As Cass scanned the crowd, trying to take it all in, she noticed that something else seemed off. She couldn’t put her finger on it at first. Then it struck her as painfully obvious: she’d never seen any children in the Underside. Everyone was an adult. She hadn’t stopped to think about it before, but it made sense that children would be rare. People weren’t born into the Underside, they were . . . converted. Could the undead (or partially undead) even have children of their own?
Richard’s private box had room for a dozen people, but today it was just the three of them. They each took a leather upholstered chair on the front row. Cass sat in the middle with Zach on her left and Richard on her right.
The view was excellent.
The fighters were introduced and the referee relayed a minimal set of instructions. The instructions appeared to boil down to really just one rule: if you could incapacitate your opponent rather than killing them, it was preferable.
These fights were—at least potentially—death matches.
Cass shot Richard a hard look. He knew exactly what she was thinking. He put his hand on her arm reassuringly.
“You’re strong, Cassandra. You’ll win. There’s nothing to worry about. And despite the trappings, the outcome of this tournament will have serious—potentially global—consequences for both the Underside and the everyday world. This is no game.”
The two fighters on the mat were starkly different in style and presentation. The first fighter was literally a knight in shining metal armor. The armor, though, didn’t seem to hamper his freedom of movement. In fact, rather than weighing him down, his movements gave the impression that the armor augmented his strength and speed. Cass watched closely, studying the knight’s movements. Zach leaned over with a word of explanation on his lips. Cass held up her finger, silencing him for a moment. Then she had it: the green tinge visible at the armor’s joints wasn’t reflected light, it was a clue to the armor’s secret. The knight’s armor was powered by magic.
“Magic,” Cass whispered in Zach’s ear, tapping her temple with one finger to indicate that she’d figured it out on her own.
“Yeah, you’re magic all right,” Zach responded.
The second fighter was a woman dressed in dark red silk. Her hair was pulled up into a brown ponytail and her face was entirely covered by a Japanese kabuki mask representing a black demon with yellow eyes, its lips pulled back in a grimace, its wicked teeth bared. Unlike the fidgeting knight, the demon stood perfectly still, radiating a dark power.
When the introductions were made, the crowd seemed to slightly favor the knight, but there was no way that Cass would have bet against that demon.
A waitress interrupted them, asking if she could get them something. Cass, trying to avoid distraction, asked for a glass of water. Zach scanned the menu, hungry for something that wasn’t fried. The menu, though, consisted almost entirely of chicken fingers and hot dogs.
“You wouldn’t happen to have any sushi, would you?” Zach asked, a hopeful note in his voice.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the waitress regretted to inform him, “only items listed on the menu are available.”
“Okay,” Zach relented, stalling for a moment while he formulated a plan B. “I’ll just have popcorn and a Coke.”
The fight, meanwhile, was underway.
The bell rang and while the knight immediately dropped into a fighting stance, the demon remained still. The knight, flustered for a moment, went on the attack. Cass could hear his gauntlets singing through the air with power and speed. The demon, though, casually dodged each blow as if she knew in advance where it was going to be.
The waitress brought back a small bag of popcorn and a child-sized drink. Absorbed in the fight now, Cass took a handful of Zach’s popcorn and big drink from his Coke.
Richard, though, had pressed a red call button next to his seat and a different server immediately popped into the room like she’d being waiting outside the door the whole time. She held out a menu for Richard but he waved it away. “Master Jiro is in?” Richard asked.
The woman confirmed that he was.
“In that case, let’s have an order of sushi—whatever the master recommends—and a round of Saki,” Richard said.
The woman bowed deferentially and rushed off with Richard’s order.
Zach, his eyebrow raised and his jaw slack, looked from Richard to the retreating waitress to Cass and then back to the waitress. Cass didn’t pay him any mind. She pulled the bag of popcorn into her lap and took another pull from Zach’s tiny Coke, nearly finishing it off. Zach settled for a sip from Cass’s water.
Down below, the action was heating up. The knight was swinging away, his arms a blur, but he still wasn’t connecting with anything. The demon danced, light on her feet, and began to peel off pieces of the knight’s armor, one by one. She started with his gauntlets, then ripped away the sections protecting his upper arms and legs. As each piece came off, she crushed it like a soda can, tossed it into the crowd, and then followed up with a crippling blow to the exposed body part.
The tide in the audience was turning. They loved the demon’s theatrics—and, more, they loved the smell of blood in the water. Cass shared the sentiment but had a hard time enjoying it in the same way. The thought that this man might die in the ring sat heavy like a stone in the pit of her stomach.
Before long, the knight was limping in retreat, favoring a broken arm and protecting a pair of broken ribs, dressed in nothing but his boots, his helmet, and a jock strap.
The demon moved in for the kill. The kabuki mask’s wicked grimace seemed to grow wider, its teeth sharper. A bone-crunching kick to the shin drove the knight to his knees and left him wavering in pain on the brink of consciousness.
When the demon backed off, assessing the knight with a clinical look, Cass thought for a moment that the fight might be over. But it wasn’t. Instead, the demon unleashed a roundhouse kick that cracked the knight in the side of his head, hammered it into the blood-red mat, and, with a sickening sound, smashed the helmet itself into an ungodly and unnatural shape.
For a moment, the entire arena fell deathly silent—it was so quiet, Cass could hear the blood roaring in her own ears—and then, en masse, the crowd irrupted in a cheer that shook the walls of the building.
The demon, though, wasn’t quite done yet.
She ignored the reaction she’d solicited from the crowd and, instead, turned in a slow circle, scanning the arena through the wild yellow eyes of her mask, until she reached Cass. Then slowly, without breaking eye contact, she bowed as if they were the only two people in the building.
Chapter Fourteen
The apartment was silent. Everyone but Richard was asleep. He’d barely slept for hundreds of years now, and these days, after months of being confined to a bed while his crushed body mended, he could hardly bear the thought of getting back into one.
Though it always felt like twilight in the Underside, the clock indicated that it was well past midnight. To compensate for the lack of darkness, the apartment was equipped with window screens that were programmed to raise and lower at the appropriate times, simulating the ebb and flow of the sun. Still, even in this simulated darkness, Richard felt more at home. Unlike the Lost, the sun was no danger to him, but he was still, when it came down to it, a creature of the night.
He sat in the sunken living room facing the wall of windows, his laptop open in his lap and his bare feet up on the coffee table. His white linen shirt was only half buttoned, the shirt sleeves rolled up. He had the screen’s brightness turned all the way down. He’d been working steadily for more than hour, his concentration unbroken until, instead of simply opening the file he wanted, the program crashed and his whole operating system insisted on rebooting.
He hated computers.
Despite the billion-dollar genius of his recent work in statistical analysis and stock-trading algorithms—there were few things Richard loved more than the cold clarity and certainty of mathematics—he’d s
truggled to adapt himself to twenty-first century tools like computers and laptops. To Richard, it always felt like they were actively resisting him. In response, he returned the favor and resisted using them, handing off the grunt work whenever possible.
His laptop rebooted and this time the encrypted file opened. His sources had confirmed reports that someone was making a move to steal the tournament prize, the sarira, before it could be presented to the tournament winner. At least one of the tournament organizers had already been bribed. Richard admired the thief’s calculated audacity, but he couldn’t allow the plot to get in the way of him achieving his own goals.
The coolly rational part of him—which was most of him—wondered if it wouldn’t be simpler to skip the tournament altogether and steal the prize himself. It seemed like an obvious alternative. The problem, though, was that this alternate plan did not involve Cass. As a result, even if the other plan felt more reasonable, it didn’t feel more right.
What did feel right?
Cass.
Richard closed his laptop, set it aside, and leaned back on the couch with his hands clasped behind his head. He could feel the pull of her, asleep in the next room, just on the other side of the wall.
He closed his eyes and his mind automatically returned, like a record needle to its vinyl groove, to the memory of their train ride to Romania just before Judas’s death.
Something had happened to him on that train. Something inside of him had changed. Something inside of him had somehow turned a quarter turn more.
Richard could vividly recall the scene. He and Cassandra were alone in a sleeper car on the train. The car rocked gently, rhythmically from side to side. Passing lights played on the dark walls. They sat in silence for hours, Cass leaning against his shoulder. Then she’d kissed him, unbuttoned his shirt, and pressed her ear against his chest. She was listening for his heartbeat. He hadn’t stopped her, but part of him had cringed, afraid of what she would—or wouldn’t—find. He’d held his breath as she’d listened until, for the first time in as long as he could remember, he had heard it, too. His hearts was still beating. The pulse was faint and irregular, but it was there.
Cass had restarted his heart.
And then they’d gone after Judas. Richard had been crushed by the collapsing castle. Cass had thought he was dead. And he’d spent the next six months in a body cast with nothing to do but listen to the faint, irregular beating of his own heart.
Since Cass had heard his heart beating, he hadn’t been able to stop hearing it. He could hear it beating right now. He could feel the pulse of it in the tips of his fingers. And, more, he could feel in his fingertips the fact that Cass was just on the other side that wall.
Without making a conscious decision, Richard stood up and went to Cass’s bedroom door. He didn’t open it. Instead, he lightly pressed his fingers against the door’s grain, listening, as if the wood itself might conduct some message.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been standing there—a minute? an hour?—when Zach stumbled out of his room, yawning, rubbing his eyes, and headed for the refrigerator. Luckily, Richard saw Zach first. He slipped away from Cass’s door and back to the couch while Zach fumbled around for the light switch in the kitchen.
“Hello, Zach,” Richard said, just as the light flicked on.
“Jesus!” Zach stage whispered, startled.
“Just Richard,” Richard said, sitting comfortably in a chair facing kitchen.
“Yeah, some people might suffer from that confusion, but I’m clear on it,” Zach answered, pouring himself a glass of milk. He rooted around in the fridge for a moment, then gave up, shut the door, and joined Richard in the living room with his glass.
They sat in awkward silence for a minute while Zach slurped his milk.
“So,” Zach tried, “how about those Red Sox?”
It took Richard a minute to process what Zach was talking about—an American sports team? He shook his head, searching for another subject to insert into the awkward conversation.
And then, without much forethought, he told Zach what he had learned about the plot to steal the tournament’s prize relic.
Zach found a coaster and set his empty glass on the coffee table. He leaned back and stared at the ceiling for a moment.
“Okay,” Zach said, “I’m in.”
Richard hadn’t actually invited Zach to do anything. But if he hadn’t wanted his help, then why had he told him about the others’ plan? Why bring it up at all, if not to imply that they could, and perhaps even should, steal it instead?
Did he want Zach’s help? He had to admit that some part of him did. Not because stealing the sarira was something more suited to Zach—Richard certainly had more capable and qualified associates available to him for a project of this nature—no, rather, it was because Zach, like Richard, would agree to certain constraints.
“Okay,” Richard acknowledged. “On one condition: that Cassandra can’t know anything about it. The best way to protect her is to make sure that she’s focused entirely on the tournament itself.”
Zach digested this. “Agreed. Good talk.”
Zach stood up, returned his glass to the kitchen, and started back to his room.
Richard watched as Zach headed back to bed—and he watched as Zach, not unlike himself, hesitated for a moment outside the door to Cass’s room before returning to his own.
Chapter Fifteen
Cass woke with a start, tangled in her sheets. The apartment was quiet. The room was pitch black. Her heart was racing. At first, she didn’t remember where she was.
A single afterimage lingered from her nightmare and was stamped into her mind. In the dark, it was all she could see: the demon’s kabuki mask with its yellow eyes, white teeth, and slowly yawning grimace. Cass couldn’t help but associate the mask’s teeth with the fangs she’d seen in Miranda’s mouth the night she’d been Lost. Now, in response to the mask’s afterimage, Cass was overwhelmed by a wave of emotion—not of fear or anger, but of guilt.
She’d failed. She was to blame.
And that mask, warped and grotesque—in a crowd of thousands, turning to bow to her—felt like an accusation made tangible.
Cass sat up in bed and slipped free of her twisted sheets. The room was cool and even though she was dressed in just a T-shirt and underwear, her skin was clammy with sweat. Cass pulled the blinds and Underside’s gray light filtered in. The light, though, didn’t tell her anything about what time it was. How long had she been asleep? She wasn’t sure. However long it had been, she’d woken up feeling restless rather than rested. Her nerves were jangled and her stomach was knotted. Her hands were shaking with a nervous energy.
Regardless of how tired she felt, she wouldn’t be going back to sleep.
She paced the room and ran her fingers down the wooden arms of the Wing Chun dummy in the workout area. The equipment was excellent but brand new. It didn’t show any of signs of use or wear. And, especially, it lacked the smiley face that Cass had long ago drawn on hers with a magic marker.
Cass felt bad for the unloved dummy. Someone needed to hit this thing. Someone needed to break it in and show it how to be what it was meant to be. Cass knew, though, that she couldn’t educate the dummy quietly. She’d inevitably wake up the rest of the apartment as she administered the educational beating.
For a few moments, she settled for the martial equivalent of playing air guitar, mocking a series of blows in the air without actually connecting with the wood. But it didn’t last long. Not hitting the thing was making her feel even more tense and restless. Shadowboxing wouldn’t do anything to calm the itch of energy roiling just beneath the surface of her skin.
Cass decided to try with some push-ups. Push-ups would, at least, be quiet. Normally, she worked in sets that maxed out at fifty, so she thought she’d start there. Cass dropped to the floor and started counting. She got to twenty or so when the image of the kabuki mask floated back to the surface of her mind, drawing away her attention.
She felt her grip on the present moment loosen and her mind drift into a space that was gray and disquieting and tinged with remorse.
She wasn’t sure how long she’d stayed in that gray space, but when she came back to herself, she found that she was still doing push-ups. The sweat was pouring off of her. Her T-shirt was soaked through. Her muscles throbbed with an agreeable ache.
How many push-ups had she’d done? Certainly more than fifty. Two hundred? At least. A set of five hundred? Maybe. She was guessing. She’d always been whip strong, her thin frame belying the corded muscles in her arms and upper body, but this was something else altogether. Somehow, fixed on the mask, she’d converted those waves of restless anxiety into . . . something else.
She’d didn’t like it, but it did make her wonder. People didn’t just accidentally do an extra four hundred push-ups because they’d zoned out for a moment.
What else could she do?
Maybe some chin-ups. She looked around for a workable spot and chose the closet doorway. Hanging from the lip of the doorjamb by her fingertips, she did a set of fifteen, her normal target. But she wasn’t struggling when she hit that mark, so she kept going. Twenty. Forty. Sixty. She felt fine. She did a set of twenty one-handed. No trouble. She switched to her off-hand for another twenty. Again, no trouble.
The harder she pushed herself, though, the stronger the image of the mask superimposed itself on her field of vision. And while she didn’t feel the burn of muscle fatigue that she normally expected, the image of the mask tied her stomach into a knot and she felt her gorge rising.
Cass let go of the doorframe and dropped to the ground. She sat down hard, pressed her back against the closet wall, and pulled her knees to her chest. She closed her eyes and slowed her breathing, willing herself not to vomit. She waited it out, tucked into a tight ball. When the cloud of nausea passed, Cass was alone on her closet floor, curled into a ball, with just the mask’s white teeth and her own sense of guilt for companionship.
Blameless: A Vision of Vampires 3 Page 6
