Solstice (or, a part of it)

          My head ached like someone had hit me with a sledgehammer. I felt so beat up that I couldn’t even bring myself to moan in my pain. My body felt so heavy that I couldn’t even open my eyelids to see where the heck I was. What had happened? I felt like I had been hit by some stray bolt of lightning. I wondered if I had been drugged, seeing how I felt as if I couldn’t move.

          I was on the ground, and the ground was cold and uncomfortable and smelled vaguely of death. My eyes were still not open and my ears were ringing so that sound could not reach my brain to be processed, but I tried to use my other senses to determine where I was. The floor beneath my cheek was cold and smooth like marble, so I must have been inside somewhere. The air was icy− like someone had blasted the AC until it had reached its limit− and the smell of it was slightly nauseating, stale and stuffy− but it was not still. There were other people here, I could sense their presence.   

         When my ears reconnected with my brain I heard them cackling, laughing triumphantly because they had caught me, and they had taken me without anybody noticing. They found it amusing that I was lying helplessly on the ground like a rug on the floor that people stepped over. They were evil; I could hear it in their echoing laughs as they rung through my ears. I hadn’t even seen their ugly faces yet and I already hated their slimy guts.    

         Slowly, my body became lighter and lighter until I found I could move my toes again. I opened my eyes and lifted my upper body off the ground, testing my strength. They had stopped cackling, and the air fell silent. I counted them quickly, using my peripheral vision so that they wouldn’t see my eyes moving around in a circle. There were nine of them, surrounding me. I looked up at one of them and he grinned, baring small yellow teeth at me that looked as if they had been sharpened to look like shark teeth. He drawled in a sickening voice that was just dripping with greed: “’Ello girlie.”   

         With speed I didn’t know I had, I swung my legs around to sweep at his ankles, knocking him straight to the ground like a bowling pin. Losing no time, I jumped to my feet and leaned over him and snarled, “Hello.”

         Then they were all on me at once, grinning evilly because they would enjoy taking me down even more than they had enjoyed kidnapping me without a fight. The man I’d knocked down jumped back up just as two of his thug-buddies tried to grab me by the arms. Yeah, because seven against one was such a fair fight− not that this crew was all about fairness…

         I punched one of the guys who had tried to grab me in the ear, hoping that I’d used enough force to shake his puny brain. Someone grabbed me by both arms and held me back, but as more approached I kicked up high enough to break someone’s jaw, using the person who grabbed me from behind as support as I kicked. Then I threw myself forward, and the person who had grabbed me came tumbling off my back and over my head. I quickly regained myself in time to throw an uppercut that near missed its mark. Someone grabbed my hair and yanked hard enough to nearly pull half my scalp off and I yelped (and hated myself for showing any sign of pain) and turned to see who had me. I sank my teeth into the arm of the person who had grabbed my hair and they screamed in fury and let go as more thugs rushed at me. 

          Someone got me in the ribs and I heard a crack! as I let out a horrible gasp and suppressed a scream of pain. I raked my attacker across the face with my nails, strongly wishing in that moment that I was the Wolverine from X-Men; then she’d be sorry. My left arm was snatched and dislocated in a second and I screamed angrily and tried to fight back with my right alone. I had a right hook anyway.   

         But right hook or not, I knew I couldn’t go on for much longer. I had always known I couldn’t win this battle; the numbers weren’t in my favor. I just wasn’t going to go down without a fight. I tried to kick a woman-thug in the ribs but she deflected my attack. Not good. Someone caught me in the jaw and I felt something in my mouth break and began to taste something very similar to iron. I was held by my arms and I struggled willfully as they shoved me to my knees. One of the people holding me by the arm and shoulder twisted the arm that was not dislocated to try and get me to stop struggling. Someone kicked me in the back and I lurched forward. I spat blood and a piece of a broken tooth onto the marble floor.    

         They cackled at the sight of me on my knees, spitting teeth and blood. I was done for. Of all my near-death experiences in the past couple of months, this was the one that scared me the most, although I tried my hardest not to show it. It was the night of the Solstice− the longest day of my life, and it was about to end, here and now.

         “Enough,” said a lovely and chilling voice, and the cackling group around me fell silent. I blinked. What now? Those in front of me slowly stepped backwards, and those holding me gripped me more firmly, straightening me up. I glared at them first, and then slowly turned my head for what the thugs had cleared up for me to see.

         And there she sat on her crumbling throne, like the queen she believed herself to be. Her head tilted delicately to the side as her cold black eyes fell on me. Her long and wavy raven black hair fell with the side favored by the tilt of her head. Her skin was as white as freshly fallen snow and her lips were as red as rubies in the sun. Suddenly I felt my fear dissipate as the air turned to ice around us, and anger and hatred rose like a deadly cloud of smoke inside my chest, taking the place of Fear. I opened my mouth with the intention of cursing her name, but instead I heard my mouth hatefully whisper: “Traitor."

         She smiled icily and her dark eyes flickered to someone behind me, and then that person reached over my shoulder, holding the point of a dagger to my chest. My hate was preeminent over my fear of death. My hate was preeminent over everything. It always had been; that was why I had always tried my hardest not to hate. I kept my eyes on Her, and I lifted my chin.