Original Final Confrontation Scene Between Henri and Lucky
This scene Jo and Nicola weren’t at all happy with – I seem to remember Jo comparing this and the one that follows to Dallas when Bobby came back from the dead in the famous shower scene (for those too young to remember he was written out of at least one whole series only for it all to have been a dream!) I chewed on my pencil for a bit and I think in the end came up with a whole better more exciting scene, which set the pace for the next two books.
Henri flung me across the arena and up against a pillar to one side of the dais; smacking my head hard enough against the stone for me to see stars. He grabbed my wrists with one hand, forcing them up above my head, pinning them to against stone. I struggled against him but he lifted me up so my feet were dangling uselessly. He smiled his razor-tooth smile and began to change.
Wiry hairs began to sprout from his beauty spot. His cheeks and forehead stretched and bubbled into bumpy crocodile scales. His eyes flickered shut, revealing pebbled aquamarine lids, and when they snapped open again fiery, orange globes glowed from round, wet sockets; their pupils vertical slithers of jet. His lips thickened into rubbery bands and when he opened his mouth a long, thin reptilian tongue darted out to taste my skin.
I tried not to scream but when he drew back his lips and I saw those teeth glistening with drool I couldn’t help myself. He laughed and his tongue slithered out and across my face. I tried to pull back away from him but whichever way I turned his tongue was there, licking me, tasting me.
‘Stop him,’ I heard Kayla scream, ‘I’ll do anything you want but stop him.’
‘Too late,’ Baltheza said, ‘not so long ago you told me that she loved you with all her heart. Now she’s going to prove it.’
I heard Kayla scream, ‘no!’ Then with his free hand Henri tore open the front of my T-shirt. He leered at me and then snagged a claw under the front of my bra and tugged hard until the material gave way with an elastic twang. He ran a claw down my left breast, scratching not cutting.
Now I was struggling with all my might. Pushing my feet back against the pillar trying to propel myself forward but it was no good. Tears of desperation were running down my face. I could hear Kayla screaming and struggling in the background.
‘Say goodbye Lucky,’ he told me and all the fight seemed to drain out of me.
I shook my head. ‘Don’t do this. Please don’t do this.’
He grinned, lifting his claw up in front of my face and then lowering it down and plunging it into my chest. Red hot pain seemed to fill the upper half of my body. I tried to scream but my mouth was full of some frothing liquid and then I realised it was blood, my blood. Another pain wracked my torso, a terrible tearing, burning sensation and then his hand appeared in front of my face.
I looked up. My heart lay in his palm. It valiantly tried to carry on pumping. Once, twice, spurting blood down onto my skin. It quivered, pumped once more then, with a soft sign, deflated and lay still.
The roar of the crowd faded away until it was nothing more than a sibilant whisper. The colour seemed to drain from everything around me dimming to grey and then black. My eyes sagged shut and then…
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