87: Journey to the finish line

“Need some help?” I heard Samantha say from beside me. Before I even had the opportunity to answer her question, she stopped me and removed Felicity from my back before placing her on her back. She adjusted Felicity slightly and then began walking again.
“Uh… thank you.” I said, still surprised by her civil behaviour.
“You know, you don’t have to act so shocked. You did save me after all. I owe you this much at least.” She said with a smile.
I stayed silent for a moment as I followed behind her. Was her kindness really just a result of a debt to repay? Or was there something more to her?
“You don’t really owe me anything. You would have survived in any case.”
“Maybe… but I would have been disqualified, and then I’d really be dead. I’d be my parents’ biggest disappointment.”
Slowly but surely, I’d begun to discover that Samantha was quite a talker. But I wasn’t complaining since it did, in fact, turn out that there was actually more to Samantha’s kindness than a debt to repay.
“You must think I hate you or something, but the truth is, I don’t. I have no reason to hate you, I barely know you. It’s true for most of us, you know. We just behave the way our parents want us to. I mean, it’s funny really, most of us haven’t even met a single werewolf in our lives, but here we are hating them. Besides, if other werewolves are even half as honourable and decent as you are, I don’t think I’d hate them at all.”
I’d never given much thought to what these noble children had been living through. Then again, I was sure that hardly anyone would have tried to understand them given the way they acted. But now that Samantha had said something, and now that she was acting in a way that could allow me to muster up some sort of empathy for her, I was beginning to understand. Most of these noble children were nothing but tools to their parents, and they knew that. I suppose that they feared their parents more than anything else. I suppose it was this fear that made them act the way they did, or at least this was the case for Samantha. Surely some of the noble children naturally grew up with that air of superiority they all carried along with them, Kyle and Darren were prime examples.
“I hope that if someone manages to win this thing, it’s you.”
Her statement immediately brought me out of my thoughts, and I gasped. Once again, she’d said something I hadn’t expected.
“Why me? I mean, it’s like you said before, you barely know me.”
She gave a soft side-smirk and nodded. “Yes, but I know that you’re a good person. I’ve been nothing but awful to you, and yet you still gave me your blood to heal me. It takes a certain kind of person to help someone who’s treated you as badly as I have. And so, I know that you’ll be good for the vampire kingdom. We need someone who cares for others as much as you do. Someone who sees us as people, and not just pawns on a chessboard. At first, I didn’t really understand what all the fuss about you was. But I’m beginning to understand it now. You really are Sanguis’s worst nightmare… Diana.”
I froze the moment my name left her mouth. “How do you know that name?”
“So, I was right. You *are* her. The woman in the portrait from the archives… the Hybrid Queen.”
“Who else knows?” I asked nervously. It wasn’t as though I were keeping my identity a secret anymore. Meera, the one person I would have wanted to hide from, already knew who I was. I just didn’t expect Samantha to know about me.
“Just me. I found the place years ago. I was curious about the woman in the painting, next to Sebastian. Figured that whatever happened to her must have been kept secret since the archive was practically the place where the council hid all of their secrets. I wanted to ask Sebastian about the portrait, but I’m sure you’re familiar with how terrifying and unapproachable he can be. So, I begun to do some digging, and eventually I discovered a forgotten basement beneath the archives. There wasn’t much, but it was enough for me to learn about you. I’d actually forgotten all about you for a while. Though I have to admit, when I first saw you, I did think you looked familiar. It wasn’t until Meera said your name, that I remembered. I thought you were supposed to be dead.”
I laughed before saying, “It’s kinda a long story.”
“Figured. But I'm sure you'll tell me all about it someday, right?” It was refreshing to observe her reaction to learning my true identity, and so I nodded. If she made it out of these games alive, I'd definitely tell her all about who I really was. Perhaps then, we could even become friends.
We fell into a sense of comfortable silence until it was time for Samantha to hand Felicity back over to me. She’d gotten colder, and so I made sure to hold onto her a little tighter.
The walk was a little longer than I expected, especially considering that before I’d come down here, the finish line had been a short distance away, though now that I thought about it, perhaps it was a little farther than I’d first estimated.
“Up ahead!” Samantha yelled as she pointed to a giant wall of rock. This was it. This was where the rocky field ended.
“How are we getting up there?” Samantha asked.
I tilted my head backward and looked up. The surface seemed so far away, farther than it had been at the point where I’d climbed down from. The spikes were probably higher up here towards the finishing line. And almost to emphasise my point, a body hit the ground beside us.
Samantha shrieked and I flinched for a moment before glancing down. I didn’t know the person who fell, but Samantha seemed to.
“Joseph… poor thing,” she uttered sadly. I was surprised she could tell who he was, especially with his face as disfigured and bloodied as it was.
She walked over towards his body and then touched at his arm which jutted out at a weird angle. “One wrong move, and we end up just like him.”
It was too far to climb, especially if there were already people making it to the end. We needed to get up there as quickly as possible. My eyes rested on the dead body beside us for a moment more before a rather risky idea made its way into my mind.
“Samantha?” I called out. She turned towards me and stared at me curiously. “Do you… trust me?”
Her brow arched and she scoffed. “Usually when a person asks that kind of question, it’s because they’re about to do something dangerous or sketchy. But I suppose I don’t have a choice. I’ll trust you as much as I need to. So, what do you have planned?”
“It’s very risky, but if I put enough concentration and effort into it, I could throw you up to the top, or as close to the top as I can get you. After that, I’ll throw Felicity up and you can catch her.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll have to launch myself up there too. If I can get myself halfway up, I can climb the rest of the way easily.” I said.
She paused a moment before gazing up. Another body plummeted to the ground, this time, just barely missing us. She gazed at the dead body, yet another person I did not know, and then sighed deeply before looking up at me with a determined look in her eyes.
“Fine. I trust you.” She said before placing a hand in front of me. I stared at it curiously.
“You need to feed. I don’t doubt your strength, but I took a lot of your blood. Besides, I can afford to be a little weaker now.”
I arched a sceptical brow and she huffed. “Listen, we don’t have time to argue. Drink.”
I sighed internally, grabbed her hand gently, and then sunk my teeth into her wrist. Her blood was warm and metallic and had my mouth salivating. I could feel it rushing down my throat as I drank from her and the feeling was exquisite. It had been a while since I’d fed like this.
“You know I think I should say this before we get back up to the top and I have to go on pretending that I hate you. You seem to be really close with Liam and Xavier. I assume that they are your… lovers?”
I removed my mouth from her wrist and let her hand drop before wiping at the sides of my lips. “You could say that. Why are you interested in them?”
“I’m not particularly interested in them per se. But you’ve been trying to keep them safe the entire time-” she then paused and gazed around, once she was certain that no cameras were around us, she continued, “-but you and I both know that once we’ve finished with the realm rounds, we’re going to have to face each other off and there… there will be only one winner. The vampire council isn’t going to make the same mistake again. So… if I were to go about protecting someone, I would find a way to get them to stop participating in the games completely, if you understand what I mean.”
And I did understand. What she was insinuating was that I find a way to get the two of them disqualified. Yes, their parents would die from embarrassment, but I had Sebastian and Demetri to look out for them on the other side and that in itself was reassurance enough. The only question was:
“How do I get them disqualified?”
Samantha chuckled, “Hey, I can’t do all the work now can I? You need to figure that one out for yourself. Just… do it in a way that doesn’t get them killed.”
“D-doesn’t g-get who killed?” Felicity’s voice came out as a soft whisper, surprising both Samantha and I.
She groaned and tried to move but winced the second she sat upright.
“We need to start moving, now while she’s still disorientated. It will make it easier for us to get her up there if she isn’t too panicked.” Samantha said. I nodded in agreement and moved towards her, carefully placing my one arm beneath her knees and the other across the middle of her back.
“I’ll tell you when I’ve made it. Don’t drop me, hybrid!” she uttered out.
“I’ll try my best. On the count of three.”
I crouched down slightly and held onto her tighter. The feeling of her blood was coursing through my veins making me feel an intoxicating sense of overwhelming blood buzz.
“One.”
“Two.”
And then, with every ounce of strength I had, I threw her up into the air. She let out a frightened scream which grew quieter the higher up she went.
I waited for a moment, prepared to catch her in case I hadn’t thrown her up high enough.
“Phoenix I made it!” I heard her utter out in the far distance. A sense of tired relief flooded through me. I just had to make sure that I threw Felicity as high up as I did with Samantha.
I gently took Felicity into my arms. She seemed dazed and disoriented. “W-where are we?” she yawned.
I shushed her before yelling, “I’m throwing Felicity up, be ready to catch her.”
“Close your eyes…” I whispered gently. When her eyelids had shut, I resumed my previous crouched stance and began counting softly beneath my breath as I felt the lingering sensation of blood pumping in my veins. And then again, I used every ounce of strength I could as I launched Felicity’s body into the air. Unlike Samantha, Felicity made no sound, as though this were all but a dream to her, as though she were floating.
I waited, once again, prepared to catch her in case Samantha hadn’t been able to. A few more moments passed by and Samantha’s awaited reassurance was given. All that was left, was to get myself up. Unfortunately, the process of healing myself, feeding Samantha and then using enough of my strength to launch both her and Felicity high into the air had taken its toll on my body, and Samantha’s blood, although of a decent quality, was hardly enough to satisfy my hybrid body.
Nonetheless, I knew I had to get myself up there if it was the last thing I did. I took in a deep breath, closed my eyes and focussed on every muscle in my body, trying to channel as much of what was left in my strength into every inch of myself.
Once I was ready, I got down on one knee and pressed my fist to the ground.
“One.”
“Two.”
And on three my body was soaring through the air. Everything around me disappeared into a blur, until I could begin to see the surface of the wall of rock. It was a beautiful sliver of light in the distance, heading closer and closer towards me. But just as I was about to reach the edge, I stopped moving upward completely. Immediately a surge of nausea hit my stomach as the realisation dawned on me that I was about to plummet to a fate almost worse than death. But just as I was about to let out a scream, a hand reached out and grabbed mine.
“Give us your other hand!” I heard Liam yell.
I reached up with my free hand which Xavier began tugging on. It didn’t take long before they hauled me up onto the grassy surface above.
Immediately I became a victim of severe suffocation as the both of them embraced the oxygen out of my lungs.
“C-can’t b-breathe!” I wheezed.
They let go of me immediately and Xavier soon wore a stern look on his face.
“What the fuck Phoenix! You had us worried sick you fucking sadist! Next time we are not splitting up from each other!” He yelled out before grabbing me and wrapping his arms around me again.
Liam chuckled and shook his head. “Nice of you to finally join us. And not a moment too soon.”
As he said this, Jayden launched himself towards us.
“And the last person to qualify for the next round is Jayden Well!”
It seemed Liam was right. I’d come in second last, but as the sight of Felicity and Aaliyah embracing caught my eye, I couldn’t help but think how worth it, it was.
Suddenly the ground had begun to shake. Then almost out of nowhere, cages began to engulf those nobles who still stood on the flat spikes.
“The rest of you are disqualified and will be transported back to Tenebris. You will no longer have any claim to the throne.”
Once the voice of Meera had stopped speaking, a thick gas had begun to disperse all around us. I assumed it was to sedate us. And as I began to breathe in the gas, my eyes wandered to Samantha who’d been watching me the entire time. What she’d said hadn’t left my mind. I needed to find a way to get Liam and Xavier disqualified, and quickly.
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Stay safe! Stay healthy! Sending my love