by Jessica Gunn
Maybe it was both.
“Perhaps we should have searched you all before putting you inside that cage.”
I turned, my head whipping around fast, toward Jerrick. He stood before the cage door with Mason and half a dozen Talon soldiers at his side. He wore an unamused expression and the same red and violet cloak from before.
Krystin shot him a glare. “Maybe you should have.”
Actually, now that I thought about it, maybe the matches were part of Krystin’s escape plan too. You didn’t need magik to use them. But there were only so many cedo matches in each pack, and I’d never once met a Hunter who carried more than one book of them at a time.
Jerrick shrugged, then stepped forward. “I need each of you to hang a hand outside the bars.”
“So you can requirem us again?” I snapped. “I don’t think so.”
“You would do well to listen,” Mason said, his focus falling to me. A wave of uneasy chills cascaded down my spine. I tried not to let it show, but Mason grinned evilly anyway.
“Yeah, and you’d do well to shut the fuck up,” I replied. “The whole lot of you are cowards.”
“Ava,” Ben warned.
I didn’t care. Not anymore. They’d killed Jeremiah. They refused to even open the door and talk to us. We were a show, mere playthings, and nothing more. Darkness had always considered us that: tools to be used and food to feed themselves.
Well, the next thing I’d be feeding was Mason’s temple, with my first. Preferably lined with steel.
Mason approached the cage, this time in front of Kian. Kian instantly backed up a step, rubbing shoulders with Brian.
“Just do it,” Ben said, sounding defeated.
“No. This is exactly what they want,” I said.
“And I can’t let someone else die on my watch,” Ben said. “Just do it, Ava.”
Brian looked to Ben. “And what’s to say they’re not just going to kill us all anyway instead of re-upping the requirem? It’s not like Mason had any qualms about attacking an imprisoned, powerless man before.”
“It was necessary,” Mason said, his tone even.
“Necessary?” Ben echoed. His face twisted with anger. “What part of that was necessary? You have us caged, for God’s sake. Magik-less. Contained. Where were we going to go? How else was this going to end?” He turned to Krystin, who nodded, then Ben looked to Jerrick. “Consider any form of alliance between the Hunter Circles and Talon off. Impossible. Never to be considered again. We don’t make deals with cowards.”
“But you’ll make them with destroyers of worlds?” Jerrick asked.
“They ended their first civilization with a civil war,” Ben said. “They created ours in the process. I don’t see how they’re going to destroy us.”
“You wouldn’t,” Mason said. “Not when your family is involved. And we all already know how much of a blind spot that is for you, don’t we?”
Ben’s fists clenched at his sides. Krystin laid a hand on his shoulder.
Jerrick watched this with a curious glance. “You’re positive you won’t reconsider?”
“No,” Krystin said.
If they were willing to kill an interim Circle Leader to make a point rather than handle things civilly, there was zero reason in hell to try to work this out. Darkness and the Hunter Circles had been at war since the beginning of time as we knew it. And it would never, ever change. We’d been fools to think differently.
Jerrick’s expression faded to neutrality. He shrugged and laid his open palms on the cage bars. “Then there is only one further course of action.”
“And that is?” Brian asked.
“If you’re to remain here as our prisoners, then you could at least do one more thing for us.”
Jerrick waved over the Talon soldiers and they moved closer to the cage door. Mason backed off a step to give them space, his gaze never traveling far from me. Mason’s lips grew into a grin.
The soldiers opened up the cage door and two of them entered. I raised up my fists, ready for a fight I was pretty sure was coming, but they rushed in and shoved us up against the bars.
Krystin lashed out, decking one of them in the side of their head. I followed suit, kneeing the soldier closest to me. Kian threw an arm around his neck and yanked the soldier away from me so I could land another blow to the soldier’s gut while Brian and Krystin kept attacking more soldiers as they piled in.
Pain burst across my jaw as one of the soldiers’ attacks connected. The next thing I knew, my back screamed as I was thrown up against the bars… which stung as my bare arms touched them. Power radiated there, magik.
My magik—it was back!
I reached behind me and wrapped my fingers around two of the bars, readying to use my magik to tear them from the wall. But as the steel began to bend beneath my will, Mason himself rounded the side of the cage wall and slammed a palm into my back.
“Requirem,” Mason whispered into my ear. Disgusted chills broke out over my arms as I felt sluggish again, suddenly out of touch with the small bit of magik I’d gained access to again.
By the time I looked up through drooped eyelids and a throbbing jaw, the Talon soldiers had similarly subdued the rest of my party. The soldier who’d decked me in the jaw yanked me forward, out of the cage, as other soldiers pulled out Krystin, Ben, Kian, and Brian. Except only Kian was near me.
Jerrick crossed his arms at his chest and grinned satisfactorily at the scene before him. Then he turned to Kian and me. “While we hold you all here, the least you could do is provide us with some entertainment. In light of that, we will be taking Kian and you elsewhere. Say goodbye to your friends.”
I shot Krystin a look as panic finally seeped into my system. My heartbeat quickened. Where were they taking us? Why separate us from the others?
Krystin shook her head. She must have been able to read my questions on my face. Of course she wouldn’t know the answer. No one would.
Kian’s face had paled. Clearly, he’d at least been fearing the worst. But still, I wasn’t sure Jerrick had meant whatever entertainment he’d alluded to should lead to death. He was planning on keeping us here for a good long while, probably as bargaining chips. And bargaining chips needed to be alive to be useful.
“This way,” Jerrick said as he gestured over his shoulder. Mason and one of the six Talon soldiers nudged Kian and me on, following behind Jerrick as we walked away from the cage. The other soldiers, I assumed, were taking care of Krystin, Ben, and Brian.
I gulped, my heartbeat thundering in my chest.
What the hell were they going to do with us?
Chapter 14
We walked for what felt like miles. Although I was starting to suspect that the reason why this trek felt like hours was due to having Mason at my back the entire way more than anything else. His presence was like an oppressive shadow I could feel. As though he wore his dark magik and twisted demonic soul on the outside with tendrils reaching out to touch me, occasionally guiding me this way or that.
“Where are we going?” Kian said out of nowhere, a bite of annoyance in his tone. I supposed he’d had enough of this bullshit too.
“To a place where I know you’ll shine.” Jerrick sounded all too happy about that. “Not to worry, Mr. Farley. And you too, Ms. Locke. I’ve heard quite a number of stories about you two.”
I swallowed hard and tried to crane my neck enough to see Kian behind me. Instead, Mason’s burgundy eyes were there, with tiny gold flecks inside of them. He was still every bit a witch as he was a demon. And that made him a monster.
“Please, do tell,” Kian said, half-sarcastically, half-exasperated.
There were, after all, plenty of stories to tell.
“Well, there’s really only one in particular that applies here today,” Jerrick said as he and the others stopped outside of a massive, three-story brick building. Though there were windows, many of them open, no sound or light emanated from within.
“This way,” Jerrick
said, indicating a massive set of ornate double doors that in no way fit the plain brick motif of the rest of the building.
Jerrick pushed against one of the doors, which gave way to an atrium with a high dome ceiling covered in paintings. The inside was filled with high, wide archways made from gold and statues created from white and black marble. It looked rich, insanely rich, especially compared to the Wild West vibe of the rest of Landshaft.
Most importantly, the interior to this building looked familiar.
If the decorations hadn’t given it away, the leaderboard above a set of ticket stands did. I’d recognize the roped-off lines anywhere, even some of the names on the leaderboard. Stone Thief. Flaming Hand. Thunder Shriek.
And then, at the very, very bottom, were two names that made my blood run cold.
Masked Hunter v. Blood Hunter. 7 p.m. tonight – The Final Showdown.
I turned to Kian and saw what I assumed to be my expression mirrored back to me on his own face. Confusion. Fear. And a lot of what the actual fuck.
Jerrick walked in front of the board, then turned to grin at both of us. “If your party can’t facilitate a truce between the Hunter Circles and Talon, even for a short amount of time, then you two can at least provide the entertainment before we go to war. Well, one of you at least. The other sadly won’t be making it.”
Jerrick and Mason left me inside of a room that only took five and a half paces to reach one end of. I turned on my heel and paced back the other five and a half steps. Stopped. Turn around again and continued.
I’d been like this for at least an hour, maybe longer. I wasn’t sure when Jerrick and Mason had brought us to Landshaft’s fighting arena, but the “show” wasn’t until 7 p.m. if the leaderboard was to be believed. When we left the cage, the sun hadn’t even begun setting.
I turned and paced again.
I’d fight Kian. I really didn’t want to, but we knew each other’s fighting styles enough now to put on a good show. We could draw it out, make the match last for at least ten minutes, maybe longer. But what happened at the end of those ten minutes? Would Jerrick even let us draw it out that long?
“Just treat it like any other fight,” I said to myself as I paced the tiny room for another who-knew-how-long before the door handle to this oversized closet turned. Light poured in, soaking the dimness of this room with brightness from the hallway.
I blinked, and there Mason stood with a Talon soldier standing guard at his side.
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it. “What I don’t understand is why you have these guards when I have no magik and I’m trapped in the middle of the city of demons with no non-magikal way out.”
Mason didn’t do much as slightly shrug. His expression remained emotionless, unconnected. Which was enough of a change from before to churn dread in my stomach. “Because you are resourceful.”
I met his gaze. “Because I fought Veynix without magik and lived to tell the tale?”
“You only lived the first time because my master miscalculated. I won’t make the same mistakes he did.”
“You won’t?” My brow creased with exaggeration. “Are you sure about that, Mason? Look where we are right now. Look what you’re making Kian and me do.”
One of Veynix’s last decisions had been to draw Kian and me into a trap beneath Midnight. We’d gone anyway, and in the madness that had ensued, Kian had ended up attacking me before I’d knocked him out and moved on to Veynix. And all of this had been before I’d realized I had magik. That came after, down in Midnight’s basement.
Mason’s expression remained emotionless. “Jerrick wants this.”
“Sure. But you didn’t seem like the type to take orders just a few weeks ago.”
“Plans change.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Not that much, they don’t. Not unless something has gone impossibly wrong.”
Mason closed the distance between us, a slight snarl beginning to twist his lips as he imposed his presence on mine. “The Neuians will see us all dead in short order. That’s more than enough cause for—”
I cut him off. “For what? Escalating things with them? Provoking them before we’re ready to deal with them? Darkness starting a war with the Neuians forces all of us into that war, Mason. And not all parties are so willing to enslave people and destroy their lives to win.”
“Pity, I’d say,” Mason said. “For the greater good, all things must be done.”
“That’s what a coward would say.”
Mason lashed out and grabbed my wrist, pulling me through the doorway and out into the hall. “We’ll see who’s the coward tonight.”
I thrashed against his hold and managed to get a knee up between us, thrusting it into his stomach. Mason grunted and staggered back a step, ending up just out of reach of the headbutt I attempted. At least now I had one hand free, and I used it to swing high for the side of Mason’s head. The Talon soldier behind me grabbed my arm and stopped the blow from connecting. He forced my arm behind me, then took the other from Mason’s hold, keeping me still.
Mason grinned, though there was a small twitch of annoyance in the corner of his mouth. “A valiant attempt.”
“Screw you,” I spat, still thrashing in the Talon soldier’s grip. “This is why Darkness will never win.”
“And consequently, while the Hunter Circles always lose,” Mason said, who then cut his gaze to the Talon soldier. “Take her to the ring.”
The soldier nodded and forced me forward past Mason, who continued smiling at me. As we passed, he laid a hand on my shoulder. “Do try not to die. Requirem.”
Though the access to my magik was already cut off from before, another wave of fatigue hit me as my magik was pushed back even farther away from me. The soldier’s grip on my hands tightened. They should have bound me, really. With cuffs. Rope. Something.
But the truth was, just as it had always been, I was nothing more than a pawn in this game. Only instead of it being a game of Veynix’s design, the game had shifted to a war of worldwide magnitude.
And Jerrick and Mason were dancing across the starting line.
Only once I was in the ready-cage did Mason leave my side. The Talon soldier remained, likely in case I decided to attack again, but he kept his distance. He had a sword on him tucked into a scabbard hanging from a red belt that matched the entire ensemble. Talon’s dress code. Red for the blood they spilled and for Autumn Fire. Purple for the original poisons they created, the kind that didn’t exist anymore. Or so I was told.
I kept glancing back at the soldier and his sword, calculating how fast I could get over there and grab the blade from its scabbard before the soldier stopped me. But no matter how I thought of the situation, I doubted I’d be able to grab it fast enough to make a difference. And then where would I go? The ready-cage, unlike the one at Midnight, was locked.
I paced back to the bars and looked into the arena ring. The ground appeared to be made of dirt like at Midnight, some of it loose and shifting with a breeze or draft from an unseen source. The crowd’s quiet chatter drifted down from the stands above in thunderous waves. It sounded like the place was full, but I had no idea what to expect in audience size.
Truthfully, I didn’t care. If we hadn’t been able to escape that cage in the road, and if I hadn’t been able to so much as bloody Mason’s face earlier, there was zero chance in hell I’d be running out of this arena, Kian at my side or not.
Not without magik. Maybe not even with a teleportante. There was too many demons who could follow the trail, and I wasn’t sure that even Hunter’s Guild would be safe anymore after that Ember witch had shown up and attacked the place.
From the other side of the ring, I saw another ready-cage just like this one, with bars and darkness shadowing its occupant.
Kian. He was so close, and yet…
The lights over the arena flashed. “Ladies and gentlemen! We have a special treat for you tonight!”
The crowd screamed and cheered, as loud—if not lou
der—than on the night Kian and I had met. It was exactly the type of rowdy, uncontrollable crowd I expected from a city like Landshaft.
“For the first time in months and for one last night only, we bring to you a fight between the outside world’s best fighters: the Masked Hunter and Blood Hunter!”
At first the roar of the crowd seemed to get louder. I smiled. At least they were excited for the fight—the entertainment. But then I began listening to the sounds they were making.
The crowd wasn’t cheering. They were booing us. As fighters. As Hunters. As siding with the Powers and Good and the Neuians.
I supposed word had spread fast about our imprisonment. But that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Depending on how far news had spread…
Hope sprung anew within me, a hint of desperation that maybe, somehow, the Fire Circle knew. But whether the Command would risk more people for a rescue party after many of them had warned us not to go was another issue entirely.
“It’s time,” the Talon soldier said as he took a step toward me. The ready-cage’s gate buckled and creaked as it rose from the hard-packed ground, kicking up small clouds of dirt.
I walked toward the now-open gateway and into the arena’s ring. The bright fluorescent lights hanging above near blinded me after the relative darkness from the corridors on the way to the ready-cages. The lights also blocked the audience from view for a few moments, so I couldn’t really get a sense of the size, until all at once, the booing and shouts got louder. As my vision cleared, the dozens of rows of people lining the circular arena grew and grew.
This arena was easily double the size of Midnight and Crimson put together. Maybe even bigger. But the ring itself must have been set deeper underground because from the outside, this building hadn’t appeared quite so tall. And we had gone down a fair number of stairs on the way here.
I gulped and tried to settle my rapid breathing. It’s just a fight.
“Over here we have the Masked Hunter, Champion of Midnight before its sudden demise,” said the announcer as the referee waved me over to the center of the ring. “But she’s not wearing her mask today! She is none other than an actual Hunter from the Fire Circle!”
