by Nicol, Andy
I thanked them, making sure they all understood how much we appreciated it, then rubbed my head and turned to Soul.
“It’s late.”
He shrugged and followed me back out of the kitchen, into the purple halls. We passed two jet-lagged warriors that just had arrived. I offered a small nod, but they simply grimaced at me and kept walking.
My face was throbbing and no amount of feathery pillows could help that. Apparently, breakfast wasn’t going to help either. I just stared at my toast as I stood at the island in the kitchen. Soul was still sleeping, as were most of the other warriors, but my nerves couldn’t be calmed that easily.
I shook my hair out and went searching through cupboards and drawers, hoping for coffee. There was a kettle but I only found tea. That’s not enough caffeine. I stood up and rubbed my head again. Maybe there was a little shop around here I could walk to, but was it wise to leave on my own? What if I ran into Jekyll and Hyde? Oh, I didn’t want to think about them…
“Coffee’s above the fridge.” The voice came from behind, making me jump.
I spun around and prepared to defend myself. My heart was pounding as I gritted my teeth and looked at the man sitting across on a bar stool.
Sighing, I leaned against the counter. “Ignatius, don’t do that.”
“Yeah, kind of dangerous to sneak up on a girl who put someone out of work her first week as a pro because they belittled a boy no one knew.” He bit into an apple and smirked. “Dog-girl.”
One of the reasons no one would team with me was because of what I did the first week I was employed. That guy never should have said that about Henry, so I lost control. People don’t need all their limbs, right? I pulled my knife from my belt and jammed it into the island. “There’s a story there, and if you call me that again no one will find your body.”
Ignatius was frozen with … either fear or plain old shock. I’m not really sure. I pulled the apple from his hand and walked away.
Goddammit, I forgot the coffee.
Stalking through the maze that was our building, I grumbled to myself. Finally, after getting lost for a few minutes, I knocked on Soul’s door.
“O-open!” he shouted back.
I opened the door and he was sitting on the end of his bed, still looking half-asleep.
“Coffee?”
He was squinting like a hamster in daylight but nodded and stretched, his beater top lifting up and his unbuttoned pants falling down. I stood against the doorway staring as he scratched his hair and dug around for his clothes.
“That looks fine, you know.”
Slowly, he stood and turned back to me curiously. Looking down, he shook his head like he wasn’t sure why he was already dressed. I laughed at him as he ran a hand over his face, then grabbed his long black coat and followed me out.
As we walked, he seemed thoughtful about something. He had brought his hands to his chest and started to fiddle with a button. “F-feeling … better?”
“Hmm? Yeah, I’m fine,” I assured him.
He nodded, then looked back up. He was standing on my right side, so he had a perfect view of the fresh bruises and cuts.
“Don’t lie, not to the bird … please.”
I stopped walking and faced him with a grumble. “Okay, my head is pounding, my face is throbbing, and I’m pretty sure my self-confidence was taken out with the trash this morning. This is pretty much the new normal for me, so I’m doing pretty darn good, considering!”
My hands were shaking, and I had snapped at Soul pretty badly. I dropped my head out of guilt. Soul had stepped away and hunched his back, looking like a dog being scolded.
“P-please don’t … don’t be m-mad at the … bird.” His voice cracked and I felt pins and needles in my chest. He squeezed his eyes shut and tugged at the collar of his shirt, biting his lip to keep himself calm.
“No, Soul, I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at the world! What did we do to deserve this? You — you’re such a good man and I’m… Well, I’m not the best person but I don’t think I’m all that bad. Maybe it’s just the universe getting me back for what happened to Henry —”
Soul pressed his hand over my mouth and stared at me, probably waiting for a reaction. Giving a snort, I stayed still nonetheless. After a second, he pulled his hand back quickly, the way someone might if they had gotten burned.
“Y-you are my K9…” he told me with determination. “Hmm … w-we will…” He fought to speak calmly but ended up pulling at his hair and taking deep breaths.
“The good guy always wins,” I told him. “But I don’t feel like the good guy, Soul.”
“No! Th-this time … wolf … K9, r-right? K9 … survival of the fittest…” he whined and pulled his hair a little harder, clearly frustrated with himself. I gently pulled his wrists away, and he took one long breath before looking back up at the sky. He started humming, first inaudibly, then harder.
“Wolves breed wolves
And crows commit murder
So stand up and run
Before we take it further.”
I nodded and thought about it. I’m not hopeless. I’m not a loser and I never have been. I’m not going out so easily. Hell, I’ll go mad before I get dead.
“I am a wolf,” I stated. “And I’m sorry.”
Soul started to look like he had settled, so I smiled and nudged him to start walking again. He grunted as I wrapped my hands around his strong forearms, looking away shyly.
“I’m going to stop freaking out. I’m going to try harder for you,” I told him as I went back to searching for any signs of coffee.
“My K9,” he muttered happily. He was barely audible.
We eventually found a small coffee shop. I threw money at the woman as she handed me my dark roast coffee.
“You two are here for the tournament, right? Is it true that you already got into it with some other contestants?”
I had started to walk away but froze and swung myself back around. “‘Got into it’ is a little … vague, lady. Anyway, they weren’t supposed to be taking part in the tournament.”
“Oh, be careful. No one really follows that rule.” She waved to us as we started to walk again. “And … um … you don’t seem to know this, but Bell Hearst’s warriors dropped out, so Mr. Vince Viktor volunteered those two guys.”
My stomach dropped about three hundred feet and I shook my head. “Oh, no, we didn’t. Uh, thanks for letting us know.”
She nodded and went back to work. I stewed in my discontentment and opened the door.
When walking through town, I was used to cobblestone roads, not perfectly smooth dirt streets. I tripped a few times but managed to save the coffee. My mind kept drifting to Soul as I let my drink cool. I needed to get my mind off of Jekyll and Hyde, so I asked him a question. “You like poems, but what about riddles?”
He thought a moment, then nodded and waited for me to remember most of it.
“Patiently, I’ll sit and watch
Though my attention cannot be bought
Tell me why, dear prince of mine
Why must I stand aside his kind
To the left of which, I see
Tell me why this has to be.”
I waited excitedly for his answer. I was quite proud of my riddle. His eyebrows creased for a moment before his eyes widened and he whipped his head around to look at me proudly, his loud laugh ringing out like a crow’s call. “A knight. The prince was a knight, r-right?”
I nodded and grinned. “It started in medieval times. The sword was drawn from the left. How did you know that?”
Soul straightened his jacket and stuck his chin out. “Gentlemen know.”
My shoulders shook as I laughed. He was a gentleman though, even if he was joking. As if to demonstrate his manners, he opened the door of the mansion and bowed as I walked inside. We quickly exchanged more poems and riddles as we finished our coffee — or in his case, tea — then made our way to the training room.
In order to
get there, we had to walk through a few tunnels in the basement. It was kind of creepy. The main training room was full of warriors, but the practice arena was empty, so I made a call to Johnny so he could give a shout-out to any locals who wanted to see a free show.
Within half an hour, the place was full and we had hauled our equipment to the lockers. These rooms were separate, unlike the ones at home — one for women, one for men, and another separate change room entirely. I tightened my shoulder pads and walked past Ignatius and Greg into the pristine, white arena. They nodded and then headed back into the change room to suit up for their own battle. The officials had put barriers up but there was no dirt, only slippery white tiles. I looked up into the stands, noticing that there were also wires and poles to hang from.
I threw my arms into the air and people shouted, whether they knew my name or not. Soul, on the other hand, was already waiting for me, flicking at a long tear in his shirt.
“We’re going to have to fix that before we’re sent back out into the cold,” I said as I casually started to walk towards him. He hadn’t realized I was there, and he looked a little bit startled. He smiled sarcastically and walked towards me, holding out his hand, the same as he did last time.
I eyed it. His tape was already bunched up from clenching his fist, but I shook his hand roughly. We both took a few steps back and he held his axe ready. I waited until he started to rush forward again before I tossed a smoke pellet onto the ground and jumped up to one of the beams. When the smoke cleared, he stood straight and scratched his head. I balanced on one foot as I watched him check behind the barriers. I only blew my cover by laughing obnoxiously at his confusion.
I twirled in place, then jumped around, showing off a little bit as Soul reattached his axe to his back, then leapt to the beam, struggling to pull his weight up. He grumbled and dropped back to the ground. I paced on the thin bar as he left the weapon on the ground and went for a second attempt. He grunted in frustration and I twirled again to face him.
“Would you like it more if I got down?”
He grunted once again and nodded. “P-please?”
Like I said, I’m a show-off. So what? I dropped down and grabbed the bar before I hit the ground. I kicked myself over the top, perching like a bird. Soul got the idea and did the same. He did pretty good despite the fact he nearly fell backwards. I was small enough that I could balance fairly well as I slid my swords from their sheaths, but Soul continued to hold his arms out as he wobbled back and forth.
Once he’d steadied himself and glared at me for making him do this, I swung my swords at him. One, two, one, two. He knocked them out of the way and reached for my collar, so I leaned back, nearly falling off, having to drop one sword in order to grab the beam and swing myself around again. The second I was back up, my partner decided to use his knife to knock my other sword away.
I gulped and then grinned. “This isn’t how I planned it…”
I faked a jab at Soul’s nose and he bent his knees, pulling himself a little bit lower — low enough for me to leap over him and start running. He groaned and carefully jumped back onto the white-tiled floor, chasing after me. Once I looked back at him; he was standing below me with his axe. My first instinct was to drop onto his shoulders, but that could get me hurt. I was in mid-air, leaping over him to the next beam, when he pulled me to the ground.
His hand was still on my boot as I landed on the floor and grabbed my cheek, throbbing once again.
“The crow better fly away…” I grumbled.
I pressed my hands onto the floor and shoved myself up, pulling my boot free and throwing punches, jabs, and then kicks. My partner grinned as he dodged left and right. He continued to dodge as he started to walk towards me, backing me against a barrier. I tried to hide my glee as I dropped to the ground and the axe followed. I pushed myself forward and rolled across the ground to my swords. The thin handles slid perfectly into my hands, just in time for me to be kicked in the side, which rolled me onto my back and forced me to hold both in a defensive position above my chest.
I deflected swing after swing until a voice — a voice with a strong Irish accent — made us stop dead.
“Well, isn’t this cute? Little lovebird and his puppy, play fighting. I wonder how they’d fare if someone they loved was on the line.” This was Hyde. I could tell by the hair-raising manner in which he spoke. Soul, who was still leaning over me, slowly started to turn his head, with rage and fear in his eyes.
Once he had straightened his back out, he let out a whimper and tensed his muscles. His axe was raised, and he started to mouth some poem to himself. I understood his terror once I turned my head to Hyde as well.
His usually well-groomed face was a mess of unshaven scruff and ugly bruises — not to mention that his nose was completely crooked now. The most horrifying aspect of this entire scenario wasn’t his looks, though; it was that he was a holding a tiny girl with long black hair and porcelain skin. Tina Ravin.
“Let me go! You … you big bully!”
Tina kicked her legs and struggled as hard as she could. I had to give her credit for not looking remotely scared. She mostly seemed annoyed.
Kicking my legs up, I jumped back to my feet and aimed one sword at the man. “This is too far and you know it, Hyde. Set her down and walk away.”
Hyde smirked and tossed Tina into the air, catching her in his other hand, then producing a knife. Soul was grinding his teeth and clenching his fists. “Put down the girl and fight like a man; best fight hard because the bird is not a fan…”
He started to stalk closer, hauling the axe along the ground and producing sparks.
Tina was kicking and screaming for her brother and me, anger strong in her little eyes. I sneered at the hulking brute of a man as he pressed the knife into Tina’s cheek, cutting her ever so slightly. She bravely bit back tears, keeping silent.
“You probably want to stay where you are. You don’t want me to do to her what I did to the doggy, do you?”
Soul stopped walking and dropped his axe, raising his arms as fast as he could. All the rage drained from him in an instant.
And then Hyde turned to me. “You too, Vixen.”
I tossed my swords down as hard as I could and scowled. “You know you can’t do this. You know this is too far; no innocents, no children! This is low, even for you!” My throat was burning as I screamed at him. Soul’s rage returned as tears fell from his eyes.
The ghoul simply sighed overdramatically and dropped the knife to his side. “You make such a big deal out of nothing. I can promise you that, if you were on your own here, you’d be far too busy to worry about it.”
The way he suggested this made it seem like busy had some undertones I wasn’t quite comfortable with. And by that, I meant thinking about it almost made me wretch.
“S-stop!” Soul grabbed his hair with both hands and hollered angrily. “Not yours, never going to be. Let the little girl go … s-so I-I can kill you.”
Hyde’s hollow laugh rang through the silent arena.
Just as Hyde was about to retort, he growled in pain and fell to the floor, crimson dripping from his right leg. The gate had splintered open, and Greg jammed his heel into Hyde’s spine as Ignatius carefully pulled Tina out of his grip. He held her tightly to his chest as he ran towards us, scowl still planted firmly on his face. Really, I think that was just his face.
I bolted for my swords and ran to Greg’s aid. Hyde had turned the tables and was in the process of strangling him. The floors were unluckily slippery, especially since my boots were made for dirt and rugged surfaces. It was difficult to get any traction. Still, I threw my body into Hyde’s and we both tumbled off of Greg, who grabbed his throat and coughed violently.
Hyde had the same plan for me; however, sadly for him I had a plan too. His knife was lying on the ground next to me, so I reached for it as his thick hands gripped my neck and squeezed. My fingers started to go numb, but I still managed to get a decent grip on the little bo
x cutter, as my vision started to fade. I jammed it into his arm, but that only caused him to grunt and lean down harder. Kicking my legs against the floor, I gasped and dragged the small blade over his wrist. His dirty demon-blood dripped onto my neck and partially into my mouth.
“Oh Hyde, we need to keep her alive, remember … until the tournament. You don’t want to be kicked out, do you?” His brother’s rough voice sounded from my left. I let my head roll to the side as I tried to swear at him. My voice only came out as a breathy whisper.
“You ought not talk like that, Vixen. It’s unbecoming of a lady, and it makes me think things…” the man leaning over me said, in a tone that only he could consider seductive.
I was nearly completely unconscious, but I could feel the pressure in my face from the bruises and the blood. I had to keep my eyes closed to keep them from rolling back, but I managed to knee him where it counts.
“Go to hell!”
Hyde’s face changed from one of amusement to one very true to his name, something deformed and sinister, and he doubled over in pain and let me go.
I heard a few footsteps as I resisted a cough as much as I could, then I heard worried mutterings and a call from my Crow.
“K-K9!”
“She’s dead!” Jekyll mused. “Sorry, bird, you’re going to have to fight alone. Alone again, just like you’ve always been! No one cares for you. They’re all afraid of monsters and that’s exactly what you are. All alone again … so sad. I thought crows travelled in flocks.”
Oh. He was just asking for it with that one. I smirked and launched myself to my feet. I quickly grabbed my sword then ran up behind him and kicked his knees out. Gripping both the blade and the hilt, I held my sword across his neck from behind, letting it cut into my hand.
“Didn’t you know?” I taunted in his ear. “A group of crows is actually called a ‘murder’” — I leaned down and sneered — “which is exactly what I’m going to do to you.”
Ignatius sighed and shook his head, evidently unimpressed with my wordplay. He took over watching Jekyll for me while Greg held Hyde in place. After nodding a thanks to them, I keeled over and coughed like I was dying, which I guess I nearly was.
