by Stephen Cole
‘I guess so,’ Tom reported. ‘They were due a dose at six.’
Jicaque nodded gravely. ‘There will be terrible bloodshed tonight.’
‘So what do we do?’ Jasmine wondered aloud. ‘I guess getting the hell out of here ain’t an option?’
‘Not without Kate,’ Tom shot at her.
Jicaque nodded. ‘We must get inside the arena. Stop this madness once and for all.’
‘Nice thought,’ said Stacy. ‘Any practical ideas how we do that?’
But Jicaque had already turned on his heel and was striding away, his long silver hair trailing behind him like a comet’s tail, his dark overcoat flapping about his ankles.
He led them along the dank corridor and up a flight of crumbling stairs. ‘This leads to the upper tiers of the seating,’ Jicaque informed them. ‘The lower entrances are blocked to prevent any escape attempts by those forced to fight.’
The stairway ended in a set of peeling double doors. Beyond them, rising in volume and pitch, the unmistakable sounds of violent battle carried: shouts and crashes and shrieks of agony.
Jicaque tried the doors, but they wouldn’t budge. Tom lent his weight, pulling on the handles with all his strength, but it was a hopeless task. The doors were locked firm.
‘They don’t want no one getting in, neither,’ Rico observed, wheezing a little after taking so many stairs.
‘You taken your inhaler?’ Jasmine prompted him.
Rico pulled the puffer moodily from his pocket. ‘I keep saying, it don’t work.’
‘Let me see it,’ Jicaque snapped.
Rico produced the inhaler and Jicaque extracted the little pressurised canister from the plastic housing. ‘Yes,’ he muttered, ‘that might just do.’ He delved in his pocket and pulled out a few crumbs and lumps of some silvery-white powder.
Stacy watched him suspiciously. ‘What’s that?’
‘Jicaque?’ Tom looked at him uncertainly. ‘Is that more of your magnesium?’
‘Hair elastic,’ Jicaque snapped, holding out his other hand.
Jasmine obliged him with a puzzled glance at Tom. ‘Magnesium?’
Tom nodded. ‘He powders the ends of cigarettes with the stuff. If he’s in trouble he lights up and the magnesium blinds whoever’s close by.’
‘Cool,’ said Rico happily.
Jicaque secured the white lumps to the canister with the hair elastic. ‘Now, Rico, that gum you’re chewing.’
Rico duly handed over the gum, and Jicaque used it to fix the little canister to the lock on the doors. But as he produced a disposable lighter from his pocket, Stacy snatched it away.
‘You can’t set light to that stuff!’ Stacy said, appalled. ‘That’s a pressurised container.’
Jicaque shrugged, untied a string from one of his scruffy silver braids of hair. ‘And these are locked doors. Any other suggestions?’
The grunts, the yells, the echoing thuds and crashes from the arena were getting louder and louder. Jicaque used a small gob of the gum to secure the short string to the magnesium.
‘They’re killing each other in there,’ Tom muttered.
He nodded. ‘We must act now.’ Suddenly the lighter was out of Stacy’s hand and back in Jicaque’s. He struck the flints and a flame jumped from its end. ‘Tell me Tom, have you heard of Chet Baker? Great jazz musician.’
Tom shook his head wearily. ‘Is this the time for a history lesson?’
Jicaque shook his head disapprovingly. ‘You haven’t heard a trumpet till you hear Chet speak through it.’ He paused, apparently transfixed by the smoky flame. ‘You know, jazz is a lot like life. All a matter of timing.’ He set the flame to the string, his makeshift fuse. ‘Back down the stairs, everyone.’
Tom covered his eyes as the magnesium compound flared with blinding intensity. Jicaque shooed him away down to the turn in the stairwell to join the others.
With a deafening blast, the pressurised canister exploded. The echoes of the explosion slammed around the concrete walls, ringing in Tom’s ears.
‘So much for Rico’s inhaler,’ sighed Stacy.
‘Guess it does work,’ Rico said, a slow grin spreading over his face.
Tom peered around the corner. The doors were blackened; the lock had been punched right out.
‘Now the danger truly begins,’ Jicaque murmured. ‘Who will stand with me?’
‘I will.’ Tom glanced around at Jasmine, Stacy and Rico. ‘But maybe you guys should hang back here and—’
‘Forget it,’ said Jasmine.
‘People might get hurt,’ said Stacy. ‘I can help.’
And Rico nodded too. ‘’S’time to get even.’
‘Then let’s go,’ the old man said, moving off into the wreaths of smoke coiling from the charred hole in the doors.
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Kate had finally managed to work her mouth free of the tape that gagged her. She bit and chewed at the knotted ropes that bound her wrists, trying desperately to free herself. All around the arena the fighting was escalating, far more slick and savage than the scrappy bouts she’d witnessed here before. Swagger was right; these people had been trained, conditioned to fight for their survival. The fighters worked with their team-mates, pitilessly targeting their victims. There was something feral about these men and women as they tore through the opposition, drugged-up and blank-eyed, that chilled Kate to the bone.
Across the arena, in the safety of the bleachers, she saw her mother watching rapt beside Takapa, palms pressed together as if praying the carnage would never end. Her father looked on at the spectacle impassively. If she could only signal to him …
She gasped as the mesh net lurched and dropped a little lower. Joints of meat went tumbling as the net tilted, and fell around the maniacs fighting below.
A woman looked up, wildly, as if suspecting an attack from above. It was the bleached-blonde girl who’d tricked Polar back in the locker room. Her eyes were gleaming yellow. Saliva flooded from her leering jaws as her body began to warp into lupine form.
Kate knew what a tempting target she must make, trapped here helpless, surrounded by a half-ton of bloody flesh; and she knew with horrid certainty the woman meant to kill her. Sure enough, with a frenzied roar the blonde leaped for the net, her broken nails extending into talons mid-jump.
The creature scraped against the chicken wire close to Kate’s head, then fell back down. Kate realised she must still be out of reach. But for how much longer?
A man rushed to tackle the blonde before her metamorphosis was complete, pounding his fists down on her distorted face. But others had noticed the net was disgorging its bloody haul. And more and more of the fighters were starting to turn.
Kate bit at the knots in the rope with a new desperation. The net shook again and she saw another ’wolf had jumped up and was hanging from the thick chicken wire with its claws. But the metal soon gave way and the animal fell to the concrete with a thud, soon set upon by two more slavering, brutish lupines.
Then suddenly Kate heard a sharp, percussive crack. Before the echoes had died away, the entire arena seemed to shake with a single bellowed cry.
‘Enough.’
The sound lashed around the arena like a steely whip.
The ’wolves slowed in their struggles then stopped altogether, panting hard, backing off from their private fights and scenting the air for this noisy interloper.
Swagger’s guards patrolling the perimeter raised their weapons, hunting out the intruder through rifle sights.
Then Kate saw Tom standing at the top of the steps that led down through the bleachers, Jasmine, Rico and Stacy standing alongside him.
In front of Tom was a slight, silver-maned Native American man. All eyes, human and beast, were on him now.
‘Please,’ Kate muttered, shutting her eyes and praying to any god that might listen. ‘Please, Jicaque, make this good.’
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Tom stared in disbelief as the ’wolves in the arena overcame their urge to attack and paused
in a sudden, uneasy truce, as if on some deeper instinct.
He felt sick with fear. There were so many of the creatures in here, trampling human corpses beneath their hefty paws as they milled impatiently around the blood-soaked rink. At any moment the violence might ignite again – and all that was stopping the ’wolves taking the fight out of the arena and into the bleachers were a few of Swagger’s generals with guns. Guns that were aimed now at him and Jicaque, guns that would tear them apart in a single burst of fire.
Hal and Marcie Folan rose from their seats. Hal looked at Tom without emotion, but Marcie’s lip kept twitching as she watched him, like she was about to bare her teeth. She kept glancing at Takapa impatiently; this was his territory, Tom supposed, and she was giving him a chance to handle the situation. How long before her patience was spent?
Takapa too had risen, his face contorting into odd expressions as he struggled to find an appropriate way to express his rage. He turned to Swagger. ‘Get down there,’ he said in a low voice, gesturing to the rink. ‘Make sure that scum don’t get out of hand. This won’t take long.’
Swagger hesitated, glaring at Tom hungrily. Then reluctantly, he turned and strutted down the steps as ordered.
Takapa’s pink eyes blazed furiously at Jicaque. ‘You dare to interfere, old man?’ he said hoarsely at last. ‘Now?’
‘I have let your activities go unchecked for too long,’ Jicaque said calmly. ‘That was my mistake.’
‘No. Coming here tonight was your mistake,’ hissed Takapa. He looked past Jicaque to face Stacy. ‘The rumours of your death are exaggerated, I see.’
‘Don’t look at me, I didn’t start them,’ said Stacy.
Takapa smiled, then gestured to the bloody rink, to the beasts that prowled there. ‘But you started all this.’
‘And maybe I’ll help finish it,’ she said fiercely.
As the exchange went on, Tom felt someone tug on his arm. Rico. He was pointing across the vast arena. Tom swore. Unseen by Takapa, Marcie and the rest, someone was balanced up on a mountain of meat hanging above the rink, waving furiously. ‘Kate,’ he breathed.
‘I’ll sneak down, try to help her out,’ Rico whispered.
‘Stay out of it, Ric,’ Tom warned him. ‘You’re only a kid, you can’t—’
‘Watch me.’ With that, Rico slipped into the bleachers to Tom’s right.
Tom held his breath, but miraculously, it seemed no one had seen him go.
‘You’ve played me for a fool, Takapa,’ Stacy was saying.
‘And it was so deliciously easy,’ the albino murmured.
Tom kept a subtle eye on Rico’s progress. He could see he was making his way down through the bleachers in a purposeful zigzag, heading for the rink.
‘I suppose,’ said Jicaque thoughtfully, ‘that Dr Stein could be said to be the founder of the feast here.’ His voice hardened. ‘Such a shame for you that the feast is poisoned.’
Takapa narrowed his pink eyes. ‘What nonsense is this?’
‘The drug you have been synthesising, the means of controlling your rabid army here …’ Jicaque waved an angry hand at the teeming monsters in the rink. ‘Your minions stole the doctored samples from Stacy’s laboratory, and I guessed you would be using them tonight. So you see, before the supplies were taken, I did some herbal doctoring of my own to those samples.’
‘Well, whatever you did, you wasted your time,’ snarled Takapa. ‘The contents of those phials were added to my own stocks of the drug.’
Tom held his breath as Jicaque went on.
‘Excellent. Then I have contaminated your entire supply.’ The old man smiled. ‘I have neutralised the effects you sought to engender in these unfortunates you would have fight for you.’
Takapa was shaking his shaven head now in angry disbelief. ‘No. You’re lying,’ he snapped. ‘Are you blind? They are fighting for me!’
‘As humans, sure.’ Jicaque clicked his fingers. ‘But now they have transformed to the lupine state, my remedial herbs are taking effect.’
Tom gripped Jicaque’s arm. ‘The cure? It’s working on them now?’
‘The first step of many – the restoration of human will. But I can only cure those who wish to be cured,’ Jicaque reminded him. ‘There are many here who relish the strength and power their ’wolf lends them.’
‘It’s a trick!’ Takapa spat, with the fury of a cheated child. ‘A filthy trick!’
‘For your sake, Takapa,’ hissed Marcie, ‘it had better be.’
The albino raised his arms and fell forwards into a crouching position. His form seemed to blur and run like watercolours in the rain.
Tom flinched to see a lean, sinewy ’wolf suddenly facing them, eyes narrowed and burning with malice.
‘A further mistake,’ Jicaque announced calmly. ‘In that form, you cannot issue orders to your men.’ The old man raised his voice, cupped his hands to his mouth. ‘Hear me! This degenerate before me has sought to use you, to make you fight for his own callous ends. But now you are freed from the hold he has over you!’
With a roar of hatred the rangy white ’wolf arched its back and then pounced forward, jaws snapping for the old man’s throat.
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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Tom shoved Jicaque out of the way. The old man staggered and fell between two benches.
Jasmine shrieked as Takapa landed at her feet. She kicked him hard in the head with her pointed boots. The werewolf growled, swiped at her with one massive paw, but Jasmine leaped for cover among the rotting wooden benches. Enraged, the creature moved to follow.
‘Rise up!’ Jicaque shouted at the ’wolves pacing the arena. ‘Fight for yourselves, now, against the people who would use you!’
‘All right, enough!’ Marcie bawled. ‘Swagger, kill him!’
Swagger didn’t need telling twice. He opened fire, spraying the gangway with bullets. One by one his generals joined in the attack. Stacy dived for cover back through the double doors, and Jicaque huddled down behind the benches in front.
Takapa broke off his attack on Jasmine, staring around in confusion. Bullets whistled noisily through the cold air. But then the white ’wolf saw Jicaque in his hiding place, and readied himself to pounce once again.
‘No!’ Tom shouted and threw himself at the creature, locking his arm around its sinewy throat. Takapa bucked and writhed, snapping at him, but Tom was just out of range of the monster’s dagger-like teeth, and holding on for dear life. Finally Takapa threw himself into a full body roll. Tom couldn’t hold on, and his bad shoulder smashed against the concrete of the gangway. He cried out in pain – then he heard a howl of anger. Dazed, he opened his eyes.
Jicaque was nowhere to be seen.
But the low growl, the bestial eyes narrowed in his direction, told Tom that Takapa had found a new target. He tried to pull himself away, but the ’wolf was preparing to spring.
‘Get out of here, you fool!’
Takapa reacted to the voice as if stung.
Marcie was shouting at him. ‘Come on! We can’t fight them all!’
Takapa turned in confusion.
‘My God,’ breathed Tom.
A whole pack of werewolves had broken free of the confines of the rink. Swagger was no longer firing at Tom and his friends, but into the slavering mass of the enraged werewolves. The creatures were thinking for themselves now, acting on their own unfettered instincts.
And, clearly, they wanted revenge.
Marcie and Hal were running for an emergency exit to their left, pursued by eight or nine of the lupine monsters. With almost balletic grace, husband and wife dropped down to the ground and brought on the change as they fled.
Takapa roared in defiance at Tom one final time, then chased after them, hurdling the benches in the bleachers, a white blur disappearing into the shadows.
Tom nodded grimly as Hal and Marcie smashed through the emergency exit and vanished from view, Takapa close on their heels. But the cold rattle of m
ore gunfire riveted Tom’s attention back to events in the arena. The men were firing wildly; some of the beasts bayed in pain as the bullets tore into them. But there was no way Swagger and his generals could take them all. The ’wolves had been trained well, and now were using their skills as a team to slash their persecutors to ribbons.
Tom swallowed hard as he looked at Kate, still perched high on her mountain of carcasses. She waved with both arms, trying to be sure he’d seen her, and Tom waved back. But his stomach was churning. How could he get to her, caught between bullets and claws – and where was Rico?
Turning, he staggered over to Jasmine, who was shakily getting to her feet. ‘You OK?’
‘Sure,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m good.’
Stacy burst back in through the shattered doors. ‘What happened to Jicaque, is he …?’ Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Jesus. How long was I out?’
It was true, Tom reflected. In seconds, everything had turned around. Now, with Takapa and his honoured guests gone, scores of ’wolves were roaming the bleachers, howling and roaring their anger and frustration. Many more were feeding on the tough corpses of their fallen opponents – and the remains of the men with guns who had sought to control them. Swagger himself had either been killed or ducked out of the fighting, he was nowhere to be seen – but two of his surviving generals were standing back to back beside one of the supporting pillars, terror in their eyes, shooting at any lupine who came too near.
I can only cure those who wish to be cured, Jicaque had said, and clearly some of the ’wolves weren’t ready to stop now. They craved more violence, more blood; a few ringleaders were snapping at their fellows, trying to pick up the fight like nothing had happened.
‘Some of the ’wolves are changing back,’ Stacy realised. ‘They’ll become targets for the others, just like we are.’ She set off through the tiers of seating, heading for a young girl who stood naked and shivering, gazing around the arena in shock. ‘We have to help them, get them out of here before the ’wolves notice them.’