“How did you know?” Piper blurted.
Lilith smiled coolly. “I know something of everything, little dove. The Gaians have been drooling over the Sahar since it resurfaced. They made a bid to steal it once already, eight years ago.” She returned her attention to Ash. “What do you need to know?”
“Where can I find them?”
“In the city? Everywhere.”
“Their base of operations in this area,” he clarified impatiently.
Lilith straightened, her chin lifting and hands folded neatly in her lap. A sudden feeling of foreboding trickled through Piper.
“Divulging that kind of information . . . why, my haemon patrons would be most unhappy with me. They might even refuse to return. If I am to lose customers, I must have something in return. It’s only fair.”
“I thought you wanted to help Ash,” Piper cut in, anger spinning through her at Lilith’s selfishness.
The succubus smiled. “I do. But I didn’t get where I am by giving things away for free, Piperel.”
“You—”
“What do you want?” Ash interrupted.
Lilith let her gaze slowly slide over Ash, the tip of her tongue sliding across her lips at the same pace. “If I asked for you, would I get you?”
Ash flicked a glance at Piper and shrugged.
“Y—”
“No.”
When everyone turned to look at her, Ash included, Piper realized the angry denial had come from her. She blinked, then folded her arms and tried not to look astonished at her own response.
“I’ll pay your price, whatever it is,” she said. “This is my problem more than his, and he’s done enough already. It’s my turn.”
“Piper—” Ash began in a low voice.
“No! I can do this.” She glared at everyone. Where her sudden determination was coming from, she didn’t know. Jealousy of Lilith’s impossible beauty was a part of it, but she kept thinking of everything Ash had done and suffered since they started this. He shouldn’t have to sacrifice anything else for her.
“Piperel,” Lilith said in the patient, you-are-an-idiot tone the snobby girls at school had down pat. “Honey, a night with me is hardly costing him anything. I dare say it would be more gift than burden.”
“I don’t care. I’m doing this.”
Lilith leaned back and smiled at Ash. “Well. Isn’t that sweet? She’s still protecting you. How chivalrous.”
Piper clenched her teeth at Lilith’s gender-bending word choice.
“Dear Piperel’s fiery determination is so admirable,” Lilith continued, her smile turning viciously sweet. “I would like to put that fire to good use—in the ring.”
“No!” Ash and Lyre both exclaimed at the same time.
“What ring?”
Lilith’s smile was now utterly serene. “That is my offer. I will give you the exact location of the Gaians’ headquarters. In return, Piperel will fight in the ring until a full loss.”
“No fucking way,” Lyre shouted. “Forget it!”
“Not happening,” Ash growled.
“What ring?” Piper asked again.
“The fight ring, of course.” Lilith scrutinized her fingernails. “The Styx offers many kinds of entertainment.”
“You mean like boxing?” Piper asked. “Or mixed martial arts?” She could do that.
“She means no-holds-barred dog fights, only with daemons instead of animals,” Lyre cut in furiously. “They aren’t fights to the death, but they don’t generally stop until someone is beaten unconscious—that’s a full loss.”
Piper swallowed hard. Okay, maybe she couldn’t do that.
“But you’re a Consul-in-training, aren’t you, Piperel?” Lilith asked sweetly. “Surely you know how to fight.”
“Of course I do.”
“Then what’s the problem?” The succubus glanced slyly between the two daemons. “Are you two so soft you can’t let her fight her own battles?”
“It’s not a battle, it’s a bloodbath,” Ash snapped.
Lilith’s head tilted. “You would know, wouldn’t you? What’s your winning streak in my ring right now, Dragon? Twenty?”
Piper shot a glance at Ash, but his expression was unreadable. “Piper is a haemon,” he said tersely. “You can’t put her in that ring with daemons.”
Lilith sat back and folded her arms. “I’ve made my offer. It stands.”
“Lilith—” Ash began, anger creeping into his voice and sending a shiver down Piper’s spine.
“I will have her in my ring, Ash,” Lilith said with absolute finality. “Or no deal.”
Piper exchanged a look with Lyre. Ash glared. Lilith merely waited, her beautiful face locked in a mixture of stubbornness and triumph. She knew she had them.
What choice did they have? They needed Lilith’s information and every minute wasted brought them closer to capture. Nerves tightened in her belly.
“I won’t be beaten into unconsciousness,” she said. “There’s no point if I can’t use your information afterward.”
“That is true,” Lilith said, beaming at this sign of cooperation. “Unfortunately, those are the rules. Every entrant stays in the ring until he—or she—loses a match. The very best fighters fight a dozen or more matches before they tire out and lose. After ten consecutive wins, the option of withdrawing is allowed, but not under any other circumstances. If I changed the rules for you, it would undermine the entire system. I can’t do it.”
Ten wins? Piper knew that would be impossible.
“Could I fake it?” she asked. “Like, take a few hits and pretend to get knocked out?”
Disdain twisted Lilith’s lips. “That bad habit is not tolerated. The referee will call an end to a match if the loser has been dealt a fair amount of punishment but is still conscious, but anyone attempting to get out of completing a match by feigning injuries is . . . soundly punished. There is no way your opponent wouldn’t know.”
“Piper, we’ll find another way,” Lyre said, leaning forward to meet her gaze. “No one comes out of those matches without a few broken bones at least. Sometimes people die.”
“He’s right,” Ash seconded, his voice low. “We’ll ask someone else.”
Piper took a deep breath and let it out slowly. They didn’t have time to go to anyone else and Ash had already admitted Lilith was pretty much his only source of information right now. Anyone else would ambush him for the Sahar.
She slowly shook her head. “We don’t have the time or the resources,” she told them. “We’ll just have to hope for the best.”
“You have no idea what you’re agreeing to,” Lyre exclaimed furiously. He turned to Lilith. “What the hell are you playing at? Why are trying to get Piper killed?”
“It’s business, my dear Lyre.” Lilith shrugged delicately. “I haven’t had a female in my ring in months. Even if she only lasts a single round, it’ll boost attendance for weeks.”
“I’ll be her opponent then,” Ash said, his voice dark and rumbling. “I’ll be the one to defeat her—without doing her serious harm.”
A truly ugly look flashed across Lilith’s perfect face. “You’ll have to continue the rounds until you take a full loss.”
He nodded shortly.
“But Ash—” Piper began.
“Shut up,” he snapped, searing her with sudden, icy anger. “If you hadn’t volunteered for this, it wouldn’t be a problem.”
She sat back, as shocked as if he’d slapped her.
“She has to win some matches first, though,” Lilith said, not sounding happy at all. “I won’t have you giving her an easy out in her first round.”
“She can fight one opponent and then me.”
“You can be her fifth opponent.”
“She won’t last that long.”
“Her fourth then. Surely she can win three fights. I will arrange for her opponents to be . . . reasonably well-matched.”
Ash glanced at Piper. She gave a jerk of her head in ass
ent.
“Deal,” Ash said.
“Deal,” Lilith echoed. As a cat-like smile of satisfaction bloomed across her gorgeous face, Piper wished she knew exactly what she’d agreed to do. Surely the ring couldn’t be that terrible.
Within the hour, she would know exactly how wrong she was.
. . .
The daemon howled. His opponent wrenched his arm backward another inch and the shoulder popped out of its socket. Piper couldn’t hear the sound of it over the screaming crowd but seeing it was bad enough. The daemon writhed in agony as the other combatant backed away, raising his fists triumphantly. Unbelievably, the downed daemon dragged himself to his feet, awkwardly slanted with his arm hanging limply. He bared his teeth, blood streaming down one side of his face, as his opponent turned back to him.
She looked away as the inevitable winner of the match made his final attack. A hideous scream of pain rose above all other sounds before cutting off abruptly. The crowd gasped in unison, then roared in approval. Standing half-hidden in the curtained doorway where fighters entered the arena, she looked across the roughly two thousand humans and three hundred or so daemons packed onto the wide tiers that ran around the half-circle side of the huge basement room. Wild energy stretched every face and a morbid ecstasy radiated from the mob.
At the lowest point in the room, the raised ring drew the eye like an ugly scar on an otherwise unremarkable face. Though a little larger than a typical boxing ring, it had the usual ropes stretched from corner pole to corner pole. An equally high stage ran across the back of the space, where the announcer in his crisp white suit strode back and forth excitedly. The wall behind him had two enormous screens that must have cost Lilith a year’s profit each. One showed dramatic close-ups of the fights and slow-motion replays. The other displayed a kind of scoreboard with a profile of each combatant that included his age, history, skill ratings, recent victories, and odds.
Between the two screens was the most frightening thing in the whole room. It was a huge game show wheel, but the outer border wasn’t marked with prizes for the spinning arrow to select. Instead, the wheel was divided into four unequal 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 slightly smaller red quadrant showed a sword crossed with a spear. The smallest quarter at the top showed neither fists nor weapons on its solid black background, only a white skull and crossbones.
“Laaaaadies and gentlemen,” the announcer called, drawing Piper’s attention back to the ring. Two referees were dragging the bloody, unconscious loser out of the ring. They dumped him on a stretcher and marched him out a door on the other side of the ring. It looked like he’d gotten his other arm dislocated too.
The announcer flung a hand out toward the daemon still standing in the ring, waving idly to his fans in an uber-masculine, bulging-muscles way.
“Our victor, Grudge, has won his ninth match. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, he has won nine matches! You all know that means, should he win his next match, he has the option of walking away from the Styx Ring undefeated. Only a tiny handful of our competitors make it this far. You are watching history in the making!”
The crowd screamed. Piper tried to take a deep breath. She glanced over her shoulder as Lyre hurried to her.
“Where’s Ash?” she gulped. Fear was starting to make her hands and feet tingle.
“Getting ready,” Lyre said tersely. “Have you been watching this guy?”
“His last three fights, yeah,” she said.
“Can you take him?”
“I—I think so. Depends on the kind of match.”
“He’ll be tired by now. Take advantage of it.”
She nodded. Lyre gripped her elbow. “You can do this, Piper. You’re going to kick ass.”
She nodded again. “Kick ass. Yeah.” It was hard to feel confident when Lyre looked so pale.
“Remember. Only three matches. You can make it through three, then Ash will help you really convincingly lose.” He smiled wanly. “Everyone loses to him, so it won’t surprise anyone.”
After nodding for a third time, she started to turn toward the curtain again when Lyre grabbed her into a crushing hug. “You’ll be fine,” he muttered into her hair like he was trying to convince himself more than her. “Ash and I will be watching the whole time. If it looks like you’re in big trouble, Ash will get you out, rules be damned.”
He finally let go and together they peered through the curtains. The announcer was finishing a summary of Grudge’s fighting history to give the daemon a chance to catch his breath.
“But ladies and gentlemen, I imagine you’re curious about our champion’s next challenger? This individual must be brave indeed to take on the Grudge. But—my goodness—our next challenger is not what I expected.”
The crowd quieted as their attention focused on the announcer.
“This challenger—I don’t believe it, but this challenger is not a daemon. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a haemon challenger!”
The crowd let out a bloodthirsty roar. The Grudge smirked, foreseeing an easy victory.
“But—but wait. I am quite frankly stunned. Ladies and gentlemen, that is not all. This brave haemon challenger . . .” He paused dramatically. “This courageous soul is not even a man!” He spun on his heel and pointed toward Piper’s curtained doorway. “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Minx!”
Minx? She could thank Lilith for that demeaning nickname.
Lyre gave her a shove and Piper stepped out from behind the curtain. There was an ominous silence as she stepped out into the full view of over two thousand stares. She scanned a hundred nameless faces, all watching her. The weight of their judgment pinned her in place.
Someone in the front row wolf-whistled. The silence broke as cheers, catcalls, and boos erupted through the whole space. Apparently the crowd was divided on whether they liked her or not. Sucking in a desperate breath, she put her shoulders back and strode toward the ring.
“The mysterious young Minx, ladies and gentlemen, is an amateur fighter from the east end of this great city. She wouldn’t tell us much about herself—but,” he lowered his voice conspiratorially, “some suspect she’s found her way to the wrong side of the law.”
That was true enough. At least Lilith hadn’t made up some story about Piper fleeing a brothel and learning to fight on the streets while defending herself against lascivious men. She stopped in front of the ring, dismayed to discover the raised floor was chest-high on her. She glanced at the silently watching bouncers. None of them offered her a leg up. Grimacing, she hauled herself up and awkwardly rolled under the lower rope. The floor of the ring was so stained with old blood splatters that its original color had been lost. She clambered gracelessly to her feet as the crowd laughed and booed.
The announcer started blabbing again, talking about Piper’s fictitious past wins in some other fight club. She had no attention left for listening because now that she was face to face with Grudge, her confidence was melting like ice in the desert. He was a lot bigger than he’d looked from a distance. His biceps were as thick as her thighs. He grinned evilly. Overall, he looked like a scruffy sailor, with tattooed arms, a buzz-cut, and a crooked nose from being repeatedly broken. Of course, being a daemon, he probably didn’t look like that at all. Like all the fighters, he wore a simple black cloth mask that covered the top half of his face.
“And now, ladies and gentlemen, we spin for the match!” The announcer cried. The crowd cheered, then went quickly silent. Dread iced her stomach as everyone in the massive room focused on the big game show wheel. The announcer grabbed the arrow and spun it hard.
It whirled around, spinning past a green section. Past black. The other green. The red. Green again. It spiraled around the wheel, gradually slowing. Piper couldn’t breathe. Please please please. Let luck be with her.
The arrow slowed and finally came to a stop on a green quarter with two crossed fists.
“A fist
match,” the announcer yelled. “Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Minx will fight Grudge with nothing but her wits and skills. A fist match! No weapons, no magic allowed. Combatants, get ready!”
Piper jerked her attention back to Grudge and pressed her back against the corner post behind her. The daemon grinned from his corner.
The bell rang.
Grudge stepped forward. He flexed his arms, leering as he slowly approached. He intended to toy with her first. Piper jumped away from the post before she got cornered and started to scuttle along one side of the square. Grudge turned with her. The announcer was yelling things and the crowd was shouting taunts and encouragement, but Piper focused on her opponent. She had to win.
Grudge stopped. He let his gaze drop and stared pointedly at her breasts. Then he met her eyes and licked his lips. The message was clear. Piper stopped her sneer before it could form, keeping her face slack and fearful. She hadn’t had a change of clothes, so she still wore her tight jeans and midriff-baring halter top. The only difference was her hands and wrists were wrapped in white tape so she didn’t split her knuckles on anyone’s face. Oh, and there was no ring box stuffed in her shirt; Lyre had the Sahar while she was in the ring.
She nervously reached up to adjust her mask. Grudge immediately lunged forward. Ha. Piper’s hand, already positioned next to her jaw, was ready to fly. While he was still cocking his arm, Piper flung her fist out with the whole force of her body behind it. Her knuckles smashed into his throat with a satisfying crunch. He staggered backward, clutching his neck and hacking. Piper pivoted on one foot and slammed the other boot into his lower gut in a perfect roundhouse kick. Grudge doubled over. She brought her elbow down on the base of his skull, then kneed him in the face as he started to collapse forward. He went over backward instead.
In a normal fight, Piper would have stopped there, but she had to knock this beast out to win the fight and she couldn’t lose momentum now that she’d used up the element of surprise. As Grudge fell backward, she kicked him hard in the kidney. He wheezed. She kicked him again in the gut. He curled over onto his stomach to protect it and Piper jumped onto his back, jabbing her knee hard into his lower back. Then she grabbed his arm, twisted it in a wrestling hold—then twisted a little more. He let out a howl. Piper gritted her teeth and wrenched. His arm popped out. She hoped his last opponent would get to see the replay when he woke up.