A Sinister Game (40 page)

Arthur had won.
He’d become the Game Lord and had
run the Game for three thousand years, even doing so with Maxwell Blood’s unsuspecting and unending support.

And he was about to win again.

Max’s world tilted.
Was there anything
he
could do to stop him?

He knelt
beside the rehabilitation chair, and took Victoria’s hand. It was warm and soft. She slowly rolled her head to one side and opened her eyes, gazing out at him with glowing
golden orbs
half sheltered by heavy,
drugged
lids.

He
felt sick.

The room was filled with Game Banded GC guards. The Game Lord –
or
Arthur Zero
– was starting up the machine.

A
nd Max had killed Victor Black,
the one man
who might’
ve stood a chance against the Game Lord and his small army.

Ullr had given Max back his memories with that touch. The problem was, they’d come too late.

Above them, the Needle whirred to life. It began spinning as it descended
, and Victoria
glance
d
up. She whimpered softly, but the bulb behind the needle flashed, emitting a pulse of mesmerizing light.
She
stopped moving, her gaze transfixed.

Max slowly released her hand and stood. He felt the weight of his sword in its scabbard on his belt. He noted the location of every GC guard in the ro
om. There were eleven of them. There were m
or
e just outside the door, and e
ven more further down the hall.

But if he took out Arthur
first… w
ould the others follow?

Slowly, very slowly, he reached for the grip of his weapon.
A
nd the Game Lord’s steely gaze cut to him, pinning him to the spot. “I wondered whether your trip outside the wall would cause you to remember, Max.”
Arthur Zero’s
voice was low, his tone
utterly and deceptively
calm.

He nodded at the guards who
had somehow positioned themselves around Max
. The air was filled with the sound of pulled swords just as
Victoria
R
ed
began to scream.

* * * *

The discomfort was mild at first. It was a
buzzing coldness that was sort of there, but sort of
not
. And then
, in the space of no time at all, it grew and intensified until
no amount of
painkiller
in
the world could have fooled her neural synapses out of the pain
.

Her back arched in the leather chair
,
and her scream pierced the air of the rehabilitation room. All around her, chaos had erupted, but it was a secondary reality to her
own
. First and foremost was the
agony
.
Nothing else mattered.

I’m here, Rose. Use the p
ower you have within yourself! Use
m
y
power!

The cold on her chest
grew colder
, becoming a freezing impression that would not be ignored. It seared into
her
breastbone
, icing over her
skin, and Victoria was abl
e to focus on it. Just barely – b
ut enough.

Help me!
s
he screamed, knowing now
that the cold was coming from the necklace she’d spotted on herself in the transporter cube.

The
necklace in question was her sister’s
, not her own
.
It
was her sister’s counterpart to her own crystal compass and
had a
piece of Andromeda inside of it. That
was the magic that had always tied the lockets together.

What do I do?
h
er
fevered brain demanded
.

Concentrate, Rose. Use
my dark leader abilities
!

Andromeda was right. Victoria ha
d already sensed them there w
hen she’d been able to read Victor’s mind.
It was Andromeda.

Because Andromeda was Ullr’s champion, and because she and her sister were twins, they shared each
other’s talents
to some degree. And now Victoria
also wore her sister’s locket
.
The locket
intensified what few dark abilities she possessed, b
ut
would it be
enough to override the saps on her wrists
and get her out of that chair
?

I can’t do it
.

The Needle
inched
closer and the
renewed
shooting pain in Victoria’s head temporarily distracted her. She felt like vomiting. Nausea roiled through her, the pain a steady, constant, throbbing force that threatened to overwhelm her.

You
’re the one
wear
ing
the
neutralizing
bracelets Rose, not me! Use my power!
Draw it from me now!
Freeze th
e shackles, Rose. Break free
!

Victoria tried to concentrate. She tried so, so hard – she really did. But it was nearly impossible. Very nearly
impossible
.

Just
not
quite
.

She imagined the steel band around her right wrist freezing. She imagined it icing over in blue-white rime
that popped and crackled
. She imagined its molecules crystallizing and its basic building-blo
ck materials becoming brittle and d
elicate
– fracturing
.

She imagined this
with every ounce of will
she
had ever
possessed.

And then, when she finally felt the cold of the manacle bite into her right wrist, she gave it a
single, hard
yank. It shattered. Victoria instantly reached up
with her now free hand and ripped the sap off her
left wrist. Then she moved her right wrist in front of her left fingers
did the same thing to the second sap
.

Within
moments, she
was free of the neutralizing bracelets.

Her power surged back to her, renewed by nothing more than mortal fear.

She focused that power
on the Needle above her. It stopped spinning.
She focused harder.
It crackled, and wires of electricity inside fizzled and popped. It began rumbling as
its motor started to die
.

Across the room, Max and half a dozen GC guards were in furious
hand-to-hand
combat.
Max removed his hand from one of the guard’s chests, and the man fell to his knees
. Hi
s body
was caked with ice, his heart no doubt frozen solid.

At the same time,
another guard came up behind Max and
wrapped
something leather around his thick throat. The Game Lord stepped back. Max’s eyelids
closed
and t
he sword slipped from his
hand.

Victoria realized
that the leather strap
the guard held was none
other than a neutralizing bracelet, unfastened and stretched out.

Time pressed in on her. Victoria blasted the metal bands off of her limbs, freeing herself from the chair. She
leapt
to her feet.

T
he Game Lord spun away from Max, and his gray eyes locked on her. “Stop her!” h
e bellowed.

H
e rushed toward her,
but she swatted at the air between them as if she were swatting at a fly, and his
tall
form went sailing backward into the control console behind him.

More GC
guard
s moved in, refocusing their fight on her. She spun to face them
, her golden eyes glowing like mini-suns, her straight, white teeth bared.
Several of the men caught on fire, their hair exploding into flames, their clothes igniting to send them scrambling back in cries of alarm.

As they flailed madly,
Victoria
concentrated on the
door to the rehabilitation room
. It
swung open, crashing against the wall behind it.
She
ran through, not
caring about the mess of fire and pain
she left behind her
, not caring about Max unconscious on the floor. He had betrayed her
. He had killed Victor. A
ll she could think about was getting away. All she wanted
to do
was
escape
.

She dealt
with the
four
guards in the hall
by lifting them up telekinetically and slamming them viciously into each other to knock them out.
They hit the floor and she
rounded a corner with blurring speed only to slam into another tall, hard body.

She stumbled back
, temporarily stunned. A pair of stro
ng
hands grasped her arms, holding her steady.

She blinked and looked up.

Glacial green eyes gazed back down at her.

“You all right then, love
?” Victor asked, the hint of a smile curling his lips.

She blinked again, finding herself at a sudden and very real loss for words.

Maybe Game Control had succeeded and she’d never freed herself from that chair. Maybe she’d died in it instead and now her dying mind was imagining things.

But when he shoved
her roughly behind him
and it hurt a little
,
she realized it was real.
He
was real.
And he
was
shielding her with his black-clad body.

She
tentatively
peeked around him, too shocked to do anything else.

The Game Lord stood at the end of the hall, another transparent black box held tightly
in his
hands.

The Game Lord
smiled
.

Victoria swallowed a rising w
h
imper. The
sudden
sound of footfalls had her spinning around to find
four
GC guards
closing in on them
from behind
.

Victor
had clearly seen them too. He
shoved Victoria
out of the way and she went sailing to hit
the opposite wall
.
Victoria braced for the impact, weathered it, and managed to stay on her feet.

The guards were upon
Victor
in record time. T
wo of them
were
holding neutralizing bra
celets
, b
ut Victor never gave them a chance to get anywhere near his wrists
with them
.

He was beautiful,
in a dark and deadly
kind of way. It was like watching a wolf take down his prey. She’d done that a few times in
the outskirts of the Field,
in-between
Games. She liked the wolves.

And now she knew why. They reminded her of
Victor
Black.

He moved with unnatural grace; a
blurring
form in head to toe black leather,
his green
eyes flashing like
shattered emeralds
as he crushed the windpipe of one guard, broke the neck of another, and then dislocated the shoulder and shattered a knee on the third. The fourth guard stepped back, trying to get away after seeing what Black had done to his companions.

But Victor
had no intention of allowing escape, and
the fourth guard never stood a chance.

When it was ov
er
a few seconds later, two sets of neutralizing bracelets lay unused
on the
floor
along with
four
injured guards
who were either unconscious
or
very
slowly
trying to crawl
away.