The swarm caught the archer. He veered left and ran straight into Mart’s sword. Mart cut him down with two short, precise strokes and walked over to the swordsman, who was still bellowing like a stuck pig. The Reaper watched him flail for a long moment, as if puzzled, then ended it in a single cut. The swarm vanished. The swordsman’s head rolled on the sand.
The crowd roared in delight.
The shapeshifters next to me didn’t make a sound.
“HERE IS HOW IT WORKS,” JIM SAID SOFTLY, WHILE the cleaners loaded the bodies onto stretchers and raked the sand for stray body parts. “There are four fights in all. First, the qualifying bout, then second tier, third tier, and the championship fight. Only the championship fight has the entire team. The rest give us a choice. We can field one to four people for each fight. If we field four and lose all, we are automatically disqualified as ‘unable to continue.’ ”
He paused to let it sink in. Apparently he’d been busy acquiring the information: he actually had a clipboard with notes written on a legal pad, as if he were coaching a baseball team.
“Despite this rule, most teams field four. Fielding three is risky.” He looked down the steps at Curran.
Curran shrugged. “It’s your game.”
So Jim retained Stratego. That was big of His Majesty.
“We break into two teams,” Jim said. “Three and four.”
So far, so good.
“This will minimize our risk of being eliminated and will permit us to rest between the fights.”
Made total sense.
“Raphael, Andrea, Derek, and I will be in group one, and Curran, Kate, and Dali in group two.”
Full break. “You want me to fight with him? On the same team?”
“Yes.”
Suddenly I had an urgent need to run away screaming. “Why?”
“Derek, Raphael, and I have similar fighting styles. We move across the field. Andrea is a mobile range fighter. She can shoot and move at the same time. Dali can’t,” Jim said.
“I do shodo magic,” Dali said. “I curse through calligraphy. I have to write the curse out on a piece of paper and I can’t move while I do it. One smudge, and I might kill the lot of us.”
Oh good.
“But don’t worry.” Dali waved her arms. “It’s so precise, it usually doesn’t work at all.”
Better and better.
“Raphael and I aren’t good defensive fighters,” Jim said. “And Derek isn’t up to speed yet. I have to put Dali behind Curran, because he’s the strongest defense we have. He’ll need a strong offense and you’re the best offensive fighter I have.”
Somehow that didn’t sound like a compliment.
“Also the three of us have undergone similar training,” Jim said. “We know what to expect from each other and we work well as a team.”
He didn’t think I could function in a team. Fair enough.
“Group two will take the qualifying bout and the third tier. The qualifying bout should give you little trouble and third-tier fighters shouldn’t be that fresh. Group one will take the second-tier bout. We will come out together for the championship fight.”
Jim flipped a page on his legal pad. “You’re going up against the Red Demons this afternoon. From what I’ve heard, they will be fielding a werebison, a swordsman, and some type of odd creature as their mage. You will have magic for the fight. They try to schedule the bouts during the magic waves, because magic makes for a better show. Try to appear sloppy and incompetent. The weaker you look, the more our opponents will underestimate the team, and the easier time we will all have. My lord, no claws. Kate, no magic. You’ll need to win, but just barely.”
He looked at his notes again and said, “About the murder law. Doesn’t apply in the Pit.”
Curran said nothing. Jim had just given the shapeshifters permission to kill without accountability with Curran’s silence to reinforce it. Just as well. Gladiators died. That was the reality. We had to be there. The rest had volunteered. And given a chance, every member of the opposing team would murder any one of us without a second thought.
THE SAND CRUNCHED UNDER MY FOOT. I COULD already taste it on my tongue. The memories conjured heat and sunshine. I shook them off and looked across the Pit.
In the far end, three people waited for us. The swordsman, tall and carrying a hand-and-a-half sword. The werebison, shaggy with dark brown fur, towering, angry. His breadth was enormous, the shoulders packed with hard, heavy muscle, the chest like a barrel. He wore a chain mail hauberk but no pants. His legs terminated in black hooves. A dense mane of coarse hair crowned the back of his neck. His features were a meld of bull and human, but where the minotaur’s face had been a cohesive whole, the shapeshifter’s skull was a jumble of mismatched parts.
Behind them reared a nightmarish creature. Its lower body was python, dark brown with creamy swirls of scales. Near the abdomen, the scales became so fine, they glittered, stretching tight over a human upper body, complete with a pair of tiny breasts and a female face that looked like it belonged to a fifteen-year-old. She looked at us with emerald-green eyes. Her skull was bald and a hood of flesh spread from her head, resembling that of a king cobra.
A lamia. Great.
The lamia swayed gently, as if listening to music only she could hear. Old magic emanated from her, ancient and ice-cold. It picked up the sand and rolled it in feathery curves to caress her scales before sliding back to the Pit.
Behind me, Dali shivered. She stood in the sand with a clipboard, an ink pen, and a piece of thin rice paper cut into inch-wide strips.
I eyed the swordsman. Weak and sloppy. Okay, I could do that.
The crowd waited above us. The hum of conversation, the clearing of throats, and the sound of a thousand simultaneous breaths blended into a low hum. I scanned the seats and saw Saiman on his balcony. Aunt B, Raphael’s mother, sat on his left, and Mahon, the Bear of Atlanta and the Pack’s executioner, occupied the chair to his right. Sitting between the alphas of Clan Bouda and Clan Heavy. No wonder Saiman had been persuaded to give up his spot to Curran.
Behind Aunt B, I saw a familiar pale head. Couldn’t be. The blond head moved and I saw Julie’s face. Oh yes, it could.
“You bribed my kid!”
“We reached a business arrangement,” he said. “She wanted to see you fight and I wanted to know when, where, and how you were getting into the Games.”
Julie gave me a big, nervous smile and a little wave.
Just wait until I get out of here, I mouthed. We were going to have a little talk about following orders.
“I know what the problem is.” Curran pulled his shoulders back and flexed, warming up a little. I stole a glance. He had decided to fight in jeans and an old black T-shirt, from which he’d torn the sleeves. Probably his workout shirt.
His biceps were carved, the muscle defined and built by countless exertions, neither too bulky nor too lean. Perfect. Kissing him might make me guilty of catastrophically bad judgment, but at least nobody could fault my taste. The trick was not to kiss him again. Once could be an accident; twice was trouble.
“You said something?” I arched an eyebrow at him. Nonchalance—best camouflage for drooling. Both the werebison and the swordsman looked ready to charge: the muscles of their legs tense, leaning forward slightly on their toes. They seemed to be terribly sure that we would stay in one place and wait for them.
Curran was looking at their legs, too. They must be expecting a distraction from the lamia. She sat cocooned in magic, holding on with both hands as it strained on its leash.
“I said, I know why you’re afraid to fight with me.”
“And why is that?” If he flexed again, I’d have to implement emergency measures. Maybe I could kick some sand at him or something. Hard to look hot brushing sand out of your eyes.
“You want me.”
Oh boy.
“You can’t resist my subtle charm, so you’re afraid you’re going to make a spectacle out of yourself.”