My heart panged painfully at the thought of Callie’s betrayal. The image of her flame-red hair and gleaming eyes floated to my mind constantly, inflaming my anger—and hurt—over and over. I curled my fists. If only I’d listened to Lexi. If only I hadn’t let a human in.
My only goal for the battle was that, if I should die, I would die with my eyes closed, instead of searching the crowd for her face.
“Let’s go, boys!” Gallagher called out, pushing open the door as if he were rousing two children for a bright and early hike. He wore a black waistcoat and a brand-new gold watch that glinted in the weak sunlight. He snapped his fingers, and instantly the guards jumped to their feet, bustling to put on the makeshift uniform of a vampire handler: gloves, boots, and vervain-soaked garlands.
The door of the cage flew open, and guards roughly yanked us out, tightened muzzles around our fangs, and shackled our hands behind our backs. We were blindfolded, then marched out of the attic and into the back of a black iron wagon. The wagon took off, bumpily heading down to the lake.
When we arrived at the tent, we were marched in opposite directions.
“Boo!”
“Freak!” I heard the sideshow acts hiss as I was marched through the backstage area. I tightened my jaw. I wondered if Lexi wondered where I was, if she thought I was already dead.
Though I was still blindfolded, I knew every inch of this tent. To the left was the tattooed woman, and to the right was Caroline, the bearded lady. The floor dipped down, and I knew I was in the arena.
I felt something grab my arm. “I’ve told a lot of people about what a crafty one you are. But don’t try too hard for my benefit, Mr. Salvatore. My money is on your brother,” Jasper whispered gleefully.
Finally, the blindfold was removed from my eyes. The tent was lit up like it was midday, and all the stands were crammed with people. At the center of the ring, Gallagher had set up a betting pool, where people frantically waved bills in the air. Organ music filled the tent, and the air smelled like candied apples and rum punch.
And then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw her.
Callie was weaving through the stands, and behind her was Buck, carrying a tin box. Her hair was plaited with vervain stems, and her face was pale. She’d obviously been dispatched to collect bets in the stand. She was certainly her father’s daughter, and she fulfilled her duties well.
She did not look at me once.
I tore my gaze away from her and forced it over to Damon on the opposite side of the ring. Damon had always been a good fighter, and his recent bouts had only strengthened him. If Damon wanted to kill me, he would.
Moreover, I would let him. I owed him that much.
Jasper struck the starting bell, and the crowd hushed. Gallagher stood up from his post in the betting pit and boomed:
“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to another fine evening of sport made possible by yours truly, Patrick Gallagher. Only days ago, we brought you the first-ever fight between a vampire and a mountain lion. Tonight, we bring you the first-ever fight between two vampires, including the winner of that previous match. And not only that,” he said, dropping his voice and causing the crowd to hush and lean forward, “these two monsters are brothers. They came from the same womb, and now one of them will be heading straight to hell.”
A rock hit me in the back of the head, and I whirled around. Vervain was everywhere, causing the sea of faces to blend together in a nightmarish collage of eyes, noses, and open mouths.
“ Brother, I’m sorry for anything I’ve done. Please. If we die, let’s not die in anger. We’re all we have ,” I whispered, clenching my jaw and trying, one last time, to reach Damon. Damon looked up for a split second and jerked his head, but his expression was unreadable. In the center of the ring, Gallagher was still commanding the audience’s attention.
“The book will be open for another five minutes for final bets. But!—” He raised his hand in the air, attempting to silence the crowd. The noise in the tent dulled, if only slightly. “Stay after the show, when we’ll be selling the loser’s blood. Even a dead vampire’s blood has healing powers. Cures all ailments. Even ones in the bedroom.” Gallagher winked showily. The crowd catcalled and cheered. I stiffened, wondering whether the crowd thought this was all an act: that we were down-on-our-luck actors and that the blood Gallagher sold after the show would be some type of cherry cordial. Did anyone know that all the blood would be real, that the fallen loser in the center of the ring wouldn’t be standing up and heading home once the tent was emptied?
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.