As it turned out, he did need help.
“If we get out of this alive,” I told him as I zipped up his pants, “I am never going to let you forget this.”
“If we get out of here alive, I’m going to kill you and tell everyone it happened in the aren – cold! God, your hands are so cold.” He smacked at me. “Get off, I can do the rest.”
“At least I’ll die happy. Come on, we’re going to be late.”
We were halfway down the hall when he demanded, “Are you going to dry these or not?!”
~~~***~~~
The party itself was as ridiculous as the clothing we were all wearing. They served it banquet style, with Reave and Victor at their own table on a stage at the head of the room. Even the witches and wizards had exchanged their brown outfits for something fancier. There was live music and some people had even started dancing. Someone in the band had a guitar string out of tune and after five minutes I was ready to go forcibly tune the damn thing. Or smash it.
It seemed like there really was no specific reason for the party; it was just an excuse to get everyone dressed up and doing something different than usual. I had no interest in dancing, so I spent most of the party sitting and people watching with Tom, accepting every slice of cake that was handed to me; a perk of no longer dealing with a stomach that felt the need to bleed at random.
I just happened to look up as Reave leaned over to kiss Adaira. She turned and let him kiss her cheek instead. Then, with a flirty smile, she pecked him on the cheek and whispered something. Reave grinned in response, then returned to eating.
I kept staring. No way.
I knew that game all too well. I couldn’t count how many times I had done it with the girls that Tom and other well-meaning friends set me up on dates with. They go in for a kiss, you turn your cheek for something a lot less uncomfortable. Soften the blow with a coy grin and a return kiss – a promise of a later that was never going to come.
Adaira didn’t like Reave.
How had I missed it? Was I misreading things? I kept watching them curiously, but only became more convinced I was right. I caught Reave gazing at her a hundred times, but Adaira never once glanced in his direction unless he addressed her. Reave constantly touched her; arm angled in her direction like he was touching her leg under the table, putting a hand on her arm or shoulder, caressing her cheek, fixing her hair…
By contrast, Adaira never touched Reave before he initiated it; even then there was something almost exaggerated about her touches and she seemed to end the contact as quickly as possible. By the time the party was over, I was convinced that Adaira had absolutely zero interest in Reave, despite the fact that everyone here claimed the two of them were in love.
The moment we were safely back in Tom's room, I turned and announced, “Adaira doesn't love Reave.”
“What?” he asked in surprise.
I told him about my observations, his frown deepening as I spoke. At last he sat down on the edge of his bed, thinking.
“So, if Adaira doesn't like Reave…” he said slowly, “then why is she pretending to be in love with him? What does she have to gain from it?”
“Being turned?” I suggested. It was the only thing I could think of.
“Reave is going to turn everybody though,” Tom argued.
“So he claims.”
“She seems pretty convinced he's going to turn her.”
“Maybe a little too convinced,” I said, thinking back to how vehemently she had insisted Reave was going to do it. “Maybe she suspects he isn't going to, if he hasn't yet. So, she thinks that if he's in love with her, it'll be easier to convince him?”
“Maybe,” Tom said. “Although she has to know if Reave won't turn her, Victor certainly will.”
I nodded in agreement; thanks to an overheard conversation we knew that it was Victor who changed Anthony into a dhampir, so he clearly didn’t have any reservations about turning people.
“What are they waiting for anyway?” I asked. “Why not turn everyone? Surely some of them have proved their loyalty by now.”
“Maybe that's why Adaira's doing it,” Tom suggested. “Maybe Victor doesn’t plan to change anyone either. We know he has a pretty low opinion of humans, maybe he’s just using them all. We’ve seen at least a couple of witches and wizards come and go since we've been here – I’m assuming they kill the ones who want to leave – maybe they're just hoping the humans all get sick of not being turned and just replace them with new ones. If Adaira gets cozy with Reave, she's probably safe and might eventually get turned.”
I nodded. There was still something not right about it, but I couldn't put my finger on it.
Tom sat quietly, eyebrows creased in thought. “I still can't believe any of them actually want to be turned. I mean, I’ve kind of come around to the whole being a vampire thing, but…”
We both chuckled darkly. Truthfully, I was glad he had finally gotten over it. I wouldn't tell him, but I was pretty sure I had caught him actually enjoying some of the glasses of straight up blood they served the vampires here; it was a far cry from the days when he was embarrassed to even mention feeding, let alone do it in front of anyone. Of course, for a time he was miserable about eating as well, not seeing a reason to enjoy the foods he liked as a human, since he didn’t need them anymore. I was glad I had snapped him out of that one too. I let out a little chuckle, thinking of the bittersweet times of the two of us sitting around, both refusing to eat human food for one reason or another.
“What?” he asked.
“Just thinking,” I said softly, shrugging. “We've come a long way from the idiots we used to be.”
He smiled grimly, then wrinkled his nose. “Other than the fact we got ourselves stuck here with a bunch of crazy witches and wizards who want to become vampires and a bunch of vampires who want to take over the world.”
“True,” I conceded. I mulled over his words for a moment, then added. “It doesn’t make sense to me.”
“What doesn't make sense?” Thomas asked.
“This.” I waved my arms at the room. “Victor’s always going on about his army and everything. He has everyone all excited about this grand plan to take on MES and create this new vampire utopia or whatever. But I don't understand how they actually expect to get to that point. He says that the fights are supposed to be their way of finding out who the strongest among us are, so that they can lead, but it's a pretty terrible way of doing it. Unless they're planning on dramatically expanding how many people are here, killing off half of the people in your army before the fight even begins seems pretty stupid to me.”
Tom nodded along. “Yeah, that’s true.”
“Besides,” I added as I thought about it. “We're not actually preparing for anything, either. We're just all screwing around half the time. The fights might be keeping us in decent shape, but they're not teaching us anything useful. If anything, they're teaching us how to fight against each other. What is Victor expecting to do? Unless we’re talking about decades here, if we went out anytime soon with this little ragtag volunteer army, we would get our asses kicked. I mean, maybe, we could take out one MES Field Office someplace, but every agent in the region would be on us. We'd never hold it and that would be it for Team Vampire.” I flopped down into the chair, thinking. “It just doesn't make any sense. However Victor is planning on executing this plan, this isn't the right way to go about it.”
Tom nodded. “I try not to think about that too much, in case we're here when it all happens, but you're right. Nothing that Victor talks about doing with this group is even possible the way it is now. But he seems serious about it.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I don't doubt that's what he wants to do. Maybe he just can't figure out how to get there or maybe he is planning on this taking a few decades.”
“It is kind of a big undertaking.” Tom frowned. “Or maybe Reave is slowing him down? I mean, according to Chris and Nick, Reave doesn't want to do any more than this. Maybe Vict
or doesn’t want to move forward until Reave is on board?” He shrugged in response to his own theory. “Either way, I don’t like it. Nothing about this place makes sense. I feel like there's something I'm missing… like if I could just figure it out, then all of this would make sense.”
“I have that feeling too.”
He shook his head. “We should probably get some rest; there's a fight tomorrow night.”
~~~***~~~
Much to our relief, neither one of us got called up for any of the fights, especially when the third fight involved Cleaver. This time the berserker fought a very unfortunate werewolf. I didn’t expect a werewolf to last long against him and wasn’t surprised when the fight ended in the werewolf’s death and Victor berating Cleaver, while sounding slightly inconvenienced.
The silver lining was that if it was anything like Cleaver’s last fight, everyone would be partying long into the night, giving Thomas and I plenty of time to explore.
When the fights were over, the two of us started out again – desperation sent us delving a little farther off the beaten trail than usual. We discovered a new stairway and followed it down quite far. Based on the water level I could sense and the dampness around us, we were underground.
“I smell a lot of witches and wizards down here,” Thomas said.
“Do you think this is where they stay?” I guessed, looking at the doors lining each side of the hallway.
“Maybe.” Tom stopped by one and studied it. “It’s a bedroom. Smells like a witch.” He tested the handle. “Locked.”
“Want me to pick it?” I offered.
He nodded. “I doubt we’ll be lucky enough to find a phone, but no harm in taking a peek.”
I pulled a small pilfered water bottle out of my pocket and poured a little ball of water onto my hands. I knelt down by the door and filled the lock with water. Then, I closed my eyes and concentrated, as I swirled it around, feeling for the locking mechanism. There. After a satisfying click, I drew out the water, simultaneously drying the lock and removing any sign I had been there.
I eased the door open, shooting a smug grin at Tom, knowing that he would never admit to being impressed by my lock-picking skills. Before we replaced the crappy lock at our first place, I had been able to unlock it with water faster than he could with a key and I was pretty sure it still irritated him.
It looked like a fairly boring bedroom; about what I would have expected from witches and wizards who chose to give everything up to become vampires.
“Anything?” Tom asked, staying carefully on the safe side of the doorway.
“No,” I said, looking around again. “Nothing.”
We did the same in a few more rooms as we made our way down the hall. It split off into several corridors and we picked one at random and headed off. This one seemed empty, but just as we were ready to turn around, we passed a hallway off it and went to check it out.
After just a few steps I felt wrong somehow. I could feel my heart pounding and my mouth felt dry. I took a few more steps, then stopped.
“Are you okay?” Thomas whispered.
I shook my head. “I feel…” I couldn’t put it into words. There was no reason I should have felt anything strange at all. Instead of finishing, I pulled out a knife. To my surprise, my hand was shaking.
“So do I,” he said.
Our eyes met and he looked pale and nervous. We nodded to each other and kept going.
Halfway down the hall my heart was still racing and I had the almost overpowering urge to turn and run. I did not want to go down this way. Every step grew harder to take. Next to me, Tom was walking slower as well. I could sense his blood pressure rising as we went deeper into the corridor.
It led nowhere.
“A dead end?” Thomas demanded, looking around in confusion.
“Great,” I said. “Let’s go. We shouldn’t be here.” I don’t know why I felt that way, but I couldn’t shake it.
“This is wrong,” he agreed.
I looked around at the walls, almost as if they were closing in and yet… “I feel like I’ve been here before,” I murmured.
Tom shook his head. “I am not okay, but I don’t feel that way.”
“Let’s go,” I said again, starting back down the hall. “I feel like I’m about to have a panic attack.”
“That I feel,” he said, hurrying after me.
The moment we crossed back into the main hallway it was like a vice that had been squeezing my chest suddenly released. I heaved a sigh and turned back, looking down the hall.
“What the hell was that?”
“I don’t know,” Tom answered, looking as disturbed as I was. “It’s getting late,” he said, looking, I assumed, to the east. “We should call it a night.”
I nodded and we started back. Just as we got to the main area, Tom stopped.
“Someone’s coming!” he gasped.
“Which way?”
He pointed to a corridor, so we rushed down another and ducked into it. The footsteps drew closer, closer… then grew quieter. We both sighed in relief and snuck forward for a peek. It was a man, walking away down the hall.
Tom sniffed. “Wizard,” he mouthed.
I frowned; this wizard was wearing normal street clothes, not the brown uniform they all usually had on. He walked most of the way down the corridor, then turned down another one and went out of sight.
We both sighed in relief.
“Let’s go,” I whispered.
Fortunately, we made it back to the area where the rooms were without incident. We were almost back to our room, when Tom stopped short, this time staring at one of the sconces on the wall.
“Adds to the creepy ambiance, doesn’t it?” I quipped, watching the dim bulb flickering like flames.
“There weren’t any down there,” he said softly.
“Why would there be? None of the “guests” are supposed to be down there.”
He turned to me and raised an eyebrow. “There were no lights at all.”
“I didn’t notice. My night vision is just as good as yours, thank you.”
“How did that wizard know where he was going?” Tom said.
“A night vision spell like Jen is always using, I imagine.”
“Without a wand?”
My retort died in my throat as I stared at him. “Skata… and what was up with his clothes?”
Thomas shook his head uncertainly.
“I hate getting more questions than answers,” I snarled.
~~~***~~~
Even though the way down hadn’t been locked, we knew we couldn’t get caught sneaking around the witches and wizards’ rooms too often. We focused our attention on the more populated areas for a couple of weeks. The following week I ended up in the arena against another water elemental; considering there was no water around it wasn’t a very long fight. Had it not been for Victor’s memorable warning about holding back, I would have gone easy on my opponent.
The week after that they pit Thomas against yet another vampire, thankfully one a bit less bloodthirsty than Olivia. The ones who had been there longer obviously had worked out more of a vampire-versus-vampire strategy and there were a couple of times I got a little nervous, but Tom took care of himself.
It wasn’t until the third week we got a chance to really explore. This time, we went up, high into a twisting tower. A locked door, without a keyhole, was at the top. According to Thomas it smelled like witches and wizards as well. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a bedroom. If only we could get inside…
Yet another fight night rolled around; a month since the night we explored down below the castle. Another month stuck in this hellhole.
We filed into the arena and settled into what had become our usual seats. The first fight was Flint against Tierra. It was a lot of slow, clumsy bashing with clubs, until Tierra got the bright idea to switch to a knife. It seemed like the tide would turn in her favor, but knives were better suited to speed and Flint blocked each slash, until he
scored a lucky shot with his club and Tierra went down, hard.
Thomas and I cheered with the others, making sure we blended in and showed support of one of our fellow newbies – not that we were so new anymore. When the cheers died down, we both sat, rolling our eyes at each other.
“I miss a good Friday where the only slaughter was me kicking your ass in Clue,” I muttered.
He chuckled. “I bet they have that here. We should play sometime. Better than… well, anything else happening.”
“Two player Clue sounds terrible.”
Our laughter stopped instantly when Victor roared, “Cleaver!”
The crowd began to chant the berserker’s name eagerly.
“Someone is getting killed tonight,” I said.
Tom nodded grimly.
Victor grinned and called out, “Delta!”
Chapter Eight
Thomas
I froze.
For a moment, I just sat there, unable to even turn to look at Danio. It wasn’t until I realized he was starting to stand that my hand shot out to grab his wrist.
“You can’t,” I hissed. “He’ll kill you!”
He turned back to me, eyes churning wildly as blues and grays crashed and swirled together.
“Really? Something like “good luck” or “kick his ass” would have been a lot more encouraging!”
“Danio,” I snarled as softly as I could, counting on the screaming crowd to muffle my voice, unable to use his fake name, not now.
“If I don’t fight him, Victor and his goons will kill me. At least with Cleaver I have a… a fighting chance,” he added with a bitter laugh.
“Delta!” Victor called. There was a singsong quality to his voice that made me want to hurl myself over the seats and rip out this throat.
Our eyes locked for a moment. I shook my head slightly, images of Cleaver slaughtering Olivia and then the werewolf flashing through my head. But I knew he was right; if we didn’t fight when Victor called us, we were dead. As slim as Danio’s chance of surviving against Cleaver was, it was better than facing Victor, and Anthony and Singe, and anyone else who might join them, to punish someone who refused to fight. For all I knew Victor would just let Cleaver chase him down and do the job anyway.
Rise of the Arcanist Series: Books 1 - 6 Page 49