Author Games: Underworld

Task Six: The Semi Finals - Warriors - Sebastian Drăculești [6]

The night was cold all around me, colder than it had ever been before. A nagging feeling told me that wasn't what it should be, that the fires burning all around me should have warned me up. Yet the ground was cold beneath me, and it cooled my entire body. I could hardly feel my toes, my fingers, any of my extremities really. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't muster the energy to make myself stretch back out again. There was a great irony in dying in the fetal position.

The right side of my face stuck to the mud that it had been forced against, my left hand to the oozing wound in my stomach. There was hardly a difference between the two of them anymore. The runny mud had the same consistency as blood, although, as it oozed past my lips, I noted it tasted entirely different. It was grainier too. Perhaps the greatest difference, though, was that, while the mud was as cold as the night air, the blood that seeped out of me was warm.

My arms and legs ached from the cold, my right hand slowly unfurling from around my dagger's handle. My mind screamed for me to get up, to fight and face death like a vampire, or else flee to safety like a Drăculești. The gash in my stomach, oddly, was in the least amount of pain. It was although it was done screaming, out of breath from all it had previously done. Everything inside me was screaming, save my heart, which was still beating.

Heavy footfalls shook the ground around me. Without looking up, I could tell there was a werewolf, a confident one. He, or she, was close to me, probably checking in to either ensure I was dead, or to loot my dead body. The joke was on them though; I had nothing worth stealing, and I was still alive anyway. My fangs burst through my gums of their own accord, my primal instincts kicking in. If I drank this werewolf dry, I would almost certainly live. But I needed to wait.

"Drăculești," the familiar voice of the werewolf spat. He kicked up dirt as he walked, mud splattering the other half of my face. "Many years have I waited for this moment."

"I thought Valentin had killed you," I said, my voice little more than a whisper. It was all that was necessary though, I had Luca's attention.

"If only his death could have been so noble," Luca laughed. Now my heart too was screaming. I could hardly handle the mention of my brother, much less what Luca had said. "Now, shall I kill you, or will you do the job yourself?"

*

The wind whipped past us, blowing Mother's hair out of the neat bun it had been in when she had found me. Father ran in front of us, leading the way towards our new shelter, while Valentin watched our backs. Although he appeared to be just a teenager, more arms and legs than anything else, he was probably older than the majority of the attacking werewolves.

"Faster!" Valentin shouted suddenly, dramatically increasing his pace.

Mother dropped all the clothes she had been carrying; there was no way for her to hold onto them and keep up her pace. My own legs could hardly keep up. There was no way I would be able to maintain this pace for more than a minute or two. But I had to try, right?

I couldn't focus on anything besides running at that moment. My arms swung harder than they'd ever swung before, my strides grew longer. My chest was burning, my ribcage no longer big enough for my pounding heart and lungs. I couldn't even look in front of me, or at the ground below my feet. Mother's face in my peripheral vision was my only guidance.

Her face couldn't possibly have warned me about the root that rudely stuck up out of the ground.

"Sebastian!" she shrieked, stopping to a halt at an inhuman speed. Father skidded for a moment, finally stopping once he saw that I wasn't getting up. Valentin stopped mere inches in front of me, his heels nearly touching my face.