Page 51 of The Last True Hero
Fifteen
MEN AND WOMENhowled their fury, shaking fists and calling offers as Adam stalked down the aisle with Mia at his side. The canyon at the back of the town was round, hollowed out by what looked like millennia of water running through it, and it formed the perfect arena.
The War Games. He had a feeling he knew exactly what was going to go down. The air had that feel of violence to it, like a thunderstorm about to shatter the peace of the evening.
Yes, whispered the warg within him, scenting the fury in the air around it.
It had been restless ever since they entered this godforsaken place.
There were benches carved into the sandstone, and they were covered with maybe two hundred reivers. A huge wire fence circled the arena, with a couple of strands of wire at the top. As a moth flew into one of those strands, it sparked and the moth's ash carcass dropped to the floor. Huge generators stood at either end of the arena, no doubt providing the electricity, and a couple of flare lights lit the sands. Thousands of insects buzzed in the path of the light.
At the center of it all stood Vex Cypher in her wolf fur, despite the heat from the lights. She held her arms up in the air, and the reivers packed into the arena screamed their love of her. He barely knew the woman, but her face seemed lit from within at the sounds of their adulation.
And that told him enough.
He'd considered Vex dangerous: anyone with this much power over a slave town was. But now he wondered just what drove her. She didn't do this for the profit, she did it for the awe of having others kiss her boots, and that made her temperament unpredictable.
Women in gauzy white danced in the arena. Mia stumbled against his side when she saw them, for they all wore collars. He caught her and they shared a look, but he couldn't afford to look too compassionate.
There were more people held as slaves here than he'd anticipated.
"Watch your feet," he told her, in a harsh voice that belied the look in his eyes.
Ahead of them stalked Zarina Cypher, who looked dangerous in leather. She hadn't said much as she showed them their rooms. Just: "I'll be back in half an hour. Don't be late."
For all of her mother's showmanship, Zarina was the opposite. She ignored the crowd as she led them directly toward Vex's stand of chairs. Somehow she seemed insulated, locked away from it all. Vex was easy to make out. Dangerous, unpredictable, damn near psychotic. But Zarina was a mystery, just like her surname.
"Here," Zarina said, gesturing them to the row of chairs set behind Vex's throne. "Nero, bring beer."
The blond slave nodded and slid to his feet with an elegant grace.
"Boys and girls!" Vex called, stepping up onto the thick rail that ran along the front of her box. The wolf fur slid from her shoulders, pooling on the floor around her boots. "Are you ready for the War Games!"
The crowd screamed back at her, but Adam couldn't take his eyes off the fur on the floor.
The fur wasn't from a wolf. He could just make out hints of a monstrous face tangled in the bottom of it.
Vex Cypher wore the skin of a warg in beast form.
He didn't know why that made him cold. Wargs were monsters through and through, but they'd been human once. Every time he put a silver bullet through one of their skulls he made it quick, because that could be him one day. Taken over by the beast inside him and forced to crave flesh and blood. There was no worse fate known to man than to lose himself so completely, and to be utterly powerless about it.
He looked up, sensing eyes on him. Zarina didn't disguise the fact she'd been watching his face. Her dark almond-shaped eyes glittered with something he couldn't name.
Vex continued, hurling out encouragement and ratcheting the tension in the arena higher. Every now and then something roared in the distance, like a throttle or an engine being gunned. It seemed to vibrate in the rock beneath his feet.
Vex waited a moment to take it all in before she lifted her hand, palm held flat. "Last man standing! Begin!"
She chopped her hand down sharply.
There was a coughing grumble of engines and then a huge truck came screaming out of one of the caves beneath the stands, its front grill transformed by iron spikes, and its flatbed empty. Another car exploded out of the darkness hot on its heels, and this one looked like someone had fused together an iron porcupine with a turtle.
Car after car exited the tunnels. The dancers fled, vanishing into a smaller tunnel, and sand and smoke sprayed as the cars and trucks circled the floor at breakneck speed.
They'd all been heavily modified, with spears welded to their hoods and enormous crush bars on the front. One of them limped along behind the others, but someone had removed the wheels and undercarriage and mounted the top of the car on the bottom of a tank.
Steel screamed as the truck slammed one of the cars into the stone walls at the back of the arena. The tank-car inexorably pushed another into the walls, and slowly rode up over the hood, crushing the other car beneath it.
There was a man inside it, screaming.
