Лиза Смит: Bloodlust

Callie knew. Callie knew, and she had decided that this would be my fate. I again clenched my jaw, ready to fight, ready to give the audience the show it was looking for. Suddenly, I found myself being led around the ring by Jasper, giving the audience one final chance to scrutinize my strength before raising their stakes. I could hear snatches of conversation from all sides of the tent:

That one’s got an inch on the other. I’m swapping sides.

How’d your old lady like one of those for your anniversary?

I wonder how they’d do against a real lion.

A man dressed in clerical robes stood next to Gallagher, raising his frocked arms to quiet the crowd. I recognized him as the snake charmer from the sideshow.

“May all good light shine upon this fight and return the loser’s soul to the cleansing fires of hell!” he yelled, causing the tent to erupt in a cacophony of noise. A whistle blew, and the fight was on.

Damon circled toward me, his stance low to the ground, like when we were kids and practiced boxing. I imitated his stance.

“Blood!” one drunken man yelled, practically hanging over the railing of the ring.

“Blood! Blood! Blood!” The entire tent seemed to be cheering. Damon and I continued to circle each other.

“ Let’s not do this ,” I said. “Let’s refuse. What can they do?”

“ We’re beyond that, brother ,” Damon said. “The two of us can’t survive in the same world.”

Anger seeped into my limbs from the center of my being. Why couldn’t we? And why couldn’t Damon forgive me? I no longer thought he was haunted by the memory of Katherine. Instead, I believed he was haunted by me . Not who I was, but who he thought I was—a monster who killed without fear or awareness of consequence. How dare he not even recognize the lengths I’d gone to to try to make him happy, to try to save him? I swung, connecting with Damon’s cheek. Blood spurted under his eye, and the crowd roared.

Damon wound up and swung back, hitting me on my shoulder and knocking me down to the ground.

“ Why did you do that? ” Damon hissed, baring his teeth to the delight of the crowd.

“ Because you wanted it ,” I hissed back, baring my own teeth, then flipped him over into a headlock.

He freed himself quickly and returned to his corner. We stood at opposite sides of the ring, staring at each other, both confused, angry, alone.

“Fight!” the crowd roared again. Gallagher glared at us, unsure what to do. He snapped his fingers, and Jasper and Buck ran toward us with stakes, determined to force us to fight each other. They prodded us until our bodies were only inches apart and both of our fists were raised, when a huge, echoing, booming crack that sounded like the sky splitting in two echoed from above. A cold wind whipped around us, causing a cloud of sawdust and debris to rise at our feet. I smelled smoke.

“Fire!” a panicked voice yelled.

I looked around wildly. Part of the tent was on fire, and people were running in all directions.

“Come on !”

I felt hands shoving my shoulders. Callie. My eyes opened wide in surprise. “ Go, go, go! ” Callie yelled, pushing me. She held an axe in her hand, and slowly I began piecing together what had happened. Had she actually cut down the supports of the tent structure, then set the fire?

“Move!” Callie pushed me one more time. She was surprisingly strong for a human, and after a few seconds of stupidly standing and blinking in place, I grabbed Damon by the wrist, and we ran, past the tents, away from the river, faster and faster, heading toward my home.

Damon and I ran at vampire speed through the streets of New Orleans. Unlike when we first arrived and Damon lagged reluctantly behind me, we ran side by side, the adobe and brick houses blurring past us like melting wax.

Something had shifted between us in that arena, I felt it in my very being. Something had changed in Damon’s eyes as he’d regarded me and refused to attack, even as the crowd jeered on. I wondered how the match would have ended had the tent not gone up in flames—would we have taken the humans one by one, or would one Salvatore brother have ended up dead and bloodied on the dusty floor?

The image of the Mystic Falls church blazing like an oversize torch sprang to my mind. The town had burned down the church and the vampires trapped within it the night our father killed us—and the vampire Damon had loved.

But Damon and I were still here, like phoenixes rising from the ashes of the vampires who came before us. Perhaps out of the fire of this circus in our new home city, a new kinship between us would spring to life—like the new life that arose in prairies after the previous year’s crops had been burned to the level of the soil.

Damon and I continued to run, our feet slapping against the cobblestones in perfect unison, down the back alleys and streets I’d learned so well in my few weeks of living here. But as we rounded the corner onto Dauphine, the same street where Lexi had taken me shopping, I stopped short. Affixed to the window of the tailor’s shop was a crude drawing of me and Damon, our fangs bared, both of us crouched low. The fight of the century, the posters read. I wondered if Callie had drawn them. Probably.

Damon leaned in close, examining the poster. “That drawing makes you look a bit stocky, brother. Might be time to lay off the barmaids.”

“Ha, ha,” I said dryly, looking around. Shouts sounded behind us, in the direction of the circus. We had a good head start, but if Callie had distributed these posters as widely as we had the posters for Damon, then we wouldn’t be safe until we were inside.

The spindly spire of a church rose in the distance—the church that was kitty-corner to Lexi’s place.

“Come on!” I pushed Damon in the direction of the church, and we didn’t talk until we reached the rickety white house.

“This is where you live?” Damon’s lip curled as his eyes flicked up from the sagging, whitewashed porch to the dark windows.

“Well, I understand that it may not measure up to your standards, but we all must make sacrifices every now and again,” I said sarcastically as I led him to the back door.

The door swung open, allowing a triangular slice of light to pour out over the dark backyard.

I put my hands up as Lexi appeared in the doorway. “I know you said no visitors, but—”

“Come in. Quickly!” she said, locking the door the second we crossed the threshold. In the main room, candles were burning, and Buxton, Hugo, and Percy were all perched on the chairs and couches, as if they were in the middle of a meeting.

“You must be Damon.” Lexi nodded to him slightly. “Welcome to our home.” I was aware of Damon watching her, and wondered what he saw.

“Yes, ma’am,” Damon said with an easy grin. “And I’m afraid that during our time in captivity, my brother somehow failed to mention you and your”—his eyes flicked over Percy and Buxton—“family.”

Percy bristled and half-rose from his seat, but Lexi put up a hand to stop him. “I’m Lexi. And as Stefan is your brother, my home is your home.”

“We escaped,” I started to explain.

Lexi nodded. “I know. Buxton was there.”

“You were?” I whirled around in surprise. “Were you betting for me or against me?” Damon let out a little snort.

Lexi laid a hand on my forearm. “Be nice. He was there to help you.”

My eyes widened. “You were going to help me?”

Buxton leaned back in his chair. “I was. But then someone had the bright idea to burn down the whole place, so I left.” He crossed his arms over his chest, looking pleased at himself for being part of the action.

“It was Callie. She lit the fire,” I said.