“Aren’t berserkers venomous or something?” Danio asked.
“Yes,” I gasped. “Their claws…”
Olivia rushed him again, this time trying to slash instead of stab. She succeeded in cutting him, but once again he allowed her to, showcasing just how tough berserkers were. Cleaver grabbed Olivia as she rushed by, not even slowed by the new, deep slice in his side. He hurled her halfway across the arena.
Olivia tumbled across the dirt and rolled to a stop in a cloud of dust. She started to stand, then cried out in pain and dropped to her knees, arms wrapped around her chest. The venom was taking effect, causing excruciating pain and, if I was remembering correctly, paralysis.
She stumbled again and then Cleaver dropped low and began rushing across the arena on all four limbs, like some kind of terrifying primordial primate, claws leaving deep divots in the dirt behind him.
“Enough!” Victor called.
Cleaver tucked in on himself and then sprang impossibly high into the air, leaping a good third of the way across the arena toward his prey.
“I said enough!” Victor bellowed. For the first time, he actually sounded like he wanted the fight to end. His raven croaked angrily.
Considering how high in the air Cleaver was, Olivia should have had plenty of time to dodge, instead she stayed put, obviously struggling against the venom.
The berserker crashed down onto to her. He opened his mouth twice as wide as he should have been able to and closed his jaws, and enormous fangs, around her throat. Olivia screamed and then went silent and limp. Cleaver dropped her body to the ground, the reared up and let out another deafening roar.
“Damn it, Cleaver,” Victor snapped as the roar faded.
“Sorry,” Cleaver growled, not sounding at all sorry. He shifted back, changing easily into an unassuming looking human.
The arena was silent for a moment, then most of it burst into cheers and more chants of the berserker’s name.
I swallowed nervously and shot a silent look of horror at Danio. He returned it, eyes swirling wildly with grays and blacks.
“We need to get the hell out of here,” he muttered swiftly in Japanese.
I could only nod in agreement.
Chapter Six
Thomas
Danio and I walked down the hall together without a single word. We were usually quiet when we explored the castle but this time there was an added tenseness after what happened to Olivia. Tonight we were finally executing our plan to check out some of the activity rooms. There was an actual sports bar near the arena that everyone seemed to flock to after fights. They spent most of the night there eating, and drinking, watching a bunch of sports and movies on the TVs. The occasional uninjured winner would hang out, gloating, for a couple of hours before going to bed, while the losers and a handful of people who were tired, went to bed as well.
The activity rooms seemed to be completely empty after fights, even though they weren't actually closed, so it was a good time to poke around them and check things out without arousing any suspicion. Maybe it was Olivia's fate or maybe it was the fact I was still reeling from seeing a berserker, but whatever the reason, I was distracted and completely caught off guard when we walked into one of the gaming rooms and caught two people playing chess.
All four of us looked at each other in surprise and unease. This really wasn't the place where you wanted to stand out and playing chess and hanging out in the game room, while everyone else was participating in the after-fight activities, definitely made you stand out.
“Sorry,” I said, trying to act like Danio and I were just there for an innocent game of something and not sneaking around. “We didn't mean to interrupt.” Danio nodded in agreement.
I recognized the two of them now: Nick and Chris, both vampires. I had taken special note of them because I frequently saw them talking to Reave. I felt like these two – aside from Victor and his lackeys of course – were probably not people we wanted to get caught by. A jackal on the ground by Nick lifted its head to look at us and I spotted a ball of black fur on Chris’ lap. A long ear twitched and the rabbit turned its head in our direction.
“It's not a problem,” said Chris with a nervous looking smile. “We were just playing some chess.”
“Yeah,” added Nick.
Then the four of us were engulfed in another awkward silence.
“I'm sorry about Olivia,” Chris said suddenly. “It seems like it sort of hits closer to home when it's someone you came here with.”
“Yeah,” I said simply.
“I'm sorry she's dead,” Nick said, brows furrowed slightly, “but I'm not sorry that she's gone.”
I could tell from his slight nod that Chris agreed and I felt just slightly more at ease.
“Well,” I said, “we'll just grab a game and leave you two in peace.” I headed across the room to the shelf of board games and quickly scanned for a two-player one, then grabbed it.
“Have a good night,” Danio offered.
They nodded to him and we started to leave. To my surprise, and dismay, Danio lingered next to one of the shelves, as if he was seriously choosing a game.
Nick and Chris resumed a quiet conversation, but it was in another language, so I didn't bother to even listen in; I was much too distracted trying to figure out why on earth Danio had decided to stop. Surely, he didn’t actually want to play a game!
All at once, he turned and said something to the vampires in Greek. They both looked up at him in surprise and replied. Oh crap, had I really been so distracted that I hadn't even recognized Greek when I heard it? It wasn't as if I didn't hear Danio and Tethys often enough.
To my shock he actually went back across the room to stand by the chess table and the three of them began a somewhat animated conversation! Soon, the jackal came out and the rabbit jumped up on the table, speaking Greek as well. I stood there, trying my best to look like I was patiently waiting while also throwing him a what the hell are you doing look, but Dani ignored me and kept talking to them.
I hadn't ever bothered to learn Greek, although I wasn't sure why; it wasn't as if I didn't have a native speaker and another fluent one at my disposal. Although I had picked up a little over the years, making it easy enough to catch a couple of familiar words as they spoke, but then I distinctly heard Danio say the word “Nikolaos” and I nearly lost control over my calm expression. Had he honestly just told them his real name?! Granted, he hadn’t gone by Nikolaos in over fifty years and it wasn't the name he was registered at MES with, but I still couldn’t believe it. Judging by Nick’s reaction, it was his name too. I should have guessed.
I stood there trying to figure out how to interrupt when Danio dropped another word that I knew: the island he was born on. Was he out of his damn mind?! I knew him well enough to know that he wasn't going to risk blowing our cover just to bond with a couple of strangers so they could speak Greek together, but at the same time, I couldn't imagine what had motivated him to do this. Maybe being stuck here, not to mention his encounter with Victor, had affected him more than he was willing to admit.
Just as I was starting to get really concerned, he shot me a cheeky grin and switched back to English.
“Sorry about that, mate! I suppose we’re being a bit rude leaving you out!”
I forced a smile in response.
“So, this is Joe,” he continued with a grin. “Joe, this is Christos and Silao, and Nikolaos and Tamun. Have I mentioned I was actually born in Greece?”
“No,” I said, trying to give him another subtle what the hell look. “You haven't.”
“Oh, well, they were too! What are the odds?”
I laughed weakly. “Yeah, small world.”
All three of them laughed too.
“You don’t sound Greek, you know,” Chris said.
“Water elementals sound like whatever they want to,” Nick pointed out.
“I moved to New Zealand a few decades ago,” Danio said with a disturbingly cheery smile. “I’ve h
ad the accent for so long, I didn’t bother to switch when I came to the states for school. Anyway,” he said with a shrug. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of each other; we should probably get going and let you get back to your game.”
They nodded agreeably and Nick said something in Greek. Danio replied, then strolled back across the room to me. He clapped me on the back and just started walking out of the room. I followed him, ready to demand an answer as soon as we were out of earshot.
Just as we reached the door he paused again and said, “Good night. Sorry for interrupting and accidentally eavesdropping.” They both laughed and he started to turn, then hesitated as if he had thought of something else and said casually, “Just out of curiosity, what farm were you talking about? And what made it better than here? Was it like this place?”
Farm?!
“Oh.” All four exchanged an uneasy glance, as if they weren’t sure how much to say. But Danio just stood there, grinning at them. Sometimes I wondered if he didn't have a little more control over his siren side than he let on. Maybe it was that or maybe he had successfully won them over during their brief Greek conversation, but at last Chris nodded.
“Well,” Chris said slowly, “back before all this castle nonsense Victor and Reave operated a little farm in upstate New York.”
There it was. I swallowed hard, forcing my expression to stay the same. It was the same Reave; it had to be.
“We were some of the original members,” Nick added.
“What sort of farm?” Danio asked.
“It wasn't really a farm, exactly,” Chris said. “It was pretty much like this, just on a much smaller scale. He ran the whole thing out of a barn.”
“Before that,” Tamun interjected, “It was just in Reave’s apartment, but things started to get a little too rowdy.”
“What did you do there?” asked Danio. “You said it was better than here?”
“That uh…” Nick said awkwardly. “That depends on what er… activities here you prefer. Let's just say things were a lot different when this first got started.”
“Why did it get started anyway?” I asked, hoping that my interjection would put them off the topic. “Was it like a club or something?”
“A dinner club, sort of, actually,” Nick said with a chuckle. “It was just weekly dinners for a few years.”
“Dinners?” Danio asked incredulously.
“Yeah, whenever Reave was off…” Nick hesitated and glanced at his familiar and Chris. Then, he leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Believe it or not, Reave and Victor were MES agents.”
“What?!” Danio and I both cried, not having to feign our surprise.
Nick nodded, seemingly satisfied by our reactions “MES agents. Good ones too, so I’m told. Sort of the poster boys of the office. But…” He shrugged, “one night they went out to deal with some rogue vampires, things went wrong, and they were turned.”
“They say Victor killed seven people,” Chris added, “but supposedly Reave didn't kill a single one! I doubt that though, every vampire kills at least one when they first turn.”
I nodded agreeably even though I happened to be one of the lucky few who hadn’t. Vampires were created with the idea that with each subsequent kill, during the month-long turning period, we lost a little bit of ourselves and were forever altered in more ways than just physically. Most vampires could handle up to three kills during that time before completely losing their minds and becoming nothing but the animals people seemed to fear we all were. To kill seven and still be as coherent and intelligent as Victor appeared to be meant that he was already seriously unhinged as a wizard.
“It seems like they lost everything after that,” Nick continued. “Friends, family, their status at MES. It was rough.”
I nodded again. That I could empathize with.
“Reave lost his familiar,” Chris added. His eyes darted around for a moment, as if looking for mine. The thought of her drew my eyes to his rabbit again and I swallowed hard.
Nick went on, “They found that the only time they were enjoying themselves was in the company of each other with no other magics or humans around, then they met a couple of vampires with similar mindsets at a blood drive and…” Nick shrugged. “They started Friday night dinners whenever Reave was off from work.”
“I wasn't around yet for those,” Chris interjected.
“They were nice.” Nick shook his head ruefully. “Nothing like this; we just ordered pizza, played some games, watched some movies, and just enjoyed having friends that didn't look at us sideways when we moved a little too fast or mentioned being thirsty.”
I couldn't believe it, but I was actually starting to see Reave’s side of things. In fact, I glanced over at Danio. He met my eyes and I knew we were both thinking of our own weekly game nights, which didn't actually sound that dissimilar to the ones Reave hosted.
“They got popular,” Nick continued, “and the landlord got sick of people always traipsing in and out and we got a couple of noise complaints… So, we started looking for somewhere else to go. Ended up finding the farm by chance. It was for sale cheap after the farmhouse burned down, but all we needed was the barn.” He paused and nodded toward Chris. “We ended up meeting by chance at a blood drive and had a couple of things, including being Greek, in common, so I invited him along to one of the Friday nights at the barn.”
“Were those different from dinners?” asked Danio.
“No, not at first. Except we had room for more people, more space to move around, and we could just do more stuff. We brought in some games, a TV… It just became this great, safe place where we could all go together to get away. Reave managed to get transferred to be the local… what is it?” He frowned, then shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Whoever the guy at MES is that coordinates the blood drives for vampires.”
The correct name of the position was on the tip of my tongue, seeing is it was actually my position, but I thought better of revealing too much MES knowledge. Dani arched an eyebrow in my direction knowingly. I couldn’t decide how I felt, knowing Reave and I had the same job.
Nick continued, not noticing our brief exchange. “So, Reave was able to keep an eye out for new turns who were struggling or vampires who seemed like they were unhappy and extend an invitation. Our numbers started growing and pretty much anytime you dropped by the barn there was someone hanging out there – some of the stalls were converted into temporary bedrooms and people would even crash there some nights.”
It was easy to picture that, considering we had seen the bedrooms for ourselves.
“Obviously we included dhampirs,” Chris said. “But eventually there were a few people who had close friends or significant others who were other kinds of non-humans.” He shrugged. “We let them in on sort of a trial basis, but it worked out. Everyone just seemed to want a judgment free space, whether you were vampire or not.”
Nick laughed. “As long as you weren't human.”
“It was like that for oh, probably a decade,” Chris added as Nick nodded along. “Eventually Reave and Victor started taking people in for extended periods of time, lending them money, helping them find apartments, setting up job interviews…”
“It was a really philanthropic sort of endeavor, really,” Nick said.
“What happened?” I asked incredulously. Honestly, it sounded like the sort of thing I would have loved when I was a newly turned.
“What happened?” Nick echoed with a snort. “Where did it go wrong, you mean.”
I shrugged, neither confirming nor denying that was what I meant and he shook his head.
“Serana happened,” Chris said dryly.
Nick curled back his upper lip and his fangs inched out a little. Below the table, I heard the jackal growl.
“Serana?” I echoed. I glanced at Danio in case it was a Greek word, but he shrugged.
“She was a new turn,” Chris said. “We brought her in just like all the others and for a little while she was just a new fa
ce, settling in like the rest of us, but then she started making suggestions…”
“Suggestions?” prompted Danio.
“Serana believed that if we were going to have a place away from humans, then we should actually do more than just, in her opinion, hang around acting like humans. She thought we should “embrace our nature” a little bit more.”
“How so?” I asked.
“Well, this is the result,” Nick said, gesturing around us. “Not the fights initially, but Serana said if we were going to be competing in video games and the like, we might as well compete in other ways too; things that showcased our speed and strength. She said we shouldn't just be enjoying the lack of humans, but we should be doing things that we normally don’t for fear of frightening them.” Nick paused and shrugged. “A couple of people kind of liked the idea. Honestly, I didn’t think it sounded so bad, at first. Eventually she and Victor became buddies.” He sighed. “Well, you’ve seen Victor.”
Chris chuckled darkly. “Victor loved her ideas and it encouraged her and everyone else who felt the same way. I don't actually know who suggested the first fight, but when the idea came up Reave was against it immediately. He said these were supposed to be peaceful, fun gatherings and a safe space. A couple of months later he ended up at some big overnight MES thing and they held the first fight.”
“Reave was furious when he got back,” Nick added. “But some of the participants had such a good time, he had a hard time saying no when Victor started pushing for another.” He shook his head sadly. “If nothing else, Reave genuinely wants people to be happy. He's a…”
“He’s a good guy who ended up in a pretty shitty situation, if you ask me,” Nick’s familiar said suddenly.
“Tamun!” Nick gasped.
The jackal tilted his head briefly, obviously not sorry he had voiced his opinion. Both vampires looked at us in concern.
“Sounds about right,” Danio said with a shrug.
After a moment of silence, Chris seemed to decide he wanted to tell us the rest. “Anyway, Reave agreed to let the fights happen. They weren't like these fights, of course,” he added quickly. “Just little scuffles; nobody even really got hurt, but… well, people started to get into them. Reave went to a couple and decided it wasn't his thing and never went back. I don't know if you've noticed, but he doesn't even come to these fights.”
Rise of the Arcanist Series: Books 1 - 6 Page 47
