I leaned on the railing, tracking Rodriguez across the field. He had both experience and skill. But a dangerous ferocity tinted the sneer on Callisto’s face.
“Who will win, Rodriguez or Callisto?” Saiman asked.
“Callisto.”
“Why?”
“A hunch. She wants it more.”
Rodriguez lunged. His blade hacked Callisto’s thigh. Vermillion drenched her leg. I smelled blood.
Callisto snapped her arm. The chain swung in a pale metal arch and wound itself about Rodriguez’s neck with unnatural precision. The end of the chain reared above the fighter’s shoulder and at its end I saw a small, triangular head. Metal jaws came unhinged. Small metal fangs bit the air. Callisto pulled. The links of the chain melded into a serpentine body in a shimmer of steel.
The metal snake clenched its coils. Rodriguez chopped at it in a desperate frenzy, but his kukri slid off the steel body. He was done. The crowd roared in delight.
Rodriguez’s face turned purple. He went down to his knees. The sword slid from his fingers and plunged into the sand. He clawed at the metal noose constricting his throat.
She just watched him. She could’ve stopped it at any point. She could’ve killed him with her axe. But instead Callisto simply stood there and watched him suffocate.
It took fully four minutes for Rodriguez to die. Finally when his legs stopped drumming the ground, Callisto retrieved her chain, its links once again mere metal, and shook it at the crowd. The spectators howled.
I unclenched my fists. It had taken every ounce of my will not to jump into the Pit and pull that thing off Rodriguez’s neck.
I hadn’t believed I could think less of Saiman. He proved me wrong.
Four men in gray scrubs emerged from the Midnight Gate, loaded the corpse onto a stretcher, and took it away.
Saiman leaned back in his seat. “As I said, mildly interesting.”
“I find it horrific.”
“Why? I’ve seen you kill before, Kate. Granted, you do it with considerably greater skill.”
“I kill because I have to. I kill to protect myself or others. I won’t take a life to titillate a crowd. Nor would I torture a man for the pleasure of it.”
Saiman shrugged. “You kill to survive and to appease your own misguided conscience. Those in the Pit kill for money and the gratification of knowing they are better than the corpse at their feet. At the core, our motives are always self-serving, Kate. Altruism is a fog created by sly minds seeking to benefit from the energy and skill of others. Nothing more.”
“You’re like a god from a Greek myth, Saiman. You have no empathy. You have no concept of the world beyond your ego. Wanting something gives you an automatic right to obtain it by whatever means necessary with no regard to the damage it may do. I would be careful if I were you. Friends and objects of deities’ desires dropped like flies. In the end the gods always ended up miserable and alone.”
Saiman gave me a stunned look and fell silent.
CHAPTER 10
FIGHTS CAME ONE AFTER ANOTHER, ENDING IN death far more often than necessary. Too much blood, too much gore, too much show. Too much amateur enthusiasm cut short by icy experience. Once in a while Saiman asked me who would win. I answered, keeping it short. I was ready to go home.
The gong tolled once again. The scoreboard descended carrying two names: ARSEN VS. MART. -1200+900. Arsen was a heavy favorite to win.
“I would like to offer you a job,” Saiman said.
I was too sickened to muster any disbelief. “No.”
“It’s not of a sexual nature.”
“No.”
“Out of six fights, you have picked a winner every time. I want to employ you as a consultant. Members of the House evaluate the fighters prior to the event to determine the odds the House will give for each fight . . .”
“No.”
Mart walked out onto the sand. He had lost the trench coat, and his black suit clung to his slender frame. He moved quietly, a dark, lean shadow, his blond hair the only spot of color. He carried two swords like two sunbeams trapped in steel, one long, one short, a classic katana and a wakizashi.
“Three grand per evaluation.”
I turned to Saiman and looked at him. “No.”
A deep bellow rolled through the Arena. It started low, a long, heavy roar produced by an inhuman throat, grew to a thunder, and broke into a cacophony of snorts and rapid, sharp cries. The crowd went completely silent. My hand went above my shoulder, but my saber wasn’t there.
“What is that?”
Saiman’s face shone with smug delight. “That’s Arsen.”
A huge shape appeared in the dim depth of the Gold Gate. Slowly, ponderously, it moved just to the edge of the light. Shadows clung to the contours of vast shoulders and a thick, muscled torso, obscuring a large helmet.
The Red Guard holding open the wire fence door to the Pit looked as though he wanted to be anywhere but there.
Arsen bellowed again and burst into the light, galloping into the Pit. The Red Guard slammed the door closed and took off.
Arsen charged to the center of the Arena, put on the brakes, raising a spray of sand in the air, and roared. The silent audience stared in shock.
He was seven feet tall and layered with slabs of hard, carved muscle that stretched his coal-black hide. His short fur flared into a shaggy mess on his chest and ran down his stomach in a narrow line to widen at his crotch, striving but not quite succeeding in masking his generous endowment. A fringe of hair climbed his thighs and the backs of his arms to droop in a long mane off his massive neck. Two pale horns protruded from his skull. His face was a meld of human and bull: a bovine nose and a bovine mouth, but human eyes peered out under the coarse ridges of his eyebrows. A braided beard dangled from his bottom jaw. His legs terminated in hooves. His arms ended in hands that could enclose my face with their thick, blunt fingers, only two per hand and a thumb. The spear in his right hand was the size of a two-by-two.
I remembered to close my mouth. “A werebull?”
“No. Something much more exotic,” Saiman said. “He was born this way and he doesn’t shapeshift into a human. He’s a minotaur.”
Arsen dug the sand with his left hoof, kicking it up, and shook his head. Gold loops of earrings glittered in his left ear. He was power, strength, and rage, bound in flesh and straining to be unleashed.
Mart didn’t move. He stood, the two swords in his hands pointing down and apart.
“Arsen is my personal fighter.” Saiman’s voice vibrated with pride.
“Where did you find him?”
“Greece. Where else?”
“You brought him over from Greece?” By boat. With sea serpents and storms. It must have cost a fortune.
Saiman nodded. “It was worth it. I have no resources to waste on cheap things. I would sacrifice a considerable sum to have the Reapers humiliated. This was a mere pittance.”
Arsen bellowed. His eyes locked on Mart. He lowered his head.
Mart simply stood, unmoving and silent.
Moist air puffed from the minotaur’s nostrils. Arsen hunched his shoulders and charged.
He came roaring down, impossible to stop, like a battering ram.
Mart made no move to evade.
Twenty feet. Fifteen. Twelve.
Mart leapt into the air, unnaturally high, like a piece of black silk suddenly jerked out of sight. He sailed over the minotaur and landed on its shoulders. For a moment he actually rode on Arsen’s back, balancing with laughable ease, and hopped off, light as a feather, into the sand.
Arsen wheeled about and lunged, thrusting his spear in a classic Greek move. Mart dove under the thrust, deflecting the arm with his shorter blade. His katana kissed the inside of Arsen’s right thigh. In a split second, Mart reversed the strike, sliced Arsen’s left thigh, and twisted away from the minotaur’s reach.
It was blindingly fast. “He’s dead.”
“What?” Saiman glared at me.
Thick gushes of red stained the minotaur’s thighs. Mart turned on his toes, faced our box, and bowed with a flourish, bloody swords held wide.
Rage twisted Saiman’s features into an unrecognizable mask.
Mart walked away to the Gold Gate.
Arsen let out a weak moan, more of his lifeblood spilling with every palpitation of his heart. His knees hit the sand. With a shudder he toppled forward and fell facedown.
The crowd exploded in a rabid crescendo of cheers. Saiman surged to his feet and took off through the balcony door. I waited about thirty seconds to put some distance between us and ran out of there as if my hair were on fire. As far as I was concerned, the night was over. It was time to go and track down the Red Roof Inn.
CHAPTER 11
EVEN THE BEST PLANS HAVE A FLAW. MINE HAD two: first, I had no clue where the Red Roof Inn was, and second, I had no transportation. The first problem I resolved with relative ease: I grabbed the first Red Guard I came across and interrogated him. The only Red Roof Inn in the area lay to the west, on the way to the South-West ley line, twenty minutes by horse or a good hour on foot. Forty-five minutes if I jogged. It was close to 2:00 a.m., and with the magic up, the odds of finding a horse to commandeer were nil. Anybody sensible enough to ride a horse wouldn’t be out at this hour, and if they were, they could defend themselves and would take a rather dim view of losing their mount. I should’ve brought my running shoes.
I emerged into the night. The magic had robbed the entrance to the Arena of its electric illumination. Instead runes and arcane symbols glowed red and yellow along its walls, their intricate patterns weaving the solid wall of a ward. One hell of a ward, too—the whole building shimmered in a translucent cocoon of defensive magic, sealed tighter than a bank vault.
I inhaled deeply and let the air out, exhaling anxiety with it. The Arena behind me loomed, emanating malice. Greed and bloodlust mixed there into a miasma that tainted all who entered.
A stone building filled with men and women in evening wear or a sand arena enclosed by crumbling wooden stands filled with people in rags, it made no difference. I had never forgotten fighting on the sand, but I hadn’t realized that my memories lay so close to the surface.
The sand marked a number of firsts for me. The first time I fought without any guarantee of my father rescuing me. The first time I killed a woman. The first time I killed in public, and the first time I was deified for it by a bloodthirsty crowd.
My father judged it to be an experience I had to endure and so I had done it. It must’ve left a scar, because I had only to look at the sand and my arms itched, as if dusted with its grit. I brushed off the phantom powder, shedding the memories with it. I wanted to take a shower.
Right now Derek was probably lying in wait for Livie at the rendezvous point. He was a careful wolf. He’d get there hours in advance. I needed to get my ass to the Red Roof Inn.
First order of business: retrieve Slayer. I headed to Saiman’s car.
“Kate?”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Saiman exit the building. Crap.
“Kate!”
I stopped and looked at him. “The fights are over. We’re done.”
He caught up to me. “Apologies for my hurried exit . . .”
“I don’t want an apology, Saiman. I want my sword out of your car. I fulfilled my obligation; now I have to go.”
He opened his mouth to speak but he must have seen something in my face that gave him pause, because he clamped his mouth shut, nodded, and said, “Very well.”
We strode to the car.
“How would you have gotten your sword out without my help?” he asked.
“I’d break the window.” We stepped over the white line.
“You would vandalize my vehicle?”
“Yep.”
“You do realize that the car is heavily warded?”
I felt someone’s gaze hit me in the back like a brick. I glanced over my shoulder. The tattooed Reaper, Cesare, stood just behind the white line, over which we had stepped a moment ago. Backlit by the floodlight, he stood very straight, his face wrapped in darkness. His eyes glowed red.
“Company.”
Saiman saw Cesare. “Hilarious. I had no idea I’d given them the impression of being susceptible to childish intimidation tactics.”
“I think they have more than intimidation in mind.” I accelerated. The sleek black bullet of Saiman’s vehicle with my saber in the front seat waited a good twenty-five yards away.
A man leapt over the row of cars and landed in front of us in a crouch, blocking the way. Dark hair dripped from his head. He glanced up. His eyes glowed like two red-hot coals. His mouth opened. An unnaturally long tongue spilled out, lashing at the air. His lips drew back, showing rows of curved fangs.
Alrighty, then.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Cesare, still waiting behind the white line, his arms crossed on his chest.
The man with the snake tongue shifted along the ground in a crouch. Long strands of drool stretched from between his fangs and dripped on the pavement, sending a heady scent of jasmine to swirl through the air. Perfumed monster spit. What was the world coming to?
Saiman went pale. His hand gripped his cane.
The man’s glowing eyes stared at Saiman. He raised his hands and showed him two daggers, narrow and sharp like a snake’s fangs.
I wasn’t even in the picture. Perfect.
Saiman grasped the shaft of his cane with his left hand, edging the handle up with his right. I caught a glimpse of metal between the handle and the dark wood. The cane hid a dagger and he was planning to use it in a heroic fashion.
The man made an odd hooting sound that raised the tiny hairs on the back of my neck, tensed, and sprung.
It was a great, preternaturally high leap, designed to clear the twenty feet between us in a single bound. Saiman took a step, drawing the dagger in a quick jerk, and leaned forward, preparing to meet his attacker.
The first rule of bodyguard detail: keep your “body” out of harm’s way.
I swept Saiman’s right foot from under him, hitting him in the chest with my left hand. He was so committed to his impending strike that his position placed him ridiculously off balance. He went down on his back like a log. I snatched the cane-sheath from his hand as he fell and thrust it up.
The cane caught the snake-tongued man just under the breastbone. The air burst out of his mouth in a startled gasp. I turned, whipping the sheath around, and smashed it on his temple. The hollow wood broke, leaving me with a shard. The blow would’ve taken down a normal human. He should’ve been done then and there.
The man staggered a bit, shook his head, and lunged at me, stabbing with his daggers. I dodged and backed away, drawing him farther from Saiman to the car.
A searchlight swept over us, lingered for a second, and moved on. The guards had to have seen us.
The snake boy kept cutting the air, his swipes enthusiastic but a bit off the mark. Still catching his breath. If he ever got his wind, we’d be in deep shit. Almost to the car. Step. Another step.
Saiman staggered to his feet.
“Stay away!” I barked.
The snake man glanced back, slashing at me with his right to cover up. I grabbed his wrist with my left hand, pulled him forward and down, and stabbed the splintered cane under his ribs, into his kidney. He screeched. I hurled him past me straight into Saiman’s car.
His body collided with the passenger door. The defensive spell rippled with a flash of bright yellow and clutched at the body. Orange sparks flew. The snake man flailed in the ward, stuck to the car as if glued, his body jerking in a spasmodic, obscene dance. The stench of burning flesh rose from his chest. His arms flexed. His hands—still clutching the daggers—braced against the car. He was trying to push free. The ward wouldn’t be enough. God damn it, he just refused to die.
I pulled the sticks out of my hair
and clenched them in my fist.
With a sound of torn paper, the ward split, exhausted. The snake man broke free and lunged at me. I kicked his knee. It was a good, solid blow. He went down and I grasped his head by the hair and plunged the hair sticks into his left eye, once, again, and again, four times. He screamed. I flipped my hold and buried the sticks in his socket as far as they would go.
The daggers fell from his hands. I swiped one and sliced his throat. The razor-sharp blade nearly took his head off. Blood fountained, drenching me. I whirled to check on Cesare, but found only empty space. The Reaper had vanished.
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