by Dannika Dark
We turned down a wide hall and neared a small gate with a room behind it. Audrey set the torch in an empty mount and said, “Open the door.”
A man greeted her with a timid bow, and he wasn’t a timid-looking man. His brown shirt was tattered and stained, and his large belly showed at the bottom. The dark bags under his eyes made him appear sickly, and his black mustache covered most of his teeth when he smiled. He unlocked the gate and let us in. Pillars secured the ceiling, and the torches mounted to them did little to brighten up this dungeon.
The hefty man plodded back to a wooden table and lifted an axe. I watched him hack into a large piece of meat and toss the scraps into buckets on the floor.
Ignoring him, Audrey reached for my hand. When she grasped it, I quickly pulled it away.
She gave me a beguiling smile. “Are you worried I’m going to sense your fear?”
“I don’t like people touching me without permission.”
“Have it your way.” She moved ahead of me. “This is where we keep them.”
Curious, I looked inside one of the cages to my right. A man with a shackle around his neck stared back at me, and my stomach dropped.
His sunken eyes widened with hope, and he reached for the bars. “Help me get out of here! Please!”
Audrey moved past the cell to the next one. “Hurry along, Robin. The beggars are so hard to endure.”
As I passed his cell, I pinched my nose. The room had a drain in the center, but no furniture or toilet. Just a bucket.
Audrey snapped her fingers. “Mr. Rafferty, I want you to rinse and mop the cells twice a day. If I come down here again and it’s not clean, you’ll be replaced.”
“Yes, Miss Audrey!” He submissively lowered his head and shuffled over to the man’s cell with a bucket of raw meat.
I stood beside her. “He can’t eat raw meat.”
“When you’re hungry, you can eat anything. I don’t believe in starvation tactics. There used to be fighting rings that would beat and starve the poor things. It made them more aggressive in the ring.”
“Where did you get them?” I asked quietly.
“They’re outcasts. You said you lived on the streets, so I’m sure you understand how many Breeds are discarded by their own kind. They have nothing to live for. The longer the fight, the happier the audience. So I feed them well. Most of them eat in animal form, but I don’t want any of them shifting to human form during a fight.”
“You can’t control that.”
She crossed one arm over her middle and looked inside the dark cage next to us. “When you keep a man in human form too long, his animal grows restless and combative. It fights to come out, and when it does, it usually stays out for a while.”
Blue and Viktor had told me the same thing. They said it was like taking hostage of the physical form. I never imagined it could be used against them like this.
“So that man in there, he’s the next to fight?”
She nodded, seemingly pleased I was catching on. “And something else you should know—they’re all men.”
“Why does their gender matter if they’re in animal form?”
“My benefactors have a particular preference in not only triumphing over a Shifter but also a man.”
This was the first case I’d seen where the victims were men instead of women or children. Curious, I asked, “Is that because your customers are all women?”
“Don’t be absurd. It’s a different experience when opposite genders battle. Those upstairs prefer same-sex fights, but down here they want to see a Mage dominate a Shifter. They also want to see a woman dominate a man, because a man shows less mercy than a woman in the ring. He’ll fight like the savage he is.”
I jerked my thumb at the cage behind me. “And what do they get out of it?”
“Survival. The one who beat my strongest warrior is now working for me. They have an opportunity to reinvent their life, and what better way to do that than to fight for it? But only if they kill the Mage. Mercy is a weakness.”
“It looks like he changed his mind.”
“They don’t get to change their mind.”
This woman was cutthroat. I wasn’t sure I’d ever met anyone so apathetic about torture and death. Some got pleasure out of it, others got a thrill. She just looked at it as a business transaction or a job interview. Then I thought about how unplugged Shepherd was at times. Sensors spent their lives feeling intense emotions in a way that others couldn’t comprehend, so they often came across as detached.
Audrey lowered her arms and stepped closer. “Fear is useless to me. Those who watch underground fights have full access to the sensory experience. I don’t sell it to the highest bidder. That’s part of their membership fee. It’s important that the victor doesn’t win out of fear and desperation. I’m looking for something special.” She brushed her hand across my cheek. “Are you that something special?”
“That and so much more.”
“Mmm, I sense truth.” She pulled her hand away.
That was the truth, all right. But Audrey couldn’t read minds. She couldn’t know I was thinking about how I worked for an organization that busted criminals like her or that I was half Vampire and could drain her in less than thirty seconds.
My fangs were throbbing again. They did that whenever I was itching to kill. Woman or not, she brought out the huntress in me, and that old familiar feeling returned. The one that earned me the Shadow nickname. Or Reaper. Or whatever the hell people called me. I was the bump in the night.
I stepped back when something moved in the dark cell. A black panther emerged into the light and stared at me with predatory eyes.
Audrey reached through the bars and stroked his nose without taking her eyes off me.
“Aren’t you afraid of losing your fingers?”
“Animals smell fear. They don’t know good from evil, and I’m neither. Nor are you. He doesn’t understand why he’s in the cell, but he knows which one of us is in the dominant position.” She withdrew her hand and led me back to the gate. “I also put a little pinch of sensory magic in my touch to allay their fears. It becomes a drug to them. When anxiety and rage are all we know, we seek refuge in any form of escape.”
I remembered my trips to Ruby’s Diner, how I looked forward to the kind words from a friendly waitress. Especially since I was invisible to the rest of the world. I understood exactly how these animals felt.
The panther growled when Rafferty opened the cell and tossed the bucket of meat inside. He quickly slammed the door, startling the animal.
Audrey clucked her tongue. “One of these days, that one is going to get himself eaten.”
Rafferty jogged over and fumbled in his pocket before pulling out the key and opening the gate.
Audrey collected the torch and strolled out as if we were walking alongside a lake on a moonlit night. “Now that we have the questions out of the way, tell me your thoughts.”
“Well, I think only a crazy person would accept a job like this. Screw up and you die. Lose the fight and you die. But win, now that’s the part that interests me.” I moved my plastic bag to my other hand. “I love the rush of a good fight. And whatever Flynn told you, well, he doesn’t know the real me. I’m ruthless, and I don’t like losing. How much does it pay?”
“Two million per match,” she replied, her voice as detached as someone talking about the price of apples. “Flynn takes his cut from the topside fights, but he doesn’t know what goes on down here. Any arrangement you have with him stops now.”
“I can’t take off work without everyone knowing. He’ll get suspicious.”
She stopped to face me. “The girls who work down here resigned, and you’ll do the same. These fights aren’t weekly or every fortnight like the ones upstairs. You’ll fight once a month. Pablo will set you up with our banker so we can do the transactions directly through him. I’ll arrange for an escort. Pablo will fill you in on where you’ll enter the building.”
“He a
lready has.”
“Splendid. As for attire, wear whatever pleases you. I want you to be comfortable and confident. Is that your change of clothes?” she asked, gesturing to my plastic bag.
“I brought these in case, but what I’m wearing now are my fight clothes. I don’t like a lot of skin showing. More to slice up.”
“You’re so different, Robin White. There’s something in those brown eyes that reminds me of my best fighter.”
“Can I have a tour of the upstairs area? I’d love to see what the ring looks like from above.”
“Next time.”
“It’ll only take a minute.”
“I’m afraid I can’t spare a minute.”
“Maybe Pablo can walk me around if you’re occupied.”
When we reached the door again, Audrey opened it. “As I said, maybe on your next visit we’ll show you the upstairs viewing area.”
I strode into the arena. “Is there another secret passageway?”
“Yes. Pablo will show you the way out.” She set the torch back in the holder. “If you survive.”
Audrey closed the door, shutting me in.
Electricity crackled in the air, and when I looked up, all the dark gaps in the archways filled with spectators.
Chapter 27
Wyatt gripped his laptop when the van hit another pothole. “Son of a ghost! Slow down before you bust my equipment.”
Shep took the cigarette out of his mouth and held it between two fingers. “Maybe you need to buckle up, Spooky. And turn that music off. It’s distracting me.”
“It’s my laptop, and nobody touches my playlist.”
“How many songs by Bread exist?” Gem grumped from the back. “You should really try something more upbeat. Like maybe a little Spice Girls or, oh! Do you have the ‘Love Shack’ song?”
Shortly after Raven left the hotel, Shepherd packed the van with weapons, then loaded everyone up and sped to the subway station to get Blue. Now they were headed to the auction house.
Ignoring Gem, Wyatt searched the network connections. He could have installed a router in the van, but anything can be hacked. For trips like these, he preferred piggybacking off someone else’s connection. Technology was another reason he’d chosen a classic Mini Cooper as his mode of transportation. Some modern cars had computer systems and Wi-Fi.
“Not too close,” Viktor cautioned Shepherd from the back of the van. “I do not want anyone to see our vehicle.”
Shepherd slowed down. “Got it. We’ll park here unless Spooky has a problem with that.”
Wyatt spotted a vulnerability in his list. “No problem at all.”
Shepherd shut off the engine. “Turn down the brightness on that thing. It’s like the fucking sun is in here.”
Wyatt didn’t like dimming his workstation, so he got up and climbed into the back of the van for privacy. Since they were parked on a quiet street, he turned off his music.
Viktor stood up. “Sit here. I will go to front.”
Wyatt didn’t take his eyes off the laptop as he sat behind the passenger seat. Since there weren’t windows in the back, no one could see him. No one except Gem, who was leaning over his shoulder to watch his every click.
“How about a little room, Nosy Nellie?”
She leaned back. “What are you looking at?”
He made sure his connection was encrypted as he logged into the black market portal. “I’m hoping we can get a full blueprint.”
Niko spoke up from the seat across from him. “I thought you gave us the blueprint. I memorized everything you detailed.”
On short notice, Wyatt had managed to access the full blueprints to the auction house. His contact had even provided him with the layout of the basement, which wasn’t public record. Nothing fancy down there he hadn’t already seen most of in Raven’s video—a fighting ring, private rooms encircling it, a bathroom, an upstairs viewing area, and an elevator. Anyone could have hit the wrong button and wound up in the game room. Well, if they could get past security. Wyatt also had the schematics that showed how the central control room powered everything, including the sliding doors to the private rooms. By the looks of it, only the person in the control room could open and close the doors. Probably a security measure to guarantee privacy to all the perverts. That would make things easy, allowing the team to focus on taking down the ringleaders while Wyatt gathered evidence.
“The blueprint I gave you is all there is,” he answered Niko.
Shepherd twisted around in his seat. “Then what’s the problem?”
That was just it—there was one colossal problem, and Wyatt didn’t like it. There were two mystery doors in the basement that he had no information on. “I was hoping to find a back way in, and I don’t just mean the back door. I’m talking about an alternate way into the downstairs level. Even if we break into one of the upstairs windows, the lobby elevator is the only way down. There are two doors below that I don’t have the full specs on, so I don’t know how to access them.”
The first door was located near a stairwell that connected the upper viewing area to the fighting level. The second door caught his eye. It didn’t fit the profile of a storage closet even though it was the right size. Wires led to it. Electrical engineering wasn’t like reading script, so Wyatt was at a loss. Here they were, at the eleventh hour, and he had nothing. If he couldn’t find the missing piece of the puzzle, they might be screwed.
Viktor shifted in the passenger seat. “Why did you not mention this before?”
“You looked stressed.”
Shepherd chuckled and pulled in another drag off his cigarette. “This is a clusterfuck.”
“Maybe it doesn’t matter,” Gem offered.
Claude scooted closer to Niko from across the van. “Why don’t you tell us what’s bothering you, Spooky? I can scent it.”
Wyatt reached in his pocket for his breath freshener and then squirted it at Claude. It was bad enough that Niko could read his light, but Claude’s nasal powers were an invasion of privacy. After opening up the program connected to Raven’s camera, Wyatt adjusted the window so he could see multiple applications. His program back at Keystone was recording everything. Once Viktor reviewed the files, he would destroy them. Keeping video records was illegal, but sometimes the higher authority contact Viktor worked with liked a visual confirmation before the sentencing.
Gem gasped. “She’s there! She’s knocking on a door. Viktor, we have to leave.”
Wyatt swallowed the knot in his throat. Without options, they’d have no choice but to use the elevator. Wyatt was in charge of strategizing the best plans, but if they had to go in through the front, there was no telling what they might be facing. Booby traps? They might have the elevator rigged to explode if anyone unauthorized used it. Those were concerns he didn’t want to relay to the group. Not just yet. They would either think he was exaggerating or deem him incompetent, and he didn’t need that kind of negativity when he was already under a tremendous amount of stress. Everyone’s safety and lives depended on him. “Can you hand me my fries?”
“Are you kidding?” Claude growled. “You do this every time.”
“They’re on the floor,” Shepherd muttered.
After a minute, Viktor turned around with a rolled-up sack. It was still warm, and the smell of french fries wafted from the bag as Wyatt opened it. He functioned better on a full stomach. Everyone had a ritual, and his was snacking.
Wyatt quit chewing when a message pinged on the screen behind the video. He minimized Raven talking with the little man and opened up the message. No one ever gave their real identity on the black market sites, and new members often used a string of numbers, which was the default. Wyatt always used the same nickname so he could establish a rapport with others.
One fry stuck out of his mouth and fell onto the keyboard when he read the message and bit down.
User 24267: Use it wisely.
What the immortal hell is this? Wyatt ran a quick virus scan on the atta
ched file before opening it. When he did, he nearly choked on his food.
“Wyatt’s got something,” Niko said. “His light looks like an atomic bomb.”
Wyatt swallowed his fries while zooming in on the blueprints. “Start up the van.”
Without delay, Shepherd fired up the engine. “Auction house?” he asked, his hand on the gearshift.
“No.” Wyatt followed the path of the door near the short stairwell. The tunnel led to another building just behind it. After a quick internet search, he identified the building. “We’re going to the animal shelter. It’s on the street just behind it. Hold on a sec or you’ll break my connection.”
“I don’t want to hurt any puppies,” Gem whimpered.
The user who had given him the file disappeared. Wyatt scanned the list of active members but didn’t find him. Then he did a search in the member database and found no such user. They’d created an account, dropped off the file, and erased their fingerprints. Who the immortal hell would do that without wanting payment?
Dressed in the change of clothes Gem had brought her, Blue got up and sat to Wyatt’s right, forcing him to scoot over. “Why not break into the auction house?”
“They have a steel shutter inside. It’ll take longer to get in, and we don’t know if they’ve got any alarms installed on the doors or upstairs windows. There’s at least one security guard on duty in the daytime and possibly at night. They expect intruders to bust in through the front or back since those are in the blueprints on file. No staircase leads to the basement, just the elevator. And only that one elevator. I bet the animal shelter is how they’re leading in the visitors.”
“Sounds about right,” Shepherd said.
Gem leaned over him. “What’s all that other stuff?”
Wyatt flipped through another blueprint and the attached data. The second mystery door had an arrow pointing down and led to a chamber even farther underground. Lots of old structures like that existed, and most were sealed off. “I don’t want to get sidetracked. I need everyone to brainstorm a way to keep those dogs from barking.”