Page 19 of Harmless
“I dunno, figure it out quick. The seats are packed.”
It was another full minute before I could even squint. I saw an arena with a sand-covered ground alright. And hundreds of people in the colosseum seats, shouting and waving.
A fight was already going on, from what the dark blurs zipping all over the pit told me. My eyes were having a bitch of a time tracking motion, let alone giving me details about what was right in front of me.
I turned back to the darkness, my senses too overwhelmed by everything going on outside, and that was how I got my first close-up look at Santos. I’d only seen him from a distance before, one of many figures out on the sands. Now seeing him up-close as a fellow man was something else.
His hair and beard were growing out, as I was certain mine had as well. He was a broadly built dude, which made it even more impressive that he could move so quickly. Intense, dark eyes met mine. That was the most familiar thing about him, the weight of his stare. I remembered the look in those eyes as he stared down his opponents in the fight I watched.
“Hey, sexy,” I greeted.
That clenched jaw relaxed into a smile for a moment. “Back at you.”
A cheer rising up made us both turn around. My eyes were slowly adjusting, and I could make out a figure lying still in the center of the arena while another raised his arms in victory. Blood darkened the sand around the victor’s feet in big splotches. A pool of it surrounded the body on the ground, slowly growing in size.
The lone man standing spun to face the crowd in all directions, turning his body slowly until he faced us. When our eyes met, his face broke into a smile and he pointed his arm, which I now saw was holding a sword, straight at us.
“Son of a bitch,” Santo hissed. “He’s got my machetes. That fucking thief.”
“Who is that?” I squinted, now seeing more clearly that the fighter’s blade was shorter than a sword’s and curved up at the end. Only one was in his hand, the other sticking out of the chest of the man on the ground.
“The Bulldozer.”
“Well, even bigger problem.” The Bulldozer gestured at us with his free hand, a mocking-friendly motion to come out and play. “He’s armed and we’re not.”
“There’s a rack of weapons we can grab. A lot of crappy, rusted-out shit, but better than nothing. It’s to the right of us, but we have to make a mad dash.”
“Do we stand a chance against this guy?” I watched the Bulldozer wave Santos’ weapon around, grab his crotch, and stick his tongue out. True to his name, the guy was huge. And he knew fighting well enough to survive this long and stab a guy in the chest.
“If the two of us are armed?” Santos tilted his head from side to side like he was weighing the options. “Maybe.”
“Okay, get weapons. Good plan. Anything else I should know?”
“Yeah.” He leveled that dark stare at me. “Rori better be on her way right fucking now. Because they won’t stop the fights until one or both of us is dead.”
Shit, how could I forget that part? One man standing was the only rule in the gladiator ring.
“So we gotta stall for time,” I said. “Potentially alotof time.”
“We can’t let the audience get bored. As long as we’re entertaining, they’ll keep it going.”
“Well, shit. How do we do that while not dying?”
“Improvise. Switch up your weapons. Get naked and run laps around the pit, I dunno.”
“Fuck.” I scrubbed my face because my eyes were still fucking killing me.
“One more thing.” Santos took a long pause. “If you can make a kill, don’t hesitate. Just do it. Make it quick and painless, if that’s your thing. But if you hesitate, the other fighterwillkill you first. Understand?”
“Yeah, I got it.” I clenched my hands to hide the shaking in my fingers. Fighting and shooting were well-honed skills of mine, but I never imagined I’d be in a position to take someone else’s life. Logically, I knew now was not the time to puss out. It was survive or die, as simple and brutal as that. But I’d never been in a position where I’d had to finish the job before, nor had I asked myself if it was something I was capable of.
Guess I was about to find out.
Not that I was about to bring that up to Santos. He had enough on his plate and didn’t need to be shouldered with giving me a pep talk on top of everything.
For a moment though, I envied him. He seemed like a nice dude, and he obviously cared about Rori. But as his gaze focused on the arena, jaw clenched and brows down in concentration, I saw the cold, detached killer that this place had made out of him.
It wasn’t that I envied what he’d been through, just that he could turn off all emotion and do what he needed to survive. He wouldn’t hesitate. The fact that he was still here was living proof that he never had.
