by Heather Linn
“Mmmm, good girl, and I just want to let you know that when we get out of here, I am going to do things to you that will make what we did last night seem like foreplay.” His promise made me feel alive. His simple words stirred things in me that had no reason stirring at a time like this. It was the perfect thing for him to say. After all, a person with hope is more apt to try.
It was the screaming that brought me back to reality. None of this was a game, this was all very real. As hopeful as Jace had just made me feel, I needed to decide if I wanted to die in an innocent stupor, or if I could face the harsher reality that might keep me alive, or just as easily terrify me to death. No matter how much I wanted to die in a state of ignorant bliss, the horrific sights and sounds around me quickly ripped me from my imaginary safe place, until all that was left were screams and the warmth pulsating from Jace’s hand, a warmth that spread and traveled throughout my body.
A detailed memory, a stolen moment, a hopeful promise, none of these could compete with the hell that was occurring right in front of me now. No matter how much I fought to hold on to the images of Jace on top of me, they were soon gone and replaced with the live images I was seeing, things no one should ever have to see.
The scene was something that even Drake’s taunting hadn’t totally prepared me for. There were so many desperate people of so many different sizes and races, and they all shared one thing and that was the terror that was oozing out of every pore.
I swear that I could smell it and no matter how much I let myself feel their terror, I couldn’t deny I was getting a rush from it. I was Cat, the girl that wasn’t pure enough to be human or monster and a very new and dark part of me was emerging and suddenly I was riding their waves of fear and loving every second of it. I had to gain control of myself if I was ever going to escape this trap.
The sounds of so many people pressed into such a small space were making my ears ring. The sobs, the begging, and the prayers were so loud and jumbled together that they built to an ear shattering crescendo around me. I had nothing to compare it to. I felt I might go deaf.
The sight of what was going on around me was worse than the sound. The terror on the faces of the parents that were holding onto their children, looking at their little faces and knowing what was about to happen to them, was enough to make my blood run ice cold. I took quick notice of how the different families were handling it. Some were trying to convince their children it was going to be OK, giving them false hope, the way parents sometimes do. I was amazed that no matter how scared and heartsick these parents had to feel, they still managed to smile and protect their children. Witnessing this gave me more hope for the human race and also, more sorrow.
Other families stood close to each other, holding hands and begging their God to save them and welcome them into his Kingdom. I wondered if their God could hear them. From the look of things, he was turning a deaf ear. It never ceased to amaze me just how strong and at the same time, how stupidly weak, a human’s faith could make them. Monsters come from another planet and they rage a war against the humans and that is OK with God? None of these believers ever questioned where this God they were praying to was when the Vampires came, none of them ever inquired why their God had ignored billions and billions of desperate prayers during the invasion.
Where was this God when half the human race was taken? I felt so bad for the ones that believed that their loss was a punishment for doing wrong. They were the ones that believed the invasion was a way to cleanse the world and give all people a sign to repent for their sins big and small. Some of the survivors had gone so far as to call the invasion Judgment Day. They worked to convince the masses that the takeover was nothing more then what the Bible had predicted hundreds of years ago, what the Bible had tried to warn against in all the preceding years.
In their mind God had thankfully given us the time and the knowledge that we needed to save ourselves and most of us had ignored the opportunity. By this logic the people that were left on earth, the ones that were not granted the fast death that occurred that first night, must be the sinners that deserved the punishment meted out by the monsters. These sinners needed to fix the damage that they had done in their lives before they could go to heaven. But even if the sinners learned their lessons and fixed their souls, they would still be stuck living in this hell on earth.
To the people that believed and preached this way of thinking, I say, how can this be? It seemed the ones who had died the first night were the ones who were spared from the nightmare the world had become. The Vampires had killed the prisoners first. Did that mean they were the ones that God loved and forgave? The babies that were killed at the time of the invasion were spared, yet here I was, living proof that not every infant was spared. I refused to believe that anything that me or my brothers and sisters had done during those first days of life could have made us bad enough to make God abandon us to this hell.
More than angering me, these thoughts scared me because if these believers were right, and I was still here, did that mean that I was lost to evil now? If there was any truth to this nonsense then how could it explain why these people were going to die so brutally? Did it mean their time was up and their stay in hell was over, while Jaden, Darien and I were the evil monsters left behind that would never find God’s peace?
If I was going to die here today, did that mean I’d learned my lesson? Did I now understand some secret of life now? Could I see the light? No. I was still blind as a bat and as pissed off as ever. In the end I decided I hated these people. I hated the believers for making me question myself.
I was lost in thought and then a pleading wail to God suddenly snapped me back to the present. My mind was less cloudy after sorting through the conflicts in my head. In the end I chalked all of these arguments up to the idea that these fools needed to cling to something so desperately, that they were creating their own hysteria. This wasn’t the warrior’s way. Maybe it all came down to hope. Hope was the greatest gift that you could give a person and the believers thrived on hope, as twisted as their hopes were. I could see these delusional humans weren’t my enemies and I could see they might never be my friends either, but right now none of it mattered. I shook my head and deeply breathed in the fear scented air. Now more than ever, I had to get my mind straight and focus on the task at hand or it would be the last task that would ever concern me.
Chapter Thirty
The believers may live in a safe state of denial but I didn’t care, they were no threat to me at all. The real monsters were the Dominus. These beings were nothing more the rabid animals. They were the bad guys and I needed to hang on tight to that thought, before the Hunt whistle blew and I found myself teetering on the line, confused as to where my loyalties lay, with human or monster.
It didn’t take much for me to remember why I hated the Dominus. The hard part was trying to remember why I thought Akia was somehow different. I mean, didn’t he have the power to protest the Hunt? It wouldn’t do any good, since this was an event for the Vampires too, but he could have tried; he could have avoided the Hunt himself. But no, instead he was here somewhere, just as excited as the rest of them to get started. I was so tempted to take the ring off my finger, just to feel him one last time and if it wasn’t for the fact that I was still hoping that he would never find me again, I would have tossed the ring aside.
Death would be nothing compared to the thought of the look on his faced when he realized I was a stupid rodent as he always called my species. But I wasn’t stupid. My main concern at this point was achieving a clear mind and so I brushed away the thoughts of removing the piece of metal from my finger and I let stubbornness fuel my will to survive.
What I had to do next was going to be one of the most difficult things that I have ever done in my life. I had to open my eyes and I had to look around and let every detail of the situation I was in sink in, even though I knew that sights around me would burn a terrible memory, and leave a hideous mark in my mind. But I knew as a s
oldier that acknowledging how bad it really was might be the key difference between living and dying.
I had never led a sheltered life and I was a stronger person for it. I needed once and for all to accept the fact that nearly all the people sharing this space with me were going to be dead and lost very soon. That was the cruel plain fact and if that wasn’t enough to scare me into fighting for my life, then maybe I would be better off closing my eyes and laying down now.
It wasn't enough for the Vampires or the Dominus to just kill the humans, it was more important for them to play mind games, to crush them and destroy them mentally. They wanted to find the ones that were the hardest; the ones couldn’t be broken quickly. The unbreakable people would be among the first ones they looked for. It wouldn’t be much of a power trip for the Vamps if they were reduced to ripping apart people that had already lain down to die.
The Vampires stormed through the crowd and focused on the prey, searching through the tragic masses, looking for the ones that they saw as the best sport. These were the ones that they would come back to later. It would have done no good to try to physically hurt them in an attempt to break their will, instead the focused on the strong one’s families. They laughed in the faces of their crying children, whispered to them promises of pain and slow death. I watched a baby ripped from the arms of its mother and torn in half by two Vampires, just so they could taunt the young mother, watching as she crumbled to the ground a screaming crying crawling mess, uselessly gathering bloody bits and pieces of her of her butchered child.
That was one of the less cruel acts that I witnessed. What kind of monster could do the things they were doing to these children? If there were no children close by to hurt, then they chose the elderly. Nothing stops a self-proclaimed bad-ass human quicker than being forced to watch his or her parents being beaten to death or stripped of their clothing and defiled by the Vampires. It was all about mental terror with these beasts and they were well practiced at their art.
I decided soon after the blood of another torn apart infant splattered on my cheeks, that I had to retreat to the place where I went cold. I had seen all that I needed to see to make this real and right now, I needed to get to the place where I go numb and where nothing could get to me because if any of this became any more real, it might break me.
I had given myself just enough of a shock to fully comprehend how serious and brutal this was and now it was time to change tactics. It was time to take a cue from Jace and pretend that this was nothing more than a movie on a screen. If I didn’t, I would be on the ground crying with the young girl whose child’s warm blood was still dripping down my cheeks.
If the images of death and the sounds of what was happening around me weren’t enough to make me lose my mind, than the fact that I was using every ounce of strength I had to stop myself from licking the baby’s splattered blood from my lips should have been. It smelled so sweet, so forbidden, and I would have given just about anything to allow myself just one quick little lick. The urge to taste the dead child’s blood was all consuming. As my hungry tongue hovered at the corner of my mouth, I wondered what I was and what I was becoming.
Chapter Thirty-One
There are things the mind isn't supposed to see, and your body knows this. It knows that there are things that can completely break you, destroying you from the inside out. That is why your body shuts itself down; to save you from what happens when you experience things like I was seeing. I felt the switch flip. I wasn’t there anymore. I wasn’t standing so close to the screaming woman that was crawling and begging that I could feel her breath on my legs, instead I was outside myself completely. She wasn’t real and I didn’t care a thing about her. Her pleads and her tears meant nothing now, because this mother was nothing more than a well-rehearsed actress on a screen playing out her part.
When the crawling mother failed to obey the Vampire’s orders and stop screaming, her life was ended. For a brief second I was glad when one of the Dominus finally slew her. She had been starting to irritate the cold part of me with her incessant screams for help.
“Nothing like a little pre-hunt appetizer,” a burly Vamp said. A primal part of me felt a smirk of agreement fighting to cross my lips.
I had never felt emptier in my life. I felt wild, untamed and unrecognizable. I could kill right now and I would relish it. It was surreal. I knew I was standing there; the ground was hard beneath my feet. I could feel the warmth of Jace's hand in mine but other than that, I was completely and totally detached from the situation at hand.
It was detachment that sustained me. I needed to feel separate and separated from the world around me if there was going to be any chance of getting out of this alive. I was used to being both the hunted and the hunter, something that hardly any of these people had ever experienced. It was not me that was going to lie down and die.
The adrenaline was already pumping through my veins. I knew the feeling all too well. It was the same adrenaline high that I get when I am flirting with one of the demons. It’s what makes me work harder to earn the pure rush I experience when I get them to follow me to bed, just before I take their lives forever. An adrenaline rush is enough to fuel anything.
The fire burning inside of me was a fitting compliment to my cold detachment. For a second I stood ready to attack them. I was ready to play their little game, I didn’t care; I wanted to die trying to hurt them. If I died trying, at least they would remember me.
Then I heard it, the wretched low-pitched sound, the steady whistle that meant the Hunt was starting. My every thought shattered and dissolved and fell by the wayside. It was hunt and be hunted time and I realized that my instincts were taking over. My body got into in motion. I knew what it was like to fight to live. It’s what I’d done my entire life. The other humans were lost. They were not prepared for battle.
Most didn't move, most didn’t even struggle, most just gave up. A few strained to cover their children to prevent them from seeing what was coming. Others just sat down, so beaten, so broken or so scared, whatever the reason, they just sat down and waited to be ripped apart, praying for the nightmare to be over. It crossed my mind that maybe the seated ones were the true believers. Maybe they were the ones that believed that through their immanent death they would pay for their sins and be welcomed into the open arms of the God that loved them.
I wanted to scream at them to move. I wanted to make them see that there was a small chance that they could get away. I wanted to tell them to fight for this life because they knew it. As bad as this world was, it was my home and I knew my way through it. Death on the other hand was unknown to me and it frightened me. I would take the horribly known over the no way of being sure unknown any day. I wanted to make these humans move, I wanted to wake them up, but I didn't have the time or the power to break them free from whatever wretched trance held them transfixed awaiting their slaughter.
I tore myself away and made a mental note to forget about these fools, and threw myself back into cold mode. My eyes scanned frantically for anything, anything that might help me escape. It was night, pitch black. It had to be night so the Vampires could enjoy the Hunt, but there were stars in the sky and a few street lights burning which made it possible for the spectators to see what was going on. Somehow there had to be a way to get lost among the 25,000 souls that were about to be butchered. I knew for a fact that we would be chased into woods that were easily five miles across; five long miles before the first sign of civilization appeared again, too much of a distance to hold out much hope. But maybe, there was a chance. Maybe somewhere in those five miles there would be one little place where we could hide unnoticed. All I had to do was find that one little place. Easy, right?
There were also spectators to the slaughter and they were human. These were the humans that were lucky enough not to have to be the prey this time around. The ones lucky enough to be safe on the other side of the fence; of course that meant being lucky enough to watch people that they loved die a horrible
death. This was more mind torture from the Vampires. The sobbing and wailing from those watching just added to the monster’s joy and excitement.
“We have to move now Cat.” I had forgotten that handsome Jace was still with me, standing at my side with ragged breath, barely maintaining his self-control.
“Let’s go!” I said and I pulled him into the darkness.
He didn’t question me at all; he just followed my lead, letting me take charge. It was a complete 180 from the night before. I trusted him and he trusted me, we made a true team. I ran with him hand in hand for what felt like forever. The screams were drifting further and further away, the horrid shrieks were ebbing. I made myself believe that it was because we were getting away and not because so many people were dying and their screaming turned to silence.
“Quick, in here!” Jace whispered, and he jerked me so hard in the opposite direction from where I was going that I stumbled and fell.
I didn’t have time to think about standing up because before I regained my balance, he had hoisted me over his shoulder and carried me to the mouth of a tiny little cave he had somehow spotted. He was stronger than I thought, and he moved effortlessly with me on top of his shoulders. He pushed me toward the opening and we both crawled in and huddled close.
“If we stay in here, maybe they will forget us.” There was hope in his voice again.
“Yeah but if they don’t forget us then we are cornered and we will never get out.”
“Cat, why do you always have to think about the negative things?”
He had a point but I wasn’t trying to be negative. I was trying to help him understand that just maybe this cave wasn’t the best idea, that if we just looked harder, that maybe we could find somewhere better to hide.
“Look at me Kitty Cat. Now!” Wow, there was that demanding tone again, the tone that made me want to obey him.