surrender to darkness

by E. M. Moore

  Without saying anything, Zeke walked up to us. He took the bag gloves from his hands and threw them to the ground before stretching his legs out. He sucked in a breath as he did so. Soren moved to my right until we stood in a makeshift circle. T.J. wheeled a little closer before Soren eyed all of us. “No need to say how imperative it is that we win this fight. We all know what’s at stake. Dumont will send in a vampire named Clive. He’s plus 100 in years, so needless to say he’s been training a very long time. He’s not as big as Diesel or as strong, but he’s tricky. He takes pride in doing the exact opposite of what you think he’s going to do. The best way to fight him is to not think. Work on instinct. If you know what you’re going to do ahead of time, guaranteed he also knows, and on top of that, he’ll know exactly how to counter.”

  T.J. stretched his legs out in front of him, his face contorting in pain as he worked the kinks out of his injured legs. When he placed them back on the foot plates, he looked up at Zeke. “I agree with Soren’s assessment. I don’t know Clive personally, but from what I’ve been told of his fighting method, we agreed on the correct way to move forward with your fight strategy. Keep seeking centerline. You see a muscle twitch to the right, you block that side. You see a muscle twitch to the left, block that side or go with the open target on the right. Don’t get stuck in any fight patterns. Don’t favor any punches or kicks. He’ll spot it right away and make you pay. The best plan is not to have a plan.”

  Zeke put his hands on his hips. “So, there’s no plan?” He bobbed his head up and down, a momentary scowl crossing his features. Honestly, I couldn’t tell if he was angry or being himself. It could’ve just been his normal, better-than-you attitude. “Is he fast?”

  Soren shifted his stance. “Not particularly. Honestly, he’s an average fighter. It’s the way he fights, it’s so unconventional that fighters don’t know how to fight him, automatically making him very dangerous. He sneaks up on you. He doesn’t do what you think he’s going to do, he does the exact opposite. He’ll tie you up, he’ll wear you down. He’s not going to give you a second chance. Because of this, he might be the most dangerous fighter we’ve had to face yet.” Zeke scuffed the ground with his foot as he held his side, and Soren quickly added, “That’s not to say he can’t be defeated. He can. I’ve defeated him myself many times in training. I just had to keep the knowledge in my head to do the exact opposite of what I would normally do. He’s especially difficult to win against when he knows your fighting style. You have the advantage in this case. He’s never seen you fight before, he doesn’t even know you. Watch him, though, because he will try to pick up your nuances from the get-go. You may want to reverse the tables on him and come out in a completely different way than you normally fight. For instance, if you prefer right lead, you might want to go out in traditional left stance. To throw him off even more, you may want to go out there and just stand in front of him. Don’t give him anything to go off of.” He mimicked an indifferent stance, feet shoulder-width apart and arms crossed over his chest. “Don’t move until he makes you move because he will be studying you from the moment he sees you. He’s really good at narrowing down the type of fighter you are.”

  Zeke shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Whatever he gives me, I’m going to take him down. I’m not worried.”

  I gnashed my teeth together. He wasn’t worried? That was asinine. Lex and Samuel had just died fighting fighters as good as this guy was. I wished he’d wake up and realize how serious this was. Yes, he showed up to train here every day like the rest of us, but his cocky attitude was going to get the better of him. I needed him to be the best he’s ever been right now. This fight was what would determine this clan’s future. He needed to take this seriously. And yes, I realized it didn’t make any sense to get mad at him because he wasn’t going to fight anyway, but this was ridiculous. I was glad I’d made the decision to fight instead of him. Who knew what would happen if he was the fighter going in? “Zeke,” I couldn’t help myself from saying. “You know how important this is, right?”

  He sneered at me. “No, I’ve been living under a rock for the past couple weeks. Of course I know how important this is. You do realize that you don’t have to be here, right?”

  “Knock it off,” T.J. said. “Both of you. This isn’t the time to bring your petty little Fort bullshit up. It all comes down to this fight. If we don’t win this one, it’s over. Kiss your cushy little future jobs and your competition about who’ll graduate number one at The Fort goodbye. If we lose and Dumont’s in charge, we won’t have any of that. This is where you really need to buckle down and fight for what you believe in. This isn’t just for the clan as a whole, but it’s for the way you want to live, Zeke. Realize that if you lose this fight, you will not have the life you’ve always sought available to you anymore. You thought Ariana was going to take that away from you? No, in the grand scheme of things, it’s going to be Dumont. You can take your nice job with some rich vampire family and watch it disappear. We’re all going to be nomads. He won’t let us regroup, start our own government and live together again. And if we decide to stay here, he’s going to squash us and squash us until we wish we weren’t alive, anyway. If anything, knowing that should be more than enough reason to fight with everything you’ve got, Zeke.”

  I peeked at T.J., my eyebrows raised. I agreed 100% with everything he said, I just didn’t realize he had it in him to say it like that.

  “Now, let’s get back to work. Ariana, I want you to do sneak attacks on Zeke. Zeke, turn toward that wall and Ariana will come at you with whatever attack she wants, and you’ll just have to sense it and deal with it. Do whatever comes naturally, just make sure you win.” When Zeke turned, T.J. mouthed at me, ‘Give him hell.’

  I intended to. Only waiting a second after that, I ran toward him, only deciding at the last second how I was going to approach him. This was going to be oddly familiar in a few hours when I put my plan into motion.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  We stopped for a short break, so I made my way into Stephan’s triage tent. I’d been worried about him ever since Lex’s fight. Out of all my princes, he didn’t take the sometimes brutal nature of what we did all that well. These fights took a toll on gentle heart. Also, there was the little thing about him knocking me out that I needed to talk to him about. Isabelle told me it was her idea, but that didn’t mean he should be shoving syringes into my body.

  His back faced me when I entered the room. He straightened a little, just enough to let me know he’d sensed I was there, but he still didn’t turn. He arranged medical instruments and small brown bottles on a tray in front of him. I walked up to him and put a hand on the small of his back. “Hey.”

  He looked over his shoulder at me with shining emerald eyes. His face looked bleak, a clear canvas in which he didn’t know how to feel. “Hey.”

  I bumped him with my hip. “You all right?”

  He snickered a little, but it lacked feeling. “You’re asking me if I’m alright? I should be asking you that.”

  He fiddled with one of the bottles in front of him. I cocked my head toward it and grinned. “Is that what you used to knock me out yesterday?” I meant to say it as a joke, but I couldn’t help the sting it caused from leaking its way into my words. Even the smile plastered on my face didn’t help.

  He looked down, stopping his nervous gesture with the small vial. Putting his hands behind his back, he stepped away from me. “I didn’t mean to give you that much. Isabelle was in my ear telling me we needed to take you away. I think she was worried Dumont might do something to you after you ran into the arena. You were inconsolable, so I gave you more than I thought was necessary to make sure you wouldn’t fight it.”

  Sounded like he’d actually thought it through. I knew what it meant to make a decision the other person would hate even though it was for the best. “I’m not mad,” I reassured him. “I know you’d never do anything to hurt me, Stephan. You are the sweetest creature I’ve ever met. S
ometimes I think you wouldn’t even hurt a fly.”

  He put his arms around me and held me to him. I felt so safe and secure there in the crook of his neck. I wound my arms around him and hugged him tight.

  “It doesn’t mean I can’t be sorry.”

  “No, I suppose it doesn’t. But there’s really no reason to be.” I picked my head up and stared him in the eyes. “But you didn’t answer my question. Is this what you used on me?” I picked the vial up and smiled at him teasingly. “It was powerful stuff.”

  He nodded. “Yes. We use it on patients who need to settle down. I used it on T.J….after.” He looked away. “I didn’t get a chance to use it on Samuel or Lex.”

  I swallowed as bile rose up in my throat. When this was over, Stephan was going to realize why I asked him this. I’d lied and betrayed him. Not to mention that he was just as upset at the events of the last few days as I was. It bothered him that he couldn’t save everyone. “I know,” I told him, eager to comfort him. “But you would have. You would’ve been the first person there if there’d been anything to do. This will be a win tonight, so you’ll get a chance to use your miracle cream on someone else.”

  He lifted his eyebrows.. “How can you be so sure?”

  “I have faith.” I shrugged. “I have faith that I wasn’t brought here for it all to end so early. You feel that way too, don’t you? You should have faith, Stephan. Everything will work out in the end.”

  A nurse came in, and I stepped back quickly. Stephan stepped in front of me to answer her question while I used his preoccupation to grab the vial of medicine and the syringe off the tray in front of us. I slipped the two things into my pocket, finally initiating my plot to take Zeke out. The plan formed after Zeke punched the exact spot Stephan had slid the needle into my arm during training earlier. Good thing Stephan had knocked me out yesterday or I wouldn’t have thought of a semi decent way to take Zeke out for a few hours. Well, a way that didn’t resolve to bashing him upside the head.

  My pocket felt heavy with the promises and the fear of what was to come. My stomach turned to knots. I was really going to go through with this. I was going to shove this into Zeke, wait until he fell asleep, then go out there and fight for my clan—all without telling the princes a thing.

  I took a deep breath and held it in my chest. I hoped they didn’t stay too mad at me after all this. If it all worked out the way I thought it would, I could promise them I’d never put my life in danger willingly again. We just had to get through the next couple hours. The next fight. The next win. Once they saw me defeat Dumont’s man, they’d have to forgive me.

  “Hey,” Stephan said, smoothing a hand down my arm. “Where’d you go?”

  I blinked and looked at him. I’d been stuck in my own thoughts for who knew how long. I gazed behind him and noticed the nurse was gone. It was just us again. Shrugging, I said, “Not sure. I’ve been doing that a lot lately, I guess.” I stared up at him, taking in every ounce of his soft features mixed with those demanding green eyes. “You know how much I love you, right, Stephan?”

  His forehead wrinkled, then he stepped forward and cupped my cheek in his palm. “You are my everything.” He tilted his head down and put his forehead on mine. “I can’t wait for this to be over. I want to start living again, not having to wait for people to die. I want to save people, I don’t want to sit helplessly by as another person loses their life. I want this over with no matter what the outcome. I’d rather we win and stay here, but—” He looked around, then lowered his voice, bringing his lips to my ear where they brushed over the sensitive skin, bringing tingles to my body. “Even if it’s somewhere else, at least we’ll all be together without the threats. We pretty much have everything we need to live long happy lives together. You and Nicolai can protect us, I can heal us, Christian can tell us what to do, and Connor…well, I don’t know what Connor can do.”

  I snickered, then sealed my lips shut. “We need a cook.”

  He shook his head. “Connor’s not a good cook.”

  I laughed. “No, I just mean that we need to eat. Who’s going to feed us?”

  “You don’t think there are pizza shops in Australia?”

  I stood on my tiptoes and kissed the corner of his lips. “I hope there are good ones.”

  “We’ll make do. All that matters is that we’re all there—safe.”

  God, what was I going to do to him? I swallowed, and stepped forward, sealing my lips to his. I closed my eyes and lost myself in kissing him. He pulled me close, wrapping his long arms around me, encapsulating me in his embrace. I huddled there willingly, tilting my head back so he could kiss me more thoroughly. Stephan, always with his attention to detail, left me breathless with my heart skipping through its normal rhythm.

  He urged my lips apart, making the kiss more intimate. Pulling me in and making me lose myself. I reached out to thread my fingers through the short hairs at the base of his neck when both our cell phones went off. Both of us sighed, pulling away slowly. He interlaced his fingers with mine then brought them up to his face to kiss my knuckles. “You know what that’s going to be about, don’t you?”

  I hid the panic that shot through me. “Leaving?”

  He nodded. “It’s Nicolai. He’s getting antsy.”

  “You don’t…you don’t want to leave?” I asked, my mouth drying at the idea of leaving all this behind.

  He looked at me warily. “I want to be wherever you are, but I also don’t want to leave unnecessarily. I’m of use here, Ariana. I’m hardly of use anywhere. I can’t fight as well as Nic and Christian. I’m okay with computers, but not like Connor. Healing is the only way I’ve been able to contribute, and I just keep asking myself who’s going to do it if someone gets hurt tonight and I’m not here. Not to mention that I basically prepared…” He trailed off, shaking his head.

  “What?” I urged

  “I prepared Lex’s body for her funeral. I know it’s not directly helping. It’s not fighting for our safety for instance, but it’s what I can do.”

  I squeezed his fingers. “Are you kidding me, Stephan? You do so much. You should never feel lesser than because you’re not out there trying to kill someone. What you do is far more important. You pick people up after they’ve gone through hell. Have you seen T.J. lately? I bet he wouldn’t be able to help half as much in the training rooms if it weren’t for you. You healed him. You gave him a better life in a quicker amount of time. If it weren’t for you, he might still be in a hospital bed. You should never apologize for giving life instead of taking it away.”

  “I know. I love what I do, I just—” He shrugged. “—can’t help but think I’d be more helpful right now if I knew how to kick some vampire ass.”

  I smirked. “Not that Gregor would let you fight, anyway. So, it’s a moot point. I, for one, am so proud of you. Always have been.”

  Our phones beeped again, and Stephan sighed deeply as if it came up through his toes. Actually, scratch that. It was as if he were a tree and the sigh originated from his deepest root, firmly planted in the ground.

  “I’ll handle it. I told him.” I took out my cell phone and sure enough, Nic was texting in our group text. They were waiting in my room, ready for a meeting. I relayed the information to Stephan and added, “We could just not go…

  “As tempting as that is, I would be furious with us if we were them.”

  “Alright,” I said dejectedly. I popped up on my toes again and kissed him on the cheek. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Stephan and I walked leisurely through the estate and then up the stairs. As soon as we crested the top stair, we saw Connor leaning against the doorjamb. He yelled back over his shoulder, “Told you they were together.”

  Stephan shoved his brother’s shoulder playfully as we went into the room. Nicolai and Christian immediately stood from their positions on the bed and came closer. Nic didn’t pull any punches. “I want to leave now.”

  A dizzy spell prodded at my head. We all w
eren’t on the same page, especially me. It wasn’t time. “I think we still have a chance. Zeke—”

  “You don’t even like Zeke,” Nic said, taking away whatever I was going to say.

  “So? That doesn’t mean I don’t want him to win.” I swallowed the bitter taste of the lie. “He’s our last chance. And if he does, we can’t just leave your father here alone. It’s a bad idea. It sends the wrong message. It’s…” I ran out of things to say, but implored him with my eyes. I really, really didn’t want to duck and run on this one. Even if I didn’t have another scheme in place, I wouldn’t have wanted to leave the clan early. “I spoke to your father earlier. He understands why we all want to leave. He’s asking us to conceal it as long as possible. I don’t think we should go just yet.”

  “You told Gregor?” Christian asked, his eyebrows coming to peaks. “Why would you do that?”

  I blew out a breath. “I don’t know. He was being really understanding. He told me he understood why we wanted to leave and then told me how hard it was to be both leader and father. He wants us to be as far away from here as possible in case anything happens, but at the same time, knows how it’s going to look to the rest of the clan, us retreating with our tails between our legs.”

  “We’re not running,” Nicolai said, the veins in his arms popping out now. “We made a plan that was best for all of us.”

  We made a plan? I remember barely being involved. Not that I had a leg to stand on about that gripe. “Last time we spoke we all agreed to think about it. I’ve thought about it and I don’t want to leave yet. It doesn’t seem like the right time. Stephan agrees.”

  Nic glared at his brother. “We talked about this.”

  “Don’t give him a hard time.”

  Stephan put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry, Ariana, Nic and I have already been over and over this. He knows my feelings, he just thinks he can will me into taking his side. It’s not going to work.”