by H. D. Gordon
“Stay with me,” Rukiya, she whispered into my mind. “You have to fight now, harder than you’ve ever fought before.”
“Go away,” I told her from the darkness. “Or kill me and set me free.”
“I’m supposed to heal you just enough,” she replied, “but I’m going to do more than that.”
“I don’t want to be healed. I want death. I’m tired. If you’re here to help, please, end it now.”
“You did not kill a bear and feed a sea monster to die in this shitty cell. You need to fight. You need to survive.”
“How do you know this?” I tried to peel open my eyes and take in her face, but they were swollen shut, and the heaviness of my body was so great.
“Everyone knows this,” came her reply. “Slaves whisper.”
“What’s your name?”
“Femi... And what’s your name?”
“Bear-killer.”
“Wrong.”
“Rook the Rabid.”
“Wrong again.”
The sudden, undeniable urge to tear the female’s throat out flashed through my mind, but I couldn’t see or reach her, because none of this was real. It was all just a dream. I was already dead.
“Rukiya Moonborn,” whispered a voice that sounded like my own, but did not belong to me.
“That’s right,” Femi replied. “You are Rukiya Moonborn, a slave only to your own mind. Break free of the chains that bind you, so that you can break the chains that bind us and free us all.”
When I opened my eyes again an indeterminable amount of time later, the physical agony considerably less than I could ever recall it being, the young Healer with the gentle voice was gone.
And Ryker the Hound was standing over me.
At first, I thought I was still dreaming, but the world was in too much sharp focus, the aches and pains in my body too strident to be imaginary. And the twist in my chest—as though something jagged had been shoved through my heart—when I looked up and saw those familiar blue eyes… That was too real, too.
Pulling myself to my feet took enormous effort, but I could not stand the sensation of him standing over me. Before I could stop myself, I was lunging for his throat, aiming to tear it clean out with my teeth.
I was jerked backwards, and only after a couple moments of crazed struggle did I realize that I’d been chained to the cell wall.
Like a fucking Dog.
The Head Hound had the mind to jump backward out of my reach, his gaze flashing with a myriad of deceitful emotion as he took in my feral state.
There was a knock upon my mental frequency, a request to communicate, to which I responded with a deep, rumbling snap and snarl. I yanked against the chains, but they held firm, cutting into my bruised and battered skin.
Bearing my teeth, I gave the Hound a wide smile. “Come closer,” I said.
The coward only stared at me. There was another knock upon my mental frequency, and I went utterly still. My head tilted as I studied him, and then acquiesced to his request.
“I’m so sorry,” were his first words. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
I laughed out loud, and didn’t care an iota that the sound came out rather mad.
“Rook, just tell him what he wants to know… Please.”
I met his blue gaze square, and saw him cringe under the undiluted fire that blazed behind mine. “You better hope I die in these chains, Hound,” I whispered, straining against my bonds so that he could feel the promise in my posture.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, clearly not willing to even speak the weak words aloud.
He left then, and did not return again
And whatever love I’d been able to feel in my shriveled heart left along with him, also unlikely to ever return.
When two Hounds I didn’t recognize came to retrieve me that evening, telling me that the arena awaited me, I was eager to go.
One last time, I told myself.
I would enter The Ring one last time.
40
There was the sound of thunder, rumbling and earth shuddering, but the night sky was clear, not a cloud hanging among the heavens. The noise was such that it sent vibrations into the ground, which travelled up through the wooden wheels of the barred wagon in which I rode.
One final fight, I thought, and then, I could rest.
As the wagon approached the looming structure of the arena, I said my goodbyes to the night stars. With all the light pollution from the Apollo-blessed lampposts and the enormous torches lit around the arena, the stars were not visible, but I knew they were there. They were my oldest companions, and I could feel their glittering gazes upon me.
We reached the arena, and I was dragged by my chains inside. Down a dark hallway, up endless spiral stairs, toward a door guarded by a Hound, the source of that thunderous sound just beyond. The Hound, easily twice my size, eyed me suspiciously as he removed the chains on my ankles. When he removed them from my wrists, I snapped his neck so fast that his face didn’t change from the shocked expression even as his body slumped to the ground.
I stepped around him and pushed open the doorway to the center of the arena, ready to make my appearance in Reagan Ramsey’s grand finale. Eager to have it done and over.
For the first time since I’d been forced to fight some fifteen years ago, I was not afraid.
In fact, I couldn’t feel a thing.
And it was a Gods damned good thing I couldn’t, because what waited for me on the other side of that door was a veritable nightmare. Had I been in my right mind, I might have soiled myself on the spot before deciding whether it would be wiser to just sacrifice myself to the sea serpent.
It was the same as the last time I’d been here. The thin, rail-less walkways leading to the circular platform in the center, which also sported no boundary to stop one from falling over the edge and into the churning, murky water below.
Except this time, chained upon that center platform, was a beast plucked straight from the mountains of some other, more feral world. Its enormous body was covered in large scales so dark a blue that they gleamed black under the torchlight. Its four powerful limbs were tipped in razor sharp claws that dug into the platform beneath it as it yanked against the chain around its long, scaly neck. Its wings were magnificent, midnight blue and membranous, with thick, corded veins spider-webbing through.
I’d only ever seen a Firedrake in pictures in old books, and only ever heard of them in old wives’ tales, but unless I’d gone completely out of my mind—which certainly was a possibility—I was seeing one now. And its blazing red eyes were looking right back at me, as hungry as the sea serpent ruling the waters below.
The voice of the announcer rang out like that of a booming deity, breaking through the daze that had befallen me as I’d laid eyes upon the magnificent beast.
“Now… we have a special treat sure to please even the most sour among us! Our very own West Coast Pack Master and host of this year’s Games has handpicked the Wolves who will face off in our final match…
Rook the Bear-killer has just entered The Ring, and she has been chosen because she is a traitorous thief and a liar.”
The crowd booed. Tomatoes splattered near my feet, and I batted away more than a couple heads of lettuce.
The announcer continued: “Rook the Bear-killer is also known as ‘Ryker’s whore,’ because she is known to get very friendly with Marisol’s handsome Head Hound.”
There were more boos, and plenty of laughter. More food was thrown at me along with vulgar names and insults. They rolled off my shoulders like raindrops. I was almost free. Almost free.
Then the announcer called the name of my opponent, and the very blood flowing through my veins went ice cold.
A door on the opposite side of the arena opened, and Kalene was shoved through.
If I hadn’t spent almost every day of the past three moon cycles with her, I might not have even recognized the dark-haired beauty. She was still in her human form… but she w
as foaming at the mouth, her dark eyes glinting with feral madness, the human part of her gone in the wake of her beast.
Purple Wolfsbane, I realized. Ramsey must have had her dosed with Purple Wolfsbane. One hit of the stuff could turn the most docile of Wolves completely rabid.
I barely had time to process this turn of events when Kalene charged down the narrow walkway before her, headed toward the center of the ring, snarling and snapping like a starving animal. The sight was jarring, and my feet began moving before my mind gave them a conscious command to do so.
Kalene was almost to the center platform, and the Firedrake turned its slitted eyes toward her. I ran as hard as I could, afraid that in her altered state Kalene might get eaten by the winged beast simply because she was too out of her mind for caution.
Now I could feel again, and the emotion that filled me was utter terror.
I’d been prepared to die when I’d come here. What I had not been prepared for was watching a friend die. The panic that filled me was intoxicating, and I moved faster than I should have with my still-broken body.
The response of the crowd was deafening, eager to see the novelty of two females fighting in human form, the Firedrake pacing hungrily at the length of his chain in the center of the circular platform. The air smelled of blood, popped corn, and body odor. Time passed swiftly and in screenshots of action—the manner it usually reserved for dreams.
Or nightmares.
Kalene and I reached the middle in the same instant, and my crazed friend leapt into the air, fingers held like claws, ready to rip my throat out. The scorching heat of the Firedrake’s breath washed over us, and I managed to grab Kalene by the shoulders and twist us out of the reach of the beast—but just barely. We went tumbling in a ball of limbs and dark hair.
Her fingernails dug into me deep enough to draw blood, but I didn’t feel any pain as I used all my might to slow our rolling motion toward the edge of the platform, where the water and its monster waited below. I managed to stop us, but Kalene was thrashing so wildly that she gained the position on top of me. Her fists began flying toward my face in the following instant.
One of them connected square on my jaw, and stars burst before my eyes, the coherent thoughts knocked clean out of my head.
“Kalene!” I pleaded telepathically. “You have to get control of yourself! It’s me! It’s Rook! I’m your friend!”
But as she continued to wail on me, I caught another dreamlike glimpse of her dilated pupils, of the furious, animalistic expression twisting her beautiful face into something horrendous.
I let the strength coil in my legs and kicked her off me with too much force, I realized, as Kalene’s strong and slim body went sailing toward the Firedrake. Its snake-like eyes were glittering with anticipation.
The Firedrake opened its mighty mouth, huge fangs poised to devour my friend whole.
I was moving in an instant. As Kalene came within range of the mighty beast’s yawning maw, I jumped high into the air, using every bit of supernatural strength and speed that I owned, and punched the scaly creature right in the face.
This bought Kalene the precious moment she needed to get out of the way, but she was too busy trying to attack me to think straight, so I sucker-punched the Firedrake and ran, crazy ass Kalene trailing after me.
The crowd roared with laughter… and suddenly another emotion returned to me.
I hated them for that laughter. Gods how I hated them for it.
I couldn’t keep this up much longer. Kalene was drugged out of her mind. The Firedrake and sea serpent were flesh-starved. And my body was starting to fatigue, threatening to fail me at any moment.
For whatever reason, as I led Kalene away from the Drake like a mouse trailing a feline, I looked out into the crowd and spotted Reagan Ramsey sitting comfortably in the box seats, a smug grin on his well-groomed face.
And Ryker the Hound stood silently beside him.
Suddenly, as if the aspiration had struck me like a bolt of lightning, I wanted to live, if only so that I could watch those two sons of bitches die.
The idea came to me in the same lightning-flash manner as had the previous epiphany, and I decided to go for it before I lost the nerve.
Spinning on my heels in a full circle, I ran back in the other direction—straight toward the hungry Firedrake. The world rushed by around me in a blur, but I pinpointed my focus, preparing to spend my last reserves of energy.
I was at the bottom of my barrel, so I would only get one shot.
Darting into the Drake’s range, I rolled to the side just as its powerful jaws snapped shut around the open air I’d just previously been occupying. I was bouncing up to my feet in the same instant, gripping the thick chain around the creature’s neck and using it to swing one leg up and over it.
In a blink that I almost couldn’t believe, I found myself sitting atop the Firedrake’s strong, scaly back. I watched in stunned, adrenaline-fueled wonderment as my hands gripped the chain… and unlatched it from around the great beast’s neck.
We were airborne so fast that my head spun.
The Firedrake shot up into the air like a dark star against an even darker night. I wrapped my arms around its neck and squeezed with my thighs for dear life as it spiraled and plummeted and rose again, trying to shake me free of it. I gritted my teeth and squinted my eyes against the rushing of air and the rising in my stomach. The creature let out a great, bellowing roar that echoed endlessly in the arena.
People in the crowd began to scream.
Over the cacophony of sound that erupted in the arena, I yelled into the Firedrake’s ear, my finger pointing in the direction of a certain box situated advantageously within the stands.
“There is the one who has held you captive!” I told it, not at all sure if the beast could hear me, let alone understand me. “There’s the one who has been your master! And mine, too. Let’s go show him what we think of this.”
To my utter amazement, the Drake twisted its magnificent body and shot off like an arrow…
Right toward that luxurious box seat. Right toward the incomparable Reagan Ramsey.
The fear in his eyes in the moments before we reached him—as the bastard saw us coming, and knew we were coming for him—was a thing to behold, a thing of absolute beauty.
The Firedrake slammed into those cozy box seats and snatched Reagan Ramsey, West Coast Pack Master and first class dickhead, right up into its powerful jaws, as easily as a bird of prey might pluck a fish from a lake.
The crowd that had been laughing, booing, cheering, and chucking food was in an outright panic. Their screams rose in a symphony that was music to my ears.
With Ramsey’s mangled limbs still protruding from between the Drake’s enormous teeth, the creature shot up and up and up into the air, aiming for the apex in the center of the dome, toward the stars that I’d bid farewell to only a handful of moments earlier.
With a deep breath, the creature opened its enormous mouth and shot out a scorching stream of brilliant blue fire, making me shield my eyes as an instant sweat broke over my forehead. Straight ahead, the cover of the dome turned to ash as though it were nothing more than burning parchment.
I watched the horror recede below me as the Firedrake sailed with mighty wings toward a future where nothing was certain.
41
The Firedrake landed on the ledge of one of the cliffs surrounding Marisol on its northern side, and I slid off its back already asking it to please don’t eat me.
Everything had happened so fast, and now I was just numb, so I stood and watched the creature in stunned silence as it spat out the remainder of Ramsey’s body, clawed it free of its fine suit, and tore into the flesh the way I might the bones of a chicken.
In the distance, the arena was still erupting with chaos, and I could see people spilling out of the doors like ants from a hill caught on fire.
The howls of the Hounds followed shortly after, and I knew, of course, that they were hunting for me.<
br />
I touched the magical collar still around my neck, and sighed. They would find me sooner or later, and then they would kill me for what I’d done.
I turned to the Firedrake, holding my hands out cautiously and noting that it had already finished devouring Ramsey’s body… Which was a total mindfuck of a realization.
“You need to go,” I told it. “You just finished eating an important Wolf, and they’ll kill you for it. So go.”
The beast only stared at me, tilting its scaly head to the side in a manner that reminded me of a puppy. I wondered how long Ramsey had kept the thing, how long it had been chained and locked up. The slave in me recognized the slave in it from the look in its big, snakelike eyes.
The Firedrake spread its wings, as if preparing to take flight… but then it turned back to me, and lowered its head. Without words, it seemed to ask if I wanted to come with it, to fly far away from here, to someplace where we would not be hunted.
When something wet slid down my cheek, it took me a heartbeat or three to recognize what was happening, and I swiped the tear away before it could leave a trail there.
I touched the collar at my throat once more. “I can’t run,” I told it in a voice that was barely more than a whisper. “They’d find me. This would lead them right to us.” The howls of the Hounds were growing closer and closer, as if simply to punctuate my words. I sighed. “You have to go. Now.”
The Drake stared at me a moment longer, and I could have sworn I saw sympathy in its strange eyes. Then, it turned and beat its enormous wings once before sailing over the edge of the cliff. I stood there watching as it disappeared into the night sky. For whatever stupid reason, another tear slid down my cheek, and I swiped it away as if I were offended.
The howls of the Hounds were close now, only a handful of minutes away.
I sank down to my knees, still staring after the long-gone Firedrake, more exhausted than I could ever remember being in my short, miserable existence. I closed my eyes and waited.
