Demon Dogs (Wildcat Wizard Book 3)

by Al K. Line

  All of this meant I felt like I was sticking out like a sore thumb as I drove through the city, becoming increasingly annoyed by the congestion and the sheer size of the place. There were too many cars, too many people, too many roads, too many buildings, and too much information in general. It was overwhelming and I knew I'd done the right thing by moving well away from these vast metropolises where the environment was oppressive and everyone was that little bit more dour and uncommunicative. Where people trudged through life rather than skipped, and where the battle to survive was that much harder.

  Odd to think that I felt more conspicuous here than my home city, that every driver we passed was looking at us, that every pedestrian who scowled as they crossed the road would whip out their phone and call someone I'd rather they didn't.

  Paranoia can be a bad thing, but it can also save your ass, and I'd rather be paranoid than followed, because, trust me, there's always somebody watching. Your neighbor, your workmates, your boss, your friends, your enemies, the phone company, the internet provider, everyone. You can't walk down a street or drive a car without your route being traced. Your whole life is recorded, filed away in a digital drawer, and there's nothing you can do about it.

  Giving myself a telling off, heeding my own advice, I shook from the paranoia. I was here for a reason and that reason was to find an abused girl, now a woman, who'd been taken from her family in the most brutal of ways. All the rest, all the drama, the vampires, Nathan and Cerberus, who I was still to deal with, they would all have to wait. For now I was just a man with a chattering sidekick, trying to find a long-lost woman.

  It was just a shame it involved what it did, as violence as sport makes me sick to my stomach. I understand the contradictions, that I was a very violent man, but fighting to survive and fighting for money are very different things, although even that is a double standard as I knew enough about cage fighting, the serious kind, to know that many of the shifters did it out of desperation. It was the only way they knew to earn enough to look after themselves.

  I pulled off the main drag out of the city heading north and took a narrow road for a few miles, the asphalt potholed, the weeds encroaching as we skirted industrial areas still barely functioning. Much of the work had moved overseas, factories running with minimal staff, everything in need of replacing or demolition.

  We came to an old Victorian pump house, the exterior a squat rectangle of red brick, a large tower giving God the finger stuck out the top. There were hundreds of cars parked all around the building, men and women milling about outside, but I knew that was nothing. Most of the action would be inside, and most of the crowd here didn't need a vehicle to arrive. We were in the most shifter-centric city in the country, and for one reason only. The fights.

  Getting In

  "Are you sure about this?" I asked Vicky, pulling my hat down low and wrapping my coat tight against the northern chill. Why was it always so much cooler up north yet everyone wore less clothes? It was one of the great mysteries of UK culture, like being Welsh and saying, "Now, in a minute." It just was what it was.

  "Of course. I want to find Avisha just as much as you do." Vicky looked tiny against the backdrop of the impressive building, out of place and certainly out of her depth.

  "I doubt that, I doubt that very much. This will be rough, nasty. Dangerous too. You can wait here. You won't miss much. I'm just here to find out where the real action is, the proper stuff, and see what I can discover about who's involved in these things. You don't need to come."

  "Ha, and then you go running off on a wild adventure, or jump through a portal or something, and I get left behind. No way, buster, we're partners."

  I was about to say that we weren't partners, that I was in charge and she was the amateur sidekick, but what was the point? So I ruffled the top of her head, said, "Good girl," just to annoy her, and as she scowled I strode toward the building like I'd been there a hundred times before.

  "Wait." I turned to watch Vicky pull out a phone and make a quick call before she smiled and scurried to catch up. "Had to check Harry got the kids from school okay."

  "Did he?"

  "They're fine. He's cooking. Can you imagine? Cooking!"

  "Good, that's good."

  Vicky skipped along beside me, blowing the hard man look, and I wondered how long until there was more drama for her, and thus for me. Probably about a nanosecond after she got home if past experience was any judge.

  Closer to the entrance the noise became intense, and everything heated up. The temperature rose a few degrees, the humidity became uncomfortable, and it wasn't just because of the press of bodies. There was a change in atmosphere, not because of the excitement, although you could certainly feel the emotional waves roiling over the crowd, but a sexual urgency brought on by the closeness of the shifters who mingled with the lowlifes and utterly abhorrent people surrounding us.

  The anticipation grew the closer we got, along with the arousal. It was in the air now, palpable, and we brushed against things we didn't want to brush against as the bodies pressed closer and we got near the entrance. People were already sweating, breathing fast and shallow, talking loudly, others arguing over who would win and who was the better fighter.

  I caught whispers of the fight later on that night, not here, the proper stuff, to the death, and snippets of countless conversations about past fights. There was laughter about this or that bloody act they'd witnessed, about the cruel ways shifters had died in the cage, and more laughing as they recounted the fights and the gruesome details to each other. Their excitement rose along with my sickness.

  Finally we were at the entrance and the bodies were a solid mass now. I paid a man an exorbitant amount of money, him not even looking at us, and we brushed past his goons that blocked the entry. Vicky held my hand tight and we were pushed through into the building.

  It was dark inside, the heat now truly uncomfortable. I raised a little magic and circulated cool air around my scalp under my hat and undid my jacket awkwardly with one hand. No way was I letting go of Vicky in a place like this.

  This was a big business, but I was surprised there was no way of checking who attended. Guess if you knew where to look then you knew what to expect. Locations changed often and anyway the Fat Man would have the people that mattered on his payroll. There would be no interference from the law here, not even from the damn elders who were always quick to point out our Code and the Laws magic users were meant to abide by. Did they know? Of course they did. But this was shifter business and our rules were usually only enforced on wizards. Even those who should have known better looked down on the shifters, distrusted and disliked them for being so wild and because they refused to follow along with our way of being.

  So they were left to it. Left to kill each other, and who cared if the gangsters profited on the side? I'd often wondered over the years just how much the Alliance knew about certain things that went on. They kept way too low of a profile at certain times, almost as if they were being paid off by some unknown entity, but that was well above my pay grade and I kept as far away from the politics as possible. Not that it ever worked out that way, but a wizard has his standards, and you may think mine pretty low but they were a damn sight higher than many immersed in this life.

  Vicky squeezed my hand surprisingly tight, so tight in fact that it hurt like hell. For a moment before my eyes adjusted to the light I wondered if I'd somehow released her and taken some big dude's meaty paw instead. I turned and no, it was her. She looked ill though. She was sweating badly, almost panting her breathing was so strange, and her eyes had lost focus.

  "You okay?"

  "I feel weird, my bones are actually aching," she whispered as I bent to listen.

  "Wanna go?"

  BOOM!

  The massive, thick steel doors slammed shut behind us and the place erupted into chaos.

  Guess nobody was going anywhere.

  Big Fight

  The lights went out and the massive roo
m was plunged into utter darkness. The raucous shouts, laughter, and arguments of the gamblers, oglers, admirers, and people so perverse I hated them so bad I wanted to skin them alive and watch them bleed out—yes, I'm aware of the irony—ebbed away until all was silent.

  You could have heard a pin drop, or a fart escape, but no pins and no farts were dropped, nobody even breathed. Vicky gripped me so tight I felt her whole body tremble.

  Music began so quietly it was like a lover whispering in my ear, and I wasn't even sure it was happening. Then it grew louder, soft and beautiful, and people moaned. It rose in pitch and grew angrier as more instruments piled into the fray and then with a mighty crash of cymbals, lights flooded the cage. Guitars wailed as the cacophony became deafening and two men were revealed.

  The spectators went nuts, shouting and calling, jeering and cajoling. The betting started in earnest. Vicky and I stayed close together. She still looked terrible, sickly green and her body vibrated. Guess the excitement was getting to her. Neither of us said a word as we watched, confused and full of trepidation as the men finally moved, as if coming out of a trance.

  Both were naked, and they couldn't have been more dissimilar. One guy was a genuine seven feet tall man-mountain, three hundred and fifty pounds at least, slabs of muscle built over years of hard work in the gym. His flesh was scarred, livid red lines that criss-crossed in angry slashes. Dense scar tissue was layered across his chest where he'd been injured multiple times. His forearms were thick and ropey, mutilated so badly the tattoos he had were lost to the angry red tracks like a train gone out of control.

  He roared as he postured about the ring, flexing biceps, squeezing his pecs and generally showing off.

  The other guy was five feet eight and not much heavier than Vicky, all skin and bone, with sinewy muscle that made him look built for speed, kind of like Bruce Lee. He didn't smile, he didn't frown, he didn't look around or acknowledge anyone or anything in any way. He merely stood with his feet wide and his hands planted firmly on his hips.

  His skin was pale and without a single blemish. Either he was a noob or he was lucky, or damn good. But there was no way he'd win against such a beast of a man. Whatever he turned into it would be monstrous, and the little guy would never stand a chance.

  The music cut off abruptly and the noise of the crowd died down somewhat. A man appeared from the shadows and entered the cage; a beauty in little but her birthday suit closed the gate behind him.

  A microphone descended just like in old fights I used to watch on TV, and the ring announcer wasted no time. "You know the rules," he said to the two men. "Anything goes, but if your opponent shifts to human you stop. No exceptions."

  The two men nodded and the announcer left as the microphone rose.

  A buzzer sounded.

  Just Goes to Show

  The crowd went absolutely nuts the moment the buzzer sounded. The man-mountain sneered then his body popped as bone cracked and his joints grew bizarre growths like tennis ball-sized callouses. Everything blurred as he dropped down and his limbs lengthened or shortened. Nasty claws split his fingers wide open as the digits morphed into pads the size of my head.

  Hair bristled all over his body and the dark brown fur shone beautifully in the strong light.

  The bear bellowed from its position on all fours then pushed back onto hind legs and stretched to full height. It was nine feet tall and the other guy was locked in a cage with it.

  The willowy man looked at the bear through bored, hooded eyes before he assumed the doggie position with fluid grace. Even as he changed he kept his eyes trained on the bear shifter. His body shrank and a tail grew. Ears elongated and pricked up sharply as fur sprang from the small body, as white and pure as snow.

  I expected laughter but there was none. People gasped as they admired the beauty of this flawless creature. It was obvious they knew this man, this shifter, this white fox.

  As much as I hated this kind of violence, a spectacle for the amusement of others, this was more akin to cage fighting than to the total bloodbath and cruel, nasty fighting I knew occurred. But it was still hard to watch, and knowing the men did this voluntarily, that the risk of death was low but still present, didn't make it much easier.

  It's one thing men punching and kicking each other, it's quite another to watch wild animals try to rip each other apart in the most visceral of ways. Whatever the rules, one swipe of the bear's claws and the fox would be history. How on earth were such a mismatched pair in the cage together?

  It soon became apparent how.

  The bear ran across the mat surprisingly fast, long arms out, claws already slicing. It got within a hair's breadth of the fox that was yet to move and as its paw almost took off its face the fox sprang agilely to the side and ran behind the brute.

  It nipped at its massive behind and the crowd laughed. The fox was playing games, amusing the audience, entertaining them so they got their money's worth.

  The bear roared in anger and turned, swiping out, but the fox leaped and was on its back, digging small but sharp claws into the hairy hide, hanging on by its front legs as the hairball swung madly in circles. Vicky buried her head in my chest as the fox raked its claws down the bear's back as it slid off, leaving red welts behind. It ran around the edge of the cage with pure grace and speed, leaving the bear bewildered and disorientated as it spun, trying to get a fix on its opponent.

  Gradually, the fox circled inward, slowing as it got closer. Without warning, it launched and shot between the bear's arms as it grabbed for it. The white whirlwind hit the massive chest and bit down hard, driving the bear apoplectic with rage. It grabbed the fox and flung it away hard at the cage, but the nimble creature landed like a cat with endless lives and stuck its head between the bars, suspended six feet off the ground. The crowd roared.

  "Silver Fox," came the chorus of rabid fans. The fox hissed then dropped to the mat.

  It turned to face the bear then darted fast between its legs, switched back and clamped down hard on the bear's Achilles tendon. Lips pulled back, massive maw gaping to reveal huge dirty teeth, the bear screamed in an all-too-human voice and kicked out hard. The fox bit harder and the bear lost its balance, toppled over onto its front and as it landed the wily canidae released its grip and sprang for his opponent's impossibly thick neck.

  It turned and looked out at the crowd and caught my eye. It blinked once, lazily, then switched its attention back to the fight and snapped down at the back of the neck, ripping flesh.

  In an instant the bear shook wildly and bones cracked, muscle pulsed and morphed, and the fur shrank then was gone. The man was human again, a nasty wound at his neck, leg a mess, long red tears down his back that sliced through his intricate tattoos.

  The fox released its hold, sat back on its haunches on the man's back, turned to the crowd and unhurriedly licked a paw.

  As the man rolled over, the victor sprang aside and with little fuss shifted into the form of the slender human.

  While the crowd went even crazier, shouting and cheering, or jeering and bemoaning their losses, I bent and whispered to Vicky, "Come on, let's go see who we came to see then get the hell out of here."

  "Good idea," she said, almost doubled over, looking all kinds of sick. Her body was distorted in the strange light, her posture collapsed in on itself like she was about to keel over.

  I dragged her through the stinking crowd, sweat and adrenaline making me lightheaded, and finally we were away from the throngs and could breathe.

  This was madness, and this was nothing. This was the tame stuff. Even lost to the animal, they could put a halt to their wild side and stop before they killed. What was it like when all bets were off and the only way out of the cage was triumphant or dead?

  Guess we'd find out somehow, more's the pity.

  A Familiar Face

  At the edge of the room, backs pressed up against cool brick, we watched the crowd disperse. The doors swung open and cool air rushed in, raising a collective
sigh from everyone inside. It emptied rapidly, everyone keen to escape the stifling atmosphere now the action was over and the adrenaline and strange sexual tension dissipated.

  Many men gave me hard stares, but most ignored me completely yet took more than a passing interest in Vicky, but I kept hold of her and stared them down until they passed on by. Show weakness and they'd try it on, and even with me doing my best hardman stare I had to deal with a few overly confident guys who came too close. No overt magic, that wouldn't be wise, but a gentle warping of the air, pushing them away like they were wading through water and Vicky clouded through a haze, enough to fog their minds and send them on their way.

  Soon there were just a few groups of men finishing up their business and a crew cleaning the cage and the mat even as others dismantled it and moved it out with forklifts into waiting trucks. This was no minor operation even though this was nothing like the death cage I was searching for. It seemed like a lot of trouble to go to, but this was the last fight here of the day. You paid to get in each and every time, so it was obviously a very lucrative operation.

  I watched and waited, knowing Vicky wanted to leave but that we had to finish our business here or our trip would have been for naught. As the stragglers left, the men passing either grumbling or smiling, I stepped out from the shadows with Vicky and walked over to a table behind which sat a slender man in a plain black suit with his back to the wall. Two large goons stood either side of him, cut off shirts revealing massive frames built for one job only—to break your head if you argued.

  The Accountant moved deft fingers through cash, receipts, and other betting related items on the desk, tutting and nervously adjusting his round spectacles as he sorted through it all, making neat piles and occasionally turning to nod at a goon who loaded up several bags when directed.

  We held back until the desk was clear and spotless and then stepped forward.

  The goons stepped forward too, and The Accountant slowly raised his head, his short back and sides glistening with product, the parting as straight as one of George's hemlines. He nudged his glasses on his nose and frowned imperceptibly as he focused his beady eyes on me, ignoring Vicky completely.