The Tournament Trilogy

by B. B. Griffith

  It didn’t hurt as much as she’d been led to believe. She felt no real pleasure, only the strangeness of having something inside of you that wasn’t yours. As he moved himself she whispered and made soft moans because she’d heard that would help him. She was very aware of the time. She focused on trying to feel the exact moment when a change would come over her, when she would explode into sexual experience. She tried to separate each part of her into its own center of nerves, wanting to catch and freeze that moment forever. But the moment never came. After several minutes the boy exhausted himself in a series of pulses.

  He rolled off of her and the damp on her hips began to cool. He looked at her and smiled but his eyes betrayed vulnerability. Nikkie recognized that moment as one in which she controlled him; One cruel word, one flippant comment, would destroy the boy. She could lay him low or build him high. She watched him for a moment in the low light and saw his smile fade, but then she smiled and stroked his hair and he closed his eyes and grinned like a dog. She couldn’t bear to break him, but inside she was disappointed. All human sexuality seemed a fragile façade.

  She couldn’t in good conscience continue to see him after that, although it hurt her a bit when he didn’t seem to mind. She always thought that after she’d slept with a man for the first time, she could consider herself truly equal with everyone else, that she’d attain a new status, but again she was disappointed. Instead of bringing her up, sex brought everyone else down; They never were any different from her to begin with. They were all just people, wasting energy worrying about stupid things together.

  During coed scrimmage, the lower ranked men would play the higher ranked women, for fun and for practice, but also for bragging rights. The highest ranked men didn’t bother with the girls; they played only each other. It bothered Nikkie that regardless of how well she played, she would never be in the same court as the top men. It also seemed unfair that their matches drew all of the spectators, while her sidelines remained empty. So she was surprised when, on one such scrimmage day at the end of her sophomore year, as she wiped her dripping brow on her shoulder, she caught the forms of two men out of the corner of her eye.

  Every now and then one or two boys would watch her, not because they cared much—more because they liked to watch a woman bent over playing tennis, and sometimes one or another of her teammates would stop by to cheer her on or critique her form, but these two were different. One was a tall black man with a bald head that gleamed in the sun. He was dressed like a broker out to lunch, in a dark, well cut jacket and a dark blue shirt with a sharp collar, no tie. She didn’t recognize him, but perhaps he was one of the new younger professors, or maybe he worked for the sports department.

  The second man was a blonde fellow, younger than the black man, perhaps even around Nikkie’s age, maybe a student, but she hadn’t seen him before. She would have remembered him. She caught all of this in a glance, before turning back to play out another point, which she lost.

  She turned around again. They were still there, standing calmly behind the chain link fence. The black man leaned in a fraction and said a word to the blonde, who nodded. Nikkie turned back around. She racked her brain as she played, trying to place the two of them, and she lost her concentration. She gave up another point. She was ad-out now. She wiped her brow again. The last thing she needed to do in front of these two was lose. For all she knew they could be scouts for an invitational. She licked her dry teeth and squared her jaw and set herself for the serve. She popped the ball up and snapped her body forward, all of it a motion so ingrained that she hardly needed to think. She felt a solid connect, a thrum of the strings as she slammed the ball directly at the feet of her opponent. He backed out of the way and deflected it high and off the court and let out a shout. Her point. She glanced back at the two men. Neither moved.

  The next serve her partner returned with force, but she volleyed, approaching to attack. She would never last in a baseline battle against him; his shots were too strong, but she could beat him at the net. He let loose a cannon forearm shot at her face, perhaps in retaliation for the serve the point before. She snapped her racket up and caught it, shot it down onto his side of the court, where it bounced once at the edge of the line and went out. He couldn’t catch it. The game was hers. She allowed herself one fist pump and glanced behind once more to see how her company reacted. They didn’t. Or maybe the blonde was smiling ever so slightly. She could see the blue of his eyes even from where she stood. They were very blue, almost tropical, and they drew her gaze like the glint of water in the distance. It took a surprising amount of control to turn around again. She resolved to finish the match without another look.

  She went on to lose the match. She simply couldn’t return the man’s serve. Point after point she proved faster than him, but she couldn’t match his arm. That his raw power could ultimately beat her finesse disappointed her, and, after shaking his hand over the net, she turned around again and saw that her visitors had left. She wasn’t surprised. She couldn’t pull out a win, after all. She was even a little relieved. The blonde in particular made her feel strangely, gave her a barely noticeable unsettling in her stomach and a bump in her heart rate. It wasn’t unpleasant, though—just strange that the mere sight of a person could do that to her.

  She gathered her equipment, finished off her water, and zipped up her bag. She contemplated watching the men’s number one and two singles match. It looked to be quite a game and had drawn a bit of a crowd. No doubt that was where the two had moved off to. But she decided against it and instead exited the courts towards the locker rooms.

  As she closed the gate behind her, she turned around and saw him. He had been waiting. For a split second she felt a bizarre desire to run away, but she quickly gained control. That was ridiculous. It was broad daylight and there were people all around her. And what was it about this man that made her think he was going to hurt her, anyway? He was a clean cut blonde guy in a collared t-shirt, jeans, and flip-flops. His blue eyes were reduced to slits in the late afternoon sun, but the color still peeked through. He even seemed to be smiling, albeit in a small, private joke kind of way. He had a bit of blonde stubble glinting off his angled chin that made him seem both clean and dirty, but that was no reason to run. Out of habit she ran her tongue over her teeth, as she often did while playing. She caught herself mid-motion when it occurred to her how strange it must look.

  “I saw you doing that,” he said.

  “I only do it when...” When what? When she was nervous? Afraid? She didn’t finish her sentence.

  He waited calmly.

  “... I’m sorry. Do I know you?”

  He broke into a real smile at this, showing a magnificent set of teeth, incisors that were nearly vampiric. “Not yet.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  NORTHERN AND MAX STOOD over Nikkie’s bed and looked down in silence. Northern moved over to examine her chart hanging from a metal hook at the foot of the bed while Max continued to watch her sleep. Both men were swollen and discolored about the face in patches of purple and red, like pools of wine beneath the skin. They both looked far worse than Hix, lying peacefully asleep. Her breathing was soft, but no longer the barely perceptible shallow indicative of a diode coma. The doctors had brought her back with adrenal before the two men had arrived. Now she was just sleeping.

  Northern flipped through page after page in the low light of the room. He reached a diagram indicating where she had been shot, and paused. She’d been hit four times. The first had been on the arm. She’d taken that in the hotel. Then she’d been hit once in the stomach and once in the back, but the finishing blow had been a diode to the top of her head. Head shots were the worst, worse even than gut shots. No wonder the lights were so low. Anything more would have been unbearable to her.

  Northern turned to look at her and saw Max reaching for her. Max saw Northern watching him and slowed. Northern said nothing, but Max gently clasped Nikkie’s hand when it looked like he might have been
reaching for her cheek. She stirred slightly and opened her eyes a fraction, seeing everything through a partial blind of her eyelashes. She saw Max and managed a feeble smile. He still held her hand. She shifted a bit and saw Northern.

  “My boys,” she mumbled.

  Northern moved to the other side of her bed.

  “John, I’m sorry, I couldn’t get both of them...”

  “Shhh,” Northern whispered as he brushed her cheek. Max watched him and moved his own fingers on her hand.

  “You did it,” Northern said. “We just finished them off. We got them all. We won.”

  As he talked, he gently and mechanically checked where the diodes had hit her. First, the top of her head. He parted her blonde hair with such a light touch he might have brushed a sleeping tiger to no effect. He slipped strands behind her ear as he leaned over her. There was no blood, but he saw clearly what looked like a big purple birthmark where the diode had hit. The crown of her head was swollen and upraised. Hix closed her eyes again. She didn’t seem to mind his probing. Max now watched Northern very closely.

  “I had to go in,” said Nikkie, her eyes still closed.

  “I know,” Northern said.

  “I was going to pass out,” she mumbled.

  “Try to sleep, Nikkie.”

  He checked her right arm, just above her bicep, where the first diode had struck. He turned down the blue hospital gown only slightly and saw that the wound still looked painful. Her smooth, golden skin was disrupted by violent shades of red and white, feathering out from a pale blue epicenter. It looked like a terrible spider bite, or blood poisoning. Northern gently ran a finger over the wound and felt small abrasions, as if her skin was piled upon itself at the edges, but stretched too thin on the interior. He took a slow, deep breath and rolled the gown back up over it. The aftereffects shocked him every time. He knew that they would fade, but a wound like that—that caused a reaction like that—had to be more than skin deep. The wound feathered out with the veins for a reason. Something traveled in the bloodstream every time a diode hit skin, and bruised as it went. Northern wondered, not for the first time, if the internal mottling ever faded. Or if he himself still looked like that, only on the inside. He spared himself the stomach shot. It no doubt looked the same.

  “What happened Max?” she asked, eyes still closed.

  Max snapped up at the mention of his name.

  “I... I’m sorry. I couldn’t get out of the hotel room. They were right there,” he said, looking away again. “I would have if I had any way—”

  “No, your face. You look terrible,” she said, her lips barely moving.

  Max paused.

  “Well, first there was the door... and then a head-butt—”

  “They got very physical,” Northern said.

  “I believe we started it,” Nikkie said, still with a trace of her soft southern drawl.

  “No, they attacked us with the hand to hand stuff,” Northern said.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Oh. In general. With the bludgeoning and the English and all. Yes, I suppose we are partly to blame for that,” Northern said. “Or I am,” he added. He didn’t seem sorry for it.

  “Is England still in?” Hix asked. The men looked at each other, unsure how to speak.

  “Yes...” Northern said.

  “And? All of the teams were in action when I went under. It’s been a while. The second round draw must be out.” Hix took in a slow breath. Prolonged speaking pained her.

  “Nikkie, you should really rest.”

  “Spare me, John. It’s us and them, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. It’s us and them.”

  “Guess I’d better heal up quick then, huh?” she said, cracking a smile through chapped lips.

  “Two weeks,” Max said, cocking his head as he watched her speak.

  “Two weeks.” She nodded slightly.

  “Once you can move, we’ll get you back to Dr. Walcott in San Diego. You can recoup there, close to home” Northern said. “Don’t worry about Grey right now.”

  “Who said I was worried? One step at a time.”

  “One step at a time,” Northern echoed.

  ————

  “We almost lost everything in Japan,” said Christina Stoke, safely away from the dried blood and dust of Mexico City, sipping a gin and tonic in the forward cabin of an airplane cruising at altitude to the Northeast and home. The seats were big bucket recliners, one to a row. She spoke to Auldborne, on her left across the aisle. Draden Tate was to her right, gazing out of the window. His bulging right forearm was wrapped in gauze. If it caused him any pain at all, he gave no indication.

  “Yes,” Auldborne said, reclining further and resting his own drink on his stomach. “The Japanese do fight on. And on. And on. Crazy bastards. They very nearly did it themselves.”

  “Hix took four shots? Haulden and Northern almost beaten down? The stupid asses almost lost. Then what? Our glory robbed. End of story.”

  “But they didn’t lose, did they? They couldn’t beat Northern in the end, could they? No,” Auldborne said, emphasizing his point with a sip of scotch, like amber medicine in its plastic cup. “No, that’s for me to do.”

  “Pretty close though,” Draden said, still looking out the window.

  Stoke slammed down the rest of her drink and began rattling the ice loudly, glass upheld.

  The stewardess made her way to where she sat. “Another?”

  “Yes another,” Stoke snapped, as if the question was the most ridiculous imaginable.

  She took the glass and hustled off, eager to be away.

  “I predict Northern will make a stand in California,” Auldborne said. “His sweeper is too injured to travel far.”

  “Goin’ on offense nearly ruined him in Japan. He be thinkin’ twice now ‘bout leavin’ his home.”

  “He’s afraid,” Stoke smiled.

  “Perhaps,” Auldborne said. “Or maybe Hix is hurt worse than we think. Either way, after the two week moratorium, the move is ours to make.”

  “So we go to them. Beat them into their own dirt,” said Stoke, snatching her drink from the proffered tray without a word to the stewardess.

  “I say why not? It’ll be a massacre,” said Auldborne. He sipped and hissed in a slow breath. “It’ll be our massacre. They’ll name it for us. It’ll be historic.

  “California it is then,” Stoke said.

  Auldborne looked at Draden Tate, who nodded as he stared out of the window, slowly balling his left hand into a fist and relaxing it again. Squeezing and releasing, squeezing and releasing, as the ground below flew by.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  WHEN THE PLANE FINALLY landed, the entire runway had already been taped off. Ian saw flashes of cameras and the twirling of red and blue lights in the distance, but only several large, black SUV’s and a single row of idling ambulances were allowed past the lines. Pyper and Ian were told to exit first, while everyone else was held back for a debriefing by the Tournament legal wing. The inert bodies of the four players shot down were hustled away and placed into the awaiting ambulances.

  Ian and Pyper were ushered into a black car with tinted windows and driven through a cordon of flashing bulbs. They were admitted to the Royal Hospital Chelsea through a basement entrance monitored by two armed guards. Once there, they waited for Kayla to slowly come back to them.

  Just over 24 hours later, when she could finally move of her own accord, Kayla insisted that they leave England immediately and would brook no argument otherwise. She became so agitated that Pyper finally agreed, and so they subtly exited the hospital and flew directly to Dublin. Thinking Kayla would benefit best from a few home amenities, Pyper suggested they all eat and regroup at her father’s house on the city’s outskirts.

  Daniel Hurley kept a modest, three bedroom ranch house. On this day, Daniel was off on a quick trip to the supermarket around the corner, and Bailey answered the door to the members of Green. She squealed when
she saw her older sister, and squealed louder when she saw Ian Finn. Kayla MacQuillan she abided because whenever she came around, Ian was usually there too. Pyper picked up the girl, still a waif, but with hair that was already nearly as long and as striking as her older sister’s. She had none of Pyper’s quiet, regal carrying, however, and screamed her hellos to the three of them, saving Ian for last.

  “Where’s dad?” Pyper asked.

  “At the store,” she said, hugging her sister’s leg and peering up at Ian.

  “Why did you answer the door then, Bailey? Never answer the door when you’re alone.”

  “But I saw Ian!”

  “And I saw you! How are you?” Ian knelt down and put his hands on his knees, which Bailey mistook for an open invitation and squealed as she threw herself into his arms. She hugged him for barely a moment before she dashed out of his reach again and around the table.

  “Wish I had half of her energy,” Kayla said, leaning hard against the doorframe and breathing heavily.

  “Let’s get you something to eat. Sugar always helps for me,” Pyper said.

  The three of them sat down at the dining room table, but Kayla pushed the soda and bit of chocolate away. She was piqued and pale. The smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose stood out starkly on her gray pallor. Her normally mischievous, dark eyes were puffy and shot through with red. Her spiked auburn hair was plastered to her head. Ian Finn watched her with concern.

  “You have to eat, Kayla,” Pyper said.

  “I’m fine,” she snipped. She looked at Pyper and then away again. “Sorry. It’s just that I’m not hungry.”

  “Kayla—”

  “If I look off, it’s because it makes me sick that we can’t fight those bastard English in the second round. Instead we get the lunatics from Russia.”

  Pyper glanced at her little sister drawing on the coffee table in the next room. Bailey doodled while shooting furtive glances at them.