The Vampire Games: A Dystopian Paranormal Romance (8 page)

A
s finishing moves went
, the glove to the neck was a terrible one.

I was in and out of consciousness for a while after that. I wasn’t sure I was awake for more than five minutes at a time for days on end, which was probably its own mercy considering how my entire body screamed with pain whenever I was awake.

Everything hurts
.

It wasn’t just my body. Alisyn’s betrayal stung like nothing I’d felt before. She had kept secrets from me, lied to my face, let me care about her.

I’d been trained by a vampire.

And then I had lost in a fight against her.

Struggling to open my eyelids felt as difficult, and as painful, as scrubbing my face with sandpaper.

When I managed to look around myself one time—for only a moment—I realized I was in some kind of hospital. I rested on starched white sheets in a gloomy, red-lit cave with glass accents. My wrists were bound to the railings with leather straps. Even disabled, the vampires didn’t trust me to hold still for very long.

They were right not to trust me.

The next time my eyes opened, I tried to break free. Tried to escape by rolling out of bed.

Needless to say, it didn’t work.

I drifted, I dozed. When I opened my eyes again, I wasn’t alone.

Phillip sat beside my bed.

“Bianka,” he murmured.

I twisted my wrists within the leather straps. “Let me go.”

“You’re thrashing too much. You’ll hurt yourself.”

“I hurt anyway,” I said.

His chilly fingers stroked along my arms. Under his touch, my body grew still. Calm radiated over me.

“You didn’t tell me Alisyn’s a blood sucker,” I said.

“She’s not,” he said.

“She’s a vampire.”

“But not a blood sucker,” he said. He was meeting my eyes for once, as though the haze of pain medication was all the armor he needed to put distance between us. I wished that I could have remained awake long enough to bask in the intensity of those eyes. It felt like I could have all secrets revealed to me if I could just sit up and look into his face.

“I thought Alisyn was my friend,” I whispered.

“She let you live,” Phillip said.

I wasn’t sure that meant we were friends, either.

He wouldn’t tell me why he didn’t tell me about her, but he did say that she let me live.

“The crowd was voting for death,” he said, “although it wasn’t unanimous. You were vicious enough that you earned points for the fight, but we have to see the results later. We’ll have to see if you move ahead in the Games.”

I hadn’t thought about it in terms of brutality during the fight, or even really known much about points.

I had just been trying to stay alive.

“I’m going to win next time,” I said, eyelids drooping shut. “I won’t let myself be defeated. I’m going to win everything.”

“I hope that you will,” he murmured.

Phillip bent over me. His lips brushed my forehead. If I’d been more conscious, my heart might have skipped a beat.

Over his shoulder, I saw a figure looming on the other side of the glass wall.

It was Lord Hector.

He was watching. He saw Phillip kiss me, his hand on mine.

I needed to warn Phillip.

But the drugs were too strong, and I was too weak.

I succumbed to sleep again.

A
fter two days
in the hospital wing, I went back to Phillip’s rooms at Dawn Hold.

The medicine had left my system at that point, so I managed to walk back to the room on my own. I wasn’t alone—the ever-present guards escorted me through the hallways—but I walked without being held upright, and that was a victory all its own.

Phillip wasn’t waiting for me at the room, but my bed was.

It was foolish to think of it as “my” bed, considering that nothing belonged to me. I wasn’t even supposed to belong to myself anymore. I was Phillip’s property, an asset to Dawn Hold. But when I sank into the sheets, I was enclosed in a familiar kind of softness.

Best of all, there was no Lord Hector to watch me there.

I pulled the blankets to my chin and I slept.

Someone knocked on my door later—minutes or hours, I wasn’t sure. The instant I heard the rapping, I was awake.

The door opened.

Phillip stood on the other side. “They’re announcing results,” he said with cool dispassion. “You’ll want to see how you’ve been scored. Do you need help to the main room?”

“No, I can walk.” I got out of bed again and only winced a little at the pain. “We know I got points. What else is there?”

Phillip waited long enough to hold the door open for me. “We need to see if you make it to the next round.”

“What if I don’t?” I asked.

He didn’t answer.

Classic Phillip.

The return of icy, unfriendly Phillip made sense when I stumbled out of my bedroom. We had company. Several people—several
vampires
—were in the big room, watching the television. It took up most of the wall and displayed pictures from the fight, along with numbers that meant very little to me. I could generally see who won because of how high the numbers were, but that was all.

When I entered, everyone stopped talking to look at me.

The silence was painfully oppressive.

I felt like I was on auction again, being evaluated for how fierce I was, how much muscle my body had, whether or not I was worth those sixty crowns Phillip had paid for my life.

“Take the couch, Candidate,” Phillip said from over my shoulder. He didn’t touch me. It shouldn’t have been surprising that he didn’t, but I longed for it.

I settled onto the couch, stiff-backed.

To my surprise, he took the other side of the couch.

The numbers on the TV changed to display statistics from other Candidates who had gone through the Coliseum. The vampires returned to their conversations, murmuring about Shadow Keep and Sunset Falls and all the other fiefs that had been competing.

“Can you see the scores on the TV?” Phillip asked me. “I’m not sure how good human vision is.”

“Oh, I think I’ll manage.”

He either missed the sarcasm in my voice or chose to ignore it. His gaze was fixed on the television.

I could see the numbers, but I decided not to look. I watched the people milling around the room instead. Many of them wore Dawn Hold’s insignia. These people were, for better or for worse, part of Prince Phillip’s court. They were his allies. That didn’t mean they were mine, though.

“Looks like your chances are good to move on,” Phillip said. “More big names lost than I would have thought…oh, yes, there it is.”

Conversation turned to cheering. My eyes lifted reluctantly to the television.

My face was on the screen. I wasn’t sure when they had gotten the shot, but I suspected it had been taken during my fight, since I was scowling more than usual. Alisyn’s face was more placid and official than mine, like an official photographer had taken the picture.

“Wow,” I said. “That’s flattering.”

Alisyn’s picture ringed in green, probably showing her victory. Mine was in red, but there was a plus sign in the corner, just like there was for Alisyn.

Vampires hugged each other, patted one another on the back, exchanged golden coins.

They had been betting on me. Some people had just profited off of my life.

Phillip wasn’t smiling. “Congratulations. You did well.”

“Uh, you did see the way I was passed out in the hospital for days, right?”

“You’re not dead.”

I rolled my eyes. In a place like this, it was very easy to see that being alive wasn’t always a victory. Or a good thing. “So what now? More training?”

Phillip didn’t answer.

“I’m not working with Alisyn again,” I said. “If that’s what you can call what she did. Why would you have her train me, anyway? Way to give her an edge.”

“It’s traditional. And she’s the best.”

I crossed my arms. “Just because it’s tradition doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck.”

“You are still capable of winning the Games, Bianka,” Phillip whispered to me, his eyes and voice heated. “There’s still a chance you can be Created.”

I forgot that there were others in the room. I was caught in Phillip’s gaze, unable to breathe. “What if I don’t want that?”

Surprise flitted through his eyes.

He broke our gaze and stood abruptly. He stalked off through the crowd.

“Guess that’s it for talking,” I muttered, and I went off to my own room to get more sleep.

I
didn’t sleep
for long. The chiming alarm soon woke me up again.

Time for more training.

There would be no rest for the wicked.

But when I went into the main room, Alisyn wasn’t waiting for me. My only company was the guard who usually followed us to the training room. “Let’s go, I guess,” I told the guard, who seemed as bored and distant as ever.

I spent the entire walk to the training room trying to decide what I would say to Alisyn.

She owed me apologies. More than apologies, she clearly owed explanations to me.

Yet I just wanted to hug her.

It was insanity, and obviously some kind of weakness. Alisyn was the enemy. A vampire. She had exploited her understanding of my fighting style—a style that she had taught me—in order to win in the Coliseum.

And she was still the only semi-friendly face I’d seen ever since being dragged underground.

I entered the training room to find that my worrying had been in vain. Alisyn wasn’t there. It was some guy in a Candidate’s training uniform, facing the glass panels against the back wall. The glow illuminated his golden hair like a halo.

My heart skipped a beat.

“Marc?” I gasped.

He turned, and it was
him
. My best friend. The guy I’d done everything to save. I hadn’t expected to see him smiling like that ever again.

“Bianka,” he said.

I ran forward and hugged him. He hugged me back hard. We gripped each other so tightly that we might have been on the verge of fighting, hard enough that my ribs ached and my eyes stung with tears, and I didn’t even care.

“Phillip said you were in training, but I had no idea if that was true!” I couldn’t bring myself to let go of him, but I pulled back an inch to look him over. Yes, he was dressed as a Candidate. There was a slightly harder look to his body underneath the skin-tight material, too. It helped that he was still as gaunt as he’d been when they’d been taking blood from him. It stripped away all the fat and revealed the lean muscle underneath. “How are you? Are they treating you well? As well as vampires can, I guess.”

“I’m okay,” he said. “I’m your new trainer, actually.”

My heart had been skipping before, but now it stopped completely. “Really?” Phillip had done a much better job this time around than I’d hoped for.

“I heard I was requested by name to work with you,” Marc said.

Phillip had done this for me. He had heard my dismay over Alisyn, and more than that, he had found a companion that I would be eager to embrace.

It was even better than a sunflower.

But it also meant that Marc and I were going to be fighting each other.

Finally, reluctantly, I let go of him and stepped back.

“Well, I guess you should show me what you’ve got,” I said.

What he had was a lot closer to my level than Alisyn had been in the ring. We exchanged blows at ordinary human speeds. Marc was bigger than me, and he had the advantage of bodyweight, but that was about it.

Marc had some boxing practice from high school, so we worked that in. He showed me how to improve my punches. I showed him how to grapple.

We smiled and laughed a lot.

It was a lot like the old days, doing co-ed gym class together. We were playing as much as we were fighting.

That was fun. It was…nice.

As nice as anything could be in the darkness underground.

He left after a couple hours that first day. But he came back the next day for more training, and the day after that, and the day after that.

Marc was my constant companion. Again.

But even though it was similar to our old lives, there was no way to ignore key changes that had come over me since I’d been taken by the Harvestmen.

For one, I found myself memorizing Marc’s every move. He was a lefty, another difference from Alisyn, and he favored that side more. It took me a couple more days of training, but there were actually a couple times I got the drop on him, and I could tell from his shocked expression that it was an accident. He hadn’t meant to allow me to win.

“You’ve been holding back,” Marc said, half teasingly, half warily.

“Trust me,” I said, guarding my face with my fists again, “I never hold back. I’m just learning.”

“What’s giving me away?”

I swallowed back the honest response. I couldn’t tell him what Alisyn had taught me about fighting slowly, thinking more, and taking my time. It was my only advantage at the moment.

But he was my friend. Did I need an advantage against him?

“It’s because you’re distracted by my beauty,” I said with a teasing grin. I hated myself for joking like that instead of telling him the truth.

“You’re not wrong about that,” Marc said.

I’d expected him to give me crap for calling myself beautiful, not that he’d agree with me.

I faltered. My fists wavered.

Marc knocked me to the ground.

He was on top of me in a heartbeat, which was to my advantage: I was the one who knew how to handle myself on the floor, as the ex-competitive wrestler. It was easy for me to use his weight against him. I flipped him around until I was on top, pinning him with my hands on his shoulders.

“If I had shock gloves, your heart would have stopped beating by now,” I said.

“I think it already has,” Marc said.

He was still so gorgeous, as though sculpted by the gods. All that time in the darkness hadn’t changed it.

I got off of him and toweled the sweat from my forehead.

“I think I’m done for the day,” I said.

Marc agreed. He took a towel and walked off, and I watched him go.

It was only then that I noticed Phillip had been watching us from the shadows.

How long he had been there, I had no idea.

Two things happened after that.

One of those was that Phillip started watching practices again.

He wasn’t being very subtle about it, either. He showed up at practice the next day as soon as we did, and he spent the whole time lurking in the corner, silent and watchful. It seemed like Marc didn’t know that he was there.

But I did.

I could barely keep my eyes off of him.

What had changed? Why was Phillip supervising my training again?

Was I about to go into the Coliseum a second time?

Phillip was a huge distraction. Marc nearly clocked me more times than I could count; his left hook was murderous when he left it unchecked. We didn’t do much actual punching because we were doing glove work, but Marc figured it was a good skill to have, and I didn’t disagree.

The second thing that happened was that Marc kept getting friendlier.

For all that we were pretending to be opponents, he seemed way too happy to see me. And he showed it with his touch.

There had always been some distance with Alisyn and me. I’d always gotten the impression before that we kind of mutually admired each other, but we weren’t exactly friends.

Marc, however, would hug me after I tried a kick that his own trainer had shown him, or he would pat my arms to make sure I was okay after a fall. He checked me for injuries. He even kissed my bruised knuckles a couple of times.

Alisyn and I had just exchanged the occasional high five. Until she’d tried to kill me, of course.

I liked this a lot better, knowing where I stood and getting the extra contact.

Except that it was hard enough to concentrate when Phillip was watching, and harder still when Marc kept finding excuses to hug me.

Basically, between Marc and Phillip, it was hard to pay attention to anything.

Phillip was present when Marc and I were doing live glove work one day. Alisyn and I hadn’t done much of that, and I’d always wondered why when we’d been training, but knowing that she was a vampire
and
my competitor made all of that crystal clear. She had wanted to prepare me, but not that much.

Marc, on the other hand, was set on having our gloves live as much as possible.

“The more you get used to the gloves’ effects,” he said, “the better you’ll be able to fight through the numbing effect.”

I couldn’t argue with that even if I didn’t like it. The practice gloves didn’t have quite as much oomph as the ones in the Games, but it still hurt to get shocked.

Still, I wondered if Marc’s decision to run through the injuries Alisyn gave me in the ring while Phillip was around was the best idea.

“It’s the accumulation that really knocks you back,” Marc said as we slipped our hands into our gloves. I could feel Phillip’s gaze even though he was behind me. “So if you know how it feels when it builds up…”

“Yeah, but…” I winced. “I don’t like the shocks.”

“Then don’t let me hit you,” Marc said.

I rolled my eyes. “Okay, sensei.”

We reenacted the fight slowly at first, Marc talking me through what he’d seen in my fight and suggesting alternate moves I could have made to beat Alisyn. It was hard to believe I had stayed up in the fight with Alisyn as long as I had. I must have been running on pure adrenaline.

He beat me just as Alisyn had beaten me.

“Let’s do it again,” I said, rolling out my numbed arms. “Same fight, same moves.”

“Don’t you want to take a break?” Marc asked.

“No,” I said. “Come at me.”

So we fought again, faster than before.

The main difference was that I knew everything that was coming. My body was ready for it. His shocking gloves buzzed past me without making contact even once, and I could see that he was impressed.

I was a little breathless, but in a good way. Marc was laughing a little, too. It felt almost more like a dance than a fight. All we were missing was music.

And then he landed his final blow.

I fell down with a surprised yelp. Marc had shocked me in the chest. It was hard enough that my heart felt like it would never beat again. Blood roared through my ears as my vision blurred.

Then I heard Marc scream.

I struggled onto my knees. Phillip had thrown himself at Marc and was crouched over him, panting so hard I could see it even with his back to me.

The vampire prince had attacked my trainer.

“Wait,” I gasped, struggling to inhale.

My lungs were still spasming from the solid blow Marc had landed. He must have struck a nerve. Something that had fried my body’s ability to do all those automatic functions that kept me alive.

I thumped my fist against my chest a couple times. At last, I felt my heart beat.

My lungs expanded.

And I managed to cross the training room to reach Marc and Phillip.

As I got closer, I could see that Phillip had his hand around Marc’s throat and was pressing. “He’s hurt,” I said, grabbing Phillip’s arm. “Let go!”

Phillip growled under his breath. “He nearly
killed
you.”

“I’m not dead. See?”

He looked over like my word wasn’t enough to believe it. His eyes were more intense than ever. But he eased back and called for the guards. They rushed in.

“Take him to the infirmary,” Phillip told them as I knelt and checked Marc.

“Can you hear me?” I asked him in a loud voice.

“Too…” Marc wheezed. “Too well.”

The guards picked up Marc and took him out of the practice room. I was left kneeling on the pads while Phillip stood above me.

“That was completely out of line,” I said.

Phillip shook his head. “His hand was on your sternum. If he’d held it too long, he could have killed you.”

“And that was worth nearly killing him? We were training! Marc would never try to hurt me!”

He growled with frustration and pushed away from me and out of the room.