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I USHERED DRAX OUT of my room shortly after our conversation. I was less worried about somebody seeing him coming out of my room and more worried about what incoherent babble might come out of my mouth the longer that he stayed. I was still mourning my loss of hatred for all vampires, but I made myself feel better by directing it toward the vampires that I actually knew were shitty- the three governors.
I finally climbed out of my dress and into my bed. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't stop thinking about what Drax had showed me in the vision and the monster that his father was. Thinking about it made me even more grateful that I had been blessed with a dad who loved me. Even though he was gone I was grateful to have had him in my light.
I let out a long sigh and rolled over. I wondered what my father would have thought about everything going on in the world today. What he would have said when I got picked. I knew one thing, he always told me to do my best at whatever I wanted to do. Even when it came to school projects. If I didn't want to do the work? Fine. But I had to own up to the grade that I got and do whatever I could in my power to balance it out. The more I realized that if he was there he would have given me the same advice.
Johnson's don't do anything halfway Scarlett. He would say. You're either all in, or all out.
As I drifted off to sleep dreaming of his cologne I decided that was the final straw. I was all in.
***
I WAS WOKEN UP BY A soft knock on my door in the middle of the night. Luckily I was the world's lightest sleeper because it was so faint that I was sure even the vampires wouldn't have been able to hear it.
I opened the door to see Vinny with a smile on his face. "You opened the door! I'm assuming that means that you've decided to grab this thing by the balls." He smiled.
"Definitely not the words I would have used, but if you mean am I ready to go all in, then yes." I rubbed at my eyes sleepily, threw on a light jacket and followed him out the door.
I let out a yawn as we walked down the hallway and toward the training gym that Veda had showed me earlier.
"Yeah, the lack of sleep is going to be the hardest part about all of this for you kid." Vinny said as he held open the door to the training arena for me. "Train at night and mingle during the day. It sounds a lot easier than it's actually going to be."
Lucky me.
I stepped inside to the large room and the motion sensored lights turned on. The room itself was about as big as a basketball court, and four concrete walls framed it. On each wall hung a plethora of weapons, shields, and swords. I'd never seen anything like it in my life. Inside the room there were sparring areas, a boxing ring, treadmills, and weights. It was like an athlete’s paradise. I probably would have been more impressed if I was actually even the slightest bit academically inclined, but it all just looked like a foreign world to me.
"So, tell me your strengths." Vinny said, locking the door to the arena behind him.
"Uhh-" I stared at him blankly.
"Okay, tell me your weaknesses." Vinny sighed.
"Uhh-"
"Okay. Tell me your name. Do you at least know that much about yourself?"
I rolled my eyes and Vinny smiled.
"I'm serious kid. You have seven days to prepare yourself for the shit that's about to come your way. Seven days to brace yourself for the trauma you're about to go through. And seven days to determine whether or not you're going to make it out of this mess alive. Do you hear me? This isn't just some high school track meet training. This is some Roman Coliseum type shit. What happens in this room over the next week is what's going to determine whether you get killed or do the killing."
His words shook me to my core. He was right. I guess it just hadn't fully dawned on me that I was going to actually be in the Vampire Trials. A to the death battle. At some point I was going to have to kill somebody, at least once but probably a lot more times if I wanted to live.
Did I have that in me? Did I want to?
"Hey, kid snap out of it. I see that look in your eye, don't go down the rabbit hole. You could battle yourself over this all day if you let it, so it's best if you just don't think about it for as long as you can. Okay? We'll start small."
I nodded. He sounded like he knew what he was talking about, like he was talking from experience.
"We'll just have to start from scratch and see what we're working with. It's going to be a long night."
We started on the treadmill, which is where we found out that I had the cardiac endurance of a hundred-year-old hospice patient.
"Really? Not even a mile?" Vinny taunted shocked.
I dismissed him with a wave, panting as I did. I was surprisingly more out of shape than I'd thought, which was already extremely out of shape.
Then we went to the boxing ring to test hand to hand combat. We slipped on the boxing gloves and Vinny took a few jabs at me. I surprisingly was able to dodge them completely but when it started getting to my head I slowed down to smile and took a jab directly to the face. My legs folded in on me and I spiraled to the ground.
"That actually wasn't half bad. We'll count it as a strong point for you."
"Yipee." I said from the floor coddling my nose.
Then we moved to the weapons testing, which was arguably my favorite part of our entire training endeavor. There were so many weapons that I didn't even know where to begin, but I looked up at them with a glint in my eye and Vinny caught on to it.
When I was younger I was a tomboy and went through a weird weapons phase. Totally normal, right?
Looking up at the astounding wall brought back nostalgic feelings of a simpler time. When both my parents were alive and the world looked big and wonderful, instead of small and scary. I reached up and pulled a samurai sword from the wall. It was a lot lighter than I thought it would have been.
"Oh, we're going right for the kill. Okay." Vinny smiled. He tossed me a protective suit and pulled a matching sword from the wall. I barely got the suit on when he took a swipe at me with his sword, which I barely dodged.
"What the hell! I wasn't even ready!" I yelled.
"Oh, I'm sorry. Be sure to tell your opponents in the trials that you're ready to they know when it's okay to start their attacks. Okay?"
"That's different." I groaned.
"No. It isn't. You need to learn to always be on your toes. Always expect an attack. Always be on your best. Some of these people are snaky, and even the ones that aren't will be singing a different tune when the trumpet goes off and they realize that it's suddenly everyone for themselves. The only person that can keep you alive is you. Remember that."
I raised my sword and took a half hazard swipe at him, which he dodged sending me spinning in a circle. My frustration grew and it made me even sloppier than I already was. I straightened out and took another swipe at him. This time he dodged it so fast that it sent me stumbling forward and he stopped me with his blade just inches from my neck.
"Dead. Again."
I was getting really sick of training, fast too. "All this is doing is showing me all the reasons why I'm probably going to die." I threw the sword to the side and huffed. "You don't think I don't already know that I'm a hot mess with absolutely no survival skills? I do! I might as well be another pretty face, it seemed like I was at least good at that."
Exhausted I plopped myself down to sit on the treadmill. Vinny crouched beside me and I averted my eyes to the wall. I didn't want to look at him. I could feel the motivational speech coming on, and right then all I wanted to do was wallow. I thought I'd earned at least a few minutes of wallowing.
"Look at me kid."
Here it comes.
"You know what inspired me to become a trials trainer?"
"Something inspirational I bet." I mumbled quietly.
"My son was summoned five years ago. On his 18th birthday actually. Just old enough to be put in the running and the unlucky bastard got summoned. He was the scrawny brown kid in school. He had asthma and glasses and he was picked on constantly. He wanted to drop out and just get a job but I wouldn't let him. When he got summoned I begged them to let me volunteer to take his place. I made every call, I wrote every letter, but they wouldn't. He survived four years of high school hell just to be killed in the first round of the trials. For nothing." Tears filled up Vinny's eyes and threatened to spill out onto his cheeks but he didn't care. It was nice to see a guy so buff and fit and masculine not shutter at the first sign of actual emotions.
"He was the underdog, but no one believed in him. His trainer did a half ass job of preparing him, and he had no idea what he was getting into. We didn't even get his body back for a funeral. It was then that I decided that when the next trials came along that I would adopt the underdog. The little guy. The person that no one thought in a million years would take the trials by storm. Little did I know that it would be a girl."
"Do you think I can? Take the trials by storm?" I asked.
"I think you got a shot. You got people out there to fight for, okay? Don't throw your towel in just yet. Promise?" Vinny's accent was thick.
"Yeah. I promise."
Vinny held his fist out and I bumped it with mine. He slid his to the side and pointed his elbow at me.
"It was our secret handshake, but I'll let you borrow it. okay?"
I touched my elbow to his and smiled.
"You're going to be singing a different tune when I kick your ass in this next sword fight." I smirked before throwing my gear back on and grabbing my sword.
We sparred, ran, and trained for three more hours before calling it quits. We said our goodbyes and headed our separate ways down the hall. Every inch of my muscles ached and screamed and I was drenched from head to toe in sweat. All I wanted to do was slip into the bath and catch as much sleep as I could before the days press conferences. It made my stomach turn that the trials were televised. That families were forced to watch as their loved ones were slaughtered. But it made me feel even worse that I had to get glammed up, slide into a skimpy outfit, and pretend to be the Scar that the other contenders had come to know. What I wanted to do was get on camera and yell Fuck the trials but that would have gotten me anywhere.
I was so lost in my thoughts that I hadn't even noticed that I passed my door. The house looked different in the dark and I lost my way. I back tracked and finally located the clean white door and walked in. The lights were off but I didn't care. At that point all I wanted to do was get out of my sweat soaked clothes and get into the steaming hot bath that I'd started.
I peeled my clothes off layer by layer and my eyes started to adjust to the room. Something seemed a little off about the placements of the furniture but I was tired so I didn't give it much attention and slid into the warm bath.
I let out a soft moan and let my muscles melt into the warmth.
Suddenly the light flicked on and I was temporary blinded.
"What? Who's there?" My eyes slowly crept open and my jaw dropped. In front of me stood Colt, one of the governors’ twin sons. He was completely naked from head to toe and I couldn't pull my eyes from his manhood that hung eyelevel.
"I could be asking you the same thing darling." He smiled.