Page 39 of Reaper
I got it then.“And if I win, you have to fight me next and only one of us gets out of that alive.”
“Exactly.”
I leaned in and gave him the one-armed bro hug, and as my head neared his, I whispered, “Stay on your toes.I don’t plan on losing, and I don’t plan on killing you in a week, either.So pay attention and when Plan C comes along, jump in.”
He pulled back, a confused look on his face, but he nodded.“Good luck, Murray.”
“Thanks, bud.”And I stepped up to the door, waiting on my cue to enter.
Pete pulled the door open, and I stepped out into a darkened arena.I took about five steps forward, then a spotlight hit me.I’ve got enough of a sense of the theatrical to stand still, with my head down as the ring announcer spoke into his microphone.
“Ladies and Gentlebeasts, please welcome to the ring the newest challenger to our four-time champion Eleanor the Red.Remember, if she wins tonight, she becomes a Grand Champion and her name will be etched forever onto the Wall of Heroes in the lobby.But before that happens, she has to get through one of the most electrifying combatants we’ve ever seen here in the Colosseum.He is the nightmare walking, he is the random chromosome, he is the beast that walks out of the valley of the shadow of death.Please welcome tonight’s challenger…MURRAY JAMES!!!”
I raised my head and threw my arms in the air, letting multicolored streamers of magic flow out of my fingertips to cascade all around me.The crowd went nuts, even though I knew damned well not a one of them had bet more than the price of a lunch on my winning.But I didn’t give a shit.Becks said she was on her way, and I’d been fighting vampires since before I fought Nazis, so all I had to do was hold on long enough for the cavalry to arrive, and we could shut this place down.Then all I needed to do was some good old-fashioned detective work, follow the money, and find the asshole making paras and cryptids fight to the death for the amusement of a bunch of rich asshats.
As the applause for me died down, “We Will Rock You” came over the loudspeakers, and the whole crowd started stomping and clapping in unison.Stomp-stomp-clap, stomp-stomp-clap.Freddy Mercury’s voice split the air, and colored beams of light played all across the sand as the house lights went out again.Just as the chorus kicked in and all the attendees started screaming in unison, the lights spun faster and faster until they all flashed white and focused on the figure standing a hundred feet away from me on the other side of the arena.
“AND NOW, please welcome back to the arena your champion, the sanguine mistress of mayhem, the blood-drinking battering ram of brutality, the death dealer, the soul stealer, the one and only…ELEANORRRRR!!!”
If I thought the crowd was nuts after my intro, they went completely unhinged at this shit.There was screaming, there were flowers thrown, and there were proclamations of undying love and proposals of marriage.It was like Taylor Swift and the Beatles all showed up for the same party, with Elvis driving their limo.
I looked across the sand at Eleanor mugging for the crowd and kinda felt bad for her.She didn’t seem all that awful for a centuries-old creature that legit has to murder people to live.And she had no idea that she was standing across the ring from the guy mama vampires tell little baby vampires stories about to get them to behave.She thought I was Murray James, kinda goofy wizard who got lucky a few times and she was about to rip into little pieces for the entertainment of the one percenters.
She had no fucking idea what she was in for.
31
Unlike all the other bouts I’d been in at the Colosseum, this one had a bell.An actual bell, like we were in a legitimate sporting event or something.I didn’t know there was a bell, but I wasn’t going to move before Eleanor did because the last thing I wanted to do was to give anything away to an opponent that dangerous.So even though I was a little caught off guard when the bell rang, at least it didn’t interrupt me trying to make some kind of fancy attack or something.
Eleanor, on the other hand, absolutely knew there was a bell coming, and the second it rang, she launched herself at me.Apparently, she had zero interest in making a good show of things, and knew she wasn’t getting paid by the hour, so she wanted to get this shit over with as quickly as possible.And with most opponents, just rushing at them from the left at full vampire speed would get the job done.I bet she’d ended more than one fight in the first few seconds, leaving her opponent with his throat in her teeth before the sound of the bell faded.
But I wasn’t any opponent, and I wasn’t watching her hands, or her feet, I was watching her eyes.So when the bell rang, and her eyes flicked to her right, I knew the attack was coming from my left.I sprang back about six feet, letting her pass through the space I’d recently occupied, then diving at her from behind when she stopped, confused.I tackled her around the waist, driving her face into the sand.
Normally I retain enough of my Victorian/Edwardian upbringing to be loath to strike a woman, but when the “woman” hasn’t been human since before we invented the telephone, I give my chivalry a rest.So I drove her into the ground like an NFL linebacker and slammed an elbow into the back of her head.Vampires are just as susceptible to concussions as humans, and the best way I know to negate their speed advantage (other than decapitation) is to rattle their noggin enough that they’re too dizzy to run at top speed.
But they also heal even faster than me, so any damage I did would repair itself in minutes, if not seconds.And a concussion doesn’t make someone weaker.Eleanor got her hands underneath her body and shoved upward, sending me flying into the air to land flat on my back.But she wasn’t fast enough to catch me in midair and rip my head off, so I had half a second after I slammed into the sand to roll up onto my feet and block her slashing strike at my midsection.
I glanced at her hand, seeing a gleam of metal, and saw that she had on blade-tipped gloves.Not quite a dime-store Wolverine, it looked more like cat’s claws, only metal.Yet another reason I didn’t want to let her get her hands on me.I kicked at her face, and she stepped back, easily avoiding my shot.But I didn’t want impact, I wanted separation.I called power and flung three-inch spheres of pure energy at her, driving her back again and again.
Then I called up my soulblade and grinned at her across the floor.“Let’s dance.”
The feral smile that crept across her face matched my own, and she said, “Indeed, Mr.James.Indeed.”
I almost outed myself right then, knowing that I could get a few seconds’ advantage by telling her who I really was, but at the last instant I remembered the exploding collar around my neck.Probably shouldn’t out myself as the Reaper until we found some way to make sure nobody could blow my head off with a garage door opener.
Eleanor leapt high into the air, her metal claws extending as she did and making me second guess my assessment that she wasn’t a Wolverine clone somebody ordered off wish.com.I watched the arc of her leap and spun a quick glamour around myself, making it appear that I was standing perfectly still waiting to strike, when actually I stepped three feet to the left and readied my sword for a slash that would cut her in half the moment she landed.
Except you don’t get to win four Tier Five death matches by being stupid.Eleanor must have realized something wasn’t right in me just standing there, and instead of landing in a strike, dropped all the way to her belly as my blade whistled right over her head.She spun around and kicked my feet out from under me, making it my turn to slam into the dirt.Again.My hands flew open on impact, making my soulblade vanish, and I brought them together in front of me, spinning a shield of energy over my chest to deflect the claws coming for my entrails.
Eleanor’s hands slid off my shield and she slammed into me, driving the breath from my lungs again.She wasn’t very big, but solidly muscled, and she managed to drive a knee into my crotch as she scrambled off me.Even through my shield, I felt that shit.I rolled over and hopped up, whipping my head around to find her again, only to feel lines of fire blaze across my unprotected back as she got in a good slice.
“Fuck!”I yelled, profanity being a scientifically proven pain reliever.
“Too slow, Murray,” she almost purred in my ear.“Time to die.”I felt her hot breath on my neck and bent sharply at the waist, getting my carotid out of the way in the nick of time.Vampires can’t drink from me and get any nutrients, on account of my weird part-vampire DNA, but an opened artery would still kill me in seconds, and dead is usually dead, whether I’m food or not.
I kicked backward, slamming my heel into her crotch and lifting her off the floor.That loosened her grip enough for me to break free of her, leaving bloody furrows from every fingertip along my arms and shoulders, but giving me that blessed separation again.I spun around, put both palms out, and shouted “Forzare!” channeling pure kinetic energy at her to blast her across ten feet of sand.Eleanor, as much a showman as a warrior, turned her backward momentum into a flip and landed, sliding across the floor in a perfect Black Widow pose.
“Poser,” I said with a smirk, channeling my inner Florence Pugh.Then I called more power and shouted “FUEGO!” Fire streaked from my fingertips in ten narrow bands, cutting off the side-to-side escape routes.Eleanor shrieked as a tendril of flame burned her left thigh, and sprang straight up again, apparently deciding that the best way to avoid getting burned was to murder the one throwing fire at her.
