Wicked Misery (Miss Misery)

by Martin, Tracey

  Lucen yanked the microphone from Assym’s hands. “All right, here’s another challenge for you, Assym, since you’re so fond of them. You kill her, and I will personally behead you tonight.”

  That got the satyrs to their feet. The sound was deafening. I did my best to block it out, to focus all my energy on my sight, but it was impossible to see beyond the first row of spectators.

  Come on, Victor baby. Where are you? Don’t you realize if I fight a sylph you’ll have nothing left to play with? But Victor was either clueless or had been squashed amidst all the fury stomping.

  Raj took control of the microphone again. “Assym, do you accept?”

  Assym spluttered a bit, which allowed me to smirk. I wouldn’t have much time left to laugh, so I tried to enjoy it.

  “Jess!”

  I looked toward Lucen, which turned out to be the wrong direction. Hands grabbed me from behind. The furies were dragging me off the stage. I struggled but was no match.

  More furies were shooing the satyrs and sylphs back into the stands. Raj was egging on the crowd and announcing which matches would be leading off. I paid attention even as I flailed. Normally, nonaddict versus nonaddict led off. The furies started with the weakest participants. Since I was the only human nonaddict in attendance though, they were beginning with addict versus addict. At least that bought me some time.

  “Hey, wait!” I twisted about in the furies’ grasp. “Wait! Raj needs to know I have another fight that has to come first.”

  “With who?”

  I pointed to Red-eye and Mace-head with my right foot. “I need to talk to them about it.”

  Behind us, the cage was being lowered. Bass-heavy music boomed from the loudspeakers. On either side, two pairs of fury addicts were pumping their fists, roaring and generally riling themselves up on testosterone and magic.

  My two captors carried me to their brethren.

  “You see,” Red-eye said, smiling at me. “I knew you’d enjoy it.”

  I forced down my fear. If they didn’t go for this, I was toast. “You wanted me to fight Victor. You need to make sure I’m scheduled against him first. Otherwise, there won’t be enough of me left for him to fight, and I’d hate to deprive you.”

  Red-eye’s face fell. “You suicidal bitch. How dumb are you?”

  Pretty damn dumb, all things considered. But then, I’d had one hell of a day. “Well?”

  “Raj!” The two of them took off.

  I kept searching for Victor and kept not seeing him. The furies were pointing to me and arguing their case. Assym argued back. Probably both sides thought only one would get a chance at me. Possibly both were right.

  The furies holding me seemed dumbfounded by this new wrinkle and loosened their grip. I shook my arms free and strode over to Raj.

  “Assym, Assym, if she’d already agreed…” He threw me a devil’s smile. “If she fights another human first, she stands a better chance of surviving until a second fight.”

  Assym was shaking with anger. “My people deserve justice.”

  “Look at it this way.” I poured as much sweetness as I could muster into my voice. “If Victor kills me first, then you don’t have to worry about your person killing me, and thus don’t have to worry about Lucen chopping your ugly head off.”

  Red-eye and Mace-head both snorted, and for a second I almost liked them for it.

  “She’s got a point,” Raj said.

  Assym reddened. “This is not justice.”

  “No.” Raj grinned. “This is the Matches. It’s much more fun than justice.” Turning to me he added, “Go have a seat in the bullpen. I want this fight on soon. If you live, you need time to recover, or your fight with Assym’s person will be over too quick.”

  “Yeah, I’d hate for everyone not to get their money’s worth.”

  My escorts attempted to grab my arms, but I dodged them and headed toward the waiting area. Unlike in baseball where the bullpen always looked comfortable, the furies took the name more literally. I was pushed into a cage with a few rage addicts who were cheering on the fighters.

  Assym stalked over, surrounded by his two goons. “You won’t die, satyr’s pet.”

  “Aw, too scared of Lucen’s threat, are you?”

  He stiffened. “Hardly, but I don’t believe in wasting interesting things. I told you I’d break you, and when my warrior is done with you, you’ll be begging for addiction to end the pain.”

  He turned away before I could think of a suitable retort. Wonderful. And a moment ago I’d merely been worried about dying.

  I rested my head against the mesh. Damn Gunthra for withholding that last crucial bit of information. I didn’t have much time to riddle out my allegedly dangerous power.

  A couple rage addicts who overheard our conversation gave me funny looks, but I ignored them, and soon the bouts had their full attention.

  This up close and personal to the fighting stages I smelled the sweat and blood. Worse, some of it occasionally sprayed me. I crept to the back of the cage. Rather than focus on the grunts, crunches and screaming from the fighting areas, I had best use this time to plan.

  Step one—don’t die. Step two—don’t let Victor die, either. I needed him alive to tell me who his master was and so I could hand him to the Gryphons. Step three—don’t die again in an effort to take down Victor’s master. I so didn’t see step three going well. Then, of course, there was the small problem of Assym, who I doubted cared at all about my guilt or innocence at this point.

  A sickening squelching sound came from the nearest stage. I closed my eyes. The addicts in the cage with me laughed sympathetically at the victim.

  “Jess.”

  A sweet, lusty magic chased away the revolting sights and sounds around me. Devon faced me, his fingers wrapped around the steel.

  “Where’s Lucen?”

  “He said he’d kill you himself if he got too close. He and Dezzi are scheming to get you out of fighting, but just in case, take these. Quickly.” He pulled three curse grenades from his pocket and slipped them to me through the mesh.

  I pocketed them, figuring what the hell. They weren’t allowed in the ring, but so long as Victor didn’t turn them against me, the better armed, the better all around. Life didn’t fight fair. I didn’t see why I should.

  “I don’t intend to fight the sylphs,” I said, lowering my voice. “I’m fighting Victor first. I need to get information out of him so I can turn him over to the Gryphons.”

  “You’re doing what?”

  “I’ve figured it out. It’s all taken care of. The furies want me to fight him.”

  “They want one or both of you dead.”

  I wet my lips. “I’ve taught self-defense courses. I’ve got my strength and speed charms. I can handle him.”

  “He’ll be charmed out the ass too. And even if he doesn’t know a thing about fighting, he’s got his master.”

  “So?”

  “His master, who can feed him to keep him going?”

  Shit. Gunthra had said something about that too, hadn’t she? That addiction wasn’t a one-way street. She could send power to her addicts.

  I pressed my forehead into the mesh until I felt it digging into my skull. How could I have been so stupid to forget it? Even if I kicked the crap out of Victor, someone would be providing him with a constant stream of energy. I had no idea just how much power his master could send. For all I knew, I could end up fighting the barely living equivalent of a zombie. And with no humans here to draw on, I had no one to keep me energized.

  I should have told Steph to call Bridget earlier. If she followed my instructions exactly, she’d be alerting the Gryphons about the Matches at a quarter of one. There was no way the Gryphons could reach us before one thirty, and that was pushing it. Could I wait out their arrival?

  Devon’s handsome face paled as he breathed in my fear. “Jess?”

  “What time is it?”

  “Time? It’s about half past midnight.”


  “The Gryphons will be coming.”

  Devon swore. “You called them?”

  “Yeah. Tell Lucen I’m sorry, but Victor’s going down and I’m not getting arrested for his crimes.”

  After Devon disappeared into the dark mob, I counted seconds by the thudding of my heart. Then minutes. My time estimate had to be off—my heart beat way too fast—but I needed a distraction from everything going down behind me.

  Logic insisted that what I truly needed was a real plan. I’d totally disregarded Gunthra’s mini-lecture on addicts earlier, and thus missed the fact that Victor wouldn’t be your average asshole—he’d be an asshole powered by fury fuel. If I got my ass handed to me, I was going to deserve it.

  An enormous cheer erupted from the crowd. One or both of the fights must have ended. Sure enough, a minute later Raj’s voice interrupted my self-flagellation.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of all races, it’s time to announce the next round of matches.”

  I held my breath. A fury came to our cage door and called two of the addicts out. My stomach unknotted as the men chose weapons and Raj announced their names and the odds. It would be a two-ring circus this round, fights on the near and far stages. The nearest addict from our cage stamped his feet a few times and snorted kind of like a horse. On the stages, other addicts were sprinkling fresh sand to cover the old blood.

  “And in the center cage, two debut fighters. I give you…Vic Aubrey!”

  My stomach didn’t bother to re-knot. It apparently preferred to jump ship. One moment I was whole, the next my gut felt hollow. Less organs to be damaged, I supposed.

  The spotlight circled wildly and landed on Victor, who burst from the bullpen across the way. So nice of you to finally have the nuts to face me, Vic. All the more satisfying it will be to kick you in them.

  The fury was back at our door and opening it. I steeled myself as Raj bellowed, “You know her as the Soul Swapper, but tonight she’s a Sword Swinger—meet Jessica!”

  For the love of dragons, that was pathetic. Not to mention that as the spotlight settled on me, I felt like I was in some cheesy wrestling arena. The crowd ate it up, though, proving that furies had more in common with human adolescent males than I’d previously given them credit for.

  I held my head high, back straight.

  “Over here,” the fury said. “You can choose your weapons. No peeking at his choices.”

  “Odds are twenty to one Vic,” Raj announced. “If you haven’t already, place your bets now. We’ll be starting soon.”

  Twenty to one against me? Bastards.

  I examined the table. Even though I didn’t know what Victor would choose, there was a strategy to this. I’d figured it out during my first and only other time at the Matches. Some guys entered the ring armed like G.I. Joe. Not a bad strategy in theory, but any weapons brought into the ring could be used by anyone. Take the mace and risk the mace tapping you in the brain. The sadists, on the other hand, chose whatever they thought would cause maximum pain, regardless of its practicality. Sadists tended to lose.

  A couple of the fights I’d watched, however, had featured decent fighters, men and women—both addicts and nonaddicts—who’d known how to throw a punch or wield a knife. For them, the Matches were sport. When two people like that faced each other, the furies tended to make sure nothing got too out of hand. Good fighters put on good shows. While the audience generally wanted to see blood, limbs and teeth fly, they also liked entertainment. So although decent fighters left the ring broken, they left capable of living to fight another day. That was one interesting fact I’d learned from them. The other was that they didn’t over-arm themselves. They knew their strengths and used them.

  Alas, my greatest strength was hand-to-hand combat. On top of that, I didn’t want to kill Victor, just disable him and handcuff him. Misery gave me an offensive weapon, and in a pinch I could probably do some serious but nonlethal damage with it. Which meant what I could use was something defensive, but it wasn’t as though I could choose body armor or a shield.

  “You only got a couple more minutes, cutie,” the fury said. “Pity you’re gonna get all bloodied.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Don’t get too excited about it.”

  I wavered between the hefty garden shovel and a baseball bat-shaped cudgel. The shovel, with its flat, shieldlike surface, won out.

  “Time’s up.”

  On cue, the thudding music was back. My heart stuttered.

  Breathe, Jess. Don’t make Victor’s job easier.

  I raised the flattened end of the shovel to my face. Blood and rust stained it. The wood handle had been dinged and gouged. How many maniacs had held this? How many people had lost their lives to it? How the hell did I end up with it? Where, oh where, had my life gone wrong?

  You relish your suffering, Lucen had once told me. You seek out situations that make you miserable because they also make you feel alive.

  Had he been right? I hadn’t chosen this. If I had my way, I’d have been accepted into the Gryphons and led a normal life. But the decision had been made for me, or so I’d always told myself. Yet not being a Gryphon was one thing. Ignoring my gift and leading a normal life was another. I’d chosen the opposite. I’d chosen the rush.

  “Move it,” said the fury.

  I scanned the crowd for Lucen or any other familiar faces, but all I saw were Red-eye and Mace-head. Red-eye had an intense diabolical expression as he stared at me, but there was no time to ponder its meaning. The fury usher shoved me into the cage and shut the door.

  Victor licked his lips from the other side.

  A light flashed overhead, signaling the start of this round.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The crowd whooped.

  I didn’t move, and neither did Victor. He looked surprisingly different up close. His face was more lined. His eyes appeared even less sane than they had in the newspaper photo. I swore I could sense his malice, but because he was an addict I couldn’t taste it or feed from it.

  A coil of steel twine lay at his feet. In his hands, he held a kind of oversized hammer—blunt on one end, pointed on the other. Like someone had squashed one end of a pickax.

  “Hi again, Jessica.”

  Ugh, I’d forgotten the creepy timbre of his voice. It vibrated in my ears, a low hum under the music and the screaming crowd.

  “Hi, Victor.”

  He pouted. “I prefer Vic.”

  “How about I just call you a murdering sack of salamander shit?” I dropped into a crouch, shovel in front.

  One second Victor was ten feet away, the next he was a blur in motion. Heat radiated across my chest as my charms sprang to life. I lifted the shovel to meet his cudgel, and the steel collided in a clang that set my arms vibrating.

  I wasted no time. As Victor bounced back, my foot landed on his chest. He smacked the hard ground, back first. My foot came down again, this time on his stomach. So far so good. All I had to do was incapacitate him long enough to get his weapon away, and it was over.

  But Victor grabbed my ankle and pulled. I lost my balance and went flying. Hands, elbows and knees collided with the floor. I held on to the shovel but barely.

  Victor jumped to his feet and brought down the cudgel inches from my head as I rolled out of the way. My leg shot out and snagged the back of his ankle. Down he went again. This time I got to my feet first. Letting go of the shovel, I reached for his leg, and he kicked me aside. I dodged the worst of the blow, but he pummeled my arm, and I lost the advantage. Shit.

  Still on the floor, he swung wildly with the cudgel, his rage blind to the distance between us. Just take the knife and slice open his damn arm, my reason screamed. It wasn’t like he’d need two in prison, right? But my split-second hesitation was too much.

  Victor was on me, and the blunt end of his weapon landed squarely in my gut. My wind left me all at once. The warehouse’s cacophony vanished. My entire torso felt like it was caving in. I hit the floor on my tailbone, and more pain shot
through me.

  Victor used the moment to crow, raising his arms and dancing like a child. In a whoosh, every noise came back at full volume. I fumbled for air. Through my half-closed eyes, he preened in and out of focus, sucking in huge breaths full of my pain.

  I balled my hands into fists, anger numbing the agony in my stomach. The very notion of him relishing my suffering infuriated me. At that moment I didn’t care about bringing him to the Gryphons or clearing my name. All I wanted was to hurt him back. Make him pay for being such a sadistic bastard.

  Calling on my charms, I charged forward from the floor and brought the shovel down on his knees. Yelling, he collapsed, and the cudgel dropped from his grasp. I whacked him again and again, everywhere but his head. Rage or magic fueled my strikes, and I had no idea where they landed so long as they hit something soft and fleshy.

  I couldn’t sustain the emotion for long, though. Sharp pain rattled my lungs with each breath, dashing me with reality. My steam evaporated.

  Victor smiled up at me, completely loony. “You see, Jessica? You are like me. I knew it when I watched you seduce Pete and kick him in the head. You enjoyed it.”

  “No, I’m not. I only kicked Pete to keep him from raping some woman. That’s not a bad thing.” But I shivered. Victor was right—I’d just given in to the urge to hurt out of anger. Not so different from a fury addict. “I am not like you.”

  “Liar!” Victor sprang to his feet with far more ease than he should have after the beating I’d administered. Stunned, I didn’t move in time, and he rammed me with his shoulder. It jutted out at a hideously funny angle, but the magic in him powered him past the pain.

  “Liar!” he screamed at me as I fell back into the cage. “You are like me! Admit it, admit it, admit it! You love the suffering. The pain—sweet, tasty pain. And the fear. It’s so much better when you see it in their eyes too. The way they stare at you so pitifully, it makes me want to lick them up like a bowl of ice cream. Doesn’t it, Jessica? Doesn’t it?”

  He backhanded me, and I lost my balance. Blood’s coppery taste warmed my mouth. He was too fast, too strong. That wasn’t the charms helping him out. That was his master sending him more power.