Page 52 of The Last True Hero
No, not a man. A reiver. Adam blinked slowly. It didn't make any difference. No one deserved to die like that.
"My money's on RoJo," Vex said, watching the spectacle with glittering eyes.
Two cars drove into each other, and one flipped up over the other, landing on its back like a turtle. The crowd screamed, fists waving, and men moving through the aisles offering odds on some battle that was coming up next. Adam took the seat Nero directed him to.
It was over blessedly soon, with the reiver from the truck staggering out of his crushed metal carcass and holding his arms in the air as the announcer pronounced his victory. Vex thrilled at the spectacle, and turned back to her party as the cars and bodies were dragged from the ring.
"Just a starter," she promised. "Next up is the Creature Feature, and that's the one we don't want to miss. Ten wargs, only the winner survives."
Adam accepted the mug of beer that Nero offered him, nearly spilling it in surprise. "You fight wargs?"
"What the hell else are you supposed to do with them? They're a plague on the countryside, and when all it takes is one scratch from their claws or teeth to start the transformation, they'd overrun us fairly quickly if they wanted to," Vex said. "My reivers hunt down as many wargs as they can. Cleans them out of my territory, gives my reivers something to do, and this"—she gestured to the arena—"pays for their upkeep."
"Until they die on the sands," Adam said softly.
Jake shot him a sidelong glance from where he sat, with Ellie at his feet.
"Where do you keep them?" Adam asked. He couldn't let it go. The warg within him seemed to have curled up tight and small, which was unusual. He'd never felt fear from it before. "Aren't you scared they'll escape?"
Vex snorted. "Not from my cages they won't. I keep them below the arena, and the only way for them to get out is if someone lets them out. My warg cages are Confederacy-made. Nothing's getting out of them once they're in it."
Another link to the Eastern Confederacy. Was this how Vex was paid?
A female reiver begged her captors as they dragged her toward two enormous posts at the edge of the arena. Ignoring her, the guards chained her between the posts, and stepped back out of the way as the crowd began to chant.
"Slash! Slash! Slash!" cried a section of the crowd nearby.
"What are they doing with her?" Mia whispered in his ear. She'd curled against his shoulder, as if a little intimidated.
She was just sheltered enough that the answer didn't spring immediately to mind. Adam, however, had seen far too much of human nature. Maybe it wasn't the wargs that people should fear. "She's their prize."
"Correct," Vex said, sipping her drink and proving just how much attention she was paying to their little group. "Bitch tried to steal from me. I might make her sweat a bit before I rescue her and send her to the slave markets. Or I might just let the match decide her fate."
He flinched as the iron gates at the opposite side of the arena rattled open, and a warg spilled into the midst of the sands in full shift. A monster of disjointed proportions, its black fur shaggy and thick, it ran on all four feet, revealing lean flanks and enough ribs to show how hungry it was.
Vex clearly didn't pay too much for their upkeep after all.
Adam's nostrils flared. He sat up and clasped his hands behind his head, trying to feign nonchalance, but seeing the beast below him confronted all of his worst fears. He felt like he couldn't breathe.
Hurtling forward, its silver eyes gleamed feral as it launched itself at the woman. She screamed, and the warg hit the end of the chain that was leashed to the collar at its throat. Its legs whipped out in front of it as it hit the ground.
The crowd roared.
"They give their women to the monsters?" Mia breathed.
Monsters.... She might as well have cut out his heart.
"Mia." He rested a hand on her knee, aware that she saw herself down in that ring just as much as he did. Only, both of them took a different perception of events. "Keep your voice down." A quick glance showed that no one was paying attention. A second warg had been brought into the pit, and this one moved slowly, still mostly a man, unlike the other one that scuttled about on all fours and snapped and snarled on its leash.
"And the match you've all been waiting for...." The announcer laughed. "His opponent, Reaper!"
The huge warg in his leather pants pumped both fists toward the sky. Matted fur clung to his monstrous head, his wolf teeth snapping. Another section of the crowd cheered.
Now that Reaper stood in the ring, the warg on all fours eyed him, his lip curling back slowly.
Without the medallion around his throat, that could be him down there. Half-human, half-animal, all monster. There was nothing as terrifying in his life as that thought.
I'd rather kill myself.
