn't looked at my bare torso even when I'd made a show of stretching my arms above my head, pacing up and down before the bars. She didn't seem to give a damn about how ripped I was. And that had always been the easiest way to get women to notice me in the past.
She continued to stare at the bars and I grew frustrated to know what she was thinking about.
“Come on, talk to me. I have literally no one else to talk to.” I glanced at one of the other Vampires a few cells down, baring his fangs at the wall and quietly drooling. “I could try talking to Dracula over there, but you're definitely my first option.”
Her eyes slid to mine and I felt something yank in my chest. Damn, she was hot. The kind of hot movie stars were made of. Scrap that. The kind poets wrote about. Yeah, she was a classy kind of beautiful. When I'd first seen her back on Raskdød, I thought I'd been thrown back in time to the 1800s. Her in her deep green gown, her hair wild and free. Maybe that's why I'd followed her around the island...
Cass gave me a very small, amused smile and my chest pumped full of air. “What were you thinking about?” I demanded and she slipped from her seat, moving toward me all swinging hips and grace. Even in her jeans and white, blood-splattered vest, she was the finest thing I'd seen in a hundred years. Maybe more.
“I was thinking...if I ran at the bars hard enough, I could probably snap my own neck.”
Woah. Dark. This girl needed an emergency injection of positivity. “Fun as that sounds, maybe we could just talk for a bit, and if you still feel the need to kill yourself, you could do it after?”
She smiled again and I grinned easily in return.
Did she really want to hurt herself? I needed to change that, fast. “Is that a yes?”
She shrugged, non-committal. From any other girl I would have been in utter disbelief that I still wasn't getting anywhere. But from her, this was progress.
“Tell me about your home.” I sat down, drawing my knees up and giving her my full attention.
She mirrored me and I gazed at her, trying not to let my eyes wander all over her body, but instead remain on her wide, green eyes. It was surprisingly easy. Those eyes were a well I was teetering on the edge of falling in to.
“My home?” She grimaced. “My home was a drug den.”
“Oh,” I breathed. God dammit, could a guy not catch a break round here?
“It wasn't all bad,” she said in a small voice. “I mean, it was, obviously. But I loved my Dad, my brother. They were just beyond help.”
“No one's beyond help,” I said immediately and she scowled. I knew I'd offended her, but couldn't take back my words. I believed them entirely. Maybe I was still naive in my upbeat outlook on the world. But I'd rather believe the world could be changed than accept that it couldn't.
“Where are they now?” I asked tentatively.
She chewed her bottom lip. “I guess they're still there. They stopped visiting me in prison after the first year. Stopped answering the phone...my letters.” She said it with a disconnect that made me worry. This Vampire was not in good shape. She probably needed blood. I'd seen Varick struggling like this back in the Helsings' prison.
“Sorry,” I growled.
She shrugged, but there was a hint of sadness in her eyes.
“And what about...anyone else?” I raised a brow and she met my eyes, reading my expression.
She shook her head at me, evidently thinking I was insane. “I don't have a boyfriend.”
I tried to hide the smile growing on my face with my hand, but nothing slipped under her radar. Her scowl increased and I offered her my palms to show that my intentions were innocent. But they weren't. Far from it.
“And what was he like? Charming? Funny? Roguishly handsome?” My grin broadened. “Oh wait, that's your future boyfriend.”
She rolled her eyes, looking like she was about to move, but I shot a hand through the bars, catching her ankle.
She extracted my fingers one by one, but a smile was on her face now so I knew we were getting somewhere. If she wanted to play cat and mouse, I was definitely game.
“My ex was a lying, cheating scumbag, actually.”
Two points to me then. I didn't lie. I definitely didn't cheat. But the scumbag part was up for debate.
“Well more fool him.” I shrugged. “At least life's panning out in a good direction for you now.”
She glowered at me. “Is that supposed to be funny?”
I shook my head with an innocent expression. “Forget the forced-to-kill-daily part and things are clearly on the up for you.”
“Oh yeah? How's that?” Her tone was ice.
I ticked off points on my fingers. “You're not in prison any more, you can now eat anyone that pisses you off, and you're going to be young and beautiful forever.” I shifted forward, cupping my mouth with my hand. “Plus, I'm envisioning a pretty hot romance in your very near future.”
She tsked. “You and me will never be a thing.”
I lowered my voice. “Not me.” I jerked my head in the direction of the vacant, growling V behind me. “Dracula clearly has the hots for you.”
At last, she laughed, her throaty tone making me satisfied through to every inch of my bones.
The moment dissolved in a wave as the door to the prison opened and three men in riot gear walked in our direction. I stood, rolling my shoulders and gazing at them with a cool expression.
“Ignus wants this one out in the game for a while,” one of the men said.
My gut sank like a stone. Fear was for the weak. But okay, I was slightly terrified at that moment.
One of them tapped something on a tablet and I heard the mechanical whirring in my collar that signified the oncoming pierce of a needle.
I glanced back at Cass whose eyes were as round and wide as a deer's. I gave her a half smile, trying not to show how miserable I really was about this. But as the needle dug into my neck and I sank to my knees, battling the serum that was trying to force me unconscious, I couldn't see much to be happy about at all. Least of all leaving her behind.
Selena
I woke to the creaking of rope and the sensation of swinging gently side to side. I was in absolute darkness inside a wooden box, laid down, nothing but my breath surrounding me. Apparently, starting each round in a coffin was becoming a new tradition.
Tiredness itched at my eyes. I'd stayed up much too late, plotting with the girls. Our plans were basic at best. More likely just a small ounce of hope to feed ourselves with so that the games would become slightly more bearable. I wanted vengeance, I wanted freedom. But before any of those things seemed even remotely graspable, I had to find Varick. Today I was filled the the kind of brutal determination I had needed in the previous round. I should have followed Varick before, let him feed from me. And today, if the opportunity arose again, I would.
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