“Yes. The dark brute uses the stage name ‘Cesare.’ The blond is Mart.”
“What are their real names?” If anyone knew, Saiman would.
“I have no idea.” Saiman sipped his cognac. “And that bothers me.”
The Reapers zeroed in on our table.
“Anything in particular I’m looking for?”
“I want to know if they’re human.”
I watched Mart. Lean, bordering on thin, he wore a long gray trench coat he left hanging open. Under it was what could only be described as a cat burglar suit: black and skin-tight over his chest, it hugged his legs before disappearing into soft black boots. If it wasn’t for the tightness of the suit, I would’ve missed the minute tensing of his leg muscles. He leapt and landed in a light crouch on our table.
Excellent balance—didn’t slide at all when he jumped, landed on his toes, the table barely moved.
Mart looked straight ahead, presenting me with a carved profile. Very light eyes, blue, rimmed in darker gray, but undeniably human. Good bone structure, masculine, without obvious weakness. Compact frame, narrow, corded with lean muscle. Long limbs, providing for good reach. No odd scent. Looked human to me, but I’d never known Saiman to be wrong. Something had to have given him pause, but what?
When in doubt, poke the beehive with a stick to see if anything interesting flies out. I clapped my hands. “I had no idea Pit teams had such pretty cheerleaders. Can you do it again, but with more spirit this time?”
Mart turned to me and stared, unblinking. It was like looking into the eyes of a hawk: distance and the promise of sudden death.
I pretended to think and snapped my fingers. “I know what’s missing. The pom-poms!”
No reaction. He knew I had insulted him, but he wasn’t sure exactly how.
Saiman chuckled.
Mart still stared at me. His skin was perfect. Too perfect. No scratches. No cuts. No imperfections, no pimples, no blackheads. Like alabaster polished to light gloss.
“What brings you to our table, gentlemen?” Saiman’s voice was relaxed. Not a shadow of anxiety. I had to give it to him—Saiman had balls.
The tattooed man crossed his arms. His frame was lanky, his limbs very long in proportion to his body. Definition showed on his arms, but his muscle was long rather than thick. He fixed Saiman with an unblinking stare.
“You will lose.” He pronounced the words very distinctly, his deep voice tinted with an accent I couldn’t place.
I reached over slowly to touch Mart’s face. He grabbed my hand. I barely saw his hand move and then my fingers were clamped in his. Grip like a steel vise. Fast, too. Possibly faster than me. This should be interesting. I kept my fingers limp. “Oh, you’re strong.” He was strong. He also left himself wide open. I wondered if he would be fast enough to block a champagne glass if I broke it and shoved it into his throat. That would be a very tempting theory to test.
“Mart!” Saiman’s voice snapped like a whip. “You break her, you buy her.”
Mart swiveled his head toward him. It was a very odd gesture: only his head turned. Like an owl. Or possibly a cat. He released my fingers. He had probably discounted me because I was a woman in a brightly colored dress.
A dark-haired woman entered the deck. She was young, barely eighteen if that. Her features would’ve made her at home on the streets of Delhi: deep dark eyes, round, full face, sensuous lips, dark hair that streamed behind her. She wore plain jeans and a dark long-sleeved shirt, but the way she walked, rolling her hips slightly, shoulders held back a little to showcase her breasts, made me want to picture her in a sari. An exotic Indian princess. Men watched her move. Three to one, this was Livie, the intended recipient of Derek’s note. I had no trouble seeing how she would inspire a young male werewolf to lose all common sense.
She reached our table and halted a couple of feet away, keeping her gaze down. “Asaan,” she murmured to Mart. “Mistress wants you.”
The tattooed man bared his teeth. She had interrupted their intimidation routine.
The woman bowed her head in submission.
In a moment the Reapers would leave and my chance to pass Derek’s note would leave with them. What to do?
Across from me two women excused themselves and headed to the corner of the room, where a small sign pointed toward bathrooms.
“I need to go to the ladies’ room!” I announced a bit too loudly, got up, and stared at the dark-haired woman. “Come with me. I don’t want to go by myself.”
She looked at me as if I were speaking Chinese. You stupid idiot girl.
“I don’t want to go by myself,” I repeated. “There might be weirdoes in there.”
The tattooed man jerked his head toward the bathroom and she sighed. “Okay.”
As we departed, I heard the tattooed man’s voice. “When you die, your woman will scream.”
“Is that a threat?” Saiman chuckled.
“A promise.”
We stepped into the bathroom. The moment the heavy door closed behind us, she turned around. “There you go, all set. Unless you want me to hold your hand until you sit on the toilet, I’ve got to go.”
“Are you Livie?”
She blinked. “Yes.”
“I’m Derek’s friend,” I said.
The name hit her like a punch. She reeled back. “You know Derek?”
I pulled the note from the wrist guard. “For you.”
She snatched it from my hand and read it. Her eyes widened. She crumpled the note and dropped it into the circular hole in the marble counter.
“Are you in trouble?”
“I have to go. I’ll be punished if I stay too long.”
“Wait.” I grabbed her by the forearm. “I can help. Tell me what’s going on.”
“You can do nothing! You’re just a slut.” Livie jerked her arm out of my hand, ripping her sleeve, punched the door open, and took off.
There are times when strenuous mental conditioning comes in handy. It helps you to keep going when you’re wading through the sewers up to your thighs in human excrement hacking at an endlessly regenerating Impala worm. It also keeps you from screaming when two young idiots intend to commit suicide by Reapers and resist all attempts to be saved.
The note. She’d thrown the note away. I gave my word I wouldn’t read the note before giving it to her, but since she had read it and tossed it into the garbage, the note was now the property of the public. I was Jane Public, so technically I could read the note.
The two women I had seen enter the bathroom earlier exited the stalls, carrying on a conversation about somebody’s biceps. They walked past me and proceeded to touch up their already perfect makeup before the mirror.
I ran through my reasoning in my head. It was a bit thin, but I was past the point of caring.
I stepped up to the counter and stuck my arm into the hole. My fingers grazed clumps of wet paper towels.
The ladies stared at me as if I had sprouted a chandelier on my head.
I gave them a nice smile, withdrew my hand, and looked into the hole. A short, wide trash can full of discarded tissue. I could fish all day and not get the note. The counter was marble, but the cabinet under it was metal. A small door allowed access to the trash can. I grabbed the handle. Locked.
The ladies determined that ignoring me was the most prudent course of action and resumed their biceps-related discussion.
I looked at the lock. Lock picking wasn’t my forte. Busting things, on the other hand, was right up my alley.
I backed up to give myself a bit of room. It was good that the counter was relatively high. Hard to place a low kick with enough power. I stepped forward and hammered a side kick to the door. Metal boomed like a drum. The door buckled under my foot but held.
The women froze.
I sank a front kick into the dent. Boom.
Good door. Boom.
The door shuddered, slid down, and crashed to the floor with a thud. I smiled at the horrified ladies. “D
ropped my engagement ring down there. You know how it is. A girl will do anything for a diamond.”
They fled.
I pulled the trash can out and dug through it. Paper towel, paper towel, used tampon . . . Ugh. Who put used tampons into the paper towel wastebasket? There it was.
I unrolled the crumpled note. “By the Red Roof Inn, same time, tonight.”
Pieces began to line up in my head. A breathtakingly beautiful girl, seemingly the property of a team of lethal, possibly not human, gladiators. A young male werewolf with an overdeveloped protective instinct. Derek was in love—nothing less would cause him to break Curran’s laws—and he was planning to rescue her. He was also in the fast lane to getting his balls chopped off.
Okay, so what possible time could it be and where was the Red Roof Inn? The Red Roof Inn was about the only hotel franchise actively remaining in business. Any shack’s roof could be painted red, instantly identifying it as a place to purchase a room for the night. Problem was, I hadn’t the foggiest idea where there might be a Red Roof Inn in this area of Atlanta.
The Reapers struck me as a paranoid sort, the kind who would leave and arrive together. If I were them, I would depart shortly after their last fight of the day was over. They also kept Livie on a short leash. Her absence wouldn’t go unnoticed for long. Derek was an idiot, but a bright idiot. He would realize this. He would meet her someplace close to their exit route. Best-case scenario, they would talk and she would go back. Worst-case scenario, he had some sort of getaway vehicle ready for their joint escape. Which would end in disaster.
I kicked the wastebasket back under the counter, leaned the door to cover up the hole, straightened my dress, and emerged from the bathroom.
Saiman sat alone. He raised one eyebrow at my appearance. A gesture copied from me—Saiman was annoyed. But not enough not to rise at my approach.
“Another minute and I would have had to request a rescue party from the management,” he said.
“You are the management.”
“No, I’m an owner.”
Touché. “What’s your beef with the Reapers?”
“I think you misunderstood the nature of our agreement.” He offered me his elbow. “I bartered for your evaluation of a team. You’re the one under obligation to disclose the information, and be assured I’m overcome with the desire to hear your report. I’m positively aquiver.”
“Aquiver?”
“Indeed. Shall we walk to our seats?”
I sighed and let myself be led from the deck. I was very tired of being kept out of the loop.
CHAPTER 9
WE WALKED DOWN TO THE FIRST FLOOR, TO ANOTHER luxurious hallway pierced with arches. Saiman picked one of the arches seemingly at random and held the heavy rust curtain aside. Beyond the curtain lay a small balcony. Circular and encased by a solid steel railing that came midway to my hip, the balcony offered four chairs upholstered in soft rust fabric and positioned movie-theater close.
I stepped past the curtain to the railing. A huge hall greeted me, too large to be called a room. Oblong and vast, it stretched for at least a hundred and fifty yards. Its walls were honeycombed with arched balconies arranged in three rows. Each balcony held six to eight people and offered its own exit door, which, if our particular door was any indication, opened to the wide corridor. The management was trying to minimize the chances of a stampede if things went sour.
The walls plunged lower than the ground level. Sunken underground, the bottom floor had no balconies or seats. Bare concrete sloped gently to the center, where an oval arena of sand lay. A heavy-duty chain link fence defined it, anchored by numerous steel posts. The Pit. Our balcony protruded from the wall much farther than the rest, and if I took a running start, I could have jumped to the fence.
The sand inside the fence drew my gaze. I looked away. “Special seats?”
“The best in the house. Despite our proximity to the Pit, we’re quite safe.” Saiman pointed above us. A metal portcullis waited above us, obscured by a velvet curtain. “I can drop it with a pull of the lever. And then of course, there are additional precautions.” He pointed to the bottom floor.
To the left of us on the concrete sat an E-50, an enhanced heavy machine gun, mounted on a swivel base and manned by two Red Guards. Guns weren’t my thing, but I knew this one: it was the Military Supernatural Defense Unit’s weapon of choice when facing a loose vampire.
The E-50 fired .50-caliber ammo at more than three thousand feet per second. At two thousand feet, a round from this gun was deadly. At a hundred yards, it would rip through solid steel like tissue paper. At a maximum rate of fire, an E-50 spat out half a thousand bullets a minute. Of course, at a maximum rate of fire, it also melted the barrel after a few thousand rounds, but if you didn’t take down a vampire within the first few seconds, you were dead anyway.
An identical gun waited across from us at the far right. Whatever was caught between them would be dead instantly. Unfortunately, even the best gun was only as strong as the guys manning it. If I wanted to cause trouble, I’d take the gunners out.
Just in case the tech failed, two additional teams of Guardsmen bided their time in the opposite corners: one with an arrow thrower and the other with an assortment of weapons.
“I see you don’t want a repeat of the Andorf accident.”
If Saiman was surprised at my knowledge of Games-related trivia, he didn’t show it.
“We don’t. But I assure you, we still get plenty of shapeshifter participation.”
“How? Didn’t the Beast Lord veto it?”
“We import shapeshifters from outside the Pack’s boundaries. They fight and we pull them out before the requisite three days are up.”
All visiting shapeshifters had three days to approach the Pack for permission to stay within its territory, or it would approach them and they wouldn’t like it. “Sounds expensive.”
Saiman smiled. “It’s well worth it. The price of tickets alone covers most fighter-related expenses. The real money comes from betting. On a good fight the House takes in anywhere from half to three quarters of a million. The highest intake on a championship fight was over two million.”
With hazard pay, I made just above thirty grand a year.
I stared at the sand of the Pit. In my head, the building vanished. The fence, the concrete, the guns, Saiman, all dissolved into the blazing sun, blindingly bright and merciless. I heard the noise of the crowd in the wooden stands, the quick staccato of Spanish, the high-pitched laughter of women, and the hoarse cries of the bookies calling out numbers. I felt my father’s presence behind me, calm and steady. The reassuring weight of the sword tugged on my hand. I smelled my skin, scorched by the sun, and blood fumes rising from the sand.
“Shall we sit down?” Saiman’s voice intruded upon my reverie. Just as well.
We took our seats. Huge rust curtains slid aside on the far left and right of the chamber, revealing two entrances: the one on the right painted garish gold and its twin on the left in a cheery shade of solid black.
Saiman leaned to me. “The fighters enter through the Gold Gate. Corpses leave through the Midnight one. If you ‘walk out gold,’ you’ve won the match.”
A long, deep bellow of a huge gong tolled through the Arena, calling the spectators to silence. A slim woman in a silver dress stepped out of the Gold Gate.
“Welcome! Welcome to the house of combat where death and life dance on the edge of the blade.” Her voice was deep for a female and it carried through the Arena. “Let the Games begin!”
“Sophia,” Saiman said. “The producer.”
The woman disappeared back into the Gold Gate.
A huge scoreboard suspended on chains slid down from the ceiling and stopped just above the Midnight Gate. Two names written on white paper in beautiful calligraphy sat in twin wooden frames: RODRIGUEZ VS. CALLISTO. The odds beneath it said -175+200. Rodriguez was a slight favorite to win. If you bet on him as the winner, you would have to put in $175 to get
back an extra $100. If you bet on Callisto and she won, for every $100, you’d get your money and $200 back.
“Both human. Mildly interesting.” Saiman dismissed the scoreboard with a wave of his hand. “The Reapers, Kate? I’m eager to hear your assessment.”
“Both Mart and Cesare are fighters?”
Saiman nodded.
“Have you ever seen them bleed?”
“Cesare. During a bout with a werejaguar, he suffered several deep gashes across the chest and back. Mart so far has been untouched.”
I nodded. “Have you noticed how perfect Mart’s skin is?”
Saiman frowned. “Its tone is quite even, but I don’t see your point.”
Not surprising. Someone who treated skin like clay he could mold and mash at will wouldn’t realize the significance of a perfect complexion. “Pimple” was simply not in Saiman’s vocabulary.
“Ordinary people have blemishes. Acne, bruises, blackheads, clogged pores, small scars. Mart has none. His skin is completely uniform and unnaturally perfect.”
“Perhaps he has accelerated healing.”
“I’ve seen shapeshifters with scars, and they regenerate broken limbs in a couple of weeks. A normal human’s history is written in their skin, Saiman. We have training scars from before we got good enough. But he has none. How long since you first met him?”
“Two months.”
“So he has been in Georgia since late summer. Have you ever seen him sunburned?”
“No.”
“A man with skin that shade should develop a nice crispy crust after half an hour under Atlanta’s sun. Why is he paler than a flowering dogwood? And have you ever seen him with a different hairstyle?”
I could almost feel wheels turning in Saiman’s head. “No,” he said slowly.
“Hair always at the same length?”
“Yes.”
I nodded. “Let’s talk about his buddy Cesare. Tattooed from head to toe?”
“Yes.”
“Did you notice that all of his ink looks perfectly fresh? First, most people get tattooed over a period of years. A complicated design takes time. The process is ritualistic for many people and as important as the result. Ink fades over time, faster if exposed to the sun. All of his tattoos—at least everything I could see—were the same color, bright black. As if he never goes outside.”
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