Who lives, and who dies

This little event was nothing less than heinous, and I could not believe that Lucien could have thought up such a disgustingly gory game. And, as I stared out into the crowd, with eyes wandering over the severely incapacitated and weakened people, I could not help but resent and feel pity for Lucien. I resented him because he was grabbing my hand and dragging me deeper into our blood ocean. And I pitied him because this was clearly all an act of hurt. In his mind, my act of abandoning him was worth these emotional scars. In his eyes they were equal. I wondered for how much longer he’d go about punishing me, and I wondered if breaking me would break him too.
Oliver and Macy then stepped away from me, towards the outskirts of the field. Oliver had, in his hand, a recording camera, no doubt filming this for Lucien and Macy had a gun filled with blanks. She cleared her throat before she shouted out, quite loudly, “It’s time to bring out our first contestant, Blake Granger!”
And, from the other side of the field, walking through the entrance sports teams usually did, came Blake who, unlike me, was shackled with a ball and chain, pulling his hands towards the ground. He looked no better than me, weak, beaten and absolutely not ready for a fight. Nonetheless, he pushed on, now being led by Macy’s sister who tugged him along by holding him around his arm. He and I both knew how high the stakes were, and that was evident by the cold look written on his rough features. We were no longer friends, no longer family, but now rivals.
Once he was right in front of me, and I in front of him, he spat out to the side and returned his cold gaze to mine before saying, “I’m sorry Jasmine, there’s no way I can’t hurt you.” And I responded with a curt nod. There was no way I could not hurt him either.
Macy cleared her throat again, “Well now I’d like to introduce the hostages. For this round we have, on Jasmine’s side, the real Jade, the young woman who saved Damon. And on Blake’s side, his beautiful sister, Cory Granger. Now, it’s up to the both of you who lives and who dies.”
I looked up at the crowd and starred at the two people now forced to stand. One, the woman I assumed to be Jade who, although showed little resemblance to Macy’s sister, was still on par with her beauty-wise. Her clothes were torn and blood, she seemed to have put up a fight and paid the consequences and, when our eyes met, she begged for no sympathy from me, no pleading to be saved from this entire deadly situation. The other woman, Cory, was a small, thin young woman with hair the shade of violet. She was shaking and pale and, quite frankly looked terrified out of her mind. And as my gaze shifted between the two women, I could not help but hate myself and hate what I knew I had to do. This was not fair and not once, but twice the thought of killing myself flashed through my mind. But who was to say my death would mean something? Who was to say it would keep all of these people safe? Besides, if I killed myself, I’d leave Damon here all alone, and who knows what the man would do without me. And as I thought this, my eyes moved to him and his hazel orbs softened before he shot me a reassuring wink, as if to say, ‘Whatever happens here, you’ll still have me’, and that was enough to block out the horrible, uneasy feeling of pre-guilt welling up inside my chest.
Macy paused for a second or two before she lifted the gun into the air and fired. Immediately a sense of urgency kicked in, and I gripped at the chain, pulling on it and holding it tightly in my hand so the impact on my neck would not be as raw. I then began to stand up and Blake and I began to circle each other. Blake had a huge disadvantage. He’d been born a wolf and so, fighting as a human would prove quite difficult for him. I, on the other hand, had lived almost all my life as a human, I was trained for hand-to-hand combat and it showed the second I laid my hands on him, gripping him by the shoulders and launching my knee right to his stomach. He fell to the ground with a loud, *thud* and began coughing up blood.
I shook my head down at him sadly and then said lowly, “I am so sorry.” I then allowed him a few seconds to get back up to his feet, wanting to win this fair and square. Lives were on the line here and I didn’t intend on making myself feel worse by playing dirty.
Eventually he did make it back onto his feet and then he quickly took a swipe at his bloodstained lips with the back of his hand and spat out.
“Do I need to stress the urgency of this fight even more? Fight you two, or I’ll take pleasure in letting them both die.” Macy yelled out, clearly not impressed at the slowness of our fight. Then again, Blake and I were severely injured and had no werewolf strength or healing to help us. But I guessed she cared little for our current state.
Blake chose to strike first this time and managed to land a decent punch in my jaw. The force of it knocked my head to the side, freeing the ball from my hand and sending both it, and myself to the ground. Unlike me, Blake showed no attempt at playing fair and resorted to kicking me in the stomach while I was down. It was at that moment that I began to hear Damon yelling at me, urging me to get up and fight. In all honesty that was the last thing I wanted to do, to fight, but with his words came the familiar rush of adrenaline and I grabbed at Blakes foot and twisted it around sending him crashing to the ground. But it was not enough to knock him out and in a matter of moments we were both up and, on our feet, again. Blake then attempted another punch at my face, but I caught it in my one hand, twisted it and began moving it behind his back. I then let go for a second before turning on my heel to execute a perfect roundhouse kick which did the job of making him wobble as he stumbled forward. I only needed one more blow to knock him out, and was about to deliver it when I made the mistake of gazing up into the crowd… of gazing at Cory. The fear in her eyes was unimaginable and it shook me to the core. She knew she was going to die, and it would be all my fault. Unfortunately, I was so focused on Cory’s terror that I did not even notice Blake turning around, taking a good step and then launching his knee right into my broken ribs. I screamed out in agony, ripping at my vocal chords and then I fell to the ground, watching everything in blurry slow motion: the screams of Damon and Loren who watched me cough up blood in horror, the look of relief on Cory’s face as she was released and joined her brother in running until they both were in each other’s arms, but most frightening of all, I saw that look on Jade’s face. The look of complacency and reassurance as she locked her eyes on me and the bullet ripped right through her chest. And just like that, my eyes began to shut closed and the tears began to fall. I hated myself for this, for losing focus. I had not known Jade, and yet I let her life slip right through my fingers like grains of sand being whisked away into the wind as they poured through the crevices of my split fingers. But I could not let that happen again, especially not when the people sitting in the crowd were those that I loved and cherished dearly.
My time on the floor, almost drowning in my own blood was short-lived when Oliver came along, gripped me firmly from the arm and then injected me in the neck. I winced and asked, “What is that? Not quite liking the fact that I was being injected every five seconds.
“It’s going to help kickstart the healing process for a short period of time. Otherwise, you’ll die before we get to the good part, and Lucien would kill everyone here.”
Immediately I could feel my bones beginning to reform beneath my skin and the bruises all over my body visibly began to disappear. Within moments I felt… alright. I was not completely healed, God forbid that, but I was healed enough to carry on, to make it through to my next opponent, Rene. The person’s life her success in beating me relied on was her father and the person’s life relying on my beating her was Hannah’s. The poor girl was fast asleep, and rightfully so. I doubted she’d believe anything she would have to witness here.
Rene stood across from me with a face stern and deadly. I wanted to make this a quick match and I wanted her to be unconscious by the time it was done. I had no desire to let her watch the death of her father, because I had no desire to let Hannah die. Despite her and I not being able to see eye-to-eye on many occasions, she was still a good friend. She never asked too many questions and, although she complained, she always did as I asked. She was too innocent to be left for dead by me.
Macy cleared her throat again, before shooting the gun in the air, letting the sound resonate through the field. Immediately I grabbed pieces of the chain in both my hands, pulled Rene towards me by using my feet under her knees and then began wrapping it around her neck. She struggled against me and, admittedly was quite strong, but I still had the upper hand, and soon I let the chains go, and replaced them with my arms, squeezing until she fell unconscious against me. I let her go, sending her falling to the ground.
Macy sighed heavily, “Damn it, I really wanted that bitch Hannah dead. Oh well.”
I turned towards her and spat at her feet. “You’re a disgusting excuse for a creature, you know that?”
She shrugged and soon another gunshot sounded, this time not from Macy’s gun. I turned my head slowly before gazing up at the stands and watching in horror as Rene’s father’s body slumped over and fell to the ground. A life, for a life. The phrase kept repeating in my head, over and over again. I would not be able to leave here unscathed. I would not be able to be free from what I did today and from what I was about to do.
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Stay safe! Stay healthy! Sending all my love!