by Val Tobin
Her boss, who Rachel would’ve considered a good friend only a few days before, fixed Rachel with a cold stare. “I’m sorry. It’s nothing personal.” She said nothing more. No explanations followed, no justifications.
At least she didn’t give me that old bullshit about how it’s just business. Rachel’s hands curled into fists. She and Hound Dog were outnumbered four against two, and Hound Dog might have a concussion. At the very least, his weakened state meant he couldn’t afford to reopen either of his wounds. Even so, if they left this room with Stefan and his men, they’d probably never live to see freedom again.
Stefan had come in unarmed. Pattenden carried a gun in a holster at her waist and nothing else, but the two guards were armed to the tits. They each carried a rifle and had handguns in the holsters on their belts. Each also had a knife in a sheath strapped to his leg. They’d have to neutralize the two guards first, but she couldn’t forget the sentry outside the door.
“Take the male to the Peterborough lab.” Stefan ignored his daughter for the moment.
“I don’t think so.” Hound Dog readied himself to fight.
“You’ll find your buddy there,” Stefan said, as if offering a tantalizing tidbit.
“What does that mean?”
“It means Rachel’s reporter friend is already on his way to the lab, where he’ll enjoy our hospitality. You’ll have his company. For as long as you’re there.”
A chill raced up Rachel’s spine. Hound Dog’s face contorted in a grimace, but when he spoke, he only said, “Fuck you.”
Stefan motioned to the captain, who pulled her gun and pointed it at Rachel.
“We want you, not her,” Stefan said. “You want her to live, you come with us. Otherwise, the captain shoots her in the head and we take you with us anyway.”
Hound Dog went corpse pale. Rachel edged her way closer to the captain. Pattenden spotted the movement.
“Freeze, Rachel.” The captain took a step back, the gun levelled on Rachel’s chest.
The two guards stood well away from Hound Dog, so he couldn’t make a grab for a weapon either.
“I’ll make it easy for you, boy,” Stefan said. He called out, “Doc, can you come in here?”
The door opened, the sentry on duty holding it, and a man in a lab coat entered the room, pushing a wheelchair. Stefan indicated he should push the chair to Hound Dog.
“Take a seat, son.”
Hound Dog turned his gaze onto Rachel. She could only stare into his eyes, pleading silently for him to stay safe. Without a word, he sat in the chair. Immediately, a guard strapped his arms and legs to the chair. The doctor stepped in and plunged a needle into Hound Dog’s arm.
“What the hell are you doing?” He struggled but slowly wound down and slumped forward.
“Get him to transport,” Stefan told the doctor.
One guard held the door as the doctor pushed the wheelchair through it. Rachel stood, helpless, and watched her closest friend disappear from her life.
***
The realization Hound Dog had been her closest friend for the last two years struck Rachel like a hammer blow to the solar plexus. They’d had each other’s backs for so long she’d taken him for granted—as he’d taken her for granted. It was the way of things, acceptable, because if you didn’t trust your partner, in this line of work, you were injured or dead.
She had to find a way to rescue him before they hurt him. That she intended to get him back wasn’t even a question. Sooner or later, she’d find her opportunity or they’d kill her first.
Her father approached her and waved the guard and Captain Pattenden from the room. Rachel chuckled mentally. She might get her chance sooner than she expected.
As the door swung closed behind the departing pair, Stefan turned to face his daughter.
“I’m disappointed in you.”
She smirked. “Aww, you sad I’m not evil like my father? Imagine how I feel. My father is asshole of the decade. You literally brought monsters into the world.”
“I’m tired of this. I’m tired of you.”
“What do you want from me? I won’t help you. What’ll you do to Hound Dog?”
“Tests. Then he’ll be turned over to the Dark Market.”
She wanted to scream in rage but choked on the attempt. The Dark Market had come into existence at the turn of the twenty-first century. A covert economy, part of the dark web, everything done there was illegal, immoral, and despicable. Those who worked in it were destined to die in it as slaves. None of them chose to be there. Those who ran it would kill to continue the sordid activities.
The police busted a small percentage of the criminals running the Dark Market, but when one mastermind went down, two more inevitably popped up and carried on, business as usual.
“Why?” Her voice quivered as she spoke. The thought of Hound Dog turned over to that foul community for—what? She shuddered.
“A guy who can fight grendels? He’s valuable.”
“The grendels don’t attack him.” She forgot her terror for a moment, unable to comprehend what her father might get from this.
“Not now.”
“What do you mean?” She shouted that last bit, frustrated with his piecemeal parcelling of information.
“Oh, this vaccine will wear off. If you don’t get a follow-up booster, the protection from the first shot will weaken after a few weeks. If we put him in a cage with one, it’ll attack him.” Stefan beamed a grin at her, his eyes shining with excitement. “You should see it. Man against monster—or woman against monster.” He scanned her up and down. “You, my pet, will beat him there. You can go straightaway since you never received the first shot. I’ll even put money on you to win.”
She charged him then, shoving him against the wall, grabbing for his throat. Her fingers found purchase, and she squeezed, but he shoved his arms between her forearms and pushed down until her grip eased. His head thudded the wall and then bounced off. He cried out in surprise and shock, roaring when she continued her ferocious attack by stomping on his instep.
Since she was barefoot, it didn’t hurt as much as she would’ve liked, but it caused enough pain to distract him. Before she could stick her thumbs in his eyes, arms snaked around her waist and hauled her off him.
“I’ll kill you,” she shrieked at her father.
Another pair of arms restrained her, and two more guards entered the room. Behind them, she glimpsed a doctor with another wheelchair. She kicked with fury and fear, but she’d lost this battle before it’d even begun.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Days blended into weeks for Rachel until she lost track of time. Each morning, she ate, she trained, and she bided her time. The week after training ended, they sent her to the death matches once a week in the afternoon or evening. In the ring, she fought a cage match against a grendel. So far, she’d won each event. Her reward for doing so was continuing to live. She’d seen more than one fighter lose a match, and the grendel’s reward for winning was to feed on its opponent.
Young, strong, and agile, Rachel had always fought well and was an excellent martial arts fighter. Often, an instructor had invited her to compete, and she’d been proud to do so, but her heart had always been in hunting monsters not in competitive sports. Now, she was grateful she’d participated in those events. In an environment where she had to win or die, she needed every advantage. Experience made these matches easier for her to survive.
So far, she hadn’t seen Hound Dog at any of the competitions, and she didn’t know if that made her relieved or terrified. He’d been a good fighter, and she expected he’d last long in this horrifying circuit, but only if he stayed focused and determined. His tendency to let his opponent psych him out made him vulnerable. Of course, a grendel couldn’t taunt him or use any psychological tricks, but it wasn’t the grendels she worried about—it was the grendel trainers.
The trainers wanted their creatures to win, and they used sabotage against the human opponent as
part of their strategy. Often, Rachel battled a grendel whose trainer stood on the periphery hurling insults and distractions at her. It violated the rules—the assholes who ran the events wanted a clean fight, and no, they didn’t see the irony in that—but the trainers did anything they could to win.
A winning grendel could make hundreds of thousands of dollars for its owner and trainer. With money like that at stake, cage fighters had to understand they fought two opponents, not one. Her coach made thousands from her fights, and he’d taught her enough tricks to keep her on top. He also ran interference if the grendel’s trainer blatantly broke the rules, but mostly, once the portcullis rose and the grendel entered the ring, she was on her own.
When she’d first arrived, she’d tried to learn as much as she could about her surroundings and those she met in the fighting world. Each fighter had an owner, and in Rachel’s case, her father owned her and won money from her fights. Unfortunately, handlers kept the fighters isolated from one another. The owners probably worried the fighters might escape if they mingled—a reasonable assumption. She’d have personally led the rebellion.
As things stood, the only human contact she had was with her coach and her sparring partners. Management swapped out the sparring partners regularly so she couldn’t get close to them, and her coach had all the warmth and compassion of a honey badger.
Tonight, the tension in the arena reached higher than usual. Rachel sensed it the moment she stepped into the ring. Her long, black hair hung in a braid—they forced her to keep her hair long since the audience grew frenzied with excitement when a grendel grabbed her by the hair and went for her throat. Even the male fighters wore their hair long.
As for clothing, she wore a white T-shirt and cargo pants, but her feet were bare. Her fights had become boring, she’d been told, because she won too quickly when she wore combat boots. Tonight was her first barefoot show.
The crowd’s roar thundered, vibrating the floor, the steel-mesh-enclosed main ring, and the metal bars of the cage inside the ring. Music added to the ruckus. It blasted from speakers high in the rafters above.
Tony, her coach, slapped her on the back. “Stay alert, Frostbite.”
They’d kept her nickname and used it as her stage name. Lights shone onto the stage, making it difficult for her to see much of the audience except the ones in the first three or four rows. They all sported Frostbite T-shirts, hoodies, or jackets. Images with her face or ones including her whole body in fighting stance and her name in neon emblazoned the shirts.
Some audience members wore T-shirts with grendel names and images. She recognized the names of grendels she’d killed in the cage and smiled. Those shirts weren’t worth much now unless they had her face on them as well and the date of the fateful fight.
This circus, illegal as it was, raked in money. She assumed the organizers had paid big bribes to allow it to continue here night after night, week after week, and month after month. Beyond that, it might stretch into years, and she didn’t plan to find out how long she could keep it up before a grendel punched her ticket.
She ignored Tony—she spoke as little to him as she could. If he cared at all about her as a person, he’d help her escape this life of slavery, and so far, he’d shown no inclination to do so. At least, she wasn’t a sex slave. In the Dark Market, youth was a commodity, and when slaves weren’t streamed onto the fighting circuit, they went into the sex trade.
Rachel wished she could do something about that. Instead of hunting grendels as monsters, she should’ve hunted the monsters in the Dark Market. These exploiters were more evil than the grendels ever could be. She promised herself that if she ever returned to the real world she’d become a cop again and destroy the slave trade.
Something pinged off her face. She pressed a hand to her cheek while Tony, seeing what had happened, scanned the crowd to find the culprit. Rachel followed Tony’s gaze to a young boy with a cardboard barrel of popcorn in his lap and a giant soft drink in the cup holder in his chair.
“Relax, Tony. It’s just popcorn,” Rachel said.
Some of these fans, like that kid, were jerks. Probably picked up the behaviour from his old man. Abuse hurled at the fighters was tolerated, even encouraged, up to a point. As long as it excited the fans, making them spend more money on souvenirs and food or larger bets, the coaches and trainers ignored it. If it caused problems or threatened to injure a fighter, security would intervene. However, when that happened, most of the people in the stands hated it and took it out on the fighters. The last thing Rachel needed going into a fight was animosity from the audience.
Tony scowled, an expression he favoured so much he sported a permanent resting bastard face. “I’ll give him one more chance. Little prick.”
“He’s a kid. Leave him be.”
“Not if he distracts you.”
“You’re distracting me more than he is. Leave me be.”
Tony’s scowl smoothed into his natural frown, and he hocked a giant loogie onto the cement directly in front of Rachel’s feet. She ignored it, used to his disgusting behaviour. The whole guy disgusted her. He looked like a pig, and he acted like one. One day, she hoped to smash his pig nose into his pig face on her way out of here. She grinned inside. A girl had to have her dreams.
The roar of the crowd intensified as the announcer stepped in front of the cage door.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he enthused, “welcome to tonight’s main event.”
The crowd roared a response, and another popcorn kernel bounced off Rachel’s face. She curled her hands into fists but kept her face impassive, refusing to give the kid the satisfaction of acknowledging the transgression. A glance in Tony’s direction confirmed he’d missed it. She rolled her shoulders, easing the tension in her neck. If she didn’t relax, it would cost her in the cage.
The announcer introduced Rachel and Thunder, her opponent. Thunder snorted and grunted beyond the darkened entrance of the portcullis.
As each name boomed across the arena, a spotlight glared down first on Rachel and then at the portcullis. The bright light sent Thunder into a frenzy, spittle raining in all directions from his frothing maw. He grasped the bars of the gate and rattled them while he roared his fury.
Screams and cheers from the audience shook the rafters, increasing Thunder’s rage. “Thunderstruck” began to play at eardrum-shattering decibels, and the crowd chanted and clapped and stamped to the music. The vibrations on the floor intensified, and the air thrummed with energy.
Rachel swallowed her terror. Fear had no place in the ring. She gathered a large glob of spit into her mouth and, careful not to hit anyone, launched it toward the crowd.
Fans in the front rows noticed the show of defiance and arrogance and jumped to their feet. A chorus of voices screamed “Frostbite!” over and over. Below it, other voices shouted “Thunder!” Still others chanted “Kill the bitch!”
She was the bitch.
The cage door she faced opened, and Tony nudged her forward. She stormed through the gate and into the centre, rubbing her hands together as if in eager anticipation, but mostly for show.
The ring’s door slammed closed behind her, and immediately, the portcullis keeping the grendel secured rose. Before it had opened fully, the creature lunged at her.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Rachel ducked, and the creature flew over her back and slammed into the cage’s bars. It continued to snarl and drool, ready to taste her flesh if she made even a small mistake. The floor under her feet was smooth stone, as if they’d polished it to make it more slippery and treacherous. Furious it hadn’t occurred to her that if she won too quickly they’d up the ante, she planted her feet and adjusted her centre of gravity to brace herself.
For tonight, her goal was to win. After she’d done this a few times, she’d drag it out so they wouldn’t have an excuse to change anything else. Ultimately, if she didn’t escape she’d die in the cage one day, but she refused to let it happen today.
T
he creature picked itself off the floor and lunged again. Sloppy but fierce in their attacks, the creatures weren’t trained to fight—they were conditioned to fight. Their trainers made them beefy walls of muscle, quick on their feet, and with lethal teeth filed to sharper points than they sported in the wild. Rachel had cut herself on those teeth at least twice, and those were her closest calls. The sight and scent of blood threw grendels into a frenzy of insatiable hunger and made them almost invincible.
She blocked the second and third attacks, always throwing the beast hard into the bars to hurt it. If she could break bones, especially ribs, it would slow down. Once she knew she had hurt it enough and could draw close without getting bitten, she’d move in for the kill. In the meantime, she had to keep it busy. And stay on her feet. She planted her feet a stable hip-distance apart, one foot back a step, her knees slightly bent, toes spread.
On the next lunge, she cracked an elbow to its head, intending to send it sailing into the bars again, but as she spun to the side, its fingers found purchase on her arm. Instantly, she changed her motion and threw her body into its torso, destabilizing it. But she lost her footing on the slippery floor, and before she could hurl the grendel’s body away, she hit the ground. The creature twisted and bit into her arm.
Rachel screamed, more in anger than in pain, but the crowd went insane, their roar increasing when drops of her blood flicked into the air. While she wore her hair long, the grendel sported a bald head, what little hair it grew shorn off before every fight. Human fighters weren’t given the option to grab hold of their opponent’s head by a braided leash. But that didn’t mean she had nothing to latch onto.
While the creature sawed into her arm, Rachel used her fingers to stab it in the eyes. It howled and parted its teeth long enough to allow her to slip from its grasp. Ignoring the warm blood streaming in thin rivers down her arm, she tackled it before it could catch its breath.
