A Sinister Game

by Heather Killough-Walden

  It would have been that and much more.

  Flames erupted in her pupils, her gold eyes took on a heated glow, and her hands disappeared behind crackling, swirling balls of flame. Waves of sweltering temperature rippled around her form as she rose swiftly and unnaturally, like a specter, to her feet.

  She funneled every maniacally enraged emotion she could conjure into that fire. She thought of her mother and father, her nanny, her sister. She thought of the mind wiping machines at Game Control, Arthur One and his misogynistic sickness, and she thought of the thousands of other innocents that would be ripped from their families and lives for the sake of draining the old gods in order to make this one man – this man right here – more powerful.

  She hated him.

  So she tried to let it show. That hatred would have shot forward like a volcanic juggernaut, washing across the landscape as if it were a tidal wave after a bomb going off. Trees along the clearing’s edge would have been incinerated, shrubs and grasses turned to ash, the ground scorched black.

  But something went wrong. The Game Lord was expecting the attack. He reacted before he should have – reaching down and opening the lid of the black box before he held it out toward her.

  The air rippled as heat waves escaped Victoria’s glowing form… and the box absorbed them. It absorbed everything, taking in the heat, taking in the fire, taking in the light. It grew stronger and brighter, and as it did, nothing else around it was touched.

  Finally exhausted, Victoria slumped against the wall behind her. Her body felt drained of vitality. She’d had so little to begin with.

  Without wasting a beat, the Game Lord crowded her, grabbing her wrist in a steely grip and holding it fast. She tried to pull away, a futile attempt at stubborn resistance. The Game Lord’s slate colored eyes filled with warning. His grip on her wrist tightened to the point of bruising pain.

  “Give me the saps!” He barked an order, his eyes never leaving hers, and a Game Control guard was there beside him, handing something to his master.

  They were neutralizing bracelets. Seconds later, the wretched saps were on her wrists and Victoria felt hope slip away.

  * * * *

  Victor watched as the gods fell to their knees. It happened so fast; it took seconds, no more.

  Ullr was the last to go down. When he did fall from where he’d been standing directly behind Blood, Maxwell slowly turned around and pinned his champion god with a bewildered, wide-eyed expression.

  What Ullr had done to him, Victor had no idea. But he wasn’t going to waste his time dwelling on it. Blood’s temporary distraction afforded him the brief respite he needed to reach Victoria.

  He peered through the swirling snowflakes and windblown dirt, searching for her sleeping form.

  Instead, he found her in the custody of a pair of Game Control guards. She wore neutralizing bracelets, and worst of all – directly in front of her stood the Game Lord.

  Victor bolted toward them, a furious rush of adrenaline spurring his body into blurring speed. He wanted to tear her from the Game Lord’s grasp and freeze the fucking guards into human popsicles. He wanted to telekinetically rip a hole in the Game Lord’s throat and then send him into a coma that he would never come out of. Or better yet, he would rip his throat out with his bear hands.

  But he didn’t manage any of that. He never even managed a single step.

  Because Maxwell Blood’s sword slid easily between the ribs in Victor’s broad back, sliced cleanly through muscle and organ, and then exited silently and fatally, through his chest.

  Victor looked down in time to catch the glint of metal as several snowflakes landed on the wet blade and slowly melted.

  Then Bloody Max was pulling the blade back out.

  And Victor was falling to his knees.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  A woman screamed, a terrible guttural sound, but it was indistinct and drowned slightly by the sound of Victor’s blood rushing through his ears.

  “Did you really think I would let you win, Black?”

  Victor heard the words, muffled as they were, and processed them as he fell. His knees hit the frozen ground, and droplets of blood splattered across the rime that coated it. He knew they were his.

  “You’ve been trouble since the day you were brought to the Field.” There were muted footfalls as Blood’s boots slowly paced around Victor’s kneeling form.

  Victor looked up; he could feel the light had gone from his eyes and they were no longer glowing. He blinked against the falling snow. Maxwell Blood smiled down at him.

  “You don’t deserve her, Black,” Max said. He shook his head. “She’s more precious than you can imagine.”

  Victor noticed the blood at the side of Max’s mouth, more under his nose, and a deep cut at the corner of his slightly swollen left eye.

  I put up a fight, Victor thought vaguely. At least I die in battle.

  Max pulled his gaze off of Victor and lifted his sword to study the blood on its blade. “I’ve thought about doing this for years, but Victoria has always had a thing for you. Even when she was thinking of me on the surface, I could hear her thinking about you underneath.” He made a face as if the thought disgusted him. Then he sighed. “Had I done anything, she would have just healed you.”

  Max glanced over his shoulder, toward something that Victor could not see, and a cruel smile graced his lips. “That won’t be happening today.”

  He turned back to face Black and Victor could barely look up at him. There was a yawning pain in his chest, a spreading emptiness. Something was very wrong. Things were messed up inside of him. It was a nauseating truth. Blood’s blade had wreaked havoc on his body.

  “But just to make sure,” Max said.

  Victor felt the words, more than heard them. They were a death sentence, both literal and figurative.

  A moment later, Max’s sword was plunging once more through his chest, the second impact jolting and slicing in the most horrible way. He heard the blade go in, louder than any sound anywhere else around him.

  Blood twisted the blade as it exited through Victor’s back. Victor heard muscle and tendon pop and tear.

  This is it, he thought.

  Max yanked his weapon back out of Victor’s broken body and took a step back.

  Victor saw the ground coming up at him. He raised his arms, barely managing to catch himself as he fell forward.

  The captain of the Red team said nothing further. Somewhere overhead, a shadow receded. Victor heard him leave, waning footsteps in a falling snow.

  * * * *

  Victoria saw Max thrust his long sword into Victor’s back, and she could barely believe what she was seeing. It shocked her to her core, slowing her reaction. She hadn’t been able to warn him. Astonishment left her no time.

  She heard a woman scream and realized only at length that it was her own voice piercing the wretched distance between herself and Victor Black.

  “Give her to me,” the Game Lord commanded.

  Just as she vaguely realized it was her screaming, she also realized that she was struggling fiercely, her only desire to get to Black and heal him. She tried to call out to her captain, order him to stop and beg him to stand down. But the Game Lord’s arms wrapped around her like steel coils, and his gloved hand slid tightly over her mouth.

  When Victor fell to his knees and Max slowly paced around him, dread unlike any other crept through Victoria’s shaking body. And when he pulled his sword arm back to strike again, Victoria couldn’t turn away. She was held too tight.

  So, she closed her eyes instead, a miserable sob trapped in her throat. It wracked her body with grief. When Max’s sword pierced Victor’s heart, Victoria knew.

  No, she thought. This isn’t happening.

  Why she cared so deeply, she had no idea. Even so, it inexplicably felt as if Max had plunged that sword, not into Victor’s heart – but her own. She was breaking inside, emptying out, bleeding into herself.

  She was fairl
y sure she would drown.

  The Game Lord bent to place his lips beside her ear. “It hurts now, but you’ll soon forget all about it, sweetheart. Trust me.” He straightened again. She felt him turn to the guards beside her. “Leave the others.”

  She was numb and didn’t even wince when he took her arm in a bruising grip. She didn’t care; she could barely feel the pain. The Game Lord hauled her beside him, his strong embrace dragging her easily down a trail that had been carved through the forest. Game guards surrounded them both, a dozen at least.

  I will be with you always….

  Victoria blinked, her unshed tears released to roll down her cheeks.

  The group came to a stop at the doors to a transporter cube. It was impossible. The cube shouldn’t be there.

  But that wasn’t what gave Victoria pause. The voice in her head had been her sister’s.

  Her chest felt warm. She glanced down to see the necklace there.

  I’m here….

  * * * *

  Simon kept his eyes shut. Even when lightning tore up the world around him, he kept them shut. Even as his team leader let out a piercing, mind-blowing scream, he kept them shut. And especially when the guard who had dealt him the dizzying blow followed up with a swift, hard kick to Simon’s unprotected gut, Simon kept his eyes shut – and forced his facial features to relax into a mask of unconsciousness.

  He had to. There was no choice but to play dead. There was no other way out of this nightmare. In his closed fist, he held the regenerator. It was the key to their salvation.

  Somewhere out there on that blood-baptized battlefield, there were two other regenerators. Dr. Jeannine Cure had given one to Simon and another to Victor, and even a third to Thor, who at the time had been masquerading as a human.

  What had Thor done with his pill before he disappeared and the Game Lord showed up? Had the regenerator vanished along with the god?

  Simon was desperately hoping that it hadn’t, because he was going to need it.

  As soon as the Game Lord had somehow made the gods disappear, the guards had moved in for the kill. April was mortally wounded. He’d watched as a guard had choked her with one hand and plunged his dagger into her abdomen with his other. Ty was unconscious beneath a blow he’d sustained to the head. Finally, after what Max had done to him, Simon was positive Victor was either dead or very nearly so.

  Any healing Victoria Red could have doled out was put on ice. The Game Lord had taken her. It was up to Simon alone to see this right.

  He remained where he was, lying on the ground as if unconscious, until the storm above him died down enough that he could make out any other sounds in the clearing. When there were none forthcoming and he was certain the Game Lord and his guards were gone, he slowly opened his eyes.

  He sat up.

  “Oh hell,” he muttered as he took in the carnage of the landscape. Three regenerators weren’t going to be enough.

  * * * *

  When the transporter doors opened, the Game Lord pulled Victoria inside with him. She was spun around and pulled up against him once more. He still held the black box with one hand, but his other slid around her throat in a threatening hold that kept her immobile.

  As she now faced the doors, she was able to watch the second person step into the transporter cube. It was Max.

  Victoria looked up at him through vision blurred with tears. He was still holding his sword. It was covered in blood.

  Victor’s blood.

  “I won’t apologize, Victoria,” Max said as the other guards piled into the cube after them. He slid his sword back into its scabbard and continued. “There was no helping it this time. Black was irredeemable.” He paused, taking a deep breath, his gaze moving over her face before he went on. “It needed to be done.”

  His bright blue eyes flashed like the hottest fire despite the waves of cold she felt rolling off him.

  “I suppose you hate me now.” He stated it simply, without a hint of emotion. It was only a slightly remorseful avowal of fact and nothing more.

  Victoria could not even answer him. There was a knot in her throat, and her voice had been stolen by misery. Instead she shut her eyes against him. More tears rolled unchecked down her face.

  “Not to worry, captain,” the Game Lord said, his tone as light as his grip was hard. “She won’t hate you for long.”

  He leaned over to whisper in Victoria’s ear. “I bet you’re wondering what happened back there, what happened to your sister and the others.”

  Victoria opened her eyes and felt the weight of the saps around her wrists.

  “This here is a computer of sorts,” he said, lifting the black box. “It is a remote access memory device that will hold a certain amount of power in any form. At the moment, it contains both light and dark power, drained from a two leaders that were no longer of use to me.”

  Victoria eyed the box with a new horror. Two life forces had been drained and placed in a single object. The box was like a miniature, much more insipid version of the wall around the Field.

  The Game Lord went on. “Combined, the two powers cancel one another out and act as a magnet, a sort of black hole if you will. It will absorb anything – even the power of the gods to a certain degree.”

  He sighed and Victoria swallowed, her throat scraping against the grip of his hand.

  “This one’s useless to me now, of course. Completely used up. It’s ironic, but the more it absorbs, the less powerful it becomes. I have others, though.”

  He dropped the black box, and it clamored to the floor of the cube. Without loosening his hold on her at all, he turned slightly and pressed a series of buttons on the console beside him. The walls of the transporter began to blur. “Unlike you, Rose Tyrnan. You, my dear, are unique. And you have centuries upon centuries of use left in you.”

  * * * *

  “Come on, come on!” Simon lifted Victor’s head and held his palm over the man’s lips. No breath. What good was a regenerator pill going to do him if the man wasn’t even breathing? Breathing came first. Swallowing was most certainly secondary.

  However, the fact that Victor’s blood continued to stain the ground beneath them meant he was still alive. A heart had to beat for blood to flow.

  As broken and torn as Victor’s body was, it amazed Simon that the dark leader was still alive. It also gave him an idea. If the man’s heart was beating, then his blood was traveling through his veins. Blood was the transport system of the body.

  With that thought, Simon lowered Victor’s head into his lap, took the regenerator capsule between his fingers, and held the pill over the deeper and more ghastly of Victor’s wounds.

  Odin, please let this work, he prayed.

  He snapped the capsule open, revealing a wealth of white crystalline powder that shimmered in the faint wafts of sunlight spearing through the clouds. Simon lowered the capsule halves to Victor’s wound and dumped the powder into the gash. He did so carefully and precisely, making certain the power-laden dust found its way cleanly into the deep cut.

  When both sides of the capsule were empty, Simon sat back and let out the breath he’d been holding.

  He waited.

  And waited.

  He expected the wound to slowly mend shut again. He thought maybe Victor would open his eyes and gasp for breath perhaps even stop bleeding.

  But nothing happened.

  Simon’s gut clenched. Hope slipped away like a wolf in the fog.

  The sudden blinding flash sent Simon reeled back, shielding his eyes. He felt a swell of heat rush over him like a shock wave. When it passed, Simon heard coughing. He lowered his arm and straightened to find Victor slowly pushing up on his side and spitting a mouth-full of blood onto the already soaked ground.

  “That hurt,” Black mumbled before he wiped his mouth on the leather sleeve of his uniform.

  “Black!” Simon rushed to his feet, so shocked and so relieved at the same time, he wasn’t quite sure what to say or do next.


  Victor looked up at him and speared him with the most intense eyes Simon had ever seen on a man. “Where is Victoria?”

  * * * *

  “Strap her to the chair.” The Game Lord gave the order as he moved to the other side of the rehabilitation room, and began perusing the controls on the operations console.

  Victoria screamed and fought, kicked and jerked, struggling violently against the guards that dragged her to the massive leather recliner in the middle of the room. It was outfitted with metal cuffs where arms and legs would be securely locked down, and above the chair hovered the Needle.

  The Needle was the pinpoint device that would emit a ray of light and sound so finite, that it sliced through the scalp, skull and brain without bringing harm to anything around it. But it hurt. It hurt like nothing else in the world, and that pain did not stay localized. It traveled across the body, bringing agony to every nerve ending until, usually, the victim passed out beneath its relentless onslaught.

  Reprieve didn’t last long, however. The victim would re-awaken due to the same pain. On and on this cycle would continue as the needle silently did its job: Erasing real memories, and planting false ones.

  It was literally the last place in the world Victoria wanted to sit – in that chair. She wanted to plead with the Game Lord to reconsider his actions, but she knew it would do no good. If she was going down, she was taking her pride with her.

  “Give her something for the pain,” Max said.

  Victoria’s wide eyes cut to him. He caught her gaze. There was something in his expression that hadn’t been there only moments before.

  What was it?

  In her terror, she possessed neither faculty nor patience to decipher what it might be. The guards shoved the saps on her wrists higher up on her arms and lifted her into the chair, four of them having to wrestle her struggling body into place. Once she was held down, they moved her arms and legs into the open metal bindings.

  The metal cuffs slid shut over her limbs, closing to a painful tightness. She knew it was useless, but she pulled against her restraints anyway. She was rewarded for her efforts with two shallow gashes in the flesh of her wrists, and two bruised ankles.