Page 13 of Blood & Throttle
The crowd is feral. A mass of bodies packed into the pit’s rusted bleachers and makeshift scaffolding, all of them hungry for blood, for wreckage, for the next poor bastard to splatter across the track.
No one comes to The Gauntlet to watch a clean race. They come to watch machines burn, bones break, and men die screaming. They come to collect on bets, to drink, to fight, and to shove their fists in the air and roar for violence like it’s the only language they understand.
Tonight, I’m the show.
I hear it in the restless murmurs, the sneers, the bets still being placed.
“She won’t make it past the first turn.”
“Bitch doesn’t even belong here.”
“Five minutes. That’s all I’m giving her.”
They aren’t just waiting for the race to start, they’re waiting for me to fucking die.
And then, something changes.
The buzz of conversation shifts, confusion rippling through the pit. Someone shouts, another curses, and then my eyes snap to the massive digital betting screen hanging above the track.
A new wager flashes across it.
$1,000,000—Sienna Vega—TO WIN.
My stomach tightens as I hear the voices and snarls somewhere behind me.
“What the fuck is Carter playing at?”
“He just threw a mil on the dead girl?”
“Motherfucker bet against himself?”
It spreads fast.
Shock turns to anger. The bookies are pissed, the high-rollers are murmuring, and the tension in the pit shifts to being as sharp as a knife’s edge.
Riot Carter didn’t just bet on me.
He bet against himself.
I exhale slowly, keeping my face blank.
Riot Carter just bet on me.
The reigning champion of The Gauntlet, the undefeated bastard who’s put more bodies in the dirt than I can count, just threw money on mysurvival.
The pit reacts instantly. A ripple of low murmurs, tension so sharp it cuts through the smoke and oil-stained air like a livewire. Bets are placed before every race—on winners, on crashes, on how many poor bastards won’t make it to the finish line. The high rollers throw down fortunes, and the Syndicate makes sure the odds stay in their favor.
But The Gauntlet isn’t just one race—it’s six levels of hell designed to chew racers up and spit out whatever’s left.
First, the Qualifier. A warm-up round, if you can call a slaughter that. You don’t win, you don’t move on. Simple.
Then The Bone Yard. Wrecked factories, rusted-out shipping containers, rigged explosives, and snipers in the shadows. Blink, and you’re fucking gone.
The Concrete Graveyard. Crumbling highways, broken overpasses, and jumps where if you don’t hit full throttle, you plummet straight into nothing.
The Dead Zone. Underground tunnels—pitch black, riddled with traps, toxic gas, and things lurking in the dark that don’t need engines to kill you.
Neon Nightmare. A shifting cyberpunk hellscape where the track itself moves, holograms trick you into crashing, and the roads disappear right under your wheels.
