The dark angel ignored my question. He waved at his soldiers. “Well, what are you waiting for? Hit her again. And don’t stop until she’s down.”
Blasts of dark magic bombarded me from every direction. I tried to run out of their path, but I was too slow. I tried to resist, but my body was giving out. Fireworks of pain pounded at my head, dragging me into the abyss. And then everything went black.
25
The Arena
It was the smell that woke me up—the sweet, almost too-ripe scent. It was that brief, overwhelmingly sweet moment just before fruit became rotten. My stomach rumbled. I was starving. How long had I been out? How long had it been since I’d eaten? My lips were dry and cracked, my parched tongue as rough as sandpaper.
I forced my eyes open, squinting under the blinding lights. It took my vision several seconds to adjust. The first thing I saw was sand. Lots and lots of sand. It was bright yellow, the color of a banana. I lay on my side, my cheek pressed against sand as soft as velvet. That’s what I was smelling, what smelled so good: the sand. I wanted to eat it all. Fantasizing about eating sand? I must have finally lost my mind.
It all came rushing back to me. The attack on the Pioneers. Tessa and Gin behind the magic veil. The Deserter, now a dark angel of hell. He had my sisters. And he had me. He’d told me that he’d been waiting for me. He’d known I would come. Was this a trap? And why? What was it about me and my sisters that he wanted?
“You can’t possibly imagine how exhausting it is to listen to your thoughts,” the deserter said in a bored voice.
I pushed off the ground with my hands, rising to my feet. There he stood, his wings out, proud as a peacock.
He didn’t have to show his wings. Angels and dark angels could hide them; they could make them disappear completely. They brought them out when they wanted to make an impression—in this case, to intimidate me. Well, I wasn’t playing along.
I gave the dark angel’s wings a casual, dismissive look and declared, “I’ve seen bigger.”
The dark angel’s hard black eyes glowed like two smoldering lumps of coal. His lips drew back into a vicious smile. “Your smart mouth won’t help you here.”
Wherever here was. I looked around. I saw that the yellow sand did not cover a beach, and the bright lights weren’t from the tropical sun. Instead, I was trapped in a deep pit. It looked like a fighting arena, the kind where desperate supernaturals battled one another to earn enough cash to buy their next meal—or to feed their addictions. They fought, bled, and died all for the entertainment of the voyeuristic, bloodthirsty masses.
Back when I’d been a kid living on the streets of Purgatory, I’d seen a few of these tournaments, but I’d never fought in any of them. My lack of magic had saved me from that fate—that plus my quickness at avoiding the big scary underlings of the district lords who went out child-snatching on the streets. A few of us street kids would risk coming to the fights to steal money and food from the drunk spectators. None of us fought in the pits if we had a choice.
If a district lord found a kid with even a smidgeon of magic, they’d forced him or her into the fighting pit. The district lords would pit their prized child fighters against those of other district lords. There was no shortage of sick people who got a thrill out of watching little children fight—and sometimes kill—one another.
Fights would often break out amongst the speculators. Some people only came to the fights to get their blood pumping, to fight their neighbors, or watch their neighbors fight. The fighting in the stands drew even more people to the arena. It was a vicious cycle, a fantasy world outside reality, where you could succumb to your savage nature and behave in ways you normally could not under the gods’ strict order.
And the spectators could do all of this in perfect safety. The worst that ever happened to them was a broken lip or a bloody nose. They didn’t die like the fighters down in the pit. I’d always found it hard to believe that people would pay good money for a punch to the face, but, as Calli liked to say, intelligence wasn’t for everyone.
I looked at the deserter. “What am I doing here, Davenport?”
“That’s Soulslayer. Colonel Soulslayer.”
Right. Because he was a dark angel now, a soldier in hell’s army. He’d cast off his old name, right along with his soul.
“Soul slayer, huh?” I said. “Cute name. Did you pick it out all by yourself?”
He just glared at me, clearly unimpressed with my commentary.
“So how did you end up as a lapdog of hell?”
“How did you end up as a lapdog of heaven?” he shot back with a cruel smile. “Oh, that’s right. Your brother, a ghost, was abducted.”
He knew too much.
“And you know nothing at all,” he retorted.
He must have read my thoughts again. Damn it. I was too weak right now. My hollow stomach roared in agreement. I needed to eat something to boost my magic back up again.
The dark angel’s smile turned more vicious. A moment later, a beep screeched out from the surround speakers. A side door slid open, ushering a monster into the arena. Huge, black, and covered in scales, it looked like a dinosaur.
No, its dimensions were too elegant, too smooth. It wasn’t a dinosaur, I realized as it spread its translucent, black-purple wings. It was a dragon.
Its long dark tongue flickered out, lightning-fast. Green eyes the color of toxic acid locked onto me, and flames that matched those vicious eyes danced across its teeth. They were sharp and pointed, meant for tearing its prey apart. Violently.
I just stood there and gaped at it.
The dark angel let out a short laugh. “That’s more like it.”
Apparently, my shocked silence was highly amusing. I forced my dropped jaw closed. “I’ve never fought a dragon before,” I said, nonchalant.
The dragon stomped forward loudly. Under its feet, the sand popped up and down like popcorn. The beast was charging right at me. It sure didn’t waste time making friends.
I rolled out of its path, narrowly avoiding being trampled by a twenty-ton dragon. Then I jumped up, only to drop my body to the ground to avoid the gush of green flames that poured out of its mouth. I hopped back up and ran away, looking for a safe spot, a place to gather my thoughts and figure out what on Earth I could possibly do against a dragon.
Soulslayer, who was somehow now sitting up in the stands, protected behind a cage of Magitech much like the walls that kept out the monsters on Earth, grabbed me with his magic and pulled me into the dragon’s path. The dragon slashed me before I could get away. My arm bleeding, the leather of my jacket peeling away, I jumped onto the dragon’s back and ran up to its neck. If I stayed behind it, it couldn’t get to me.
Soulslayer’s magic blasted me off the dragon, and I fell to the ground with a thump. Pain exploded across my left side as several bones snapped. My breathing labored and heavy, my side bleeding and broken, I got up and threw an irked look at the dark angel up in the stands.
“Fight or die,” he said coolly.
Like that was even a choice. Somehow, I didn’t think the dragon was eager to open up a peaceful dialogue with me. It seemed too intent on tearing me to shreds.
I avoided the dragon’s swinging tail and jumped up to its back. Putting all my strength into it, powering through the agony in my ribs and the black spots dancing in front of my eyes, I broke a spike off the beast’s back. The dragon roared. I jumped down, spike in hand, and stabbed it through the dragon’s foot. The monster staggered, tripping over its own weight.
I didn’t have long before it came at me again, angrier than ever before. I ran for the side door the dragon had come through, trying to force it open.
But Soulslayer’s magic clamped down on my body. He tossed me at the thrashing dragon. I was nearly crushed under the beast’s feet as it tried to free itself from the spike. I rolled out of the way.
“I said fight, not run away,” the dark angel barked.
I glared up at him. “Well, it’s not really a fair fight, is it? Not with you interfering.”