11.
The woman strolled out of the hotel and crossed the edge of the meadow toward the dead stump.
Prim's heart was hammering so hard against her rib cage she was sure she was going to pass out. She followed the woman's progress toward the Hellmouth until her eyes were attracted to more movement around the hotel.
They came out right when the sky finally turned dark and everyone around her started laughing or screaming with excitement despite the teachers' attempts to hush them, as if they were intimately attuned to the movement of the sun. There were dozens of them. Fifty or more.
She knew they were vampires.
She knew that at once.
And not just because the three that walked ahead of the pack were in what Katniss called game face. They had yellow eyes and the female vampire who walked between the two males was dressed like some sort of Egyptian warrior queen and she looked ready to…
A hand fell on her shoulder and she startled badly but it was just the teacher who was frowning at her… "Primrose…"
"We need to leave." she blurted out.
The woman followed her gaze and her fingers gripped her shoulder tighter as if in reflex. "What…"
There was a rumble to their right and suddenly the ground started quivering… Everyone screamed for real, then, shouting about earthquakes and…
"Stay on the ground!" the teacher ordered, forgetting the mass of strange people striding toward them in the new emergency. "Don't try to stand up!"
Prim didn't like to disobey a teacher's orders but she grabbed Rory's arm, forced him up and started to drag him away.
"What's going on?" he asked her, sounding slightly panicked. The good thing about Rory though was that he would always follow her lead without question and she loved him for that.
"We need to get out of here!" She had to shout to be heard over the screams and the earth's rumbling.
They didn't make it three steps before falling down. The ground was shaking so much…
And then, suddenly, all was still.
Except, Prim saw, for the brand new deep hole right in front of the dead tree.
She was too far to see what the woman was doing but, if she had to bet, she would gamble it was nothing good.
The vampires had spread out, flanking the children to better circle them…
They had not attacked yet but…
"Shouldn't it be light again by now?" Rory asked, looking up at the sky.
It should have.
It really should have.
But either it was the Hellmouth making the eclipse last longer or it was magic or…
"Remember!" the female vampire's voice boomed out, easily carrying over the panicked screams. "Do not feed! We will kill any of you we catch drinking! They have to be bled over the Hellmouth!"
"We have to be what now?" Rory asked, helping her back to her feet.
"We… We need to run." she answered. She looked around for her bag and the weapons hidden inside but she couldn't find it and, really, what chance did she have against a vampire anyway. She grabbed the little golden cross Katniss had slipped around her neck when this whole crazy thing with vampires had started and she held it in front of her, knowing it would be a poor sort of protection.
"Run." Rory repeated as the vampires started approaching from all sides.
The others were picking up on it now. One of the teachers walked toward the female vampire, demanding they told her who they were, demanding that they take off their masks and explain themselves… The vampire snapped the man's neck as if it was nothing and the teacher crumpled on the ground.
For a moment, the silence was complete as everyone watched, shocked.
"We only want innocent blood." One of the vampire leaders reminded the others. He was wearing a set of ancient roman looking armor. "Kill the adults."
And then it was chaos.
°O°O°O°O°
The sky had turned dark and Peeta had lost sight of the bike for a few minutes already.
"Faster, Peeta." Cinna ordered calmly from the backseat.
Peeta gritted his teeth because Gale was already following him so close it wasn't safe and had made the same request a few times over the phone.
"I can't." he growled, too stressed to worry about being polite. "My foot is literally flat on the floor. The car can't go faster."
You should never dare a warlock.
That was a lesson he would remember.
Because suddenly the truck was picking up so much speed he lost sight of Gale's stolen car in the rearview mirror…
"Cinna…" he hissed. It was all he could do to keep a deadly hold on the wheel. Effie reached out to help him steer the car, to keep their course steady, but was more hindrance than anything else.
"Cinna." she snapped. "This isn't safe."
"It won't be any safer when the Hellmouth opens and we are too far away to do anything about it." the warlock retorted.
"It won't help anyone if we die getting there either!" Madge argued, clutching the edge of her seat.
That was a perfectly wise remark and Peeta would have gladly agreed with her if the Earth hadn't decided this was a perfect moment for a earthquake.
Peeta lost control of the car immediately.
It became a projectile he couldn't hope to direct.
"Hold on!" Effie shouted.
He wasn't sure what she did because he instinctively lifted his arms in front of his face to protect his head against the inevitable deadly crash. He caught a glimpse of golden hues and then the car impossibly slowed down in a chorus of steel screeches as if the truck was physically protesting whatever magic she was working.
It went against all the laws of physics and yet despite the velocity and the shifting ground, when Peeta opened his eyes, the car was stopped in the middle of the road.
He took a few seconds to realize he was still breathing, still alive, and then he unbuckled his seatbelt to check on everyone else even though it probably wasn't the safest thing to do – the earth was still rumbling and quivering. Madge was pale and hyperventilating but otherwise unhurt. Cinna… Cinna was not there anymore. Where he had been sitting, there was only empty air and Peeta worried he had somehow been ejected even though there was no broken windows when Madge licked her lips, unbuckling her own seatbelt.
"He puffed away." she said. "There was a cloud of red and then he was gone…" She kneeled on the seat to peer through the rear windshield at the dark woods behind them. "Gale… Do you see the car?"
Waiting out an earthquake in a car in the middle of the woods wasn't fun and Peeta gripped the edge of his seat, praying that the truck would hold and that no tree would fall on them.
"He teleported in his car to help, I felt it." Effie said, her voice weak. "He must have steered the car ahead instead of stopping it."
"How?" Peeta scoffed, turning toward the witch. "There's no driving in… Shit, are you okay?"
Effie was quick to wipe her nosebleed with the back of her hand but there was no hiding how pale she looked or the tremors in her fingers. "Perfectly fine. Start the car again. I will shield it as best as I can."
He shook his head. "No way. You're…"
"Start the car again, Peeta, this is not the time for a mutiny." she snapped. "If the earthquake means what I think it means, they will need us."
He was torn between what he knew deep in his guts – that Effie wasn't fine and that the last time she had pushed her magic that much she had ended in a coma – and the impossible urge to get to Katniss and make sure she was safe.
There wasn't really a choice in the end.
When it came to Katniss…
"Haymitch is so going to kill me." he muttered under his breath, clipped his seatbelt back on and turned the key.
°O°O°O°O°
Katniss was off the bike before Haymitch had even properly stopped it. She hopped off – and immediately fell flat on the ground because the Earth chose that precise moment to rumble and tremble.
"Shit!" Haymitch cursed a few feet away, struggling to put the bike flat down on its side so it wouldn't fall and either damaged itself or him.
Katniss didn't care about the bike.
She only cared about her sister.
She could see the school's busses and she could see the meadow was overrun with people and kids but she couldn't…
"Remember!" a woman's voice echoed over the distance. "Do not feed! We will kill any of you we catch drinking! They have to be bled over the Hellmouth!"
Enobaria, she thought even if she had never met the vampire before.
There were maybe fifty vampires that she could see in that meadow and they had at least three classes of kids of various ages surrounded.
She shouldered off her bow, already reaching for an arrow… Her heart was beating so hard in her chest she could barely breathe. Prim was in the middle of this. Prim was…
"Take care of the witch." Haymitch ordered, his big hand falling on her shoulder even as he unsheathed his sword with the other. "I'll get your sis."
But he wouldn't be able to. Not with so many vampires.
He was only human.
She couldn't see what was happening in the center of the crowd, she could only see the vampires circling closer and closer, but suddenly there was the telltale noise of a neck being snapped and children screaming…
And over the chaos…
"We only want innocent blood." She remembered that voice. It was Gloss'. "Kill the adults."
Her blood running cold, Katniss shrugged off Haymitch's hand and ran straight into the fray, shooting arrows as fast as she could. Vampires blew up in smoke one after the other but not enough to hope to make a difference. Not when some of them were already dragging struggling kids toward the big hole in the ground that hadn't been there the previous night.
"Prim!" she shouted, looking around, panicked. "Prim!"
"For fuck's sake, Katniss!" Haymitch screamed behind her.
She didn't know if he followed her or chose to do the right thing and take care of the witch.
She didn't care about doing the right thing.
She didn't care about stopping the end of the world.
She only cared about saving her sister.
°O°O°O°O°
Haymitch charged after her, of course.
What else could he do?
However, he knew a lost battle when he saw it and this was what he had in front of him.
They were hopelessly outnumbered. It was exactly what he hadn't wanted, exactly why he had held off on storming the Capitol… They wouldn't make it.
So the right thing to do, what his duty dictated, should be to take out the witch so this Reaping couldn't go through. Because, sure, the Hellmouth was out in the open and, sure, the eclipse was holding and, sure, there was a chance it was too late to stop the ritual but there was also a chance killing the witch now – or, at least, incapacitating her – would make it impossible for the ritual to succeed. So, yeah, that was what he should have done: go for the witch.
But the crux of the matter, the reason why he was such a bad selfish man, the reason why he had tried to leave his Watcher duties behind so many times, was that he had never been able to abandon his Slayer.
Never mind the fact that it wasn't just Katniss in there but Prim too.
So, despite the fact that it was stupid and suicidal, he charged into the fray with a war cry, beheaded a vampire on his right, cut one down on his left… Katniss was leaving a trail of dust and panicked kids running straight in the waiting arms of more vampires behind her, so he picked up the slack.
And for a human, for a seasoned demon slayer, he had a good run.
Four minutes in, he left his flank vulnerable.
The vampire was on him before he could so much as try to wield the sword or drop it for a stake...
are we in troubles? oh yes we are XD
(just a little clarification because there were a few remarks about Prim and Rory seeing all the calls and such and not answering their phones, I don't know how it works in USA clearly but in France you just don't answer your phone in the middle of class? I mean, sure people do, but it's major trouble and Prim and Rory are mostly nice kids following the rules? Prim immediately got something was amiss but why would Rory immediately think trouble?)
Ok so... Cinna is now riding with Gale. Are is that going to go? Will Effie manage to reach that fight with some magic to spare? What's up with Portia? Is Haymitch going to make it? Will Katniss find Prim? :p LET ME KNOW YOUR THOUGHTS!
Are your ready for the last two chapters to come? You better buckle up, the fight is now.
(also Akachankami gifted with an awesome fanart for this story, you can find it on her tumblr (akachankami) or mine!)