Page 25 of Reaper
Sounded like Willy, the dead shifter whose body on the golf course had put this whole thing in motion.“How did he get started with the fights?He get shanghai’d like I did?”
“Not at all.It’s pretty rare that anybody who’s conscripted actually wins a fight.Usually you guys are just picked up, get your asses kicked in an opener against some Tier Two weenie who lost his last fight, and then you get dumped in an alley with a hundred bucks in your pocket.But Will got into betting on the fights, lost more than he could afford to lose, and started fighting to pay off his debt to the house.He was doing good, too, but you could tell his heart wasn’t in it.I knew he’d take the out.He wasn’t a killer.The Main Event scene was never going to work for him.”
“What about you?”I asked.“You a killer?”
“Nah, I’m a lifer, man.I fight on Tier Four one week, lose, fight Tier Three the next, win, then back to Four for another loss.I don’t want to kill anybody, either, but I like the fight.And I’m a faerie.I know as long as they don’t kill me, I’ll outlive all these idiots anyway, so as long as I’m young, I might as well have some fun, bust some heads, and eat for free.Plus this way, I don’t have to do whatever shit duty Oberon wants to make me do as punishment.”
Okay, now I was intrigued.“Why would Oberon want to punish you?”As someone who the King of Summer absolutely fuckinghated, I was always interested in hearing from another party on Obie’s shit list.
“I might have banged one of his maids,” Anthony said, dipping his head in mock embarrassment.
“I thought faeries weren’t into the whole monogamy thing?”Certainly none of the ones I’d known back in my Studio 54 days had been.
“They aren’t, but Oberon looks at his maids as more his property than his servants, so in his mind, I may as well have slept with Titania herself.Not that I would ever—” He held up his hands as if to stave off any possible offense.I waved his protests aside with a strip of bacon.The cooks in this joint were really good.The bacon was that perfect shade of almost burnt.
“I get it.You would never dream of besmirching her Royal Hotness in such a way.Plus, you’re scared she’d rip off your junk and stick it on her mantel alongside all her other former lovers’ equipment.”
“You’ve heard that story, too, huh?”
“Everybody’s heard that story, bud.At least everybody who deals in magic and might ever encounter a faerie.”I added that last part as I realized that not everybody had probably heard that story, and even fewer had seen the evidence with their own eyes, but that’s a story for much later.“I get it.Titania’s hot, but so far off limits as to be on another plane of existence.”
“Exactly,” my newfound friend agreed.
Titania’s hot, huh?Becks chimed in, reminding me yet again that there was a perennial hitchhiker on my dirtiest thoughts.I think this is another conversation we’re going to have when you get home.
Losing in the Main Event gets more appealing with every conversation I want to avoid,I replied.
Oh, no, Harker.You don’t get off that easily.If anybody murders your ass, it’s gonna be me.
Or him,I thought, looking up at the shadow that had just fallen across our table.Gotta go, babe.I think it’s time for the obligatory fight in the prison mess hall scene.
The heavily muscled were called Yannis stood glaring down at Anthony.“You talk too much, Tony.Tell too many stories.I shut you up now.”He talked like a cliche of a Russian mob goon, but from the look on Anthony’s face, he had the skills and strength to back up his threats.I guess it really was time for the fight in the dining room.I shoved the last of my bacon in my mouth as Tony stood up, palms out to try and defuse the situation.
I knew I was about to get in a fight, but that was no reason to let good bacon go to waste.
19
Istood up and got my legs clear of the picnic bench before looking up, and up, and up at Yannis.Not only was he packed with muscle, he was pushing seven feet tall, too.It was like somebody from Central Casting decided I shouldn’t fight anyone my height or smaller lately.“Hey buddy, no need to make a mess in the mess hall.Get it?”
My fake laugh got no more reaction than my dad joke.Tough room.Of course, given that most everybody in here was competing in the supernatural edition ofBloodsport, that tracked.Yannis just glared at me for half a second, then seemed to dismiss me as irrelevant and focused back on Anthony.
“You tell new guy I am pussy.That makes me look bad.Now I rip your head off and shit down your neck,” the wall of muscles with a mouth said, his lips twisted into a snarl.
“You ever seen anybody do that?”I asked.“Because I have.It’s way more disgusting than it sounds, and that’s a high bar.So why don’t you give Tony one good slap across him overactive mouth, then go back and finish your brekkies with your pals over there.We don’t need to get blood and entrails splattered all over everybody’s eggs, do we?”
That got his attention.The big wolf turned his glare fully on me, and I could see this was a glare that cowed men’s souls, as it were.I mean, normal men who haven’t had a sliver of demon wrapped around said soul since birth.To me it just looked like another overgrown shithead making weird faces at me while his nostrils flared.But I’m not easily cowed.
“You want to die in his place?”Yannis asked.“You want me to shit downyourneck?”
I raised both hands in a sign of supplication.“Trust me, big guy, I do not want anything to do with you shitting, either down my neck or anywhere else.I’ll go so far as to say I have less than zero interest in any part of your digestive system, your asshole, or anything in between.I just want you to fuck off so I can get another one of those yummy parfaits.I’m a sucker for granola and yogurt with the little chunks of fruit in them.”
This obviously confused Yannis.I was neither cowering in fear nor bowing back up to match aggression with aggression, and the predator side of him, which seemed to be like ninety percent of his makeup, was baffled.I have that effect on people.Snark is my superpower.Along with strength, speed, durability, healing, and magic—you know, myactualsuperpowers.
But confused predators only react in one of two ways.They either attack, or they flee.And with a dining hall full of people he’d have to fight soon watching, Yannis’s flee reflex was pretty well suppressed.Which I’d expected when I first opened my mouth.I knew there was going to be a fight, and I knew I was going to get dragged into it.At least this way, I could control when the violence popped off.
And pop off it did.Yannis didn’t bother going over or around the table to get to me.He just reached down and yanked the table up, shearing the aluminum legs off from the bolts holding them to the concrete.He tossed the whole thing over his shoulder without looking, and a couple of other fighters had to scurry to get out of the way.Neither of them had the presence of mind to save their literal bacon, I noticed.
I didn’t have much time to feel smug about my culinary reflexes because in one big step, Yannis loomed over me, panting and flaring those nostrils.I might not have any interest in his asshole, but I was giving serious thought to poking a couple fingers up those noseholes and pulling him around by the snout.And this was in hishumanform.
