Chapter 24

Chapter Twenty-Four

PIPER

The daemon howled as an invisible blast of magic exploded against his chest. He pitched over backward, a spray of blood decorating the fight ring and splattering the front row of cheering spectators. His victorious opponent raised his fists in triumph.

Piper swallowed her stomach down. She wasn’t normally revolted by blood, but something about the ecstatic screams of a sadistic mob combined with unchecked violence under the guise of entertainment made her feel ill.

Or maybe the knowledge that she would soon be standing in the blood-splattered ring was the source of her nausea.

“Grudge wins his ninth match!” the announcer crowed, his voice amplified but still difficult to hear over the noise of the crowd.

Stepping back from the doorway where fighters entered the arena, Piper glanced over her shoulder. Ash and Lyre stood behind her, their eyes on the ring. Farther down the hall, more fighters waited for their names to be drawn and their matches to begin—all male, all heavily muscled, and all mean as vipers.

Two burly guys dragged the bloody, unconscious loser off the platform. They dumped him on a stretcher and marched to the doorway. Piper, Ash, and Lyre pressed against the wall as the stretcher rolled past.

She tried not to look at the daemon’s injuries. She failed.

“What exactly is Lilith’s plan?” she asked, her voice higher than usual. “She’s going to… ‘tip the scales’ or something for me, right?”

“Once that brute”—Ash jerked his chin toward the current victor—“wins his next match, he’ll walk away with his prize money. Everything resets, and the two lowest-rated fighters in the pool will face off. You’ll be one of them.”

“What’s my rating?” she asked.

“Zero. It’s based on previous matches,” he added, noticing her scowl.

“We just need him to hurry up and win,” Lyre said, scanning the fighters loitering in the hall behind them. “If he loses, it’ll be a random draw for the next challenger.”

Biting her lower lip, Piper rubbed her palms together, scuffing the tape wrapped from her knuckles to mid-forearm. While she’d been alone with the tape, she’d used a few extra pieces to secure the Sahar in her bra. She couldn’t risk it getting knocked loose in the ring. Its empty box was stashed in a back room where she could retrieve it later.

She peered through the doorway again. Roughly two thousand spectators were packed onto the wide tiers that formed a half circle around the ring. A stage ran across the back of the room, where the announcer paced excitedly.

On either end of the wall were two screens lit by projectors. One featured a leaderboard with fighters’ names, their wins and losses, and a rating. The other was replaying grainy video footage of Grudge pile-driving a different opponent headfirst into the platform—the end of a previous match.

Between the two screens was the most frightening thing in the whole room: a huge game show wheel divided into quarters. On the left and right, a symbol like two crossed fists glowed white on a green background. At the bottom of the wheel, a red quadrant showed a sword crossed with a spear. The quarter at the top showed neither fists nor weapons on its solid black background, only a skull and crossbones.

“ Laaaaadies and gentlemen, ” the announcer called. He gestured grandly toward the daemon still standing in the ring. “Grudge is one victory away from leaving with all the winnings, and it’s time to select his final challenger!”

While Grudge pumped his fists in an uber-masculine, bulging-muscles way, the announcer turned expectantly toward the right side of the stage. At this point in the past three matches Piper had observed, a scantily clad woman had sauntered onstage carrying a blood-red box from which the announcer would draw a name.

Cheers erupted from the crowd—louder than anything during Grudge’s matches. Piper frowned, leaning farther out the door. The crowd was chanting, but she couldn’t quite make out what.

Then she saw the woman gliding across the stage with the box of names.

“ Lilith! Lilith! Lilith! ”

A gracious smile lingered on the succubus’s lips as she waved to the spectators, the red box balanced on one curvy hip.

Ash’s shoulder brushed Piper’s as he leaned over the threshold for a better view.

“What’s she up to?” he growled.

As Lilith reached the announcer, he eagerly offered her his mic. The crowd went silent, waiting for her to speak.

“Grudge has fought in my ring on many occasions,” she said, her musical voice filling the space, “winning six, seven, and even eight matches. Tonight, he stands on the cusp of becoming one of our champions!”

The twisting nausea in Piper’s gut quadrupled. Beside her, Ash had gone rigid.

Lilith passed the box to the announcer, and he shook it vigorously before tilting the open top toward the crowd, giving them a glimpse of the paper slips inside. Then he offered the box to Lilith.

The crowd shouted with excitement, some of them calling out the names of the fighters they wanted to be drawn—but Piper knew, with a horrible sinking feeling, which moniker Lilith would “draw.”

The succubus dipped a slender hand into the box. She withdrew a paper slip, the end pinched between her polished red fingernails. She handed it to the announcer with a smile.

“And our challenger is…” He glanced at the paper. “Minx!”

Piper’s heartbeat pounded in her ears, nearly drowning out the announcer. Her fingers and toes tingled with adrenaline.

“Fuck!” Ash snarled.

The crowd was shouting and laughing. Minx’s stats had appeared on the projector screen next to Grudge’s, and it was a very inspiring row of zeroes.

“What the hell is Lilith thinking?” Lyre snapped furiously.

“Making things more entertaining .” Ash sneered the word, his voice rough with anger.

Piper couldn’t look at either of them. She was too busy hoping that some feeling would come back into her limbs.

Ash’s face appeared in front of her, blocking her view of the ring. His irises churned like thunderclouds. “Grudge is tired. Don’t give him time to catch his breath.”

She nodded mutely.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer yelled, “I give you Minx! ”

That was Piper’s signal to go get in the ring, but she couldn’t move. Ash stepped to the side. His warm hand curled around her elbow. He leaned close.

“Don’t even think about fighting fair,” he said in her ear, his breath tickling her cheek. “Wreck him.”

She swallowed hard. Ash’s hand on her elbow guided her forward, and she took her first step. With the movement, her shock and dread fell away.

Wreck him. She could do that.

Lifting her chin, she strode toward the ring. At the sight of her, the noise from the spectators swelled, filled with cheers, catcalls, wolf whistles, and laughter. Lilith’s bookies were hard at work, rushing from patron to patron to mark down their bets.

Piper stopped in front of the ring, dismayed to discover the platform was chest high. There were no steps in sight. Grimacing, she hauled herself up and rolled awkwardly under the lowest rope. Up close, she could see that the platform wasn’t actually gray. It was just covered in so many multicolored stains that they’d blended into a gross sludge-like shade.

“Primary bets are now closed!” the announcer declared as Piper faced her opponent. Grudge was a lot bigger than he’d looked from a distance. He had a buzz cut and a crooked nose, and his tattooed biceps were as thick as her thighs.

“Ladies and gentlemen, shall we have the beautiful Lilith spin the wheel?”

The crowd howled their approval, then went quickly silent. Dread iced Piper’s stomach as Lilith stepped up to the giant game show wheel. As she pretended to test the rotation of its oversized arrow, her gaze caught Piper’s.

The succubus smiled, then spun the arrow hard.

It whirled around and around, spinning past the different quadrants. As it slowed, Piper held her breath. It spun past a green section. Past black. The other green. The red. Green again. With a tick , tick , tick sound, it slowed to a crawl.

The arrow came to a stop dead center on a green quadrant, marked with a symbol of two crossed fists.

“A fist match!” the announcer yelled. “Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Grudge will defeat his final challenger with his bare hands. No weapons or magic allowed. Combatants, get ready!”

Refocusing on Grudge, Piper pressed her back against the padded corner post of the ring. The daemon grinned evilly from his corner.

The bell rang.

Flexing his beefy arms, Grudge slowly approached. He intended to toy with her. Piper jumped away from the post before she got cornered and scuttled along one side of the square. Grudge turned with her. The announcer was yelling things and the crowd was shouting taunts, but Piper wasn’t listening. All her attention was on her opponent.

Grudge stopped. He swept his gaze over her from head to toe, taking in her stupid clubber outfit with a suggestive leer. Keeping her face slack and fearful, Piper reached up to sweep loose strands of hair off her forehead.

Grudge lunged at her—and her hand, already positioned next to her jaw, was ready to fly. She flung her fist out with the force of her entire body behind it.

Her knuckles smashed into his throat with a satisfying crunch.

He staggered backward, choking and hacking. Piper swung a roundhouse kick into his lower gut. Grudge doubled over. She grabbed the top of his head with one hand, leaped off the platform for better reach, and brought her elbow down on the base of his skull. As he buckled forward, she kneed him in the face for good measure. His nose crunched against her kneecap.

In any other fight, Piper would have stopped there, but Ash had said to wreck him.

As Grudge stumbled, trying to regain a defensive stance with blood gushing from his broken nose, she kicked him hard in the kidney. He wheezed. She kicked him again in the gut. He staggered. Dropping to the floor, she swept her leg into his ankles. He fell.

Piper jumped onto his back, grabbed his thick wrist, and twisted it in a wrestling hold. The bands of muscle in his arm were so heavy and powerful that it took her whole body to get his arm into position—then she wrenched it.

Grudge howled as his shoulder dislocated.

She grabbed for his other arm, but Grudge heaved sideways. She fell off him and tried to roll away. With daemon speed, he flipped on top of her and drew back his good arm for a punch that would break her jaw.

Gasping, she jabbed her fist into his left side. He reared back with a guttural shout. She’d seen him take a hit in that spot two fights ago and suspected his rib had cracked. It had—and now it was broken.

As he clutched his chest, still straddling her, she sat up and punched him full force right between the legs.

His face paled drastically, and he seemed incapable of making a sound. Piper scooted out from under him and hopped to her feet.

He bared his teeth, his expression promising pain. She smiled, lifted one foot, and slammed her kick-ass boot into his face. There went his nose again. He keeled over, thudded down on the platform, and didn’t move.

The crowd roared, and the announcer began counting. Piper backed up to the ropes, breathing hard. Her gaze finally shifted off Grudge, swinging toward the succubus still standing beside the game show wheel.

Lilith tilted her head slightly, her eyelids half lowering with catlike satisfaction. She blew a kiss at Piper, then sauntered off the stage.

“Ladies and gentlemen—your victor, Minx!”