“Usurper!” came a shout from the masses.
Mal, as if he had a Garnis’s refined senses, shone a light on the man who’d cried out the insult. Sath, perhaps? Maybe Indranan? The light Mal flared across the naysayer’s face also glinted off the damping collar practically fused to his neck. He may have been wearing it for decades. “There has never been any Giva in the history of the Dragon Kings like me. You take it as a sign of weakness or trickery.” Grinning tightly, he said what was on everyone’s mind. “The Tigony. Tricksters. I know what you think. But being chosen as your Giva is a sign from the Dragon. We are dying. Our ways are being thrown to the winds of chaos. The humans are marching us over a cliff, while lining their pockets as long as they can.” Again he shone that flaring light on the man who’d protested. “Do you wish to be a slave forever?”
“No, but I would see my wife bear a child. How do we fulfill the basic needs of our people if we don’t fight?”
“Because none of the cartels hold the key to conception,” came a quiet, gurgling female voice.
Avyi ran toward the sound. She experienced the same unmooring sensation she always did when coming face to face with a prediction made real. “Cadmin,” she whispered. “You’re here. I thought you were dead.”
“Nearly.” She glared toward some of the warriors in her pen. “Seems a few here feared my abilities even before we stepped into the arena.”
She was just as Avyi had envisioned, but her face was bruised and she lay beaten on the ground. Only her fingers, clutching the wire frame of the pen, were strong enough to lift her upper body and head a few inches off the ground.
“Tell me who,” Avyi said with deadly purpose.
“No. Their time will come.”
Mal seared open the pen, then sealed it again after Avyi and another freed Dragon King pulled the young woman loose. She lay across Avyi’s lap, where Mal’s gift revealed a gash across her forehead and a deep cut in her left arm. She wouldn’t be able to hold a shield.
“I remember you,” she whispered to Avyi. “My mother before my mother.”
Tears gathered in Avyi’s eyes as she stroked bloodied red hair back from Cadmin’s face. “Tell them. Please.”
With Mal to help Avyi lift the girl, Cadmin faced the three cartel pens. “Many of you are my age, or even younger. Think back. Feel with your heart. Do you remember this woman? Do you remember how she touched you with the softest touch, so that you knew safety and love even before your real mother held you for the first time? Do you remember feeling destined for greatness before you knew the definition of the word?”
Murmurs of agreement and some of disbelief filled the tight room, which reminded Avyi of an abattoir just before cattle were herded in for slaughter.
“Can you feel her? Do you?” The calls of fellow Aster warriors bolstered Cadmin’s strength, until she was better able to hold her own weight. Her face revealed awe and something akin to love.
Avyi held her closer, rocking, unable to say what that expression did to fill her with joy. Cadmin remembered her. None of what she’d done was purely in the service of the Asters. The ends had justified the means. She had not chosen the wrong side, not when she’d given such an unexpected gift to so many Dragon Kings she would never know by name.
“This woman helped our mothers and fathers give birth,” Cadmin said, her rough Scots voice unrelenting now. “Listen to the Giva. Listen to me, although few of you trust him and few of you know me. If we fight today, we will live or die. But we will not be rewarded with the prize we desperately want.”
“Then what do we do?”
“Who speaks for us?”
“There’s no guarantee what you say is true!”
Avyi lay Cadmin gently on the concrete floor. She took Mal’s hand and stood by his side. “I am Avyi. I am crossbred of Sath and Garnis. Today, we will not shed the blood of our kind. The Great Dragon would weep when looking down at our fear and subservience. This is the time to overturn the corrupt system that has made mighty lions whimper and crawl beneath ants.” She inhaled. She pushed away fear. She trusted in all she ever believed to be true. “Today, we take back our lives and our futures … at any cost.”
*
Those already freed stood in preparation. Mal and a select few waited for human guards to come for the first combatants.
“Please, Mal,” Avyi begged. “Let them take Cadmin. It has to happen this way.”
“What happened to choice? What if we simply fight back?”
She shook her head. Unlike the speech she’d delivered to the captured of their kind, she showed no such assurance now. “I can’t say.”
“Then let me do what I know.”
Standing tall on her tiptoes, she hooked her forearms around his neck and kissed him. The kiss was possessive and strong, fearful and yearning. If anyone saw, they said nothing—not that Mal would’ve cared. He held Avyi in his arms, tasting her and touching her as if this would be the last time. Who could tell what went on in that tipped-over mind of hers? She might very well know that this was the last time. She’d never tell him. That thought made him tighten his arms around her lower back, holding her flush against him, unyielding.
No matter what happened in the next few hours, he would not lose this woman. His feelings were too strong. She was too precious. And they would never be as powerful separately as they were together. With a final sweep of his tongue over hers, he gently pushed her shoulders until she returned to the firm footing of her sturdy boots. Armed and fierce, she was the warrior with the most unpredictable gift, least useful for combat, but with skills and determination he doubted could be matched.
“Yes,” she whispered against his mouth. She stole one more quick kiss. “Lead us, Giva. It’s your right and your duty.”
When the guards entered the holding pen, he and another pair of Tigony built on one another’s gifts until the pens disintegrated. Not melted. Simply … evaporated under the strike of so much potent energy. Human guards in SWAT-style armor, bearing their napalm rifles and Tasers, stood in stunned awe for the few seconds the Dragon Kings needed. Avyi had done her best to reach as many as she could through the wire pens, using her sister’s Dragon idol to free the captives from their debilitating collars.
In the crush that followed, Mal lost sight of her. She was consumed by the crowd of Dragon Kings still eager to have their gifts returned to them. He needed to trust that she would claw her way free of any danger. He’d seen her do it before.
A few brutes who refused to go along with Mal’s plan of rebellion were subdued by Indranan. The telepaths held each in a state of immobility, trapped within their own minds, until they could be restrained by collars and manacles. The sight was sickening—immobilizing his own people—but Mal couldn’t have dissenters as they took on the greatest battle in the modern history of the Dragon Kings.
At least he’d kept his temper when those dissenters fought back. He was the Giva. He was, on occasion, called on to become judge, jury, and executioner. But there was relief in knowing they could quickly find a way to subdue foes within their own ranks without needing to inflict the ultimate punishment.
Among those freed, only a few scrounged up Dragon-forged swords. The human cartels possessed no more than a dozen of the rare weapons between them, assembling them for the Grievance and reusing them for each new match. This would be a matter of skill, suppression, and crowd control, not the metal forged in the fires of the Dragon’s high Chasm in the Himalayas. Their human opponents could die in so many different ways.
Together, Mal led the way up a sloping ramp that lifted up and up toward the shouts of an eager crowd. They were approaching the arena floor. The conflict should be an easy one. They were fifty strong. A hundred times that many humans would be no match for the combined purpose of so many Dragon Kings.
He burst into the arena, feeling more assured and in the moment than he ever had before. Not even when lying with Avyi had he been this much himself.
Yet those
around him began to scream. Some dropped to their knees, clutching their heads.
Mal groaned as pain slammed through his brain and down his spine. He fell to his knees, although he never let go of his sword. That precious weapon might as well be welded to his palm. He looked to his left, where Cadmin’s eyes bulged and her face contorted. Her eyes pleaded for answers.
“Let the games begin,” came a booming voice.
The voice of Old Man Aster. He was laughing with a sick rattle in his throat. Mal had only met the man once, when he’d observed his first Grievance, when he’d thought so foolishly that the cartels could be reasoned with. Tricksters at work, although the Old Man was even more skilled in that respect.
“The entire arena is wired to cause this agony. You will fight one another. Fight. No conception as your prize this time, you beasts. Just the right to crawl back into our service. If you kill another Dragon King, you will have your collar returned to you and your place within each cartel restored. The collars will end the agony you feel now.” He laughed again. “Why take one fight at a time when we can watch four dozen of these beasts fight to the death. Do you agree?”
The crowd cheered with wild screams. Some of the Garnis and even a few Pendray cried out when the powerful shouts hit their heightened senses. Indranan rolled into tight balls, elbows clutched over their ears, screaming. To be on the receiving end of that much hostility must be crippling. That left the Sath, the Tigony, and a few more resilient Pendray who’d already worked themselves into berserker furies. Already they were confronting each other for possession of the few Dragon-forged swords.
That meant they all still retained their powers. They needed to fight the pain, not one another.
Mal was heartsick. He’d led his people with such authority—into what? A trap. A fiendish plot by the cartels. Avyi might have been right in that this looked to be the last Grievance. How many Dragon Kings would remain when the bloodshed ended?
He battled the split-ax feeling in his mind and staggered to his feet. Never had he fought a stronger foe. The pain was beyond comprehension, beyond limits. Yet his reflexes remained, if he concentrated past the temptation to black out. He swung his sword in time to stop a Pendray from cutting his way through a huddled trio of shrieking, defenseless Indranan. He cut the Pendray’s arm clean off, but he swore, as he looked into the crazed man’s animalistic eyes, that he would not kill one of his own kind. The cartels would not force the Giva to stoop to their sick games.
He would only do what he could to stem the tide of violence.
Which didn’t feel like much as he stumbled back two steps and briefly surveyed the arena.
A cheer went up when a Tigony—older than Mal, who would’ve participated in the secret ritual at Bakkhos—beheaded a young Sath woman. Her features so resembled Orla’s that for a moment, Mal’s veins iced over. But it wasn’t Orla. That barely dimmed Mal’s fury, especially when his clansman strode toward an awaiting human at the far side of the arena. The human must’ve been from the Kawashima cartel, because his finery was distinctly Far Eastern, with so many colors and, to Mal’s sickened mind, ironically covered in embroidered dragons.
The Tigony man was collared by a nearby guard. Relief washed over his face. The absence of pain. Mal envied that relief, but his fury was even greater.
The man’s powers had been stripped. He’d voluntarily become a slave again.
Heedless of sense, Mal raced toward the smirking murderer. They clashed swords. Mal battled the burning anguish that threatened to split his skull in two. How he managed to keep fighting was beyond his ability to comprehend. It was as if his body knew what some distant part of his mind desperately believed: that this was a desperate fight against more than a single member of Clan Tigony. This was a fight to save their entire race. If others saw this man rewarded for killing—in a sick, roundabout way—they would follow. The cartels would have the bloodbath they craved.
Mal swung to the left, spun, and brought the pommel of the sword down on the Tigony man’s nose. Blood erupted from his broken face. He dropped his own sword to cover the scarlet injury. Mal jumped on him, straddled him, and shouted past the pain. “Who did you kill in Bakkhos? Your lover or the virgin you were privileged with defiling?”
“The virgin,” the man snarled. “She begged for more, until she begged for her life. You have been the worst of our clan for decades, and you’re the worst of our people.”
Mal slammed the pommel down again, breaking fingers, busting teeth. “You shame the Dragon.”
For the first time, he meant it. He believed in the Dragon, completely, and knew this Tigony bastard represented everything cruel and wrong about their evolution as a race. Perhaps they were dying out for a reason. They profaned the Dragon. They turned their back on the creature that had given them life and extraordinary gifts.
What had Avyi said? She’d said it so often …
The Chasm isn’t fixed.
“Malnefoley!”
He jerked his head toward the sound of a determined female voice.
Cadmin stood only a few dozen meters away. She held the bow and quiver he and Avyi had journeyed so far to bring to this young warrior. She’d drawn an arrow, no matter that her face was bloody and she held most of her weight on her right foot. The left arm holding the bow shook from where the bone had been crushed.
She aimed into the crowd, directly at the thrice-cursed Indranan witch named Ulia.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
The more often Avyi was right in her predictions, the more fearful she became. It shouldn’t be that way. It should’ve been an affirmation of years of doubt and blind faith. It should’ve been her gift flying in the face of all that was natural or expected or within the realm of belief.
That wasn’t the case now. As Cadmin fulfilled the vision Avyi had seen for the entirety of the young warrior’s life, fear was all Avyi felt. Bow lifted, Cadmin fired an arrow straight into the crowd. The first pegged a human in the thigh. Only then did Avyi see Cadmin’s target.
Ulia.
The old crone had the arena entirely encased in crippling agony.
She was practically another of Dr. Aster’s pets, a former Cage warrior who’d lost a leg and retired to a comfortable life as a thrice-cursed Indranan. She’d murdered her brother and sister, in the sick tradition of the Indranan, in order to take their gifts into her own body. She was the most powerful telepath Avyi had ever met, with the ability to twist minds—and, it seemed, to focus her sick gift on dozens of Dragon Kings at a time.
Avyi had long feared that Ulia would see into her thoughts and discover the secrets she harbored against Dr. Aster on behalf of the unborn and the tortured. Ulia never did. Avyi’s only reasoning was that she had played the part so well, down to the basics of every thought, that she never registered as a threat. It was nauseating now to think she had been that able to subdue the best parts of herself.
She blinked once, then again, through the dust kicked up by the fighting. Her gut snapped taut in fear. By the old woman’s side, Dr. Aster grinned his sick, knowing grin … directly at Avyi.
Ulia trained her sight-beyond-sight on Malnefoley. He collapsed onto the ground, writhing, shouting in the ancient language of the Tigony.
She raced to Mal. He looked up at her with an utter lack of recognition. Avyi flinched and jumped back. She didn’t know the Tigony language, but what he spouted made his words feel like needles. His blue eyes were not his. They were owned by someone—something—else, namely a one-legged demon who did the bidding of Avyi’s former master.
She tried one more time to reach the man she loved. Yet he was a vessel for some other being. He was the personification of rage and selfish hatred. Was this what he’d been that day at Bakkhos? Were those the memories Ulia was exploiting to turn Mal into something bestial and unthinking?
“Cadmin! Please! Try again, my young one. Try again. Save our Giva!”
The warrior’s face was warped with so much pain, f
rom the shock waves of anguish that radiated over the floor of the arena, and from the injuries she’d sustained at the hands of her own cartel’s fighters. But she held the bow steady, with more determination on her face than Avyi had ever seen.
But she had seen it. This was the moment when Cadmin fired an arrow into the crowd at the person who had orchestrated the attempts on Mal’s life. At the Asters’ bidding, Ulia would’ve been able to track Mal across the world. He never would’ve been safe, and neither would the leadership of the Dragon Kings. The Asters had predicted exactly what method to use when it came to bringing the whole of free Dragon King society crumbling down.
In this case, Avyi’s predictions were far more accurate.
Cadmin incapacitated Ulia with a sure, pure shot through the witch’s throat. The old woman gagged and clutched. Those around her, even Dr. Aster, backed away. Some screamed, knowing now that the Dragon Kings could come after them.
This was no longer an entertaining bit of blood sport. This was death on the prowl.
The Dragon Kings, driven to near-madness by the pain Ulia had inflicted, looked dazed when they came back into themselves. Skirmishes slowed, then stopped, as they realized there was no longer a need to fight—not for survival, not for glory, and certainly not for the cartels. Some fled the arena floor in favor of the stands, where human spectators ran in screaming hordes.
Avyi could not watch the bloodshed. She understood her people’s wrath, and how greatly some of the humans assembled there in Battersea deserved to die, yet she was unable to take any pleasure in vengeance. Her goals had always been more complicated, whereas her loves and hates had always been so simple.
One such love was Cadmin. She fell to her knees. Instead of running to comfort her, Avyi landed a roundhouse kick to the face of the nearest human guard. His armor meant the impact of the kick reverberated up Avyi’s leg, but she spun at the waist and, with ambidextrous skill, hit him from the other direction. She swept his calf and jabbed her switchblade in the exposed places where the armor latched but didn’t completely protect: the wrist, the back of the knee, the leather of his boot’s upper padding, and finally, when the man doubled over, she stabbed the back of his neck.
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