Page 38 of Faithless
I finished tying up my hair and stood to look over his shoulder. I had a few inches on Santos in height, but he had me beat in muscle mass and savage brutality that crowds loved to see in a gladiator. My talents lie in being fast and swift. My opponents always lost sight of me before I delivered the killing strike.
Hence why he was dubbed the Butcher and I, the Ghost.
Through the window and across the canyon which had been our involuntary home for the past four years, I saw the guest elevator descending with three people in it. One was Nella, the vile bitch who was the guest manager of this so-called resort. The guests were a couple in their twenties, a woman with short blonde hair and a dark-haired man. Their arms were around each other, so honeymooners probably. Their eyes were on Nella as she gestured around the canyon, no doubt giving her welcome speech filled with her cleverly woven bullshit.
“They look pretty typical to me,” I said to Santos. “What’s weird about them?”
“I dunno, something’s off.” His dark eyes narrowed, rapt on the couple like they were a puzzle he was trying to solve. “The woman’s body language is stiff. Like she doesn’t want to touch him.”
“They’re hundreds of yards away. How can you tell?”
“Appearances are off too. Their clothing looks like Blakeworth, but they just…don’t look like Blakeworth stock to me.”
“So what are you thinking?” I returned to sitting on the bed, where Tezca was already asleep with a bit of his tongue poking out. “That they’re the ones big kitty here says we’re waiting for?” I patted the jaguar’s flank. He stirred but didn’t wake up.
“Maybe. I don’t know, could be nothing.” Santos finally turned away from the window, rubbing his eyes. “Ever since he told us that, it feels like I’m reading into every little thing.”
Young gladiators often prayed for miracles. They asked their various gods to rescue them, to be kept safe in the pit, or for a quick, painless death on the sands. If they lasted a year or more, like us, they often became too jaded to have any hope left. We certainly had been. The two of us were skilled fighters, but it was also our celebrity status, our entertainment value, that kept us alive.
But for Santos and I, our answered prayers came years after we’d lost hope and in the form of a black jaguar. Or rather, a god taking on the form of a black jaguar. He was brought out for the gladiators to slaughter during an event, but the clawed, fanged shadow killed everyone who neared him instead. Everyone except us.
Tezcatlipoca had said rescue was coming. Not right away but one day. He gave us hope, but hope was a heavy burden when you had to fight for your life, day in and day out.
It was relatively easy to make Tezca our pet. He wouldn’t leave our side, and we were valuable gladiators who brought income to the resort. So they just let him stay with us. It kept the pitmasters from breathing down our necks and the other gladiators from attempting to kill us in our sleep.
Yeah, the pit wasn’t a place to make friends. Santos and I were somewhat of an exception in that we were already acquainted. We’d been taken from the same place—another prison, just not one where we’d been forced to fight. He and I had been housed there together, along with a third guy, Hudson, who had been left behind. Who even knew if that poor bastard was still alive?
“Has he said anything to you?” I nodded at the snoring jaguar behind me.
“Nah, nothing.” Santos pulled on his pants and then secured his belt around his hips.
“So it’s probably not them, right?”
“I dunno. He doesn’t always tell me shit.” Santos slid the machetes into their sheaths on his belt. “Sometimes it’s fucking riddles, and I don’t know what he means.”
While both of us had heard Tezca speak, his primary bond was to Santos. An Aztec deity paired up with a Mexican guy made sense, I guess. It would be nice if a Chinese dragon would appear to save my half-Asian ass, but no luck so far.
“Well, that couple was with Nella, so you know she’s gonna bring them down here to inspect the livestock,” I said bitterly. “We can do some inspecting right back.”
Santos sat down to lace up his boots, glancing up at me. “Which one were you inspecting more, the girl or the guy?”
“They were too far away to see clearly. But probably the girl. Guy didn’t look like my type.”
“Yeah, girl was cute.” There was something in his voice that sounded a bit like yearning.
I held back from saying a sarcastic remark. Despite his reputation for brutality in the pit, Santos was, for lack of a better word, soft. Not in a bad way. I actually admired him a lot for holding on to that part of himself. Even after our years in captivity, he held on to that desire for a long-term partner and a family. The guy wanted love, and while I couldn’t fault him for that, I wondered how he could still believe in such a thing at all.
Especially with how Nella exploited him to the guests. She was no better than a fucking street pimp, serving him up like fresh meat.
“Come on, Butcher. Let’s keep you sharp.” Before getting up, I gave two more pats to Tezca’s flank, and that woke him up with a snort.
Santos and I both laughed at the big cat. Tezca was our sleek, prowling ray of black sunshine in this hellhole. Sometimes it was hard to believe the goofy animal was also inhabited by an ancient god.
The jaguar rolled over and slid down from the bed, now alert with ears pricked forward as he followed Santos out the door, an ever-watchful guard. I followed after the cat, already armed to the teeth like usual. Not that anyone but Santos could tell.
The pitmaster eyeballed us as we came out into the hallway, muttering under his breath as he took a headcount of all the gladiators coming out for training. The sun wouldn’t be directly over the canyon for another couple of hours, so the sands were nice and cool when we entered the pit in the center of the colosseum.
Santos and I immediately separated, as was our routine. We didn’t act like friends in front of the others, especially the pitmasters. Once they saw friendships, or worse, romantic or sexual relationships developing, they liked to set those fighters up against each other. Everyone knew Santos and I were roommates and had come here from the same place, but all that meant was we got along well enough to not try to kill each other outside of the pit. After four years of being here, it seemed to work. We had never once been scheduled against each other and were both still alive to show for it.
