A Sinister Game

by Heather Killough-Walden

  “You’ll be safe with him, lass,” Anders said as he lifted her with no effort at all and placed her in the seat on Brom’s back. She now recognized the leather contraption as a saddle. It was another memory that had been suppressed until now. “Don’t stop, whatever you do,” Anders continued, handing her the reins. “Don’t stop until Brom does.”

  There was another horrible sound, wet and disturbing. Someone grunted and hit the ground. And then there was more cold crackling.

  Victoria shivered violently. Goose bumps raised painfully across her skin.

  Anders cupped her face in his free hand and forced her to look at him. Distractedly, she noticed that when he breathed, there was no cloud of frost before his lips.

  “Are you hearing me, Red?” he asked her, his expression starkly concerned. She could understand his reservations. If her eyes looked as wide and unfocused as they felt, and her pallor was as pale as she thought it probably was, then she was the very picture of near death and dawning hysteria.

  But she nodded. She heard him – and she understood. And strangely enough, she felt at ease in the saddle.

  Anders nodded, looking pleased but worried. “He’ll pick up good speed, I think you’ll be fine.”

  “Anders, I’m too dizzy. I lost too much blood. I don’t think I can hold on,” she told him frankly, suddenly very worried that she would pass out and fall off.

  “I know lass,” he said. “This will help.”

  With that, he placed the palm of his hand against her chest. Victoria went very still as her skin grew warm, and even almost hot, beneath the uniform she wore. The heat quickly spread from his contact point until within short seconds, it had enveloped her entire body.

  When it hit her fingers and toes, Victoria closed her eyes. It was like being wrapped in a warm blanket after getting caught in an autumn rain. Like hot tea on a sore throat or the hearth’s flames on a winter’s night.

  “That should do it. Now get going,” he finished, at last removing his hand. Victoria opened her eyes and gazed down at him.

  Only now – now that she could see without the blur of pain and blood loss – did she notice the tiny red-orange flames leaping to life in the depths of his deep brown eyes.

  And by the time she did, it was too late.

  Anders slapped the stallion on the back and Brom took off down the street. Victoria held on for dear life.

  In the streets behind her, cold fury met cold fury in a desperate battle – and an unknown savior had just given her the very fire in his blood.

  * * * *

  Captain Maxwell Blood watched from the corner of his eye as Victoria Red shot down the street on the back of a giant black stallion. He couldn’t go after her, not right now. Game Control had been right to fear Victor Black. The dark leader had indeed become too powerful.

  Max was bleeding from several telekinetically induced wounds Black had opened up on his body. His bicep was split from shoulder to elbow, his chest had been reopened where Black had injured him previously beside the beach, and the palm of his hand was bleeding around his sword. His grip was becoming slippery. He wasn’t certain how much longer he’d be able to hold on.

  But the sword was the only advantage, however small, that he had over the other dark leader. It was the only tangible thing that separated them. So he clenched it tight and attacked with it while he could.

  Technically, Black should have been more powerful than Max.

  However, neither opponent could read the other’s mind, and neither could throw the other off using telekinesis. They were matched strength for strength, even though Victor Black was supposed to be four hundred years older than him.

  Because in reality, Black was in fact not. Not at all.

  Maxwell Blood was what Game Control referred to as the “ace up their sleeve.” Several long and time-blurred centuries ago, Max had come to play on the Field as a dark team leader. As was every other player was when brought inside the wall, he was wiped of his memories. He had no idea who his family had once been or where he had once lived or what he had once been like. When you become a Gamer, it no longer mattered. That’s what they told you, and in the end, that was what you believed.

  When Max helped his team win Game after Game and earned the nickname, “Maxwell the Bloody” or “Bloody Max,” GC offered him a place in their ranks.

  It was the offer of a lifetime. He couldn’t refuse.

  As centuries heaped upon centuries and Bloody Max’s powers grew, the former team leader climbed the ladder of ex-players in the GC’s lines.

  Until he became who and what he was today.

  When young Rose Tyrnan had been taken from her home and brought onto the Field, it was a move that granted GC a massive boost of power and supplied the wall with the burst of energy it needed to continue working for another several hundred years. Rose was a gem of a born Gamer. Her power was immense; she had yet to even discover most of her own latent talent.

  Max had recognized this when he viewed the results of her initial test. He’d reviewed hers… and her sister’s.

  Their parents had not wanted them to enter the Field. It was that way with some. There was distrust there, and sometimes there was the selfish envy that came with knowing a Gamer would live forever. In other cases, parents simply did not want to lose their children, and worse, have their children forget them.

  But in the end, it didn’t matter. Gamers were always taken.

  In the unfortunate case of young Rose and her sister Andromeda, something went horribly awry. The two girls were incredibly strong, especially for their ages. They were but children, yet they fought Game Control valiantly, intelligently, and desperately.

  One of them didn’t make it. Her young life was lost in the struggle to escape from Game Control. She died in her mother’s arms as her sister was carried, kicking and screaming, to the transporter cube that would forever separate her from what remained of her small family.

  Wiping Rose’s mind had been an undertaking of disproportionate difficulty. Even strapped down and drugged up, she fought the procedure with every stubborn fiber of her tiny being. Max had watched the child scream and writhe as the machines whirred to life and, little by little, erased what she knew of her past.

  He’d been fascinated by her. Touched. She was so small and so brave. She was so desperate and so tragically determined. It was a helpless, hopeless resistance on her part, but she never gave in. Not once.

  Not until the very end, when the deed was done.

  Game Control turned off the machine and presented to Max one golden-haired, golden-eyed Victoria Red, the new Red team leader.

  She had smiled at him. It was a beautiful, innocent, bright-eyed smile, and something inside of him suddenly struggled to breathe.

  Game Control hadn’t wanted to lose their new player, of course. They were already upset over the loss of her sister. They wanted to keep close tabs on Victoria and make certain that she grew to love and trust the Game and the Field it was played upon. If she did, she wouldn’t ask questions. She would never be tempted to wander.

  So Max volunteered to go undercover and keep an eye on the pretty and powerful new Gamer that GC secretly referred to as “Red Rose.” As all dark leaders were able to do, Max changed his form. He took on the body of a pre-teen boy and joined Victoria’s team as the new Red team captain.

  They grew close, he and Victoria. He came to truly and deeply care about her.

  And now….

  Now she was running from him.

  This had gone too far. It was getting out of hand. She was never supposed to have left the Field in the first place; he’d failed in that much. The damage might already be irreparable.

  As Victor Black hurled another cold ball of energy at Max, Maxwell the Bloody dove for the ground and slipped into invisibility.

  This time, when Black shielded himself with a wall of power to block a return attack, no attack was forthcoming. Instead, there was a dawning silence. It was the stunned, dust sett
ling, crackle-lingering kind of quiet, and it echoed the hollowness of the space where Max had once been.

  *****

  The town’s people peeked tentatively through their windows and around the splinter-laden logs of buildings up and down the wide path. And what they saw was a solitary, tall figure in iced-over black with hair the color of a raven’s wings and eyes the same brilliant, impossible green of the sun’s final flash before it sets on the horizon.

  A breeze picked up and kicked a few dried leaves down the road. They skittered, caught a strand of errant cold electricity, crackled a few times, and then skittered into the distance.

  The lone figure in black turned slowly in place, his all-seeing gaze burning an icy path into everything it saw.

  And then he too vanished into thin air.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “This isn’t good, Blood.”

  “No sir.” Max stayed where he was, standing easy, his hands open at his sides as his superior paced slowly across the room. He kept his eyes trained on the man’s tall, broad form, and tried very hard not to let his own anger seep out to any detectable level. The Game Lord was upset enough as it was.

  “If anyone on the Field possesses the ability to upset the balance we’ve fought so hard and for so long to maintain, it’s Victor Black and Victoria Red.” The Game Lord stopped, ran a hand through his thick gray mane of hair, and sighed heavily. “Three thousand years, I’ve kept the wall working, Blood. Three thousand years. And now….” He shook his head, his eyes shutting momentarily. “Now it’s a few short hours away from crumbling to bits. And all because you couldn’t keep Red Rose where she belongs.”

  Max didn’t have a reply for that. The Game Lord was right, more or less. Victor Black had something to do with it, but the Game Lord was also not interested in excuses.

  Max considered himself fortunate that he’d been keeping close tabs on Victoria when everything had reached a boiling point.

  She’d tried so hard to be discreet and keep it secret, but it was his job to watch over her, so he’d noticed when she started practicing at night without her Game band. He naturally began to suspect that she might one day soon attempt to leave the Field. So he’d had that special bottle of sleeping pills created for her. Each capsule contained a tracking device that, once swallowed, would find its way into her blood stream.

  Without that, he never would have found her. She would have drowned in the Mare.

  “She’ll be the death of us, Blood.”

  “It isn’t Victoria, sir. It’s Black. He is the one who instigated this.”

  “It doesn’t matter. The longer Red stays beyond the boundaries of the Field, the more memories she’ll regain. And if she recalls enough of them, well – ” He stopped and fixed Max with a stare the color of wet slate. “She would have the backing of almost any Gamer on the Field. She’s charismatic and capable. People fear Black, but they love Victoria Red. I don’t think I need to remind you what will happen if too many Gamers realize the Game they’ve been playing all along is a farce and attempt to venture beyond the wall.”

  “No sir.”

  The Game Lord’s dark gray gaze intensified. “If this mess ultimately leads to a reawakening of the Old Ones and their self-professed ranking in the world, Blood,” he shook his head, his tone lowering, “we will be the first to go.”

  Max had to agree with that. There would be vengeance on the deities’ minds. Their power had been stolen, their champions used.

  The wall around the Field sapped their strength and fed it to a few chosen mortals, giving immortality to those inside the wall even as it shortened the life spans of those in the outside sectors by half. Max doubted that this was going over well with the old gods. At the moment, the deities could do nothing to stop it.

  But if the wall were to cease functioning, that would change.

  “Fix this, Blood. Get Victor Black and the Red Rose back inside the wall before everything falls apart.”

  “I need a dozen men, Arthur One, and supplies,” Max said.

  “Take and do what you must. In case Black decides to come back inside the wall for whatever reason, post guards at the transporter cubes.” The Game Lord’s jaw muscles tensed and his gray eyes darkened to nearly black. “If it comes down to a fight inside the wall, try to get him to the rehabilitation center without doing any permanent damage to him. And speaking of that, since you requested him I should tell you that Arthur One is in rehabilitation at the moment. Black’s handiwork. He should be finished within a few hours.”

  Max nodded. “I’ll post the guards.” He turned to leave.

  “One more thing Blood.”

  Max stopped, looking back over his shoulder.

  “I want them alive.” Their eyes met, blue on gray. “Especially Rose. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Perfectly.” He waited a moment. With a single nod before he left, he added, “Sir.”

  * * * *

  Something had been bothering Victor ever since his meeting with Blood on the shore of the Mare. The captain of the Red team had found Victoria outside the wall in the first place. He’d saved her from the transporter cube accident that had dumped her into the ocean.

  And then, hours later, when Victoria ran from them both and headed for the forest, Blood had told Victor that he knew where to find her again.

  How, exactly?

  Victor was grateful beyond words that Blood had found Victoria the first time. If he hadn’t, she would be dead. She would be drowned and most likely floating somewhere half in and half out of the water along the Mare’s shoreline.

  But the question of how still niggled at him.

  And how had he tracked her to that village, Ocanus?

  He wasn’t able to follow her by reading her mind. Victor was sure of that at least. No matter what the lay person might believe, a dark leader’s telepathic powers were only so strong, and distance was its greatest weakness. Within sheer seconds of her mad-dash flee from the shore, Victoria had been too far away for either of them to track by following her thoughts.

  Yet somehow, Maxwell Blood was always one step ahead – and one step closer to Victoria.

  At this point, Victor was willing to bet just about everything he had that Blood was locating her by using a tracking device. Such devices were impossible to attach to Game and downtime uniforms; the uniforms had been designed that way, in order to make Game play fair. But there were other ways to track a person, and it was the only logical explanation.

  There had been a tickle of a concern in the back of his head since the night he’d sent Victoria that dream. She’d been sleeping so deeply, it had been difficult to infiltrate her unconscious mind enough to make her feel what he’d wanted her to feel. It was too deep a sleep, unnatural even.

  That kind of sleep was a drugged sleep, and as far as he knew, Victoria was not the kind to make much use of the Medical Research Unit and its various remedies.

  If Victor’s gut feeling was right, Maxwell Blood had given her a sleep medication containing tracking devices. They would lead him to her should she ever try to escape the Field.

  Bloody hell. At the very least, Max was a very capable and experienced dark leader. At the very worst, he was working for Game Control.

  Either way, Max would be able to track Victoria again in no time and Victor needed help. He wasn’t stupid. He knew this was no longer a Game of one-on-one. The rules had changed, and the stakes were too high.

  John Storm was Victor’s closest friend and one hell of a fighter. Victor was certain that Storm would be more than willing to join forces with his team leader. The man had been itching to take on Game Control for a very long time.

  Jeannine Cure was the head Foster in the Medical Research Unit. She was in charge of all of the comings and goings in the medical facility and had authority over every doctor and nurse within its walls. Like Black, Jeannine had long had her suspicions about the true nature of the wall and the Game that they all worked so hard to keep up.

&n
bsp; Jeannine’s boyfriend, whose name was Jonathan, was one of the men who worked under the Arthurs in the Technical Research Facility. There, he kept a low profile and as a result, saw and heard a lot of what happened within the TRF.

  Jonathan could help Victor track Victoria using the same technology that Blood was using. Jeannine was sure to have a medical ace up her sleeve that could be put to good use getting rid of a hand full of Blood’s men, at the very least. And Storm was always good in a fight.

  All three would all be a boon to Victor right now.

  The problem was getting to them, and in fact getting back inside the wall. If Victor was right about Blood working for Game Control, they’d have called out the troops by now and would be guarding the cubes on the other side.

  Victor eyed the transporter before him with wary determination. He knew that once he got inside and pressed a button, he would be sending himself headlong into some sort of ambush.

  Gods, I’ll be killed for sure.

  Victor frowned. What the bloody hell was a god?

  This was not the first time he’d muttered the term, mentally or aloud. He realized that now.

  Come to think of it, he recalled hearing the same phrase inside of Victoria’s head when he’d had her up against the wall of her room at the tavern in Ocanus. He’d used it himself after she’d fallen.

  Victor shook his head as if to clear it. Being outside of the wall was messing with him. It was messing with everyone. He stubbornly pushed the strangeness to the back of his mind and concentrated on the task at hand.

  This was the same transporter cube that Victoria had nearly drowned in when she’d arrived outside of the wall. But she hadn’t had the advantage of a dark leader’s powers.

  It was no longer immersed beneath twelve fathoms of ocean water. Instead, it rested on a thick plane of rime, well above the surface of the Mare, where Victor had raised it on a hastily formed glacier of ice.

  He was not going to drown attempting to use it. He was just going to have to blast his way back out again once he reached the other side.