The Last True Hero (The Burned Lands Book 2)

by Bec McMaster

  He'd told himself a thousand times he couldn't have her. But every day only twisted that tension tighter. Every day he realized the attraction between them was growing.

  Everything about this was wrong. Wrong timing, wrong situation. Right woman.

  Wrong man.

  She'll never forgive you, Jake's voice whispered.

  Adam pushed away from her. "There's a reason for that. I don't have an answer. I can't afford to live in the abstract. We all have dreams and wants, Mia, but sometimes we have to accept that those dreams don't always come true."

  "Adam." That hand drifted across his lower back, splaying over the base of his spine.

  And he wanted so much to turn to her—

  A knock sounded sharply at the main door.

  The breath exploded out of him. Saved by an intruder. This was going to be hell: trapped in here with her at night, trying to do the right thing, when both of them wanted to explore the wrong so badly. He was only a man. That kind of willpower was for a monk.

  "Who is it?" he called. The smell of Mia's soap covered all others, and he was reining himself in so tightly that he didn't have access to his better senses.

  "Zarina's here," Jake called. "Are we ready to do this?"

  Adam dragged a fresh shirt over his head, then reached for his jeans. He paused and glanced at Mia.

  She rolled her eyes and headed for the bedroom. "I'm not likely to tackle you right here, with Jake behind the door. Not the time. Not the place. Besides, I want to go look around a bit. I'm just opening up the discussion of what happens when we blow the candle out tonight. I'll give you a minute to get dressed."

  "Nothing happens."

  "We'll see." She paused with her hand on the door handle. "McClain?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Consider this discussion postponed," she said. "It's not over yet."

  That was precisely what he was afraid of.

  Fifteen

  MEN AND WOMEN howled their fury, shaking fists and calling offers as Adam stalked down the aisle with Mia at his side. The canyon at the back of the town was round, hollowed out by what looked like millennia of water running through it, and it formed the perfect arena.

  The War Games. He had a feeling he knew exactly what was going to go down. The air had that feel of violence to it, like a thunderstorm about to shatter the peace of the evening.

  Yes, whispered the warg within him, scenting the fury in the air around it.

  It had been restless ever since they entered this godforsaken place.

  There were benches carved into the sandstone, and they were covered with maybe two hundred reivers. A huge wire fence circled the arena, with a couple of strands of wire at the top. As a moth flew into one of those strands, it sparked and the moth's ash carcass dropped to the floor. Huge generators stood at either end of the arena, no doubt providing the electricity, and a couple of flare lights lit the sands. Thousands of insects buzzed in the path of the light.

  At the center of it all stood Vex Cypher in her wolf fur, despite the heat from the lights. She held her arms up in the air, and the reivers packed into the arena screamed their love of her. He barely knew the woman, but her face seemed lit from within at the sounds of their adulation.

  And that told him enough.

  He'd considered Vex dangerous: anyone with this much power over a slave town was. But now he wondered just what drove her. She didn't do this for the profit, she did it for the awe of having others kiss her boots, and that made her temperament unpredictable.

  Women in gauzy white danced in the arena. Mia stumbled against his side when she saw them, for they all wore collars. He caught her and they shared a look, but he couldn't afford to look too compassionate.

  There were more people held as slaves here than he'd anticipated.

  "Watch your feet," he told her, in a harsh voice that belied the look in his eyes.

  Ahead of them stalked Zarina Cypher, who looked dangerous in leather. She hadn't said much as she showed them their rooms. Just: "I'll be back in half an hour. Don't be late."

  For all of her mother's showmanship, Zarina was the opposite. She ignored the crowd as she led them directly toward Vex's stand of chairs. Somehow she seemed insulated, locked away from it all. Vex was easy to make out. Dangerous, unpredictable, damn near psychotic. But Zarina was a mystery, just like her surname.

  "Here," Zarina said, gesturing them to the row of chairs set behind Vex's throne. "Nero, bring beer."

  The blond slave nodded and slid to his feet with an elegant grace.

  "Boys and girls!" Vex called, stepping up onto the thick rail that ran along the front of her box. The wolf fur slid from her shoulders, pooling on the floor around her boots. "Are you ready for the War Games!"

  The crowd screamed back at her, but Adam couldn't take his eyes off the fur on the floor.

  The fur wasn't from a wolf. He could just make out hints of a monstrous face tangled in the bottom of it.

  Vex Cypher wore the skin of a warg in beast form.

  He didn't know why that made him cold. Wargs were monsters through and through, but they'd been human once. Every time he put a silver bullet through one of their skulls he made it quick, because that could be him one day. Taken over by the beast inside him and forced to crave flesh and blood. There was no worse fate known to man than to lose himself so completely, and to be utterly powerless about it.

  He looked up, sensing eyes on him. Zarina didn't disguise the fact she'd been watching his face. Her dark almond-shaped eyes glittered with something he couldn't name.

  Vex continued, hurling out encouragement and ratcheting the tension in the arena higher. Every now and then something roared in the distance, like a throttle or an engine being gunned. It seemed to vibrate in the rock beneath his feet.

  Vex waited a moment to take it all in before she lifted her hand, palm held flat. "Last man standing! Begin!"

  She chopped her hand down sharply.

  There was a coughing grumble of engines and then a huge truck came screaming out of one of the caves beneath the stands, its front grill transformed by iron spikes, and its flatbed empty. Another car exploded out of the darkness hot on its heels, and this one looked like someone had fused together an iron porcupine with a turtle.

  Car after car exited the tunnels. The dancers fled, vanishing into a smaller tunnel, and sand and smoke sprayed as the cars and trucks circled the floor at breakneck speed.

  They'd all been heavily modified, with spears welded to their hoods and enormous crush bars on the front. One of them limped along behind the others, but someone had removed the wheels and undercarriage and mounted the top of the car on the bottom of a tank.

  Steel screamed as the truck slammed one of the cars into the stone walls at the back of the arena. The tank-car inexorably pushed another into the walls, and slowly rode up over the hood, crushing the other car beneath it.

  There was a man inside it, screaming.

  No, not a man. A reiver. Adam blinked slowly. It didn't make any difference. No one deserved to die like that.

  "My money's on RoJo," Vex said, watching the spectacle with glittering eyes.

  Two cars drove into each other, and one flipped up over the other, landing on its back like a turtle. The crowd screamed, fists waving, and men moving through the aisles offering odds on some battle that was coming up next. Adam took the seat Nero directed him to.

  It was over blessedly soon, with the reiver from the truck staggering out of his crushed metal carcass and holding his arms in the air as the announcer pronounced his victory. Vex thrilled at the spectacle, and turned back to her party as the cars and bodies were dragged from the ring.

  "Just a starter," she promised. "Next up is the Creature Feature, and that's the one we don't want to miss. Ten wargs, only the winner survives."

  Adam accepted the mug of beer that Nero offered him, nearly spilling it in surprise. "You fight wargs?"

  "What the hell else are you supposed to do with them? They're a plag
ue on the countryside, and when all it takes is one scratch from their claws or teeth to start the transformation, they'd overrun us fairly quickly if they wanted to," Vex said. "My reivers hunt down as many wargs as they can. Cleans them out of my territory, gives my reivers something to do, and this"—she gestured to the arena—"pays for their upkeep."

  "Until they die on the sands," Adam said softly.

  Jake shot him a sidelong glance from where he sat, with Ellie at his feet.

  "Where do you keep them?" Adam asked. He couldn't let it go. The warg within him seemed to have curled up tight and small, which was unusual. He'd never felt fear from it before. "Aren't you scared they'll escape?"

  Vex snorted. "Not from my cages they won't. I keep them below the arena, and the only way for them to get out is if someone lets them out. My warg cages are Confederacy-made. Nothing's getting out of them once they're in it."

  Another link to the Eastern Confederacy. Was this how Vex was paid?

  A female reiver begged her captors as they dragged her toward two enormous posts at the edge of the arena. Ignoring her, the guards chained her between the posts, and stepped back out of the way as the crowd began to chant.

  "Slash! Slash! Slash!" cried a section of the crowd nearby.

  "What are they doing with her?" Mia whispered in his ear. She'd curled against his shoulder, as if a little intimidated.

  She was just sheltered enough that the answer didn't spring immediately to mind. Adam, however, had seen far too much of human nature. Maybe it wasn't the wargs that people should fear. "She's their prize."

  "Correct," Vex said, sipping her drink and proving just how much attention she was paying to their little group. "Bitch tried to steal from me. I might make her sweat a bit before I rescue her and send her to the slave markets. Or I might just let the match decide her fate."

  He flinched as the iron gates at the opposite side of the arena rattled open, and a warg spilled into the midst of the sands in full shift. A monster of disjointed proportions, its black fur shaggy and thick, it ran on all four feet, revealing lean flanks and enough ribs to show how hungry it was.

  Vex clearly didn't pay too much for their upkeep after all.

  Adam's nostrils flared. He sat up and clasped his hands behind his head, trying to feign nonchalance, but seeing the beast below him confronted all of his worst fears. He felt like he couldn't breathe.

  Hurtling forward, its silver eyes gleamed feral as it launched itself at the woman. She screamed, and the warg hit the end of the chain that was leashed to the collar at its throat. Its legs whipped out in front of it as it hit the ground.

  The crowd roared.

  "They give their women to the monsters?" Mia breathed.

  Monsters.... She might as well have cut out his heart.

  "Mia." He rested a hand on her knee, aware that she saw herself down in that ring just as much as he did. Only, both of them took a different perception of events. "Keep your voice down." A quick glance showed that no one was paying attention. A second warg had been brought into the pit, and this one moved slowly, still mostly a man, unlike the other one that scuttled about on all fours and snapped and snarled on its leash.

  "And the match you've all been waiting for...." The announcer laughed. "His opponent, Reaper!"

  The huge warg in his leather pants pumped both fists toward the sky. Matted fur clung to his monstrous head, his wolf teeth snapping. Another section of the crowd cheered.

  Now that Reaper stood in the ring, the warg on all fours eyed him, his lip curling back slowly.

  Without the medallion around his throat, that could be him down there. Half-human, half-animal, all monster. There was nothing as terrifying in his life as that thought.

  I'd rather kill myself.

  Could he truly blame the people of Absolution for turning their backs on him? For wanting him out of their lives? Out of their town? Sweat trickled down his spine, and he held on to Mia's thigh tightly.

  "Who do you think will win this bout?" Vex asked, tossing a couple of coins at Nero. "Reaper, or Slash?"

  "What?"

  "Reaper or Slash?" she repeated, reminding him that the wargs in the arena were the least of his problems.

  Adam considered them both. Reaper was a giant of a man, with a close-cropped beard and tattoos that crawled up his arms and throat, peering through the straggly fur. As he lifted an enormous iron hammer, the crowd screamed again. But there was something about the way Slash paced to and fro, watching his opponent's every move, that made him hesitate. This one was more wolf than man.

  "How many bouts has Slash won?" he asked, trying to avoid offering his opinion.

  Vex cast shrewd eyes his way. "All of them, so far, though he hasn't yet faced my champion. I'm saving that match for the third night, if he wins here. Reaper's been brought up from Fort Henry, where he's the champion. Do you think he can kill the beast?"

  Everything he saw decreed this match should go to Reaper: the scrawny Slash looked lean, scarred, and underfed. "Slash will win," he said softly.

  Vex's smile turned oily. "Put my money on Slash," she told Nero. "I like the way you think, McClain. Slash is mine. Let's hope you don't cost me my coin."

  "He's not here for the cheers of the crowd, or whatever else they're promised. He just wants to kill."

  "That's because I don't treat them as anything other than what they are. Raiden from Fort Henry nurtures his wargs. Promises them things. Thinks they're human. I don't. They win, or they die. Then they feed my other wargs."

  As he looked away, he caught Zarina's eyes. The younger Cypher watched him, and suddenly the sweat down his spine chilled him. She faded into the background so easily that he needed to remind himself that Vex wasn't the only danger.

  The bout began. Reaper launched forward, swinging his hammer as Nero hurried off to place Vex's bet.

  "Ah. Here comes my favorite." Vex's attention caught on something else.

  A tall man strode up the stairs, black hair streaming over his shoulders and an eye patch covering one eye. His short black beard was neatly trimmed, and he wore expensive black leather that seemed not to fit in with the rest of the crowd. They wore scraps of clothing and armor that were clearly salvaged; the very look of this man screamed that he had coin to buy his own. Behind him was a tall redhead on a leash, her eyes downcast and one side of her face bruised. Her pale skin gleamed beneath the floodlights, like polished pearl, and a taupe robe barely covered her.

  Reivers reached out to touch her, but the man shot them a fierce look and they cringed backward, away from him.

  Jake cursed under his breath and straightened in his chair. "Son of a—" He jerked to a halt, as if remembering himself.

  Adam knew, even before he heard Mia suck in a sharp breath, that the woman before him was one of hers.

  Blood spattered the sands.

  Mia flinched, despising the way it only drove the crowd to a higher frenzy. The poor woman in the chains squirmed and sobbed, trying to free herself, but her fate lay in the hands of the warg who won her.

  Or Vex, if she felt merciful.

  Swallowing bile, Mia looked up—just in time to see her sister jerked to her knees beside a man wielding a leash in his fist.

  Every molecule in her body went still. Sage. She started to move, but a hand yanked her back into her seat. McClain. Mia froze. Now wasn't the time to let control slip through her fingers for even a second. Jake eased out a breath at her side, and Mia's hand found his.

  Mia willed her sister to look up. Sage wore a couple of bruises on her pale skin, but her lips were pressed firmly together, still hinting at defiance. Whatever she'd been through in the past few days, it hadn't broken her. That had been Mia's biggest fear, after Sage lost the baby. It had taken months for her sister to recover, and she feared losing Sage to that blackness again, more than anything.

  Come on, damn you. A breathless moment as she waited—needed—her sister to look up.

  Slowly, as if sensing eyes upon her,
Sage lifted her gaze. Their eyes met, and Sage's mouth fell open.

  "Nice-looking slave you've got there," McClain said sharply, his hand still resting on her thigh.

  Sage's head jerked to him, then she looked down again.

  Mia forced herself to control her racing heartbeat. Her baby sister was alive. That was all that mattered. And it didn't look as though she'd broken. There'd been mutiny there, in Sage's green eyes, when she first looked up.

  "Rykker," Vex practically purred, extending her hand.

  The black-haired man knelt on one knee, kissing the backs of her fingers. "Warlord." The pair of them shared a fond look.

  "Good hunting, it seems," Vex said, raking Sage with a mercenary look. "She's glorious."

  "Hit upon a small mother lode," Rykker replied. "Got myself a new route."

  Son of a bitch. Those were her people that he spoke so callously about.

  "Relax," McClain murmured, his breath stirring the tight curls that brushed her ear. His steady hand stroked soothing circles on her thigh.

  "It seems tonight's the night for people offering me fresh slave routes," Vex said.

  Rykker's gaze cut to Mia and the two men with her, but he lingered longest on her, and there was something dark and canny in his gaze that unnerved her. Better if he was looking at her, rather than Ellie, who he might recognize, even if the girl kept her face lowered as she knelt at Jake's feet. He dismissed Mia eventually, his flat gaze locking on McClain as if he knew who his adversary was. "I don't think we've met."

  "Most likely not," McClain said, not bothering to offer his hand. "I'm McClain. Bounty hunter by trade, someone with his eye on the cash by necessity. This here's my cousin, Jake McClain, and my woman, Mia. We came to pay our respects to the Warlord of Rust City."

  "Where you from?" Rykker demanded.

  "The Rim."

  "Rykker," Vex called, leaning back in her chair and lighting a cigarette. Clearly she didn't like the attention shifting from herself for the moment. "I like this talk of a mother lode. Enlighten me. Just what have you brought back for me?"