The group broke apart into hugs and handshakes. The assistants talked excitedly to one another, DuBois moved between groups to offer caramel corn with single-minded devotion, and Nick sniffled suspiciously into a cup of coffee.
Jacob released a breath he felt like he’d been holding for weeks. “The cat’s out of the bag,” he said to Amber. “And it’s okay.”
“Yeah.” She hugged him. “We did good.”
“We did good,” he agreed.
A beep sounded from the lab and everyone turned. They knew what that meant. For a long moment, no one spoke.
“Time to go see the fight,” Jacob said. “Did someone call Ms. Price?”
“On it,” an assistant said.
“I’ll be there in a moment,” Mary said. She looked quickly at her phone. “The Senate is going into arguments in a couple of hours. I want to see if I can get ahold of Tad before he leaves his office. He should know that at least someone in the press believes him. Hopefully, it will have changed a few minds. Whose, I don’t know. But it’s possible.”
In his office, Dru Metcalfe switched the TV off and stared at the black screen in silence. Finally, he stood and buttoned his suit jacket, a reflex from years of business meetings.
He had one move left and it was something he had tried to avoid for years.
On the other hand, he thought with a certain grim humor, he’d made an entire career on doing things he didn’t really want to do.
What was one more?
Chapter Eighty-Four
“Citizens and visitors!” The voice echoed and seemed to roll around the vast space. “Welcome to the final match of Season Twelve!” People cheered and stamped so hard that the entire cavern beneath the arena shook.
“Justin survived the car crash,” Tina said in a mock-reporter voice, “only to die when a video game tunnel collapsed on him because he was…too popular. Joining him in death was Tina Castro, who had never imagined her life would end this way.” She looked at him. “Too soon?”
He laughed too hard to speak for a moment so simply waved a hand. “Oh, God. You’re right, though. Holy shit.”
The Master of Ceremonies was clearly enjoying this match. He worked to wind the crowd up with descriptions of the two teams, some details of which were a surprise even to Justin.
“I didn’t know you defeated a dragon,” Tina said. “Did that slip your mind, or…”
“I rode a dragon,” he said. “Damn. I forgot that the real world doesn’t have dragons. This will be a serious bummer in some ways, I gotta say.”
The platform began to ascend. The Twins were being introduced by name and he had a mental image of them waving to the crowd. He could see their smirks in his mind’s eye and the same attitude they’d given him on the first day they met.
Now he knew what lay behind them. They believed utterly that they were meant to rule this entire world.
He had to say he wouldn’t trust them as gods. They had proven that they didn’t give a damn about anyone but themselves. Anyone willing to kill an unsuspecting opponent to gain godhood clearly didn’t have a great grasp of ethics.
Tina caught his hand and he jumped. Her hold was so tight that his fingers hurt.
“Are you okay?” he asked her.
“I’m nervous,” she said. “Last time, I wasn’t fast enough to save you.”
“Last time, I ran off like an idiot.” He squeezed her hand. “This time…”
“This time didn’t have to happen,” Tina said. “You knew they would wake you up if you asked. Why are you here, Justin? Why are we still here? The truth now.”
The cover slid back and dappled light covered them. He could see the tops of trees swaying above and he suddenly felt oddly calm.
“Do you remember when Zaara asked me if I thought this was real?” he asked her.
“Yeah.”
“I…” Justin took a deep breath. “Look, don’t think I’m crazy, okay? But I wasn’t lying when I told her I think it’s real. I don’t know if it’s only real for people like us—for players or for NPCs too, or what—but I know that you and I have the chance to stop those two from becoming gods and I think that’s important for this world. I don’t want to leave it with a threat I could have saved it from.”
She squeezed his hand again. “You know, I’m really looking forward to seeing what you do when you’re awake again.” As the platform rose to the arena floor, she pulled suddenly on his hand, grasped his armor, and pulled him down for a kiss. “For luck,” she said and her eyes sparkled. “Let’s do this. And stick to the plan, Williams.”
“Stick to the plan,” he repeated. The wall was still around them, but they could see treetops and he pointed urgently. “Zip lines!”
“Oh, this is gonna be as fun as hell,” she said as she turned to stand back to back with him. The two of them scanned the area around them for weaponry.
The countdown appeared Ten seconds, nine, eight…
“I’m ready,” he said.
Five, four, three…
“I think.”
Tina elbowed him with a laugh.
The shield vanished and they stared at an incredible forest, the trees as large as redwoods. Zip lines ran between them and the flat earth covered in a soft blanket of pine needles. With the ground so open, it was easy to see the cache.
Because there was only one—and it was right in the center of the arena.
The two teammates surged into a sprint. He was fast, the legacy of his father’s talent in track. It was one of many things he hadn’t pursued even when Tad had practically begged him to do so. He wondered if his father was watching now and hoped he was.
The thought of seeing his parents helped him push to an even greater speed. The twins pushed toward the cache with the same determination he and his friend did. He and Tina would reach the area first, but not by much.
“Stick to the plan!” he called to her.
She didn’t spare any breath for a response. Her gaze was locked on a battle-ax that protruded from the ground and the tell-tale shimmer of a blue bottle toward the Twins’ side of the cache.
Justin burst into the center of the cache when the Twins were still a dozen yards away. He didn’t slow as he grasped a sword and went into a spin. A few passes helped him retrieve it fully and he continued to run. If he could eliminate one of them now, it would be incredible. Immensely unlikely, of course, but incredible.
That wasn’t his real goal, however. Their adversaries slowed and began to circle outward as he forged forward with the sword. Neither of them was willing to risk decapitation at the start of the match—a pity, that—but they clearly thought they had a chance to defeat him two-on-one.
Idiots. He lunged at Callie and attacked with verve, dragging her partner’s attention from where Tina had reached the blue bottle and now spread the water power along the edge of her blade. Out of the corner of her eye, he saw that she snatched as many potions as she could and stuffed them into a pouch at her belt but also threw swords and daggers away from the cache.
The twins realized too late what was happening. Dexi, angry, shouted and attacked him from behind. Justin pounded face-first into the ground and winced when his sword hand made impact a moment later. It stung but he tightened his grasp on it through the pain.
He maintained his hold when the entire sword shuddered. Callie had raced forward to stamp on the blade and pin it down while her partner grappled for a chokehold.
Without a doubt, Justin would have been in a bad way if he had to choose between defending himself from Dexi and retaining his sword, but he didn’t have to choose. They’d made plans for a few eventualities, and their one-cache plan had been for him to take a ranged melee weapon and hold the Twins off while Tina collected as much of the cache as possible and threw the rest away. She would then distract them, and the two of them would find high ground while their opponents armed themselves.
Tina held up her end of the bargain now and barreled in with a battle cry.
&
nbsp; She disappeared in a cloud of black smoke that stung Justin’s lungs. Callie and Dexi both coughed and the weight on his back released. Whether this was what his friend had wanted, he wasn’t sure. He only had one goal in mind—to push into the Twins’ territory. With that purpose fixed in his head, he pushed to his feet and stumbled. Surely this cloud had to end sometime.
A hand caught his wrist and Tina hauled him along. “Come on!”
“What was that?” he asked. He coughed so violently he almost couldn’t speak. “I…can’t breathe—”
“We gotta keep running,” she said and detoured sideways. “Not this one, not this one—okay, go!”
“Can’t…breathe!”
“This is not the time for dying,” she said succinctly. “You can die later.” She hauled him around the side of a tree and up a set of stairs that wound around it. “Come on, come on, come on. One foot after the other. Keep going.”
Still coughing and choking while his eyes watered, Justin stumbled up the stairs with one hand in hers and one hand wielding his sword. He held onto it as tightly as he could to keep from screaming at the pain in his lungs, and the metal ridges of the hilt dug into his palms.
When Tina let him stop, he dropped to his knees with a dull thud that shook the wooden planks beneath him. He coughed for a long time until he finally spat out something black that looked malevolently at him and crawled away with a hiss.
“So that’s what gremlin-smoke is,” Tina said.
“You didn’t think it might kill me?” Justin looked at her in horror.
“Nope.” She smiled. “And the good news is, it incapacitated both the Twins for a while too.”
She pointed and he crawled to look before he gaped at his surroundings. He’d known vaguely that they were going up the side of a tree but he could see now that they were much higher than he’d realized. The forest floor spread below them and he could barely see the movement of their adversaries limping up one of the staircases.
“Whoa,” he said.
“Yeah. Also, from the coughing, I learned something important.” She pointed at Dexi. “His ribs aren’t all better yet—like the healer warned Lyle about his leg.”
“Yes, well, it’s only been two days since you shattered literally every bone in his torso,” he said. He shuddered dramatically. “I keep trying not to think about that.”
“It was better than cutting him in half,” Tina argued. “I only had the two choices.”
“Yes, because you’d started a killing strike.” Justin grinned at her. “Okay, breathing doesn’t hurt anymore. What’s the game plan from here?”
She pointed to the zip lines. “While you and they were out of it, the Master of Ceremonies announced a change. Magic was blocked at the start of the match but it will be available in…well, probably about two minutes now. I’m not sure if either of the Twins heard, so my idea was for you to get on one of those zip lines and throw spells at them as you go. It’ll be hard for them to target you in return. I’ll follow and we can use the strategy we talked about.”
He nodded seriously. This time, they had decided that they would stay on the move, learn about the arena, and not wait for Dexi and Callie to find a hideout. The zip lines had made that a higher-speed game than they had expected, but he was savagely glad about that.
With deft but careful motions, he spread a fire potion on his sword and buckled it to his side. Tina also had a mana potion, which he slipped into the pouch at his waist.
“So, how will the organizers prevent us from dying to magic?”
“Apparently, the arena’s spells will automatically reduce the size of any spell so it can’t leave you with less than one percent of your health. Each one of us was tagged before the start of the match and that portion of our life force was hidden, I guess? I’m not sure. It must be difficult to do—either that or there aren’t any assassinations in this world.”
“That’s definitely new,” he said. “Sephith would have had that if he could.”
“Good point.”
The two of them strapped themselves into zip lines and readied for the next phase. Tina’s gaze was glued on the Twins’ hideout, and she reported with a smile that they squabbled over the one potion they’d managed to get.
When Justin’s magic bar turned from gray to blue, he made a running leap off the platform before his fear of heights could catch up with him. After a sickening moment when he feared the zip line wouldn’t catch him, the harness bounced, the line went tight, and relief spread through him with a tingle.
Still, he had no time to dwell on that. He readied fireballs and hurled them one after another. It was immensely satisfying to see them converge on the Twins’ location, and his only regret was that he couldn’t take the time to enjoy the zip line. He barely recovered his focus long enough to stop himself from careening into the second tree at high speed—and to get out of the way before Tina came in hot behind him.
They’d divided their tasks at that point too. He would locate their next hideout and look for other caches, and she would report on what their opponents were doing.
“They’ve split up,” she reported suddenly. “Callie got onto a zip line and Dexi didn’t. He’s going down the stairs. Justin, that zipline—now. We have a chance to disable him.”
The Twins had run as their platform caught fire. Justin hooked himself onto another zip line and jumped before he realized fully what was happening.
This one led to the ground. He opened his mouth to scream an expletive but fortunately remembered that the element of surprise was necessary. Instead, he mouthed the word over and over until he landed with a clatter and a crash. Thankfully, the impact dislodged his harness and he tumbled free. Tina landed beside him and rolled to her feet, her battle-ax in her hand.
Dexi reached the ground before he saw them. He turned and ran up the stairs with a look of pure panic, and Justin felt a wave of satisfaction.
Surprise, motherfucker. He downed the magic potion in one gulp and lobbed a fireball at the side of the tree. It destroyed the fugitive’s next stair and began to burn along the stairway in both directions.
With a curse, the man leapt free. He landed heavily and Justin saw what Tina had meant. He winced when his torso moved. Still, he was a warrior through and through. He’d trained through injury before and launched into motion without missing a beat, wielding two short swords like daggers.
It shouldn’t have worked, but Dexi had clearly practiced this, along with magic and claymores and maces. He melded mid-range melee strength with quicks strikes Tina couldn’t defend well against. She began to fall back almost at once before she managed to rally.
“Payback!” she called to him. When he ducked, she mouthed, “Gank him,” and returned to her attack.
She wouldn’t win in the long run but gave a good show of being too emotionally invested to do the smart thing. Her attack was accompanied by shouts of rage and an impressive grimace, and she insulted her opponent’s lineage, his morals, and his looks. She spat insults about how little he deserved to win and how he would not even be remembered when he died.
Dexi, hamstrung by his injury, was nonetheless lured in by the slight edge he had over her. Justin remained behind him until he sensed that the man had forgotten entirely about his second opponent.
The timing was perfect when he struck. He raced forward and swung the sword in a powerful slash. Dexi’s back arched as he screamed, and the blue shield came up.
“Knockout,” the Master of Ceremonies reported. “Dexi has been taken out of the match by Justin.”
A scream came from nearby—Callie, he guessed.
“Get ready,” Justin told his partner.
“I was born ready.” She adjusted her hold on the battle-ax. “Are you ready?”
“Yep.” He sighed. “I hate to give her even the momentary satisfaction again, but…” He sighed, winked at Tina, and ran to one of the distant trees. While he dodged and weaved, he also made sure he was seen as if he simply wasn’t
very good at sneaking.
He located Callie when he was halfway to his target. She sprinted toward him and looked continually around her for Tina. Clearly, she had an idea how Dexi had been eliminated and she was wary as well as furious.
Justin wondered idly if she thought about being a god alone or if she’d let Dexi rule with her.
It didn’t matter because she wouldn’t win. A thrill surged in his blood. She was a formidable opponent but he’d fought Sephith and the demons. He was no longer afraid and he wasn’t desperate. It meant he could choose his time.
The woman cut him off twice. She was armed with a sword identical to his and the two of them parried and clashed. They were close enough at one point for their breath to mingle. She hated him, he could see that.
“You weren’t supposed to be here,” she snapped. “Only Quartzfire stood between us and the crown.”
“Is that what your madman told you?” Justin retorted. “You know, I could get a pet madman to tell me I’m a god too. Or even a pet dog.” He braced his feet and shoved her back.
It had to be done carefully and he wasn’t sure he could do it. He was tiring now. His magic was drained and his footwork grew slower each time he danced out of the way. If he could only get under her guard, he could end it.
Unfortunately, that seemed unlikely. He had used swords on the battlefield and he attacked with more strength and brutal efficiency, but Callie had trained for years. Time and again, a little trick of footwork or a tiny twist of her sword would rescue her from what he thought was a winning strike.
She had maneuvered them onto open ground too. The woman knew by now that his partner had no magic and there was no way for Tina to get out from the shadow of the trees before she saw her. It would be impossible to gang up on her.
Finally, Callie tired of the fight. Justin saw her draw on the deepest reserves she had. Her eyes went flat and cold and she launched into a flurry of strikes that he could not begin to parry. He swung his sword as fast as he could but there was no way he could hold out for much longer. Any attempt at offense was impossible and he scrambled back and jerked out of the way of the strikes. He prepared himself to make his own last stand when he tripped.
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