She crumpled the paper in her palm and stuffed it into her jeans pocket.
A large sliding door not far from where she sat, just beneath the crowd's feet, groaned open and Nik hobbled inside. She stared after him. His body was hunched over; she could see that he was having difficulty breathing. When his body was clothed in shadow he collapsed. Jaz jumped up from her seat, leaning over the barrier. She could just make out Carr and another Were as they lifted him to his feet before the door closed.
She muttered through her hand, “Please don't let him die.” She looked around the arena for Alf, the tears in her eyes blurring her vision. “I'll do anything,” she whispered. “Just please don't let him die.”
*
“It didn't work then?” Carr asked, dropping into his seat.
“It helped,” Nik said, his voice weak. “But I can't keep this up for long. Kain is strong, and he's not tiring out as quickly as I'd hoped.”
Stephanie shook her head. “I don't understand why these arena organizers don't have a cut-off point.”
“Oh, they do,” Carr said. “If it loses its entertainment value, they'll mix it up with fire and booby traps or weapons. Or other Weres from the same or different Packs just to spice it up. They can be pretty creative.”
“Why haven't they then?”
Carr shrugged.
“They will,” Nik replied as if he was putting Stephanie at ease. “Round four is usually where it gets... real... interesting.” He chuckled.
Stephanie watched him anxiously, knowing his slow speech was due to his inability to breathe normally.
“Sometimes they do a different thing in each round. But, I guess, because this isn't an ordinary duel, it's between Pack Leaders, they like to drag it out,” Carr added, massaging his furrowed brow with his fingers.
“Here.” Stephanie pressed another cup of coffee to Nik's chest. He gulped it down. “Need to be sick?”
He shook his head.
She checked his heart with her stethoscope whilst Nik wiped his mouth: saliva was dripping out of it like rain. Stephanie asked him about his other symptoms and he described it as though both his head and chest were being hacked at with an ice pick.
“Your pulse is weak,” Stephanie said, dropping the ear piece of her stethoscope round her neck. “The poison is still going strong. Eat some more acorns, keep awake with the coffee. There's nothing else I can do right now.”
*
“Where have you be-?” Jaz cut off the last of her sentence to stare at Alf. He looked so furious. “What happened?”
“Those twats won't allow the duel to stop. Even though Nik's clearly been ill!”
“Why?!” she charged. “It's cheating! It has to be cheating!”
“It is. But until they have proper proof they can't halt the fight.”
“Are they dense?! For fuck’s sake he might be dead by then! Are they gonna wait for him to die and then test the blood from his corpse?!”
He shook his head, rubbing his fingers through his hair angrily. “Okay, look, for the past three rounds, it's been plain hand-to-hand combat. All in the cage.”
“O-kay?” Jaz did not like the tone in his voice. He was treading on eggshells round her, which instantly set off alarm bells in her head.
“But they have to make it more interesting for the crowd.”
Jaz stared him down.
He squinted as if in pain. “So they basically told me that this round, they're gonna do just that.”
“H-how?”
“I don't know. But this round will end it either way.”
“End... it?”
He didn't meet her eyes, gazing across the arena instead.
She inhaled sharply. “We need to do something, Alf. We can't just sit here.”
“Nik told me not to put you in harm's way. I already broke that promise bringing you here.”
“Then why did you?” she demanded, her voice bitter.
“Because...” The roar of the crowd drowned out any words he might have said.
They both looked down as Nik reappeared.
Nik's minor wounds had started to heal, Jaz noticed, though he looked battered and bruised, especially across his torso and back. His left arm looked like he'd shoved it in a shredder and he had a slight limp.
Kain strode out at the same time, looking cleaner; some of his less serious wounds already healed. She then thought with venom that she didn't give a shit. She just wanted Nik to win.
As the two men approached the cage, Alf explained to Jaz that despite Nik being the stronger fighter, Kain had inflicted more damage because Nik had been blocking most of the time.
Kain hit whatever he could. His blows weren't very accurate and at times sloppy, but he was fast with them and the odds of hitting a decent spot were inevitable.
Nik never missed. His blows were always unerring and meticulous. He knew the anatomy, the weak spots, the places that hurt the most, that caused the greatest damage. But Alf had heard from others that Nik had seemed weak, out of breath and in a daze several times, which had got worse the longer he'd been in there, and that was when Kain's attacks had done serious harm.