Shan, Darren - Cirque Du Freak 05 - Trials Of Death

"That's disgusting!" I shouted, torn between ghoulish laughter and moral outrage. "Why do they do it?"

"We're not sure what the appeal is," Kurda admitted, "but part of it may be that it keeps them alive longer. The average Guardian lives a hundred and sixty years or more. Of course, if they became vampires, they'd live even longer, but none do — accepting a vampire's blood is taboo as far as the Guardians are concerned."

"How can you let them do it?" I asked. "Why not send these monsters away?"

"They are not monsters," Seba disagreed. "They are people with peculiar feeding habits — much like ourselves! Besides, we drink their blood. It is a fair arrangement — our organs for their blood."

"Fairisn't the word I'd use," I muttered. "It's cannibalism!"

"Not really," Kurda objected. "They don't eat the flesh of their own, so they're not really cannibals."

"You're nitpicking," I grunted.

"It is a thin line," Seba agreed, "but thereis a difference. I would not want to be a Guardian, and I do not socialize with them, but they are just odd humans getting along as best they can. Do not forget thatwe feed off people too, Darren. It would be wrong to despise them, just as it is wrong for humans to hate vampires."

"I told you this would turn morbid." Gavner chuckled.

"You were right." Kurda smiled. "This is a realm of the dead, not the living, and we should leave them to it. Let's get back to the Festival."

"Have you seen enough, Darren?" Seba asked.

"Yes." I shivered. "And I heard enough too!"

"Then let us depart."

We set off, Seba in front, Gavner and Kurda fast on his heels. I hung back a moment, studying the stream, listening to the roar of the water as it entered and exited the cave, thinking about the Guardians of the Blood, imagining my dead, drained, hollowed body making the long descent down the mountain, tossed like a rag doll from rock to rock.

It was a horrible image. Shaking my head, I thrust it from my thoughts and hurried after my friends, unaware that within a frighteningly short time I would be back at this same gruesome spot, not to mourn the passing of somebody else's life — but to fight desperately for my own!

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE FESTIVALof the Undead came to a grand, elaborate close on the third night. The celebrations started several hours before sunset, and though the Festival officially ended with the coming of night, a number of vampires kept the party spirit alive late into the following morning.

There was no fighting during the final day of the Festival. The time was given over to storytelling, music, and singing. I learned much about our history and ancestors — the names of great vampire leaders, fierce battles we'd fought with humans and vampaneze — and would have stayed to listen right through the night if I had not had to leave to learn about my next Trial.

This time I picked the Hall of Flames, and every vampire in attendance looked grim-faced when the Trial was called out.

"It's bad, isn't it?" I asked Vanez.

"Yes," the games master answered truthfully. "It will be your hardest Trial yet. We will ask Arra to help us prepare. With her help, you might pull through."

He stressed the wordmight.

I spent most of the following day and night learning to dodge fire. The Hall of Flames was a large metal room with lots of holes in the floor. Fierce fires would be lit outside the Hall when it was time for the Trial, and vampires would use bellows to pump flames into the room and up through the floor. Because there were so many pipes leading from the fires to the holes, it was impossible to predict the path the flames would follow and where they would emerge.

"You must use your ears as much as your eyes," Arra instructed. The vampiress had injured her right arm during the Festival, and it was in a sling. "You can hear the flames coming before you see them."

One of the fires had been lit outside the Hall, and a couple of vampires pumped flames from it into the room so that I could learn to recognize the sound of the fire traveling through the pipes. Arra stood behind me, pushing me out of the way of the flames if I failed to react quickly enough. "You hear the hissing?" she asked.

"Yes."

"That is the sound of flames passing by you. It's when you hear a short whistling sound — like that!" she snapped, tugging me back as a pillar of fire sprouted from the floor at my feet. "Did you hear it?"

"Just about," I said, trembling nervously.

"That's not good enough." She frowned."Just about will kill you. You have very little time to beat the flames. Every fraction of a second is precious. It's no good to react immediately — you must reactin advance. "

A few hours later, I had the hang of it and was darting around the Hall, avoiding the flames with ease. "That's good," Arra said as we rested. "But only one fire burns at the moment. Come the time of your Trial, all five will be lit. The flames will come quicker and in greater volume. You have much to learn before you are ready."