High-pitched, frightening howls woke up the Arena that night. Thousands of paws shook the ground, made the leaves vibrate and the animals run away. The high moon illuminated with its reflections dark and elongated silhouettes, scorpion tails, wolf jaws. They were nightmares in the flesh.
Jendy opened her eyes wide, almost falling out of the tree. Her ears perked up. Silence reigned again. Then a scream tore through the Jendy heard them approaching.
"Lyssa" she whispered terrified "Lyssa wake up.
Her friend wearily opened her eyes. At that moment a second scream shook the forest. Effie's niece sprang up and sat up.
"They are coming here" she murmured, looking at her ally for help. But Jendy was paralyzed.
"Jendy we have to do something" Lyssa said shaking her "we have to..." she interrupted herself.
The pack was approaching. They were close. There were so many of them. But what were they really?
One of the creatures howled for several seconds. Jendy and Lyssa plugged their ears.
"Don't move a muscle," Lyssa whispered. The sentence crystallized in the air. A second later the girls fell out of the tree. Cinna's niece took a few minutes to realize what was happening before she started running senselessly at breakneck speed, her backpack slung over her shoulders. Her ally was beside her, out of breath as well, and the beasts continued to follow her. Two cannon shots made her gasp.
Someone had died very slow.
The dress was dark red, like blood, full of glittering stones.
The forest thickened. But which way were they running? Wasn't there supposed to be a ravine?
Uncle was sewing patiently, carefully. The aunt was not far away, also working.
There were stones and stones and stones, dammit! And they didn't seem to scratch the creatures' race in the slightest.
Cinna lifted her eyes to admire her work and met Jendy's. he smiled at her. he brushed the red fabric to show it to her.
Jendy felt strange for a moment. Time slowed down. Then a hiss came over her.
"Do you like it?" Cinna asked. Portia also looked at her niece smiling. Jendy nodded.
Both girls fell to the ground on a completely rocky ground. At one point the nightmare pack leader froze and sniffed the air.
"And for Katniss Everdeen?" asked Jendy. Cinna nodded in reply. The little girl took a closer look at the dress, fascinated. "Nice dress, uncle" she added.
"Jendy" Lyssa called her in a whisper "Jendy they're leaving-. But the ally paid no attention to her. She was looking at the dark red spot spreading on her shoulder.
"Nice dress uncle" she murmured, then fainted.
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An annoyingly petulant mechanical voice had woken them up. They had climbed out of their beds and stood in front of their televisions with their hearts in their throats. And they had witnessed the carnage: two tributes too naive to climb trees to sleep had been torn apart by horrors they had never seen. Everyone else was running around the arena in a panic. And Effie couldn't say no less. But Lyssa and Jendy were not being shown. Where were they? Away, from those monsters or also in excruciating pain that they would later show?
"They're fine, they're fine, they're fine, they're strong" she repeated in her mind like a litany " They can't do this, they can't kill them like this, they're not monsters like Snow, it's all fake, it's all fake"
But then Cinna cried out; Jendy had slumped to the ground as she was bleeding profusely and Lyssa screaming in despair, crying, trying todab at her wound.
Effie turned on her side and vomite.
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"Make them stop!" Annie shouted, covering her face. Beetee's hands were shaking. Peeta was huddled in a corner while Katniss tried to calm him down. Haymitch was white in the face. Johanna was still asleep in her room, but she certainly wouldn't have had a better reaction the next day. That scene was too much for even the most vengeance-hungry. Enobaria, on the other hand, stared into the void, her fist clenched.
"Please, Beetee, stop it, send them away, make them stop" whimpered Annie, moaning as if they were beating her.
But there was nothing the inventor could do. He hadn't been warned about that sudden change of schedule.
"Beetee please..." whimpered Peeta.
"I can't..." the man's voice was breathy "I can't... I can't do anything".
Annie burst into tears. Then the screen went blank. Haymitch was standing beside it.
"This is too much " he said "We... we didn't vote for this.
Beetee looked at him. But he didn't understand how he wanted to look at him either. Only that the sentence had disturbed him.
"And what did you vote for?" he asked weakly "How would you like to see children die?
"Faster" the man answered with a lump in his throat. Then he turned away from the television.
Peeta stood up and walked out of the room, followed by Katniss who gave an indecipherable look to her former mentor. They probably understood each other.
Silence fell in the room.
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Clarisse had seen death in the face twice before that night. The first was when she had nearly crashed to the ground at age five because she had slipped off the balcony. Instead, she had dangled from the railing, paralyzed with terror, for ten minutes before they pulled her off. The second time was when the rebels had taken Capitol City and invaded the presidential palace. There were gunshots, screams, explosions, windows smashing and then a soldier grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and dragged her away, his rifle pointed at the back of her head.
But this third encounter with death was the most peculiar. Because he had a hideous body, two pairs of red eyes on his snout, and he was staring at her. In fact, he could smell her.
"You will not leave the Arena alive," she had been told. And that promise had become flesh and bone or whatever the creature was made of. A nightmare created to kill her. Like reptiles for Katniss Everdeen. Clarisse wondered for a moment if it wasn't the Mockingjay herself who had given her that creature. The monster took a step toward her, and Clarisse on the rebound crouched further into its hollow trunk. Then the beast drew back and ran away.
Clarisse sighed evilly. Death gave off an ugly stench.