“Andrei!” I screamed. I couldn’t see if he heard because I was too busy trying to stay out of the way of other arrows. Somebody landed on my platform. I glanced down and cursed. Meryl lifted her head and gave me a menacing smile. She started to climb up behind me.
Was this bitch kidding?
I tamped down the rage and focused on getting to the top. My hand was just within reach of the orb when fingers latched on to my foot. I had just enough time to hug the pole before Meryl yanked. My jeans ripped. My shoulder popped like it had come out of its socket.
I drew my free leg back. With every ounce of strength I had, I slammed my foot into Meryl’s face. Above all the noise in the arena, I heard the crack of bone. She screamed and let go of me, clutching at her face.
Ignoring all the aches in my body, I pushed up. My palm touched on the orb. A beam of light whipped from the orb. It was followed by another until there were hundreds of them. They braided together in the air to form a glowing silver bridge that anchored itself in the sand.
“Andrei!” I called out again. “Run!”
His head snapped up. He looked at me like I was insane. “What the hell are you waiting for?” I snapped.
“There’s a damned gaping hole in the way!” he shouted back.
“What are you talking about? There’s a bridge!”
By now the others on the platforms had figured it out too. “Max!” Sophie shouted. We were out of time. Max would run through a fiery chasm while being shot at with silver bullets to get to Sophie.
Andrei and I had zero trust between us. We weren’t friends. Heck, we were barely even enemies. That had been the point of this game.
Sensing that harming me wouldn’t win her daughter this challenge, Meryl leaped off my platform. Moments later, another bloodcurdling scream filtered through the air. My gut clenched. As did the rest of my body.
When Max burst into a run, Andrei shot out and slugged him in the side of the head. The shifter when sprawling into the water. Okay, he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but Andrei was good at playing dirty.
We didn’t have time for this. “You got me into this mess,” I shouted at him. “A metre to your left and start bloody running!”
Maybe it was the steel in my voice. Or the fact that Meryl called out to Chanelle. This time he didn’t hesitate. Even though he stepped wide, the bridge compensated and allowed him to run across it. He reached my platform in three seconds flat. A column of grey light shot up to the sky around us.
“First,” Angus’s voice called out.
I let out a heavy sigh thinking it was over. And then Cassie screamed.
45
Andrei held me back just as I was about to jump. “We can’t help her!”
I rammed my knee into his gut. He let out a soft grunt and let go. I jumped over two platforms with my heart in my throat. The mage who was trying to rip Cassie from where she sat on her pole was the size of a fricken bear. Sweat made two dark patches under his armpits. He was dripping moisture from his brow and nose. I slipped on some of it as I hit the platform. My cut palm landed in some more. Great. Now I would have to get some kind of magical tetanus shot.
The guy barely moved when I tried to shove him aside. I was hot and sweaty all over. My side was bleeding. There was no strength left in me.
The beast-mage ripped his arm back. He was going to club me across the head. Andrei appeared behind him. With a distinctly bored expression on his face, Andrei grabbed the mage by the scruff of his neck and pushed him over the side of the platform.
“Go!” I screamed at Cassie. She scrambled her way to the top and smacked the green orb. I couldn’t see the bridge that materialized, but Kai was already halfway across it when Andrei wrapped his arm around my waist and dragged me away.
Kai was the second-last to finish. Andrei almost killed himself laughing at the black look in Kai’s eyes.
When the final contestant, Barbara in this case, reached her platform, the mirage dissolved around us. A green field took its place. In front of me, a portal opened.
“Not this again,” I muttered. Andrei yanked me through it. I brushed him off as we landed back on the amphitheatre stage. Waiting in the wings was the Fae boy who had first disappeared. The girl who Meryl had dispatched stood beside him. She was wrapped in a towel, but other than that, she seemed unharmed.
I didn’t know it, but I must have made a sound. “You gotta be tougher than that in this game,” Andrei told me. I dug my finger into his rib.
“Don’t even speak to me right now!” I hissed at him while the others came though the portal. “We are not friends.”
He showed me his fangs. “Of course not. I wouldn’t know what to do with a friend.”
I wanted to slap him so badly. I would have if Jacqueline hadn’t come back on stage. Only the contestants were here. A scan of the crowd showed me Sophie and Cassie safely back in their seats.
“There you have it, ladies and gentlemen,” Jacqueline said. “Your sixteen contestants for this year’s Unity Games.”
The crowd got on their feet and applauded. I wanted to roll over and throw up. My side was throbbing something fierce. The way Sophie was clutching at her shoulder told me these injuries were real. I thought of the people who had been seriously injured. I was biting my lip and didn’t hear what Jacqueline said next. Everyone on stage and in the audience was looking at me.
“Huh?” I said. One of these days, someone was going to give me
