Chapter 20

beep...beep...beep...beep...beep...beep

I could feel that I was laying on a bed and that I was slightly nauseous. Not a great start. I opened my eyes and blinked as I adjusted to the light. Immediately I met that dark stare of the man lounging on the bed across the room from me. I would have jumped but the air felt heavy and my body was dazed as if my blood had turned to warm soup. Instead I just looked back. My neck and shoulder was too heavily bandaged for me to turn my head in any other direction. 

It was Victor on the bad across from me but he didn't seem to be wounded at all, just relaxing and patiently studying me. Like he was waiting for something from me. I dropped my gaze to my arms where tubes of various liquids fed into my arms. That might explain the hazy feeling over my body and brain. My mouth was dry and I cleared my throat.

"Been waiting long?" I asked. He shrugged as of if he couldn't be quite sure of the difference between a long period of time and a short one.

"The combat challenge was two days ago."

The combat challenge! I had forgotten about that. What had happened? I tried to turn my head as far as it could go to see who was laying in the beds beside me. I spotted Dani sleeping to my left with her leg all wrapped up and elevated and a platinum blonde woman to my right that I hadn't met before with bandages over one side of her face. She looked back at me and gave me a pained smile. 

"He's just been sitting there waiting for you to wake up all day." she said. Creep. I couldn't see Trina anywhere in the long medical room, had she won my spot? 

"Trina," I said turning back to the vampire, "did she win?"

A smile graces his thin pale lips for the first time.

"You killed her." 

Shit. The mother Luna specifically asked me not to do that. I scrunched my eyes closed as hard as I could trying to make it not be true. I opened them again and saw Victor had his own blood bag and IV that he was casually drinking out of like it was a straw. Disgusting, I wish he wouldn't do that while he was sitting in the only direction I could comfortably look. I think I'm going to be sick. I closed my eyes again and tried to steady my breathing. 

"Quit it, she's already been through enough," I heard a voice scold from my right. The vampire king ignored her. I heard long footsteps cross the room and a hand with all the warmth and softeness of a concrete floor slip behind my back and lift me into a sitting position. I peaked open my eyes to see him holding a glass of water to my lips. I complied taking careful sips.

"You shouldn't be so disturbed. I saw you taste plenty of blood yourself two days ago."

I pulled away from the glass of water to meet his eyes. 

"I didn't meant to-I didn't think-" but I could find any excuse for what I had done. A little pink had returned to Victors lips from his latest snack and I could almost imagine I was looking up at the stoney face of a human if maybe not a very healthy one. His dark eyes seemed to absorb all the light from the room and they were a bit sunken with darkness around them that a regular person would credit to lack of sleep. He had a long angular nose and a thin dark mustache and goatee. My eyes traveled down his porcelain neck unmarred by any vampire bites like I half expected and to the collar of his velvet shirt where his strait black hair ended. He's a corpse I had to remind myself pulling away from his touch. 

"I'll go get the nurse to untangle you from this mess." he said looking hungrily at the tubes that kept me tied to the bed. I nodded and turned to the woman beside me the moment that doors closed. 

"Why is here?" I whispered. 

"I don't know, he always seems to be where you are. Freaks me out a little bit, which is why we haven't officially met. I'm Sylvia."

"Elma," I said, "I didn't see your fight."

"I won it. But not before she could leave me with this," she gestured at the bandages on her face.

"Did you-Did you," I could hardly force out the question I so badly wanted to ask. I can't be the only one.

"No, I didn't kill anyone. My opponent was already patched up and sent home to recover the rest of the way."

I nodded. I guess the couldn't send Dani home to recover on the account of her leg. 

"Jules?" 

"Another victory."

I smiled in relief, but cringed at the idea that I might have been the only one to actually killed someone.

"Along with Pepper and Petunia," she continued.

I think I might have seen them around before, both solid color wolves. 

At that moment the nurse entered to unplug me. 

"Thanks" I mumbled as she took all the tubes out of me and I stood and stretched my legs. 

"You should go get some rest and eat lots of iron. You lost a lot of blood," she advised. I couldn't wait to get to my own bed even though the walk to my cabin seemed like a perilous endeavor. I gave Dani a sympathetic glance. I'd be back to visit her soon, but I didn't want to wake her up now. One step at a time I stumbled out of the medical room and towards the kitchens.