Halo (Blood and Fire Series (A Young Adult Dystopian Series)) (32 page)

“I know what must be done, and yet I cannot agree with it. I reject the sacrifice,” he cries.

More shocked voices. More rustling and awkward shifting from the masses.

“I also reject the sacrifice,” James shouts.

Callum follows suit. “I, too, reject.”

Am I allowed to reject myself as sacrifice? I definitely reject myself as sacrifice. Surprisingly there are a few more voices offered up, close to the pit and further away, who call out on my behalf. I can only imagine if they are people I know. Maybe Melody and August. Maybe Max is still here somewhere, too. A thick silence follows. A well of fear is building in the back of my throat when finally another voice echoes out into the night air.

“I reject the sacrifice!”

Ryka.

Even though his voice was impossibly close, it takes a long time to pinpoint him in the crowd. My mistake is that I am looking for him at head height. And he is on his knees. In the hammered down, sticky mud, Ryka is on his knees. “I reject the sacrifice!” he all but screams.

“Not enough.” The High Priestess moves effortlessly to the side of the pit, where a handful of men reach down and pluck her out. Her stooped form turns and faces me.

“The consequences of tainting sacred ground are too much for this town to bear. The people know it is unwise to incur wrath where offering is required. The offering of one for the good of the many. Who will claim this honour?”

I’m stunned. This is really happening. Two days ago, Olivia sobbed into my shirt and asked me if this was really her life. Now I’m left wondering the same question. Am I really going to get killed by a member of Freetown? Ryka rocks back and gets to his feet, although the effort looks like it kills him.

“No one dare,” he says, his voice low and menacing.

“This is not your place, boy,” the High Priestess says calmly. “If you do not stand down, you will be nominated to commit the act yourself. Would this please you?”

“Put me in that pit and I won’t be going after
her
with a knife.” The threat in his voice is clear, and everyone hears it. A loud shout goes up and the fighters gathered around Ryka flinch away from him like his brand of idiocy is contagious. I will him not to do anything stupid, but it might already be too late for that. He glares up at the High Priestess from underneath drawn brows and I can tell he means it. Good Gods, he means it.

A soft clicking sound comes from underneath the woman’s veils. Unfazed by Ryka’s insinuation, she point-blank ignores him. “I ask again. Who will claim this honour?”

The spit of the burning fires is all I hear for a moment, but then a buzz explodes further back in the crowds. A pathway clears and a tall, broad man stalks his way forward. A jagged scar runs down the right hand side of his face, and it’s too neat and tidy to be a defensive scar. Self-imposed, more likely. He falters when he catches sight of me.

“I didn’t know it was a girl,” he says. His knife is still in his hand, though.

“It matters not whether the sacrifice is male or female. She volunteered herself. It must be done.”

“I fell!” Finally I find my voice, and with it my anger. It rushes over me so forcefully that I can’t keep my hands from shaking. My whole body, in fact. “I didn’t volunteer for anything. I’m not fighting.”

“You’re right in that, child. You are not supposed to fight. You are supposed to die,” the High Priestess tells me.

Like hell I am.

I lock onto Ryka
―
see the horror on his face. He looks from me to the fighter now dropping down into the pit, and I watch it happen: he explodes. He goes to jump into the pit after the fighter, but the men around him catch him by his arms. It takes six of them to hold him back and in the end there’s nothing he can do. They pin him to the floor while he strains and kicks. “Don’t you dare, Sam! Don’t you dare!”

The fighter, Sam, hesitates for a second. The look he gives me is almost apologetic. Spinning a short, ugly looking blade over his hand, he shakes his head. “I’m really sorry, girl. This is just the way of it. Why don’t you lie down? I’ll make it easy for you.”

And just like that, I snap. I’m not lying down. I’m sick to death of lying down. “How about I make this easy for
you
. Leave,” I say, menace in my voice. My hands hover over my knife belt, still concealed under my shirt. If he takes one step towards me, I’ll have steel in both hands before he can blink.

“Don’t you touch her!” Ryka hollers, still restrained on his back. His boots dig uselessly into the ground as he tries to get away. The people surrounding the struggling fighters are all statues, clearly conflicted as to what the hell they should be doing. Most of them know Ryka, and his fury mars the air enough for them to keep quiet. Not so on the other side of the pit. The chant starts up low, but it gradually grows in strength as more and more people take it up.

“
Raksha! Raksha! Raksha!
”

The stupid call galvanises Sam, who, up until this moment, hasn’t really been all that convincing in his role cast as my murderer. The glint in his eye definitely gives the impression he’s starting to take his position seriously.

One step.

He takes one step and I do what I said I would. My daggers are a part of me, an extension of my body in a heartbeat. Sam hesitates.

“Oh, come now, girl. This doesn’t need to be a difficult. It can all be over in one quick thrust. I swear, you’ll hardly feel a thing. If you go up against me
―
”

“You’ll die,” I snap. Good thing my voice sounds confident, because I really don’t feel it. This is a first for me. A terrifying, raw first. I am not wearing my halo.

Before there were consequences to my fights, some of which remain the same now. If Sam wins, I die. If I win, Sam dies. Other consequences are different, however. If Sam cuts me, it’ll hurt. If he attacks me, my heart rate will elevate and I’ll be scared and I won’t be able to breathe and Iwillfeellike…thewallsofthepitare…
   
closinginaroundmeand…

“
Kit!
”

The shout warns me just in time. Sam dodges forward with his crude blade, and the sweep he lashes out with would have slashed my stomach open if I hadn’t leaped back. I glare at him incredulously.

“One strike, huh? You obviously don’t know human anatomy very well. It can take days for a stomach wound to kill a person.”

Sam hunkers down and everything about him says,
defend!
“I’ll take what I can get to put you down first, girl,” he tells me.

“Fine. So long as we both know where we stand.” I dip so that my centre of gravity is close to the ground and I flick my daggers over in my hands. In this stance the hammering in my chest seems to ease. This is something I can do without thinking normally, but now I have to concentrate to process everything that’s happening over the roar of my emotions. It’s hard, but I can still do it. My body remembers what is required of it, and I strike out. Flashing metal sings through the air, and I’m the driving force behind it, urging it to seek out flesh and bone. My rapid manoeuvre has Sam on the back foot, literally, and I don’t take the kill I could rightly claim. Instead, I just graze his neck.

A stark line of red blossoms across his skin, and howls go up all around us.

The warning slice I’ve given him doesn’t serve its purpose. It takes five seconds of staring at Sam’s dismayed face before I realise I haven’t made things better for myself by showing him I’m capable. I’ve just sealed my fate. Rather than extricating myself from one ridiculous ritual, I’ve landed myself well and truly into another: the blood demand. I made him bleed, and no one here is foolish enough to pass this off as a symbolic cut between a man and a woman. We are fighters, both, regardless of our sex.

Freetown witnessed me taking the lifeblood of another, and, strict record keeper that the town is, a debt now exists between Sam and I. A debt that can only be paid with my blood. From the expressions on the people hovering at the edges of the pit, payment is due immediately.

Sam takes a dazed look around and then starts circling me. I let him prowl for a moment, subconsciously keeping track of him while I watch Ryka buck, still trying to get out from under his friends. What is he going to do if he actually manages to get free? If he steps one foot on the pit floor without being called for, the High Priestess will demand his death, just like mine. That can’t happen.

I find Jack still standing next to James, and oddly both the men don’t look as worried as they did a few minutes ago. “What am I supposed to do?” I call up to them.

Jack’s eyes flash—steel and resolution. “What you need to,” he says. He’s telling me I need to kill Sam. He knows as well as I do, along with everyone else, that that’s the only way I’m climbing out of this pit. Maybe even then that won’t be enough. James folds his arms across his chest and just stares down on me. The look in his eyes says one thing: impress me.

Sam is heavy-footed and clumsy in his second attack, but I have to give it to him
―
he’s fast. Just not fast enough. He lunges from behind, a coward’s strike by anyone’s standards, with his knifepoint honing in on my kidneys, and I spin, throwing a wide kick. My foot connects with Sam’s forearm and the force of the blow is more than enough to knock away his weapon.
 
A displeased grumble from our audience tells me that I’m not the favourite in this match. Surprise, surprise.

Immediately, Sam has another weapon from the belt at his waist, and this time he approaches slower. I let him come to me again, not willing to play the dart and dodge game. I want this over. I’ve weighed Sam, weighed his brash attack mode and the way he favours his right side, and now I’ve set my body on pause. I’ve fought people like him before, and the inevitable always happens. They get too close.

He’s a foot away and I’m breathing slowly, trying to calm the thunder in my chest, when Ryka breaks free. He jumps to his feet and immediately goes to leap down into the pit, but Jack’s seen what is happening and comes out of nowhere, bear-hugging his grandson before he can leap. Above all the noise and the chanting and the jeering, I hear Jack yell, “Just stop, Ryka! She doesn’t need it. Watch! She doesn’t need saving!”

Sam circles closer, his movement predatory, his shoulders tensed. “That’s it,” he coos. “Don’t worry. It’ll all be over in a moment.” I almost laugh when I realise he thinks I’m panicking or something and I don’t know what to do. Fine. I let him believe it. Jack sees me for what I really am. What I’m capable of. Soon everyone else in Freetown will, too. An inch closer. Another inch
―

“Do you have family, girl?” Sam whispers.

His question throws me. “What?”

“Tell me their names. I’ll make sure they’re cared for.”

My voice cracks when I say, “I have no one.” Not because I miss my brother or my birth mother. But because he asked me in the first place. Suddenly, I have to fight to keep myself still. It’s not right that I have to kill this man. It’s not right that I need to murder someone to satisfy some stupid superstitious ritual.

“You don’t need to do this,” I tell Sam.

“I’m sorry,” he breathes, “but I do.”

I close my eyes, and he leaps. I’m not where he thinks I will be, of course. With a swift spin, I pivot on my heel and lock the hilt of my dagger against the flat, open palm of my free hand. I bring it to the side of my rib cage just below my breast, and I twist around Sam’s body as his intended deathblow meets with thin air. There’s not much to it from here. A final rotation of my upper body; a transference of energy as potential turns to kinetic, travelling up from the floor, through my body, pushing outwards with very little exertion. Metal grinds on bone, and a wet gurgle wheezes out of Sam. One punctured lung. He sinks to his knees… and all hell breaks loose.

The crowd starts screaming. I look up at Jack and Ryka, and Ryka has gone still in the old man’s arms. He’s just looking at me, eyes wide, and all I can think of is Cai’s recording. How he watched me kill endlessly, harrowed out by my inhumanity. Well, right now I’m chock full of humanity but I’m still capable of destroying life. Is Ryka horrified by me now? He should be. I horrify myself. His eyes grow wider and I think I can see how disgusted he is by me, but then his mouth opens and the shape of a soundless warning masks his face. Something’s wrong. I duck instinctively and feel the biting sting of pain slash across my arm. I’m on fire, my nerve endings protesting angrily, as I roll away from the danger.

Sam is on his feet, blood spilling from his mouth and dripping from his knife. My blood. I don’t dare touch my fingers to the searing wound on my upper arm. Who knows how deep it is, and I can’t worry about that right now. I have to focus on finishing this, otherwise we’re going to cut each other away piece by piece until nothing remains but the red earth. Ultimately, I don’t want to die just yet, and it’s this thought that pushes me forwards at a near run. Sam weaves as I charge him, my tactics completely changed now, and it’s not a considered dodge that saves him from my blade; it’s his body collapsing as he spits up more shiny, viscous blood from his mouth. To his credit, he doesn’t pause. He kicks my legs out from underneath me and then we’re grappling on the ground. I don’t want this kind of a fight. Even though he’s injured, Sam’s reach is much greater than mine and there is strength in his muscled, heavy arms. I strike out with both feet, trying to put some distance between us, but Sam covers my body with his, pressing me downwards.

He spends two seconds trying to pry my dagger from my hands before he gives in and manfully flips me onto my front, shoving my face down into the dirt. He almost has my arm locked behind my back when I push my hips up and unseat him, flinging him off me.

From there, things happen quickly. My hands are full of his death and Sam sees it. He has time to rise to his knees as I spring up and scissor the blades; they sing as the metal scrapes together but soon they’re both buried in Sam’s neck. It takes a lot of power to follow through with the sweeping motions, but I make good. His head makes a dull thumping sound as it hits the pit floor, and a jet of red arterial blood sprays up at me, soaking the front of my shirt, my face, my hands