Page 27 of Reaper
Pro tip: don’t do that.Even if you’ve got a magical constitution and the stamina of a horse, don’t drink Tijuana well drinks for seven days straight, even if it’s to win a bet.Odds are, if you survive, you won’t remember what the bet was for, and if you do, you’ll realize that it wasn’t worth the dysentery.
Harker, are you okay?Becks asked.You’ve been kinda fucked up for days now.
Yeah, I hit my head.A lot.And they blocked my magic.But I’m better now.How’s it coming getting a fix on my location?There can’t be too many places this size in Charlotte.
There aren’t, but we don’t really know if you’reinCharlotte.You were unconscious for a while, so we’ve had to expand our search out to about a hundred-mile radius.You could be in Greensboro, Columbia, or anywhere in between.
Fuck.Okay, keep working it.I think I’m gonna have to fight tonight, and I expect it’s gonna suck.I kinda pissed off the bosses getting into a fight in the dining hall the other day, so this is probably going to be some kind of punishment bout.
You, piss off an authority figure?Quelle fucking surprise, Babe.
Yeah, love you too.
Her tone turned serious.Be careful, shithead.I do love you, and we haven’t found you yet, so stay alive until the cavalry can get there.
Yes, ma’am.I sent her a mental image of me saluting and tamped down our connection so I could focus on the grinning ginger in my dorm room.I took the pillow off my head.“That helps,” I said, pulling power in and pouring it into the injuries to my brain.“Couldn’t have done that shit forty-eight hours ago?”
“We could have, yes,” Pete said.“But the Boss thought you might actually learn something if we let you suffer a little bit.”
“Little does he fucking know,” I said.
“That’s the argument I made, too, but he’s the Boss.You’ve got the rest of the day to heal up, then it’s into the ring with you tonight.And it’s going to be agoodone.”
Well, that nasty little grin sealed it—this was definitely a punishment bout.My money was on either Yannis getting to gnaw me a new asshole for embarrassing him in the mess, or Maris getting to play with me like a cat toy for a while before he left me half-drained and completely shattered in the middle of the sand.Neither one was appealing, but I just sucked it up and smiled at Pete.
“How long do I have to get ready?I could use another shower and a change of clothes.”
“It’s ten in the morning, so you’ve got all day.You’ll have unfettered access to your magic until an hour before the bell, so you can heal.Then you’ll get shackled back down to Tier Three levels for the fight.You’re still Tier Three, so it’s incapacitation of surrender, except for this fight, surrender is not allowed.You will fight until one of you can no longer compete.And the audience will decide when you can’t continue.So knocking your opponent out might not be enough.They’re going to want to see blood, and a lot of it.”
“So you assholes can just change the rules whenever you feel like it?”I asked.“That’s bullshit.What about the guys who are here voluntarily?Doesn’t that kinda fuck them?”
Pete looked at me like I was a particularly stupid first-grader caught eating paste.“You don’t think the guys who volunteer for this shit are here to cause as much chaos as fucking possible?Come on, Murray, don’t be obtuse.The guys like Maris are here for the mayhem; they love this shit.It’s losers like you with some kind of fucking moral compass that think things should be fair.Everybody else knows that fair is bullshit.”
Wow.This was a new Pete.I guess when he had to threaten to detonate every collar in the lunchroom, he decided that kind, gentle Opie-Pete wasn’t working and he needed to go full on tough love.Only without the love.“So no more smiles and pats on the back, huh?All business from now on?”
I thought I saw a flicker of sadness dance across his face, but then it was gone.“It’s always been all business, Murray.Every once in a while I try to make people believe that somebody in power gives a shit about them because there are some fighters who perform better that way, but most people here don’t give a shit about a carrot.For most of you fuckers, all stick is the way to go.I thought you might be different, but then you had to go and pick a fight with Maris.Can’t have anybody damaging one of our biggest draws, not that I think you had a snowball’s chance to hurting the vamp anyway.”
“Don’t sell me short, dickhead,” I growled.“I had him right where I wanted him.”
“Standing over you while you counted the birdies spinning around your concussed ass?”Pete asked with a snort.“Here’s some breakfast,” he said, tossing a pair of takeout containers on the floor and pulling a Coke can out of his cargo pants.“Eat up.You’re gonna need it.”Then he spun on his heel and left me to my food and my shower, in that order.
He was right, I needed all the energy I could consume just to heal myself, and I powered through what felt like half a dozen scrambled eggs, at least half a pound of bacon, and about eight sausage links before I stopped instantly burning every calorie I put in my body to heal.By the time I licked the Styrofoam containers clean and sucked the sides flat on the Coke, I felt almost like myself again.I was still weak from lying in bed for days, but I could move my head without wanting to puke and I wasn’t in any serous pain.
I took a shower, pulled on some clothes, noting that my previously tight t-shirt hung loose on me after burning so much body fat to heal, and did some light stretching to loosen up my muscles.I moved from stretches into a few easy katas, then did about thirty minutes of yoga before sitting on the floor to meditate, draw in enough power to keep my batteries topped off once they throttled my magic again, and tried to rest.
I left my room for lunch feeling much better, but the dining hall was almost completely empty.I asked one of the servers what was up and was told that most fighters had been eating in their quarters since the big dustup.I’d seen enough of those walls for a while, so I picked out a prime spot where my back wasn’t exposed and tucked into a huge plate of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and mac and cheese.It was good mac and cheese, too, not the stuff out of a box.I mean,Hawkeyewas right, boxed mac and cheese is delicious, but this shit was off the hook.
I was just contemplating not if I was getting dessert but how many desserts I was going to get when a massive shadow fell across my table.I looked up into the mournful face of Yannis, the wolf who had been trying to murder me just a few days earlier.
“May I sit?”he asked.
I nodded, and he put down his tray and lowered himself onto the bench opposite me.This left his back completely exposed to the entrance and most of the room, so he was taking a massive risk doing this, a fact that was not lost on me.
“I must apologize to you for Thursday morning,” Yannis said, in one of the most surprising conversational openers I’ve experienced in my ridiculously long life.
“It’s cool,” I said, in that kinda mumbly was dudes talk when they know they’re supposed to say something but have no goddamned idea what they’re supposed to say.
“No, it is not cool,” Yannis insisted.“I should not have threatened Anthony.My pride was wounded from losing to Maris, and I behaved poorly, causing everyone to suffer.This is not how an Alpha should behave to a lesser creature.I am sorry.”
