The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com

by Various

  “You’ll fight in the third round,” the judge said. “Good luck.” He started to walk away, but looked back over his shoulder. “Pity,” he mumbled. I wanted to ask him why, out of every competitor here, Steve was the pity. Because of what he symbolizes? Steve started to walk back into the stall, and I followed him. Pity. What a useless emotion when you don’t act on it. Pity is supposed to trigger compassion. The judge had forgotten that. But we’d show him. We’d show him you’re supposed to stand up, not walk away.

  We always did.

  I went in early to watch. The fights were held in the main room of the warehouse, which resembled an airplane hangar. Taking up most of the space was a chain-link domed monstrosity of a cage sitting in the middle. Chainlink may not seem like much of a deterrent, but the fencing was magic and warded. I could see it, even if the crowd couldn’t. I didn’t really think it mattered. The animals were too beaten down and trained to even consider escape on their own.

  Metal bleachers flanked the dome, each one full to bursting with people you would never expect to see on a cheap metal seat in a warehouse. Let’s just say that if you went looking under those bleachers for loose change you’d probably come back with handfuls of hundred dollar bills. For these guys, that was loose change.

  There were a few people here and there in cheap jeans and threadbare jackets, their watches knockoffs of Rolexes, their phones last year’s models. Faces like mine. Trainers.

  The first fight was a nonfatal win, harpy versus manticore. The harpy strutted around, her sharp talons clicking against the concrete, her filthy feathers rustling, muck-encrusted breasts hanging down to her scrawny bird knees. Her eyes were mad and she foamed from her mouth, screeching insults from a twisted maw. The manticore paced, his lion body smooth and feline, looking graceful despite the incongruous man-head that stared the harpy down. The harpy looked like she was going to lose, but in the last second she hamstrung one of the manticore’s back legs. The combatants weren’t allowed outside weapons, but teeth and claws didn’t count. The harpy used her own talons to slice into the manticore’s flesh and tear muscle. The wound would probably get infected. I’ve seen what harpy nails look like. Odds were heavy that, even though neither creature died in the bout, there would be a delayed fatality.

  The second match featured a minotaur and a wepwawet. The minotaur loomed over the wepwawet, who was tall for a human, which was the majority of his body—except humans don’t have the head of a jackal. I’d never seen a wepwawet up close. In the ring they were even more rare than creatures like Steve. The jackal-headed creatures were supposed to be sacred to the god Anubis. They were guides to the underworld, protectors, not fighters. Like unicorns.

  The minotaur moved slowly on muscle-bound legs. Its upper body was wide, like a bull on steroids. The minotaur kept charging, but then the wepwawet would just sidestep, duck, all defensive moves. His body language said calm, his muscles relaxed and loose. Like I said, they’re rare, so my experience was nonexistent, but everything was telling me that the wepwawet wasn’t into the fight. Unlike the minotaur, the wepwawet was clothed, but only in some sort of golden skirt and two rude copper bracelets. The skirt swayed and moved with him, almost a part of him. The bracelets glinted dully. They weren’t his; I knew that with an odd certainty. The wepwawet would never be so crude.

  The minotaur began to wheeze. Must have taken a lot of energy to move that bulk around, and the prolonged fighting began to wear it down. After a few minutes, the wepwawet seemed to take pity, and in a blur he struck down the minotaur. The jackal refused to take the kill but left the minotaur bleeding on the floor, unconscious.

  As he left, I swear he looked at me—right in my eyes, down to the dusty corners of my being. I couldn’t pull away. The jackal had large black pupils and glowing golden irises that for some reason made me think of how Steve had seemed to glow earlier. In Egyptian mythos, the wepwawet leads souls down into the underworld. He throws the discarded souls onto a giant scale. If your essence is as light as the feather that rests in the other balance, you go to the afterlife. If not, he feeds you to a giant hippolike creature. I forget what it’s called. I just know that you don’t want it to eat you. Or your essence.

  Finally the wepwawet blinked and kept walking. I stood still for another beat, stuck in that frozen moment you get sometimes when confronted with something amazing and beautiful. When I came back to myself, I wondered what the wepwawet had seen in me—whether or not my soul was hippo food.

  The audience milled impatiently while I went to get Steve. Two nonfatal matches back to back struck me as a rare event, and the crowd began to get bloodthirsty. They’d get their fill. Steve never disappointed.

  The murmuring died as we walked in. For a blink, there was nothing but glorious silence. Then a swell of voices broke out, crashing into me as I walked by. Gasps, whispers, outright shouts—a few people even stood. I concentrated on the crisp bite of Steve’s hooves on the concrete as we walked into the cage.

  In the other corner, a chained waheela snarled at us. Waheelas are usually found in Alaska or Canada, anywhere remote and cold. We were about twenty minutes outside of Chicago. Not really their prime habitat. They look like a polar bear and an arctic wolf had a baby. Long, white coats, broad, flat heads, and the bulk of a bear, but the rest of them is all wolf. This one had been shaved, and the collar around his neck looked like it had been there for a while. Waheelas were loners, and avoided confrontation unless they were hungry. Like most animals, they don’t fight for sport. But this one looked like he had been kept hungry for a long time. The owner standing next to him looked pretty well fed, though.

  The whistle blew, the chains were dropped, and I stepped away from Steve to make my way quickly out of the cage. The waheela’s owner was gone long before the chains hit the ground.

  The creature let loose a throat-rattling howl and the temperature dropped. Ice formed on the floor around him and began to spread out. Steve gave a disdainful snort and put his horn against the frozen floor. Soon there were puddles instead of ice. That was a new trick, even to me.

  The waheela hurled himself at Steve, causing a horrific crash as the two tumbled into the side of the cage. Both of them righted themselves, but the wolf-creature seemed groggy. He blinked a few times, tilting his head at Steve like he was listening, his features relaxing and losing some of their frenzied look. Then the thing went down, as they say, like a ton of fuzzy bricks.

  The crowd roared. The fight had been too short. No bloodshed. Was the thing even dead? I could only hear random snippets through all the yelling, but I got the gist of things. Both the well-fed owner and I were motioned back into the cage. The man made sure I went first, proving that chivalry is indeed dead. I’d like to say he ran to the waheela’s side out of concern, but instead he walked slowly over and kicked him. I hovered at the cage door, making the attendant keep it open.

  Even though I’d been paying attention, I barely caught the movement. A quick blur, a spray of blood, too fast for the waheela’s owner to even scream. He just suddenly had no leg. Or I should say his leg was suddenly elsewhere. It hit the ground with a wet thud a split second later. Then the waheela pounced, and I could no longer see his handler. Blood poured and splattered, but by the time it hit concrete, it was freezing into patterns, like hoarfrost on a window. It was kind of pretty.

  I hadn’t been inside the waheela’s head when Steve tapped him in the arena—that was Steve’s power, not mine—but I can imagine how it had gone. There had been a first time for me, too. Had to be a shock for a cold-based creature’s head to suddenly be filled with that springtime mind. Still, he hadn’t argued. He’d thrown the fight like Steve suggested. They didn’t always. Occasionally a creature had been so beaten down and abused that its mind was broken and all it knew was the fight. That’s why Steve had scars. And that was why we kept going to these fights. Someone had to stick up for the little guy. Sooner or later, the promoters had to give up, right? Either that, or we’d eventually r
un out of promoters. Steve and I would see to that.

  The crowd panicked and swirled, some running for the exits, some yelling at the bloodshed, happy they’d finally seen something die. Handlers, animals, what did the spectators care? In their minds, I guess it was the same.

  The attendant tried to slam the door, but I stubbornly held it open, like a human doorstop. Steve came charging out, a brilliant blur. I sidestepped, grabbed onto his mane, and swung up—a movement worn smooth with practice. Steve plowed through the crowd, scattering people in his wake. I reached back and moved my ponytail aside so I could get down the back of my jacket. The metal was warm to the touch as I yanked the bronze rod from its harness. My fingers found the slight depressions and I squeezed until the ends extended, the metal sliding out with a hiss. I raised my spear above my head and screamed my battle cry. Funny thing about these matches—they pat down the creatures, but they never, ever checked the handlers.

  Another battle cry tore from my throat, and I heard answering cries from the kennels. The air crackled around me, and I knew if I looked at myself I’d see my mother’s blessing crystallize in a bronze circlet on my brow, my jacket morphing into a cape of swan feathers. Steve’s mind met mine. Sunshine and green fields. The iron tang of bloodshed and the reek of sweat. I grinned like a mad thing. Steve reared and I laughed at both of us showing off.

  The people in front of us screamed and tried to flee, but we ignored them and crushed our way back to the kennels.

  Some idiot tried to block us. As he held one arm out, the other clutching a box of betting slips, I recognized the reedy-looking man from check-in. The two security guards from earlier flanked him, clearly pissed that they hadn’t caught my weapon. Pissed turned to terrified as we charged them. Even the guards figured out that the two of them versus an angry chick with a nine-foot barbed spear perched on eighteen hands of unicorn fury was a no-contest fight. The check-in guy stood his ground. I stabbed past him, dragging the barbed edge against the side of his thigh as I pulled back. He collapsed, dropping the betting slips in his hurry to cover the wound. It would hurt like hell, but he wouldn’t bleed out into his own personal paper blizzard as long as he sought medical attention. It was probably more than he deserved.

  We swung past the cages, Steve slowing his gallop as I leaned down and started slicing locks. I freed the hydra, two centaurs, a chimera, three hellhounds, a woozy minotaur, and what might or might not have been a chupacabra. After that, I stopped paying attention and just started opening doors.

  The last cage contained the wepwawet. Steve slowed to a walk, and I slid off his back. The wepwawet stood, head high, stately gold eyes drifting from me to Steve. He dipped his chin toward the unicorn, who mimicked the movement back. I twisted my spear and broke the lock.

  The wepwawet walked casually toward us, out of his cage.

  I watched every movement, my spear gripped tightly in my right hand as I wiped a bead of what was either sweat or blood off my cheek. You’d be surprised how similar those two substances can be.

  He stopped in front of me. That is a fine weapon.

  The words floated into my head like music, the tone a bass roar from an orchestra. I grinned and held the spear up to him on the flats of my palms. “It’s celestial,” I said.

  Valkyrie? He made it a question.

  I shook my head. “Only half,” I said, “on my mother’s side.”

  And your father?

  “A mechanic from Rhode Island.”

  His tongue lolled out. It made him look like he was laughing at me.

  “What will you do now?” I asked.

  He extended his bronzed hands, palms up, toward my spear. If I may?

  I handed it over to him, and with a ringing clang, he struck the barbed blade against the cuffs on each of his wrists. They fell to the floor, charred and ruined. Satisfied, he handed the blade back to me.

  I’d been right. They weren’t his.

  They were restrictive. He reached out and a void appeared—an oval of blackness in space. He reached into the void, and when he pulled his arm back out he was holding a nasty looking scimitar. Then he repeated the motion and pulled out another. One for each hand. He gave them an experimental heft.

  He saluted me with one of the scimitars. Now, his voice whispered in my mind, you will have to excuse me. I have many to lead into the underworld. Not all of my fellow prisoners have fled. Some have stayed to seek their revenge upon their owners. I cannot say that I blame them. He lowered his arms to his sides, the tips of the blades in his hands almost kissing the concrete. I am in your debt, and I will never forget it. If you ever need a favor, you call for Ed.

  He didn’t tell me how to call him. I guess I would just have to scream “Ed” into the night and hope something happened. I watched him as he exited the kennel. I should have asked him to give me a leg up before he left. Metal bit into my hands as I climbed one of the kennel doors and clambered onto Steve’s back. It’s harder to get up at a dead stop, especially wearing a cape made of swan feathers. It’s just as difficult to climb a kennel door with a spear in your hand. Sometimes my heritage is a pain in the butt. I leaned into Steve, tired. With the adrenaline gone, I didn’t have much left in me.

  Steve began to walk out, leaving the screams behind us. Perhaps the fights would die down for a while. But they’d start up again. I knew I’d have to keep my ear to the ground, listen to see if the survivors talked. No one would believe the few who did. A white unicorn that fought? A fairytale. A rumor. The after effects of a head injury. Anything but the truth. We hadn’t had any problems so far, but I’d keep a close eye on the rumor mill anyway and see what whispers evolved.

  That was the thing about humans. They found it so easy to discard the implausible and the unbelievable. People ignored anything that made them uncomfortable. A forgetful, ungrateful race that looked at unicorns and saw purity, and looked at me and saw the weakness they thought inherent in my sex. Gone is the memory of the unicorn as the protector of the forest, the guardian of the weak and innocent. Vanished are the warrior women of antiquity. The furies. The morrigan. The valkyries. Violence was in our blood, but humans have forgotten all that.

  Steve and I together, we created balance. We just did it vigilante-style. Hey, it had worked so far.

  I kept my spear out, holding it loosely at my side. I trusted Steve not to jolt me off his back. A soft padding sound came from behind me. We both turned our heads and discovered the waheela trotting behind us. Some of his white fuzz was matted with blood and dirt. He paused, then sat, looking like a patient wolf. A mutant patient wolf.

  I looked at Steve. If a look could be a shrug, that’s what he gave me.

  “You wanna come with us?” I asked.

  The waheela stood, and I swear his tail wagged. It’s a little less friendly when the wagger is encrusted in his former owner’s blood.

  The bushes next to me rustled then, and the waheela’s head snapped in that direction, but he didn’t growl. Jonah stepped out of the bush, his hands shaking as they held onto a flimsy blue jacket. I had to give him some credit, though—his voice only shook a little as he asked me if it was safe to be in the open.

  “I told you to go home,” I said.

  “I forgot my jacket.”

  “You could have bought a new jacket.”

  He shook his head, his lips pressed tight, and I got it. No way Jonah would spend money that could go to his family when he could just run back in and grab it. Cannon fodder. The kid was lucky he hadn’t been eaten. I shrugged and tapped Steve. We needed to reach our trailer and get going. Then I needed to find a car wash for the waheela to run through. When Steve didn’t move, I looked to see what the holdup was and discovered three pairs of puppy-dog eyes on mine. Oh, no. Hell no. Absolutely not. I glared at Steve, thinking, Traitor. He didn’t feel one speck of guilt over it, either.

  Jonah surged forward and then pulled himself back, hesitant. He twisted his jacket in his hands. “I’m good with them,” he said. “
I can help out. I’m useful, I promise. I just—I can’t not work. And this place…” He trailed off, eyes darting to the side door as a lady wearing a white fur coat came stumbling out. She staggered to the side and vomited, and I could see a pink smear of blood down her back. I didn’t think it was hers. Steve made a “fur is murder” joke in my head and I hit him.

  “This place won’t be open any time soon,” Jonah said, his eyes never leaving the woman. “Please.”

  “We travel a lot,” I said. “Won’t your family want you home?”

  He shook his head quickly. “As long as I send money, they won’t care.”

  Jonah and I stared at each other for a good two minutes while Steve and I argued silently. Finally, I broke. “I guess today is our day to pick up strays,” I said, holding out a hand to him. He let out a whoop and ran to us so I could pull him up behind me. He weighed almost nothing. I looked over at the waheela. With his fur so short, I could count his ribs. What a motley crew. A warrior chick and a battle unicorn, now that was an image to inspire fear. But a warrior chick, a unicorn, a half-starved kid, and a mangy mutant dog? Not so much.

  Jonah sneezed and I turned. “You okay?”

  He blushed. “I’m allergic to feathers.”

  “Of course you are,” I said, turning back around as he sneezed again. We finally started heading toward the trailer, away from the now eerily silent warehouse and the vomiting woman. “Allergic. We’re supposed to be badasses, Jonah, walking off into the sunset, the smell of victory in the air. Your sneezing fit is ruining our image.”

  “Sorry.” He sniffed. “The sun won’t set for another hour or two anyway.”