by Jessica Gunn
Still. Two thousand dollars.
Transaction complete, we headed toward the bar for drinks. I ordered our usual and paid, greedily drinking some as soon as the glass was in my hands.
“Are you okay?” Kian asked, watching me with concern wrinkling the skin around his eyes.
“This is insane,” I mumbled over the rim of the glass.
Insane and expensive and positively brilliant. Every decoration or art piece in here had purpose. And the longer I stared at the art in this lobby, and remembered the statues from the entrance corridor, the more I realized that all of it was a tribute to fighting.
And to war.
Altdorfer’s The Battle of Alexander at Issus, depicting Alexander the Great’s victory over Darius III of Persia. Visions of Spartan battles, and Roman marble statues of great warriors. Frescos of the gods of the ancient world.
Kian nudged my side with his elbow and held his arm out to mine. “Shall we?”
I nodded mutely, still in awe of the art around us. At one point in time, I might have been an art history major. I had still been undecided when I’d run into my first demon on St. Patrick’s Day two years ago. After that first encounter, my heart and soul had belonged to the Hunter Circles. Even when the Fire Circle got weird and those in charge made bad calls, the overall mission of quashing Darkness and anything that posed a threat to the innocent overrode it all.
Then Veynix and Talon had torn that all away from me.
The crowd around us began to shift toward the archway with a ramp leading down into the ring. We followed the audience, all dressed in fancy gowns and expensive suits. A few of the patrons gave us dirty or worried looks, most of them eyeing my inadequate outfit with a sense of pity. But none of them seemed to outright recognize Kian or me, so they could pity me all they wanted.
Maybe we should have placed a higher bet to fit in.
I just hoped the magik hiding us would hold. Every magik-user gave off an aura, so there was no hiding me. But Kian had taken the same potion we’d used three months ago to get into Night Fire. It temporarily gave him the impression of having a demonic aura. In addition to burgundy-colored contact lenses, we’d both donned wigs.
Kian had the easier time hiding. He hadn’t been unmasked in front of the entire clientele of Midnight’s ring, many of whom might now be here for lack of another place to go.
Me on the other hand…
I tucked the neck of my coat up higher and nuzzled closer to Kian. At least escape was only a teleportante away if we needed it.
A short corridor off the main lobby opened up into another domed room that looked much the same as Midnight’s ring had before we’d blown it up. A ring of seats circled a story above a lower platformed area that was caged off: the ring. A flat, barren space for demons and Hunters and witches to fight each other for money. The seats in the audience ring were red and plushy, and a bar was never far from reach. I counted six stationed throughout the space designed to house at least four thousand people.
Most of the patrons hurried to the closest seats toward the center while others made their way to private boxes prepaid in advance. Kian and I headed midway toward the center, sitting just behind the most crowded areas. Even if we won the betting tonight—and I doubted we would since we didn’t even know who was fighting, much less who the new Crimson champion was—we wouldn’t be leaving these seats for anything but escape.
Still, we circled halfway from the main lobby corridor and sat near a back exit Kian knew about. Just in case.
“Bet you never thought you’d have one of these views at a ring,” I said as we settled down into the plush red seats.
Kian sipped at his drink. “It’s strange. I think I’d rather be in the ring than out here with these people.”
I gave him a small smile. “Isn’t that the truth.”
“You know, I never realized how extravagant this ring is, especially compared to what Midnight used to be.”
“Did your winnings reflect that?”
Kian shrugged. “Guess not.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, the only time I saw significant winnings was when Riker said they were giving me a million dollars to kick your ass in our second fight. Compared to my normal winnings, I can’t imagine the number of bets that went into our fight.”
Kian nodded, but his eyes and focus were still on the empty ring below. “It was likely one pool between both rings. But you’re right: that million was insane.”
I grinned up at him. “Insane enough to want to fight me, knowing who I was?”
His brown eyes met mine with a serious look. “I knew Talon would be there for the second fight, so I knew you’d be in danger. I agreed to it to get you out of there right away. For me, agreeing to fight again was part of the mission.”
I wet my suddenly dry lips, but when that didn’t seem to do anything, I sipped at my drink again. “I wish I had as noble an excuse, but all I saw were escape and money signs when Riker said one million dollars. That and a hell of a good time fighting you again.”
A ghost of a smile grew on Kian’s face. “It was pretty fun.”
The lights above the audience ring dimmed for a long moment before going dark completely.
Showtime.
A bright spotlight lit the center of Crimson’s fighting ring, revealing a woman in an expensive red suit. Even her uniform was fancier than most things worn in Midnight. She pulled down the edges of her jacket once before tapping the tiny microphone on her collar.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the referee said, her voice deep and commanding. “We have a show for you tonight! Crimson has found a new combatant to try taking on our newest champion, and this one might be the first to beat him out.”
A surge of cheers soared out from the audience, sailing over the center of the space and down into the ring below. The referee grinned, but something about the curve of that grin, twisting in an almost super-villain way, had me scooting to the edge of my seat.
“Do you want to meet our newest contender?” the referee asked over the roar of the crowd. It only got louder with her question. “Then let’s bring them out! First up: our champion, the Ember.”
The cage door located behind the referee slid opened and out from the darkness walked a man in loose handcuffs. A long chain connected them to another pair of silver cuffs at his feet. My eyes narrowed. He’s bound?
“What?” Kian hissed.
I glanced back at him. “That’s barbaric. We were never cuffed.”
Kian’s eyes went wide, seeing something I hadn’t because I’d turned from the ring. He touched a hand to my arm and squeezed hard once. “Look, Ava.”
I did, and only then did it register why Crimson might have wanted to keep their champion bound like this. Ember.
Sure enough, the Ember’s hands had a glowing, red-orange energy swirling around them. Ether-flames whipped around his arms and spiraled up to his shoulders.
Crimson’s new champion was an Ember witch. One that had been infected by Talon’s new favorite poison.
“I don’t get it,” Kian whispered, even though there was no one close enough to hear, not over the hollering of the crowd. “Why risk word getting out about this poison, knowing we’re working to get rid of it, and show it off in Crimson?”
“Because they don’t care that we know,” I said. “Mason didn’t care. He confronted us, Kian.”
Kian’s grip on my arm tightened, but the anger—or fear—wasn’t directed at me. He let go almost immediately. “They’re testing something.”
My brow furrowed. “Testing what?”
He nodded to the ring, where the referee woman had backed up a few paces, toward a side exit that the referees often entered and exited the ring from. Kian grimaced, and even in the dim lighting, his face seemed too pale. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
I looked back to the ring. “You’re not the only one.” Except I’d been feeling shitty about all of this from day one, way back when my team had f
irst discovered Talon’s poison to turn Ember witches fully demonic.
It was like that had been phase one, the forced transformation. Now, phase two was to create Ember witches from normal magik-users. Combined, they’d be able to make an army.
An army to fight the Neuians.
My stomach rolled over itself as the referee announced the entrance of the underdog in tonight’s fight.
“And now, our contender: The Old One.” She nearly clapped, but her fake excitement was betrayed by the fast steps she took toward the side exit. Before the contender had even entered the ring, she was out the door and had disappeared.
A shadow-cloaked figure stepped out from the darkness of the cage door. He, too, was bound, but much more tightly. Only once he was fully in the center of the ring, beneath the spotlight, was it possible to see the amount of bindings on him. Three sets of handcuffs, all linked to cuffs around his legs.
Both fighters in tonight’s matched were bound. Both unable to truly defend themselves, much less fight.
“What the hell sort of dishonorable crap goes on in Crimson?” I hissed at Kian.
“It was never like this before.” And from the equal parts wonder and disgust in his voice, he had to be telling the truth. “The Ember witch makes sense. Those bonds are loose, and they’re impossible to control. But why the demon?”
Unless… “What if it’s not a demon?” My words came out low, quiet. So quiet that for a long moment, I wasn’t sure Kian had even heard me. But then he slowly turned his head to me.
“You don’t mean…”
Kian didn’t even have to finish his sentence. We were probably two of the small handful of people in this building right now who knew the truth of this fight. Of who this contender was, and what had been done to this Ember witch.
Suddenly, as the fighters circled each other, waiting for the match to officially start, a wall of ether came down around the ring, seemingly from nowhere. It washed down from the ceiling, sealing the center of the audience’s level and the ring itself in an ether shield that looked a whole lot like the one Veynix’s ether-shaper had set up around Midnight when Kian and I had gone to end him. At the same time, the bindings around both the Ember witch and the contender cracked with an audible snap and slid to the ground.
The contender, whose back was to Kian and me, looked down first, then backed up a few steps. “What’s going on?”
The Ember grinned evilly. “It will be done.”
Then he launched himself right for the other man, his red-orange ether crackling around him as though it were a real fire. One, two, three shots of ether flew from each of the Ember witch’s hands, but the contender deftly avoided them. He bounced back and forth on what had to be his own sort of magik, which in and of itself was strange. But from this angle, I couldn’t see what that magik was. The lip of the center ring blocked the few.
“You couldn’t use magik in Midnight,” I said.
“Here either,” Kian said. “It’s like all the rules have changed. All for this test.”
I wasn’t so sure this was a test of anything. Everything about tonight had so far been a production.
“Enough!” the Ember witch roared. “Your kind will perish! Your time is over!” Red-orange ether blazed around him, growing until the ether-flames bounced against the shield surrounding the ring. His magik soared upward, rising all the way to the ceiling of the shield.
But then a cobalt blue ether, striking and in stark contrast to the Ember witch’s magik, split the space, dousing the flames in what looked like water.
“You know not of which you speak!” the contender called out. He was circling the ring again now, waiting for his moment to strike. He walked to the opposite side, now facing where Kian and I were sitting. His magik flowed around him like a fountain. On his face were tattoos, twisting around his eyes. Lit up with cobalt blue magik.
Neuian magik.
My stomach roiled. Bile slicked the back of my throat as the realization set in that this match was indeed a show. One intended to show off how Talon’s new Ember witch army would fare against Neuians.
Chapter 16
This time, it was me who reached out for Kian. This couldn’t be happening. Talon could not be using Crimson’s ring as a way to make sure their plans for ordering an army of volatile Ember witches on the Neuians was something that was going to work. At least they’d thought of using the ether shield to protect the audience.
My breaths came in quick gasps, increasing in tandem with the pressure on Kian’s arm. His warm fingers covered mine and pried me from him.
“We should go,” he said.
I shook my head. In a sick way, I almost wanted to see how this played out. Right now, the Neuian and the Ember witch were exchanging blows, but the Ember witch was gaining ground, pushing the Neuian back against one wall of the ring.
“Let’s explore,” Kian added. “While they’re busy with this match and the clean-up.”
I swallowed hard, my throat dry. Kian was right. “And if the match ends before we even reach the stairs?”
Kian’s expression tightened. “Better hope it doesn’t.”
We stood and made our way toward a side exit from the audience level. The security guard at the door gave us a weird look, but since it wasn’t against the rules to leave mid-fight, he must have assumed we’d seen our pick losing and wanted to leave before the match ended.
Kian and I hurried down the steps and moved toward a corridor blocked by a locked door. A keypad was set on one side.
“Hang on,” Kian said as he went on ahead.
Of course he knew the code. He’d been Crimson’s champion for months.
“Know where we’re going?” I asked.
Kian nodded as he input a seven-digit code. “Vaguely. Basing it off of our experience below Midnight.” The door swung open, but Kian didn’t move from the keypad. Instead, he input another string of numbers, then waved me over once a beep sounded.
“What was that?” I asked as he ushered us through the door.
“Insurance.” Kian paused for only a moment to shut and lock the door behind us before continuing down this side of the corridor. “I’ve disabled part of the security system, but we’re going to have to be quick. The cameras will only be down for a few minutes.”
“Only a few minutes? That’s hardly time to find much of anything.”
“It’s all Syd could buy us,” Kian said.
I gave him a sidelong glance. “Syd?”
He nodded. “I spoke with her briefly before we left. She’s good with computers and told me how to get into Crimson’s systems. But it won’t work for long. Come on.”
Despite the fact that neither of us had seen this part of Crimson before, much of the bland white walls looked the same as the building beneath Midnight. There were storerooms of poisons and venoms dotted along the corridors. A quick look revealed some of the contents, many of which I recognized: dharksa, the hallucinatory drug, elin, which disabled magik, Demon’s Blood, which Kian made a point of ignoring as we passed, and, of course, a few vials of Veynix’s mutated platypus venom. Seeing caches of that intact here sent shudders down my spine. But I forced my feet to keep moving, to take me past these rooms and deeper into Crimson.
Deeper into Talon’s plans.
Surprisingly, there weren’t any guards. Either Talon had never suspected someone would come down here or they were all busy watching the match.
Kian hissed and pulled me back around a corner as we rounded it. Maybe I’d thought too soon. “Security.”
“Fantastic. How many?” I asked.
“Two,” Kian said. “I’ll take the one on the left.”
“Right,” I said.
Kian nodded, then reached for the knife hidden in a sheath on his back. I did the same, and we both jumped out and launched ourselves at the guards. They yelped in surprise but met us without hesitation, one of them slamming a fist into my gut. I sputtered but managed to hold myself long enough to slash my blade
across his throat.
So much for being stealthy and not leaving a trail.
Kian dispatched the other demonic guard before he could use his magik on either of us. “That was too easy.”
I glanced down the long hallway. “Just a little.”
The guards had been stationed outside of a single room, the only one on this stretch of corridor. The double doors were locked by another keypad.
“Wonder what’s behind door number one,” Kian said as he stopped in front of the keypad.
“Whatever it is, maybe it’s not that good if this was the only security they have down here.”
Kian tapped a few number keys, entering the same code as before. The keypad shrieked an awful, high-pitched tone. Above the number pad a light flashed red. “Shit.”
“What?” I asked.
“The code doesn’t work,” Kian said. “That’s the only one Syd gave me.”
“Makes sense that they’d hide something important behind another code,” I said. Not that that was at all helpful for us.
Kian frowned and sheathed his knife again just so—it appeared—he could shove his hands into his pockets. “We only have another minute or so left before the cameras turn back on, assuming they don’t already know we’re here.”
I swallowed hard and stared at the door. Just beyond it, the echoes of sound sifted through. “We need to see what’s behind this door.”
“Judging from the match happening in the ring right now, I think it’s pretty clear.”
“Five minutes ago, you were all for exploring,” I said. “You want to back out now?”
Kian sucked in a shallow breath. “Fine. But you’re going to have to take down this door. I don’t know another way in.”
“Me?” I asked. “How do you expect me to do that?”
Kian lifted his hands and balled them into fists, knocking them together. “Your magik.”
I glanced back at the door and planted my hands on my hips. “You’re assuming it’s metal.”