A Sinister Game (37 page)

Take my strength, Rose.

Victoria
lowered her head, hardened her gaze, and
dug down deep, scooping out everything she had
inside of her
and yanking it out of her core
with merciless determination.

The attack
would have been a
fast and furious
di
splay of light leader power
, the kind that had
initially
earned her a team
on the Field
and her place at its head. It
was
meant to be
the kind that had
drawn Game Control to her and her sister to begin with.

It would have been that and much more.

Flames erupted in her pupils, her gold eyes took on a heated glow, and her hands disappeared behind
crackling, swirling
balls of flame.
Waves of sweltering temperature rippled around her form as she rose swiftly
and unnaturally
, like a specter,
to her feet.

She funneled every maniacally enraged emotion she could conjure into that fire. She thought of her mother and father, her nanny, her sister. She thought of the mind wiping machines at Game Control, Arthur One and his misogynistic sickness, and she thought of the thousands of other innocents that would be ripped from their families and lives for the sake of draining the old gods in order to make this one man – this man right
here
– more powerful.

She hated him.

So she
tried to
let it show.
That hatred would have
shot forward like a
volcanic juggernaut
, washing across the landscape as if it were a tidal wave after a bomb going off. Tree
s along the clearing’s edge would have been incinerated, s
hrubs and gr
asses turned to ash, the ground scorched
black.

But something went wrong. The Game Lord was expecting the attack. He reacted before he should have – reaching down and opening the lid of the black box before he held it out toward her.

The air rippled as heat waves
escaped Victoria’s glowing form
… and the box absorbed them. It absorbed
everything
, taking in the heat, taking in the fire, taking in the light. It grew stronger and brighter
, and as it did, n
othing else around it was touched.

Finally e
xhausted, Victoria slumped against the wall behind her.
Her body felt drained of vitality. She’d had so little to begin with.

Without wasting a beat, the Game Lord
crowded her
, grabbing her wrist
in a steely grip
and holding it fast.
She tried to pull away, a futile attempt at stubborn resistance. The Game Lord’s
slate colored eyes
filled with warning
. His grip
on her wrist tightened to the point of bruising pain
.

“Give me the saps
!” He barked an order, his eyes never leaving hers, and a Game Control guard was there beside him,
handing something to his master
.

They were neutralizing bracelets
.
Seconds later, the
wretched saps were on her wrists and Victoria felt
hope slip away
.

* * * *

Victor watched as the gods fell to their knees. It
happened so fast; it took seconds, no more.

Ullr w
as the last to go down
. When he did
fall from where he’d been standing directly behind Blood, Maxwell slowly
turned around
and pinned his champion god with a bewildered
, wide-eyed
expression.

What Ullr had done to him, Victor had no idea. But he wasn’t going to waste his time dwelling on it. Blood’s temporary distraction afforded him the brie
f respite he needed to reach
Victoria.

He
peered through the swirling
snowflakes
and windblown dirt, searching for her sleeping form.

Instead
,
he found her
in the custody of a pair of Game Control guards. S
he wore neutralizing bracelets, and w
orst of all – directly in front of her stood the Game Lord.

Victor
bolted toward them
, a furious rush of adrenaline spurring his body
into blurring speed. He wanted to tear
her fr
om the Game Lord’s grasp and
freeze the fucking guards into human popsicles. He
wanted
to telekinetically rip a hole in the Game Lord’s throat
and then send him into a
coma that he would never come out of.
Or better yet, he would rip his throat out with his bear hands.

But he didn’t manage any of that. He never even managed
a single step.

Because Maxwell Blood’s sword slid easily between the ribs in Victor’s broad
back, sliced cleanly through muscle and organ, and then exited
silently and fatally, through his chest.

Victor
looked
down in time to catch the glint of metal as several snowflakes landed on the
wet
blade and slowly melted.

T
hen Bloody Max was pulling the blade back out.

And Victor was falling to his knees.

A woman screamed, a terrible
guttural
sound, but it was indistinct and drowned slightly by the sound of Victor’s blood rushing through his ears.

“Did you really th
ink I would let you win
, Black?”

Victor heard the words, muffled as they were, and processed them as he fell
. His knees hit the frozen ground,
and droplets of blood splattered across the rime that
coated it
. He knew they were his.

“You’ve been trouble since the day y
ou were brought to the Field.” There were m
uted footfalls as Blood’s boots slowly paced around Victor’s kneeling form.

Victor looked up; he could feel the light had gone from his eyes and they were no longer glowing
. He blinked against the falling snow. Maxwell Blood smiled down at him.

“You don’t deserve her, Black,” Max said. He shook his head. “She’s more precious than you can imagine.”

Victor noticed the blood at the side of Max’s mouth, more under his nose, and a deep cut at the corner of his slightly swollen left eye.

I put up a fight
,
Victor thought vaguely.
At least I die in battle.

Max
pulled his gaze off of Victor and
lifted his sword to study the blood on its blade
. “I’ve thoug
ht about doing this for years, b
ut Victoria has always had a thing for you. Ev
en when she was thinking of me on the surface,
I could hear her thinking about
you
underneath.” He made a face
as if the thought disgusted him. Then he sighed. “
Had I done anything, s
he would have
just
healed you.”

Max glanced over his shoulder, toward something that Victor could not see, and a cruel smile graced his lips. “That won’t be happening today.”

He turned back to face Black and Victor could barely look up at him.
There was a yawning pain in his chest, a spreading emptiness.
Something was very wrong. Things were messed up inside of him.
It was a
nauseating truth. Blood’s blade had wreaked havoc on his body.

“But just to make sure,” Max said.

Victor felt th
e words, more than heard them. They were a
death sentence, both l
iteral and figurative.

A moment later, Max’s sword was plunging
once more through his chest, the
second
impact jolting and slicing
in the most horrible way. He heard the blade
go in, l
ouder than any sound anywhere else around him
.

Blood twisted the
blade as it exited through Victor
’s back
.
Victor heard muscle and tendon pop and tear.

T
his
is it
,
he thought.

Max
yanked his weapon
back
out of Victor’s broken body and
took a step back.

Victor saw the
ground coming up at him. He raised his arms, barely managing to catch himself as he fell forward.

The captain of the Red team s
aid nothing further.
Somewhere overhead, a shadow receded. Victor heard him leave,
waning
footsteps in a
falling snow
.

* * * *

Victoria
saw
Max thrust his
long sword into Victor’s back, and s
he could barely believe what she w
as seeing. It shocked her to her
core, slowing her reaction. She hadn’t been able to warn him. Astonishment left her no time.

She heard a woman scream and realiz
ed only at length
that it was her own voice piercing the wretched distance between herself and Victor Black.

“Give her to me,”
the Game Lord commanded
.

Just as she vaguely realized it was her screaming, s
he
also
realized that she was struggling fiercely, her only desire
to get
to Black and heal him. She tried to call out to her
captain, order him to stop and
beg him to stand down. But the Game Lord’s arms wrapped around her
like steel coils
,
and his gloved hand slid tightly over
her mouth.

When Victor fell to his knees and Max slowly paced around him, dread unlike any other crept through Victoria’s shaking body. And when he pulled his sword arm back to strike again, Victoria couldn’t turn away. She was held too tight.

So, she closed her eyes instead, a mise
rable sob trapped in her throat. It wracked
her body with grief.
W
hen Max’s sword pierced Victor’s heart, Victoria
knew
.

No
,
she thought.
This isn’t happening.

Why she cared so deeply, she had no idea.
Even so, it inexplicably
felt as if Max had plunged that sword, not into Victor’s heart – but he
r own. She was breaking inside, emptying out, bleeding into herself.

She
was
fairly sure she would drown.

The Game Lord bent to place his lips beside her ear. “It hurts now, but you’ll soon forget all about it, sweetheart. Trust me.” He straightened again. She felt him turn to the guards beside her. “Leave the others.”

She was numb and
didn’t even wince when
he took her arm in a bruising grip. She didn’t care;
she could barely feel the pain. The Game Lord hauled her beside him, his strong embrace dragging her easily
down
a trail that had been carved through the
forest. Game guards surrounded them both, a dozen at least.

I will be with you always
…
.

Victoria blinked, her unshed tears released to roll down her cheeks.

The group
came to
a stop
at the doors to a transporter cube. It was impossible. The cube shouldn’t be there.

But that wasn’t what gave Victoria pause. The voice in her head
had been her sister’s.

Her chest felt warm. She glanced down to see the necklace there.

I’m here…
.

* * * *

Simon kept his eyes shut. Even when lightning tore up the world around him, he kept them shut. Even as his
t
eam leader let out a piercing, mind-blowing
scream, he kept them shut. And especially
when the guard who had dealt him the dizzying blow followed up with a swift, hard kic
k to Simon’s unprotected gut, Simon kept his eyes shut – and
forced his facial features to relax into a mask of unconsciousness.