Chapter 262. The Competition X

Chapter 262: 262. The Competition X

Maisie

My path to the podium was blocked off as a dozen guards spread out around Quinlan and I, surrounding us in a circle with various arms pointed at us.

My back hit Quinlan’s as I tried to figure out moving without getting shot in the head.

"Step aside, Chastain," Ryder said, not bothering with a weapon as he crossed the distance.

Quinlan’s eyes moved once across the field, counting bodies, exits, angles. I felt the tension in his back, the restraint in the hand that kept me tucked behind him. "Lay a single finger on her, and I’ll have your head hanging off a fucking spike."

Ryder let out a raspy chuckle. "You’re both deeply fucked. Outnumbered. If you didn’t want your little plaything getting hurt, you should’ve kept a leash on her. This was out of your control the second she attempted to murder the Queen."

Quinlan’s head turned just enough to look at me over his shoulder. His face was stricken with pure disbelief. "What did you do?"

I swallowed. "I can explain."

His brows climbed higher up his forehead and I added, "But there are more pressing matters at hand. We need to--"

A loud boom came from above us and silence fell over the stadium as every head snapped up.

The lights flickered once before steadying--

Boom.

The impact shook the entire stadium and startled gasps and cries filled the air. All of the amusement was gone from Ryder’s face, and I vaguely noticed Bastian in my peripheral as the guards took a step back, their weapons rising for the high ceilings as the lights sputtered again.

And died.

Darkness swallowed the entire stadium and the sound of the heavy pelting of ice against the roof was as loud as the dreadful silence that followed.

"Everybody remain calm," I heard Atlas’s voice echo. "This is only a temporary outage--"

Boom.

I heard the stark fear in my voice as I whispered, "It’s too late. They’re already here."

Something--multiple things--shrieked. The chorus of it was so horrendous that it seemed to split the world open. And as if it weren’t enough, a thunderous roar followed.

I felt Quinlan’s hand close over my waist in the small heartbeat before the world above us detonated.

For a moment, everything moved in slow motion. And I saw it all come apart. The roof breaking off, concrete and scaffoldings falling. Heard the screams that mingled with the boom of the explosion and the fire that ravaged the skies.

I saw blue flames, so cold, it burned everything in its path. I saw scales. I saw sharp, innumerable teeth and I saw a long, spiked tail the size of a small courtyard.

It coiled through the air like a whip before lashing sideways, and pillar and stone exploded at the strike.

I barely had time to understand just what I was looking at before one of the pillars broke free.

It came hurtling toward us with impossible speed and I stood, frozen to the spot, unable to move or think. My eyes hadn’t left the creature spitting fire.

If any of the book I’d read, any of the movies I’d seen depicted them correctly, I was staring at a... Oh gods.

Fear creeped up my spine, paralyzing me. Perhaps it was because I knew there was no running. Neither could there be a fight.

How did one kill a dragon? How did one kill a creature that scorched and turned everything in its path to ash?

I didn’t know the answer to that question, and I knew no one else in this hall did.

We were all going to die.

"Maisie, go!" Quinlan snarled at me, and I felt his hand slam against my chest at the last second before the pillar hit.

My eyes widened as my feet left the ground. "No!" I cried, stretching my fingers to grab a hold of him, but I couldn’t.

He’d shoved me. Hard. The force launched me in the opposite direction. I crashed across the hall, landing on my injured arm.

White hot pain shot up shoulder, but I barely felt it. My eyes were wide with horror as the pillar slammed into Quinlan, and that god-awful sound of bones cracking echoed in my ears.

Quinlan’s body jerked across the hall like a rah doll and my scream tore through me. "QUINLAN!"

He pitched into the wreckage and a thick cloud of dust and smoke erupted from the distance, swallowing everything whole.

"No," I cried, staggering to my feet, half-stumbling, half-running. "QUINLAN!"

My injured shoulder screamed, swinging oddly at my side, and I clutched my wrist as I tore across the hall, following the scent of his blood.

Goddess please.

Around me, the stadium had become a nightmare.

Students were running. Some screamed as they shoved through the exits. Others clutched their friends as they stumbled through the smoke. Bodies collided. People fell. Others stepped over them without stopping.

There were just as many bodies on the floors as there were running. The smell of blood was so thick, it clogged my throat.

And as if it weren’t already worse, I heard the familiar shrieks, and I made the gross mistake of looking above me.

The skies were dotted with a horde of them. The winged, grotesque creature that had attacked us in the woods beyond the school yesterday.

There were dozens of them, and they began swooping down, plucking off guards and students alike from the floors.

One dove in directly at me, its jaws yawning wider as its wings flapped with urgency. My legs burned as I ran, reaching blindly for a weapon, for anything.

But I felt the stench of hot death behind me, could feel it preparing to bite my head off, before something careened into me with the weight of a moving truck, grabbing me off the floor.

My stomach hit a broad shoulder and I grabbed onto the first thing I could--the back of a familiar embroidered jacket as we took off in the opposite direction.

"Mercer?" I rasped.

He didn’t respond. He kept running and I clutched his back as my stomach bounced hard on the rocky ride.

"We have to go back! Quinlan--"

"Will be fine," he growled. "Getting hit by a bunch of rocks isn’t enough to get us killed. Worry about yourself first--"

"And the others?"

He made an annoyed sound that vibrated along his back. "Safe, for now." A pause. "How did you know this would happen? I take it it’s the reason you interrupted the games in the first place--"

I cried out as I felt something hit the shields of my mental walls, and the sound of that ancient voice hammer against my skull.

"Running again, are you?"

And in the very next second, the wall ahead of Mercer and I exploded.

"Fuck," Mercer swore and tipped us to avoid getting eviscerated by the blast of blue flames that erupted in our direction.

He grabbed a hold of my back, holding me close to his hard body as we crashed into the debris, rolling hard across the floor.

I swallowed a cry at the jostle that went up my arm and the scrape of stones against my skin.

And when I opened my eyes, I found myself staring directly at it.

The entire front wall of the stadium had been carved away to accomodate its gigantic shape, and as the smoke cleared, it’s body became less corporeal.

Blue-black scales shimmered, its massive head rising to the dark cloud and it roared once. Then bayed. Its eyes were a swirling gold, rounded by a fat ring of blue, slanted through the center with a black line.

It’s talons dug into the ground, and its body shuddered once, wings lowering to the ground.

Being so close to it felt like being at the North Pole. And when it exhaled, I felt my skin begin to ice over. It was freezing. And my body shook, suddenly at the verge of hypothermia.

And then, in the blink of an eye, it morphed into something else.

One second was all it took, and in its place stood a man naked as the day he was born.

Mercer stood in front of me as he walked towards us, his steps wrong wrong at first as his legs and feet shrunk into the size of a man’s.

Then his walk evened out into something majestic.

Smoke rolled off his skin with each step he took, and I watched, in fear. In awe.

He had black hair so long, it teased his calves. His ears were pointed. His skin was pale and thin. His limbs were unnaturally long and graceful. His eyes didn’t change. They were still the colour of fire and sea. His chin was pointed, and if his groin and smooth chest weren’t right in my face, I would have thought him to be a woman.

He was beautiful enough to be mistaken for one.

"I’ve been looking for you," he said, and his voice came from every direction. It was both beautiful, as it was terrible melody I wished never to hear again. "We have unfinished business, little Thorne."