Galdoni (26 page)

“
You kill the innocent for
your lies,” I shouted up at the Arena dome. “Are you happy now with
your pocketbooks padded in blood money?” I turned to the Galdoni
around me. “And you! Curse you for fighting for
their
pleasure. We are not animals,
yet you persist in acting like blood-thirsty beasts because
they
tell you to. You
have a right to live your own lives, but you have to believe that
you are better than how they see you.”

I threw the knife at the pillar next to
Blade; it sunk to the hilt in the red sandstone. The Galdoni around
me had waited quietly in respect to David. Now, to my surprise,
they dropped their weapons. One Galdoni pulled the knife from the
pillar and used it to cut away his own mask. He then handed it to
his companion, who did the same. The other Galdoni passed the knife
around, dropping their masks to the ground beside mine. Only Blade
met my eyes and turned his still-masked face away, his head held
high.

When the last Galdoni had removed his mask,
I held out my hand for the knife. I used it to gently cut the
bindings on David’s mask. I gripped the cooling metal in my hands
for a moment, then hurled it with all my strength across the
Arena.

“
He is not an animal. None
of us are animals!” I shouted up at the dome. “And none of us
deserve to die like this.” I tore off my armor and threw it after
the mask.

A grating sound heralded armed guards that
streamed from openings in the Arena floor. The Galdoni backed up at
the sight of spears and whips. I crouched over David’s body as the
guards surrounded me, lowering their spears threateningly.

I wouldn’t kill them, but I would do
whatever I could to make them pay for David’s life. I motioned with
my left hand; a strange, fierce, primal joy filled me at the
anticipation of the fight. I flexed my wings with a snap and
grinned wildly. “Bring it.”

The guards stepped closer. One on the left
stabbed at my side.

I spun, narrowly avoiding the point, and
pulled the handle with me so that the guard fell forward. I chopped
him in the throat with my fist and he fell to the sand. I spun,
spear held handle-out, and parried four more spears thrust my way.
I knocked their points down and to the left, then brought the
handle back with enough force to crack all four of them across the
face. They staggered as I spun to the right.

The point of the spear cut into my left
hand, but the pain focused my strength and I held it tighter. I
ducked under one spear, then knocked away a second and cracked the
holder on the nose with the butt of my spear. A blade tore through
my shoulder and I turned. I tore the spear away from the guard,
then drove the butt of my own into his stomach. He doubled over in
pain. I elbowed him in the back and he fell to the ground.

Another spear cut across my back. I arched
backward with agony as a second guard forced a spear into my side.
I turned toward him, driving my spear down behind his ear. The
sound of it connecting with his skull echoed against the pillars as
he fell to the ground. Another stab in the thigh drove me to my
knees. My spear was yanked from my hands.

“
Stop!” a voice shouted. My
mind reeled with the pain, trying to place the voice within the
Academy.

Someone kicked me and I fell to the side. My
hands found the head of a spear embedded in the sand. I grabbed it
and rose in a crouch. Two guards stabbed at me and I knocked their
spears away, but the effort and loss of blood caught up to me. I
fell forward onto my hands and knees and coughed. The motion tore
through my ribs with agony. I tasted blood.

“
Drop your weapons,” the
voice commanded. “You’re surrounded.”

A movement caught my eye and I turned my
head. Armed humans dressed in black dropped from the ceiling on
ropes and streamed across the Arena floor. They pointed guns at the
guards surrounding me. The leader met my gaze with a relieved
expression, then his eyes widened. He opened his mouth to shout,
but something cracked against the back of my skull. I fell forward
into the sand. Ringing filled my ears as darkness stole my vision.
I felt vaguely grateful for the relief to my light sensitive
eyes.

Chapter Twenty

Urgent voices and sterile scents beat down
on me. I opened my eyes to see blinding lights checker past. I shut
them again and felt the rush of air as I was pushed down a hallway.
Something beeped near my head. A plastic mask had been fitted over
my mouth; my lungs burned as I fought to pull in enough oxygen.
Someone held my hand. I forced my eyes open again, turning my head
to avoid the blinding lights. Several forms hurried along each side
of me. I tightened my hand. The person closest to me leaned
down.

“
Kale?”

My heart slowed at Brie’s voice. I tried to
talk, but couldn’t get the words out. Tears blurred my clouded
vision.

“
Kale, can you hear me?”
Her words sounded distant as though she shouted them across a huge,
empty room. They echoed in my head as unconsciousness stole me away
again.

***

It was harder to push through the dark this
time. It clung to my hands and feet; fingers of shadow caressed my
cheeks, urging me to stay in the comfortable unknown. Steady beeps
sounded in the distance, reminding me of something I had to do.
With regret, I pushed past the darkness and pulled myself toward
the light.

Pain. Before I opened my eyes, pain tore
through my chest and raced down my arms and legs, awakening every
wound. It was a different kind of pain than I had ever experienced
before. This pain was weakening, desperate, the kind of pain that
forces the soul back to the blackness and rest beyond.

But I don’t have a
soul
, I reminded myself grimly. The pain
let up only slightly, but it was enough. I forced my eyes to
open.

An oxygen tube had replaced the mask, and
the cool air rushed against my nose. I breathed in shallowly, aware
of the deeper pain of my ribs and side. I took a few breaths and
tried to slow my heartbeat. It raced as though I had just finished
a fight, and it took all of my concentration for a few minutes to
bring it down to a more normal pace. The beeping slowed.

“
Doctor, is everything
okay?”

I looked toward the sound of Brie’s voice.
Tension seeped out of my body at the sight of her. She stood next
to three white-jacketed people near machines in the corner. Two of
them consulted the third who studied the machines.

“
If he was human. . . .”
The man shrugged, frustration and concern evident in his voice. “I
just don’t know.”

“
It’d be nice if we had
access to the lab records,” one of the others replied angrily.
“They have no right to keep those from us, especially given the
fact that we’re trying to save
him
. Who knows what valuable
information they could have?”

I tried to swallow, but my throat was dry.
“Their records were a little biased,” I managed to rasp out.

They all turned in surprise.

Brie ran to the side of the bed and fell to
her knees. “Kale, we thought we lost you!”

I lifted a hand to touch her cheek and was
alarmed at how hard it was to do even that. “I’m pretty hard to
kill. You know that.” I gave her a smile.

She smiled back and tears filled her eyes.
“They took you to surgery for hours, and when you were back in your
room your heart stopped. They had to use a defibrillator.” She
glanced back at the doctors who now stood behind her, their eyes on
me.

I remembered the rush of pain from my chest
and gave a slight nod. “Thank you. I felt that.”

One of the doctors laughed at the dry
sarcasm. “Better than dead.”

I shrugged, then winced at the pain that
knifed through my shoulders. “Let me know next time you try
it.”

He chuckled and turned back to the machines.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said. He tapped some numbers that
didn’t mean anything to me. “You lost so much blood that we had to
give you a transfusion. Your friend Goliath donated the blood. He
fought everyone else who offered.”

I smiled at the thought of anyone trying to
argue with the huge Galdoni. Then I remembered David. Regret filled
me. It hadn’t been enough.

Brie read my expression. “We couldn’t get in
any earlier. After showing the video, we were able to convince
everyone.”

“
The video worked?” I
asked, surprised.

She nodded and squeezed my hand. “Yes, the
video worked. People were ready to tear down the gates before it
was even over.”

I nodded and swallowed dryly.

Brie noticed and took a cup with a straw
from the nightstand. “Can he have water, Dr. Benson?”

The doctor nodded.

She gave me the straw and I drank until I
heard air gurgle at the bottom.

“
Wow, thirsty,” she
said.

We both smiled. Heaviness stole through my
body and I fought to keep my eyes open.

“
Doctor?” Brie
asked.

“
He needs to sleep,” Dr.
Benson replied. He put something in the IV. It ran with a cold
sting into my arm. “He’ll heal faster that way.”

Brie squeezed my hand. I shook my head. “I
don’t want to sleep.” I slurred the words.

“
Don’t worry,” Brie
whispered as my eyelids closed. “I’ll be here when you wake up. I’m
never leaving your side again.”

***

True to her word, Brie was there. Nikko,
Jayce, and Dr. Ray beamed down at me from behind her. I smiled
uncomfortably at the attention. “Is it too late to pretend that it
was all a dream?”

Dr. Ray smiled. “Yep. Now you’ll have to
face the tidal wave your heroics have caused.”

I met Jayce’s eyes. He gave a huge smile.
“Were you surprised it worked?” I asked him.

He laughed. “Almost as much as you, I think.
I ran in with the others at the gate, but those Galdoni were ready
to tear us apart if we so much as laid a finger on you.”

I glanced at Brie for an explanation.

“
When Jayce and Nikko
stormed the Academy, the Galdoni there rushed to the Arena. Jayce’s
group made it just before the other Galdoni broke through. Looks
like they had their own plans to stop the fight.” She grinned at
Jayce. “You could say it was a battle for who got to help take you
out of the Arena. It almost became violent.”

Nikko chuckled. “Yeah, lucky for us you had
that ‘no fight’ policy.”

“
It was more of a ‘no kill’
policy at the end there,” I amended with a slight laugh. I shifted
to find a more comfortable position. Pain knifed up my side. I
winced and settled back against the pillows that kept my weight off
my wings and the wounds down my back.

“
Well, you managed to do a
pretty good job of making your point,” Dr. Ray said. He squeezed my
hand. “Good to see you’re okay.”

Nikko looked me over critically. “I don’t
know if I would call this okay. You’re still not in the clear
yet.”

Jayce gave his trademark grin. “I don’t know
if he was ever okay in the first place.”

“
Hey,” I protested. “As I
recall, it took you a while, but I finally broke you
down.”

He nodded. “Well, you’ll have to get use to
charming your way into the hearts of the people. You’ll have a lot
of that to do when you get out of here.”

“
Jayce,” Brie said in a
warning tone. She threw me a worried look.

“
What?” I asked.

Brie glared at Jayce, then she sighed and
turned back to me. “You’re kind-of the press’ golden boy for
Galdoni rights now.”

My eyebrows rose. “How’d that happen?”

Everyone turned to Nikko and his cheeks
actually reddened. “I, uh. . . I might have changed the video a bit
with that intention in mind.”

“
A bit,” Brie
scoffed.

Intrigued and a little concerned, I asked if
I could see it, but the doctors were still worried about my heart
rate and wouldn’t let them bring in anything that might cause
excitement. My friends refused to give any details and made me wait
a few more days before the doctors pronounced me fit enough to see
it.

Chapter Twenty-one

The video opened on the picture of the tiny
Galdoni baby asleep in the white gloved hands of a lab tech. The
wings looked delicate and perfect, but they weren’t white like the
first time I had seen the picture. The wings had been altered so
they were the black-purple hue of a raven’s feathers. Their simple
beauty matched the angelic, innocent smile on the sleeping baby's
face.

The pictures then rotated to the toddler
learning to walk, the toddlers in the classroom, and the toddler
about to be whipped. Music started slowly, rising at the picture of
the whip in the air.

But then the video changed to the next
scene, and the mood of the music shifted subtly, darker tones
taking over the simple cadence of childlike innocence.

The scene showed the boy with the katana,
wings lowered and a tear on his cheek as he stared down at the
dying Galdoni boy at his feet. It, too, was different than the
first time I had seen the image. Instead of tawny wings, the
feathers had been changed to black, just as Nikko had done to the
children in the slides before. The boy’s hair had likewise been
darkened. I wondered why until the video showed the next scene of
the younger me fighting the other Galdoni. In that transition, it
looked like I had been the one in all the pictures.

My heart slowed as several more images I
hadn’t seen flowed through, images that were really me. I wondered
how long they had searched for them.