Of course, with so many people already here, the babble of voices and reek of aftershave and humanity was almost overwhelming. But it was the underlying scent, the base rawness of death and despair that seemed to be leeching from the sand itself that had trepidation stirring.
This room wasn't about fighting. Wasn't about enjoying a spectacle. It was about control. About destruction.
Of hope. Of humanity.
I didn't realize I'd stopped until Berna shoved me from behind.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" she said, voice low and annoyed.
"You're a bear-shifter—can't you smell it?"
"Misery," Nerida said softly, her sharp gaze briefly resting on mine. In the amber depths of her eyes, fear flickered. "This place is drenched in it."
"Weres," Berna said heavily, "are very strange people."
"No. It's just that dogs of all kinds have noses designed to trap smells, and certain emotions are accompanied by strong scents. Fear, for example." I glanced at her as our guide led us to a table near the wall and the stained post. "I would have thought a bear-shifter would know that, given your olfactory senses are as keen, if not keener, than a wolfs."
She shook her head. "That may be true, but we are attuned to physical scents and sounds more than emotional ones. The click of a gun being cocked one hundred feet away or the scent of a carcass two miles away, for instance. Emotions have no scent for us."
"So this arena doesn't worry you?"
"I'm being paid good money to fight in it." Her gaze came to mine. "So are you."
"I love a good fight as much as the next wolf, but this arena isn't just about fighting."
She raised an eyebrow. "If that turns out to be true, then maybe the three of us should plan a little bust-out."
"With cameras on every corner? They'd catch us inside a minute." Though if I wanted to get out of this place, I'd damn well find a way, cameras or not. "And I'd be careful where you said that, because they have voice monitors as well as cameras in this joint."
She looked around as she sat down on the chair near the wall. "Really? Where?"
I nodded to the black dome above the table to our left. "That looks like a PTR-1043. It comes complete with sound and motion sensors." I grinned at their surprised looks, and embellished the truth with a little lie. "Fucked a home security guy for a while. He liked to go on about his hardware."
Nerida snorted. "As all men do."
"I'm gathering that's where you picked up the finer skills of a thief?" Berna asked.
I glanced at her. There was no animosity in her voice or on her features, yet I felt the wave of her disapproval all the same. "Yes."
She harrumphed and didn't add anything else, simply crossed her arms and stared out over the arena. Nerida looked at me for a few seconds longer, then said, "You don't seem like a thief to me."
That's because I wasn't, but if I was fooling Berna and everyone else, why wasn't I fooling the fox-shifter? What was she picking up that the others weren't? I forced a casual shrug. "And what does a thief look like?"
"Shifty. Desperate. You don't."
"Well, I'm not right now, am I?"
A set of trumpets blasted before she could answer, and an unseen announcer ordered us to rise. I ignored the speculation in Nerida's eyes, pushing to my feet as I glanced over to the main table. Starr, his lieutenants, and their hangers-on were entering the room like royalty. And considering at least one of them was a queen, maybe that was appropriate.
Starr himself wasn't the type of man who immediately drew the eye. He was on the small side, thin, with bristly brown hair and sallow-looking skin. Not that this was the real Starr—he'd been killed off some time ago and replaced by the shapeshifting son of the man who'd started the whole cloning nightmare. This Starr was flanked by his two lieutenants—Moss in front, Merle behind, both men naked from the waist up. Of the three, Merle was perhaps the most eye-catching. Not only did he have the build of an Adonis, but strong, almost feline features and the striped skin of a tiger. In any normal situation, I would have named him yummy and pounced. But knowing who he was, what he was, kind of killed desire.
Which wouldn't matter a damn if he had an aura as powerful as Moss's.
One of the accompanying guards pulled out the most ornate of the chairs. Starr didn't immediately sit, instead leaning his hands on the table as he skimmed his gaze across the crowd. He seemed to pause when he came to our table, and though we were far enough away that I couldn't even see the color of his eyes, a chill ran all the way down my spine. It was as if, in that brief moment, Starr sensed who I was.
I licked my lips, and clenched my hands against the sudden desire to run. This rush of fear was ridiculous. Starr couldn't know my real identity. I'd be dead, or locked up in one of his freak pens, if he did. His gaze lingered for several rapid heartbeats, then he leaned sideways and made a comment to Moss. When he finally moved on to the remaining crowd, I sighed in relief. Not that it eased the tension curling through my limbs any, because I had a bad feeling I was going to get an introduction to that madman far sooner than I'd anticipated.
Once Starr had taken a seat, the rest of us were allowed to. Waiters immediately appeared, plunking plates of vegetables and meats on the table.
As we ate, a solitary man walked onto the arena. Spotlights followed his progress, shining across his hairless cranium but throwing the rest of his body into shadow. The babble of voices gave way to a weird mix of trepidation and excitement.
"Ladies and gentlemen." His voice seemed to echo across the vast arena, and the clink of cutlery died. "Tonight you will bear witness to the price of foolishness."
He made a sweeping motion with his hand, and part of the wall on the far side of the arena began to slide up. From it came two men and a woman. She was striking to look at—white blonde hair, golden skin, big breasts, and hourglass figure. The sort of woman who'd graced the centerfolds of men's magazines year in and year out, almost since the birth of such things.
Though her hands were tied, her expression was defiant, like she was sure this was nothing more than a minor hiccup.
I was sure it wasn't.
The tension that had begun to ebb revved into high gear again, and suddenly the food on my plate lost its taste. I forced what I already had in my mouth down, then pushed the rest away. I had no stomach left for food. No stomach for whatever it was that was coming.
"This fighter, Janti Harvey, was caught in an off-limit space. She was given the choice of being whipped for her mistake or facing the arena. She has chosen the arena."
Bad mistake. She had to be a shifter or were of some kind, so however bad the whipping was, for her it was a survivable punishment simply because shifting shape would heal the worst of the wounds. And okay, it wouldn't be pleasant and would probably haunt her nights, but that would surely be better than facing the unknown in the arena.
But as my gaze went to her face, I saw the arrogance. The confidence. Maybe this woman had been so successful in the arena she figured she could beat whatever foe they presented her with.
Obviously, no one had ever shown her the zoo or the creatures held prisoner within it.
"Bring down the cage," the announcer continued dramatically.
Both he and the woman looked up, so it was natural the rest of us would follow suit. From the shadows of the vaulted ceiling, a huge cage began to lower. It was made of some kind of shiny metal and looked very much like the top half of a fancy birdcage. It lowered to the wall and clicked into place with barely a whisper, covering the entire arena in a huge mesh of metal. Which was how they kept the bird-shifters in.