Vampire Academy: Final Choice

Life's A Bitch

I stared up into his red eyes and realised that this was it. I was going to die. An odd sort of calm setlled over me.  

And then he plunged my stake into my heart.  

My body arched upwards, the rush of heat from the wound flooding through me and paralysing me.

"See how you like it bitch." He hissed the words, his face only inches from mine. "You made a big mistake in Russia. You should have never tried to kill me. This is payback," he whispered maliciously in my ear as he dropped my now lifeless body onto the ground.  

I felt the impact as I hit the hard earth, but not like I normally would have. It was like I was seeing, hearing and feeling everything as if covered by a blanket. Or like I was inside a giant ball of cotton wool. I was cocooned. It was…..disconcerting… I felt a faint sort of fire around where the stake had gone into me, but I couldn't feel the pain of it anymore. I couldn't even tell if the stake was still there. I also felt like I was in a warm bath, but I knew I wasn't, unless maybe I had blacked out…? And then I realised: it wasn't a bath: I was covered in my own blood. So covered in fact, that I felt like I was drowning in it. I frantically tried to get up, but trying to move was like running through jell-o. It was impossible.  

I started to truly panic then, I couldn't see anything and I was drowning, choking on the cloying thickness of my own blood. I couldn't even move. The blood was killing me! But then I realised it wasn't that I couldn't see, it was that I couldn't open my eyes.  

Oh yeah Rose, that helps your situation so much. Not.  

But I told the sarcastic little voice inside my head to shut the fuck up, and decided to try and open my eyes.I concentrated and managed to shove through the curtain that was currently cocooning me from the outside world. Opening my eyes brought the painful awareness of reality straight back to me, and in an instant I could feel the blinding pain in my chest, the numbness of my limbs, and the cold silver of the stake inside my chest.  

It felt like a cruel joke that after I had killed so many Strigoi like this, I was now going to die the exact same way.It was very ironic.  

I looked around as I tried to pull myself up from the ground, but it looked like nothing had changed.   Well, except for one thing.  

Nathan wasn't next to me as I had assumed, instead he had a pale blonde Moroi girl in his arms, and it looked like he was in the process of ripping her throat out. So that explained why he hadn't checked to see if I was dead. For a minute I felt a small laugh come from between my lips, but then everything clicked together.  

Lissa.  

Nathan was killing Lissa.  

I grabbed an abandoned stake from the ground and threw myself forward, only just managing to stand upright before I launched myself at Nathan. He was so involved with draining Lissa that he didn't even see me coming, and I staked him again and again, until he was barely recognisable. It was then that I noticed Lissa lying on the ground next to him. I crawled over to her as quickly as I could, but it was obvious from her posture that she was dead.   

"No, no, no, not Liss….No! Liss come on…..no!"   I wiped her blood stained hair out of her face and gasped. It wasn't Lissa! I felt elated as I realised that Lissa was probably out with Christian at college, and therefore safe. But then I looked down at the Moroi girl that Nathan had just killed and felt despair that even though I didn't know her. She was dead, and the last thing she would have seen was the blood red eyes of a Strigoi. That was no way to die.   

The sadness of what was around me suddenly felt too much, and I sank to the floor, the reserves of strength I had summoned to kill Nathan with were gone, and now I was just very tired. Tired and cold. It felt like too much to stay awake, to even lift my head up, let lone keep my eyes open. And of course what was the point? The Strigoi were going to win. Why even bother fighting?   

I looked back over at the poor Moroi girl I had failed to save. She had probably had a life, a family, a best friend....and she had still died. I felt the guilt again, burning in my stomach.   I wish I could have done something, but as I had to remind myself, I'd tried. Yet looking at her pale, lifeless eyes that didn't seem to be a good enough excuse. 'I'd tried'. Had I tried hard enough? If it was Lissa lying there, would 'I'd tried' be a good enough excuse? No.   

I could feel the stake shifting in my flesh as I moved, struggaling to get to my feet again, and I had to fight the urge to throw up again. I was cold and numb now, which as my brain was telling me, was a pretty bad sign. But I also knew I couldn't pull the stake out, no matter how much I wanted to, because then I would die from blood loss.   

It didn't look very good for me.

I stumbled across the courtyard, struggling to walk around the bodies that were spread out everywhere. It was like a battlefield. I soon realised that I wouldn't make it all the way to the main entrance if I kept looking at all the dead Moroi, and dhamphirs. I was already feeling faint, and just staying upright was starting to get too much. My whole body ached, and I could feel the blackness coming, obscuring my vision at the edges. Another sign that I knew was pretty damn bad.  

And yet I still tried to keep going. But now I was starting to sway, and the feeling in my legs was retreating… All I could feel was a faint numbness, like an anesthetic starting to take root, making my whole body slow and clumsy.   Then suddenly I spotted a familiar figure.  

"Dimitri! Dimitri!" I tried to shout, but my voice was weak, and what little sound did emerge from my mouth was quickly swallowed by the screams emitting from the injured. I struggled forward, desperate for him to hear me, but he was engaged with a vicious Strigoi who seemed to be winning, as Dimitri had no stake on him. Whether he had lost it fighting before or not, I could see that he had fought other Strigoi, that much was evident from how he looked and moved.  

His clothes were covered in blood and dirt, and his jeans were ripped in several places. He also, I noticed with fear, had a long cut across his right arm, but that didn't seem to bother him, as he was fighting the woman in front of him relentlessly. But the blood coming from the wound, and the pallor of his skin made scared me, the fear growing inside of me, a black hole against the numbness.   Suddenly the Strigoi threw him to the ground, and although I saw him pushing at her, I also heard the crack as she broke one of his ribs.

"No!" It was a shout, but it came out as more of a harsh whisper. I tried to move forward, knowing that I wouldn't be able to do much, but maybe I could distract her at least, when I tripped over something. It was a body. The lurching in my stomach returned, the nausea  overwhelming me as I fell. I gasped as I hit the hard ground, and the female Strigoi looked up, giving Dimitri enough time to grab a stake lying next to him and drive it through her chest, effectively killing the bitch. Good. At least I had been some help.  

But then Dimitri started to run towards a huddle of Moroi, and I realised that while the Strigoi may have heard me, he hadn't. I pushed myself up as fast as possible, but now my movements were jerky and slow. The waves of nausea were much stronger now, and I literally had to swallow back the bile that had risen in my throat. Suddenly I coughed, and a spray of blood came out, a direct result, no doubt, of the fact that the stake was embedded further into my body than it had been before, due to my fall.  

Despite the god awful taste in my mouth though, and the feeling that I was without a doubt dying, I used the last burst of strength I had,  and I ran toward Dimitri.   "Dimitri..." It came out as a mangled whisper, my body so close to giving up the losing battle.   He stopped, and for a second I thought he was going to turn and help me, but then he just replied to me in such a cold voice that it started to dawn on me that perhaps he really didn't care.

"Rose….this is not the time. Just go."  

"No Dimitri…you don't understand." My voice was so faint now, I wasn't sure if he could hear. My vision started to cloud, and I felt consciousness leave me. But not before I heard him say, in a voice so filled with emotion that there was no doubt he meant it, "Rose…..I will never love you. Just leave me alone."   

And then everything went black.