Jayden and I shared alook and nodded. No way in hell was I letting anyone take out my new bestfriend.
Bryan shifted his focusto me. “I saw your fight. Well done. Jayden is pretty badly injured, so I thinkhe should have the spike ball. The dagger will mean you will have to get closerto your opponent…”
The rest of his sentencewas left unsaid, but we all knew what the words would have been. Jayden mightnot survive being close enough to use a dagger.
Ryder interjected. “ButJayden is stronger. If he gets pulled to the ground he can handle himself. Shecan’t.”
“No, I agree. I’ll takethe dagger.” I shut them all up. Ryder’s expression did that stoic, cold thingagain. He seemed upset with my choice, but the buzzer sounded, eliminating anymore time for arguing.
I grabbed the dagger,letting it roll in my hands, trying to ignore the dried blood at the tip. Theycouldn’t even wipe the blade down? Sometimes the members of the Hive were trueanimals.
Ryder approached me andleaned in so close I thought he meant to kiss me. Instead, he whispered in myear: “Charlene Bennett, you are a direct descendant of the fourth house. Don’tforget that.” His words were strangely smooth and echoey, and somethingunfurled inside my chest, seeking, strong. Before I could say or do anything,we were thrust out into the fight.
As per the previousrounds, we were checked for unauthorized weapons, then the fight buzzer rangout. The stomping and hollering from the crowd was sickening. It rang in myears and had the blood pounding through my veins. Crazy mofos, how could anyoneenjoy this? This was not sport or entertainment, this was real live ash gettingslaughtered. It was sickening. I wanted this entire goddamn Hive to burn down!I might be an ash, and I might have had ash friends now and a possible ashcrush, but my hatred of the system still remained.
I forced myself to focuson the fight. I couldn’t change anything if I was dead. The two ash across fromus definitely looked a little worse for wear. The shaved head ash, with hisstupid pimp goatee, had his right arm in a hard cast; his other hand held thethrowing stars. Great weapons choice from our sponsor. It was going to be nearimpossible for him to throw that with one arm all banged up. The other ash, whohad long, light brown hair tied back at his neck, had a bandage over one eyeand held a bow and arrow, which would totally screw with his depth perception.Still, they both had long range weapons. We needed to get in there fast.
“Stay by my side!” Iroared, as Jayden and I took off. Bow and arrow guy dropped to one knee and expertlylet loose an arrow. Shit! Even with sucky depth perception, he knew what he wasdoing. I hadn’t expected him to move so quickly and I was too close to dodgehis arrow. The razor sharp end slammed into my thigh, lodging itself quitedeep. I screamed, turning to find Jayden right beside me. In a flash, before Icould protest, my friend broke the end off, leaving the head embedded.Holymutha effing fuck,that hurt so badly. Luckily the adrenalin kept memoving. I followed Jayden as he dropped and rolled behind an obstacle barrier. Wecrouched side by side as I panted in pain.
“Plan?” I huffed. Eveninjured, these guys were lethal. They had not made it this far without winningfights. And they wanted this desperately.
I realized Jayden wasn’teven listening to me. His eyes were pulsing and his fangs distended. “Yourblood.”
Oh shit. I looked down atmy bleeding thigh. Right, of course, the weird attractiveness of my unicornblood.Wait a freakin’ minute.The obvious answer had been staring me inthe face the entire time. I knew my blood attracted these a-holes. I knew thatit was some sort of special, weird, not-really-ash blood. Might be time to usethis to our advantage. I wiped the blade of my dagger in my blood, letting itthickly coat the tip.
“Don’t bite me, bitch,” Isaid to Jayden. “This blood is going to be useful to us.”
His eyes were crazed.“Trying not to,” he said through clenched teeth.
I popped my head up andsaw the two guys advancing slowly. They were close and I was confident enoughto pull my arm back and let the dagger fly, giving up my only weapon. It sailedthrough the air and sank into bow and arrow guy’s shoulder. Try shooting mewith an arrow now, asshole.
He cried out at the thud,but then, almost in the same instance, his nostrils flared and his eyeswidened.Holy crap … it worked.Both guys were standing there stupidly,fighting the lure of my unicorn blood. I reached down and grabbed Jayden’sweapon.
“Stay here!” I jumped outfrom behind the barrier and sprinted the ten feet between us in record time. Thehot burn in my thigh faded a little as my mind focused on what I had to do. Bothash twisted to face me, fangs extended, and I felt my own descend in response.Their eyes were as black as night and pulsing. I expected them to snap out oftheir blood haze any moment and come at me double-team style, but despite thefact they were facing me head on, they still seemed stunned, especially the onewith my bloody knife in his arm. Focusing on him first, I raised my arm up and whippedthe flail in the air to gain momentum, bringing the spike down across his head.He didn’t dodge it; the spike sank in with a sickening thud. Something awoke inhim then and he grabbed my shoulder with a death grip, holding me in place.
I was focused onspike-head and hadn’t expected the other guy to move so quickly. But as I feltfangs sink into my neck, shock ran through me. That fucker. Hell to the no! Noone got to suck my blood, no freakin’ …oh my gods.It was like a suddenrush of euphoria flooded through me and spilled forbidden pleasure into mybody. I didn’t even feel his fangs any longer. All I felt was the weightlesspleasure of the sucking motion on my neck.
“Charlie!” Ryder’s deepbellowing voice carried through the cheering, those low tones hanging in theair, and a semblance of sanity started to filter into my hazy brain. What … no!I kneed the guy with the spike hanging out of his head in the balls beforedropping to the ground to get this neck sucker off of me. I could hear himgrowling and fighting like I was stealing away his favorite chew toy. What thefuck was up with my blood?! Was it Nutella flavored?
I pushed those thoughtsfrom me as I heard Jayden come up from behind and engage neck biter. Although Iwas feeling a little woozy still from loss of blood and the last tingles ofthat feeding euphoria, I tracked the scene. I would admit to some surprise thatthe guy with the spike in his head was still very much alive. I’d hit him hard.Dammit, he was not just alive but fighting.
I attempted to dodge ashe kicked out at my legs. Of course I managed to trip over my own feet, andlanded hard on the mat anyways. The sharp jag of pain in my thigh increased asthe head of the arrow went deeper. My eyes drifted across the floor and myheart started pounding as I realized the dagger lay five feet away. I lungedfor it just as spike head caught my ankle, my fingers grazing the hilt. It wasjust out of my reach. Turning back, I flexed my knee and, as hard as I could,kicked at the spike which was still in his head. Was he not removing thatbecause the injury would be worse?
As my foot connected fora second time, I gained enough distance to close my hand fully around the knifehandle, and raising to my knees I leapt onto him before he could stand,slashing at the tender meat of his neck.
He was already covered inblood from the massive spike in his head, but the neck wound finished the job. Ileft his prone body, standing quickly, dagger still in hand as I soughtdesperately to find Jayden. I realized he was all the way across the gym and myheart literally stopped beating when I saw neck biter on top of him slicing at hisneck with the throwing star. There was blood everywhere, doing that littlespurting thing which meant something serious had been hit. I wouldn’t make itin time.
“No!” I screamed. Desperationflooded through me – I would not lose Jayden here today. I would never give upon my friend like that, and I knew he would never have given up on me. I had tomake it there in time.
The heat that had begunbefore, after hearing Ryder’s words, started to burn in my center, like aforest fire which had just been doused with an ass-ton of fuel. I sensed thatthis was what everyone kept harping on about – my special blood, the unusualtest, my genetic linage from the fourth house. This was what burned inside ofme. Everything about my life started to make sense then, the reasons I wasdifferent. I took off to give myself a proper speed for launching, and withouta second thought bent down and sprang up with all of the strength I had. I hadplanned on trying to jump in large leaps, closing the distance fast, butapparently the fire had a different plan.
I freakin’ flew, likesome sort of strange bird, across the arena. The crowd gasped, and a weird sortof dead-air silence fell over the fight. That’s right, bitches. Levitation. I workedhard to land close as possible to the ash who was hurting my friend. Dudehadn’t even looked up; he didn’t know death stalked him from the air. But hewas about to find out. I came down hard, knocking into him, throwing theasshole off of Jayden, the pain in my leg roaring back to life with anintensity that had my vision flashing with black dots.
I wobbled for a second,breathing deeply. Not the time to pass out, no matter how much I wanted to.Neck biter jumped up, and I was relieved to see Jayden was alive – clutchinghis bleeding throat but alive.
Neck biter circled melike a lion about to strike. Anger was coming off him in waves. I forced myselfto envision how I would kill him. Then of course, the moment I did that Istarted raging at myself. This entire situation was screwed up. Why the hellwas I having to become a murdering monster? Because the vampires needed toconserve space for their huge luxury Hive apartments?
Neck biter lunged, but Iwas ready – I was so ready. I might not want to kill him, but I wanted to endthis. I dodged and threw out a high kick to the side of his temple. He wobbledand I dropped to my knees, stabbing him in the stomach. Not a kill shot, but adebilitating one.
