Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (38 page)

Ethan said, with confidence, “He will win
with the first attack.”

“I agree that he will win,” I said, “but it
will be a close thing with two, maybe even three attacks, and he
may not be able to continue on afterward.” Ethan gave me an odd
look at that.

The first bell tolled and I refocused on
Blondie and his opponent. The second bell rang and his opponent
pulled hard on the ambient energy while Blondie barely touched it
at all, just like I thought. He was already reaching into his
leather jacket pocket for something, though, and I focused on it as
the third and final bell tolled. Blondie dove at the man as a wall
of crushing, suffocating power rolled forward at him, missing him
by an inch. From his jacket, he pulled a butterfly knife; he worked
his hand furiously to bring the blade out but without paying any
attention to it at all. He bounded off the wall of the enclosure as
his opponent realized his first attack hadn’t scored a mark at all
and turned to defend himself. Blondie snarled as he worked his
first bit of magic, a tiny spell. He opened a small portal in front
of his knife that ended just below the man’s sternum and behind his
shields. He shoved the blade of his butterfly knife into the ground
hard and his opponent gasped behind his shields, falling to his
knees, shocked. I chuckled softly as the man fell face first into
the grass. He was merely unconscious, his foot skewered to the
ground but he’d felt the portal open just above his breast. Blondie
wasn’t quite as nasty as he could have been.

I refocused on the man and the woman quickly.
They were both bloodied in the first wave of their attacks. Neither
was pulling power for a second, relying on their internal reserves.
The man was trying to suffocate her right then, pulling air away
from her head and pressing down on her lungs. Her swift kick to his
groin gained her nothing as he apparently was smart enough to
protect himself. In desperation, she flared out tendrils of pulsing
electric power into his shields that found purchase on the
overlapping plates he used. The tendrils squeezed together, just
like he was doing to her but his shields were farther out, hers
were right against her body now—dangerous. A crack formed along one
of his plates and she focused the tendrils there and forced one
small line through and pulsed energy through it. Not enough to hurt
him, but it shook his confidence briefly and he let up just enough
for her to force all the tendrils through the tiny hole and pulsed
again with all her reserves.

The man flew backwards, hitting the back wall
of the pen. The woman gasped for breath, her chest heaving. She got
maybe two full breaths down before a bright red wall of fire
engulfed her. It lasted for five seconds or so before dissipating.
She was on the ground, unconscious with her clothing smoldering.
Her opponent was sitting against the pen wall looking barely
conscious himself.

“He stole that!” Ethan exclaimed, meaning
Blondie’s trick with the knife.

“Yes,” I said, drawing the word out and
grinning at him. “And it’s easily defended. But that guy didn’t
know that and he saw it coming.”

The walls were shrinking back into the ground
again and the stretcher men were once again streaming onto the
field. Ethan and I returned to our seats. Again, the entire
conflict had taken about five minutes from the first bell to the
walls coming down.

“You have an… excellent eye, young McClure,”
said MacNamara. “How… do you see… your upcoming… battle with St.
Croix… unfolding?”

I turned around to face him and considered
his question. “Honestly, sir, I have no idea,” I said. “But I would
have to be an idiot not to be afraid for my life and the lives of
my friends and be willing to do whatever I have to do to make sure
we come away alive.”

Florian asked, “And if that means killing
your grandfather?”

“I don’t think that thing has been my
grandfather for a long time,” I responded levelly. “I don’t think
it’s been human for a long time, either.”

“You may be right there, boy,” Florian
agreed.

“Gentlemen,” said MacNamara, rising from his
chair, “let us leave… them to their… preparations, then. Good luck…
Team McClure.”

I jumped to the gate to let them out. They
filed out singly without a word. As I closed the gate, Florian
turned and said to me quietly, “Should you win against St. Croix,
someone will be at the gates of the battlefield to escort you
directly to your mother. She’s alive, but that’s all Cahill can
tell us. I’m sorry, Seth, but please believe me when I say we did
not know about him. I hope you do well against that monster.” And
with that, he hurried after MacNamara. I watched them until they
disappeared into another box along the narrow aisle of the
Arena.

I sighed and sat back down. The field was
almost cleared again. A few minutes more and it would be reset.

“You know what disturbs me most about this?”
I asked as I slumped back in the chair to wait.

“That you’re good at it?” said Ethan.

“That it’s barbaric and still exciting,” said
Peter. “Yeah, I don’t think this is something I’ll be trying to
experience again too quickly, either.”

“That’s a very good philosophy to take. Make
this a unique experience,” agreed Kieran. “That way, you’re alive
on the other side. Come on, Ethan, let’s go get changed. The elves
will have more complex magic you should see.”

“All right, let me try my hand at this. Who
looks good to you?” Peter asked, briskly rubbing his hands together
and smiling grimly at the field. The next set of eighty was taking
the field. One guy in particular caught Peter’s attention so I
zeroed in on him. A redheaded guy, just shy of six feet tall,
solidly built. Black leather pants and jacket over a black tee
shirt, he was trying too hard to look like a hoodlum, but he was
evenly schooled. His energy flow was too structured to be a street
fighter’s, too thick and evenly tuned to his body to be anything
but meditative. At the same time, he had a few scars already and he
was holding a few blades in easy reach. This wasn’t his first time
at the rodeo.

His opponent was one I recognized from the
restaurant the previous day. No one special, but he was there. He
wore green paramilitary attire and his pockets were crammed full of
stuff that couldn’t possibly be useful now. He had a lot of passive
magic written onto his skin that made him creepy to look at because
it crawled and writhed slowly when he stopped moving. I wondered if
he had met the guy at the front of the warehouse. He might rethink
the tattoo idea if he had. He had a few knives stashed for quick
retrieval, too, and some of the ink was designed to deflect
physical attacks.

I sized them up as they faced each other and
the walls started rising. “Red’s got a chance if he can get around
the inked defenses,” I said to Peter.

The first bell tolled. Inky already decided
he was going to win and had laid out his plan of attack, snarling
at Red as he took his attack position. Red was only slightly
tentative but had a similar confidence as he mirrored his
opponent’s stance. The second bell tolled and the massive influx of
energy on the field occurred. On the third bell, Red latched on to
his opponent’s shields and battered him against the walls of the
pen, using Inky’s own defenses against him. It winded and shocked
the man immensely. Then Red tossed him backward to the pen wall and
shot a ball of magefire through the floor of his shields. The man
was toast before even throwing a punch.

Peter barked out a laugh. “I think we just
learned a lesson about fixed shields there,” he said with
admiration.

“Is he okay?” I asked. The magefire I’d seen
had eaten a man into a grease spot.

“It didn’t look lethal,” said Peter, still
chuckling.

There was still a body on the ground. There
wasn’t one in the cases I’d seen so I guess that was a good sign.
The walls started coming down again.

“Anything interesting happen?” Ethan asked,
coming out onto the balcony, shoes in hand, his long-sleeved shirt
draped over his shoulders.

“Yeah,” Peter said. “We learned that if you
strap a shield to your arm somebody will grab the shield and beat
you with your own arm.”

“That must have been amusing,” said Ethan
looking up at Peter as he put his shoes on.

“What was amusing?” Kieran asked, entering
the balcony fully dressed, his still damp hair only slightly darker
than the emblem embossed on his chest. I’d have to ask the brownies
whose idea this uniform was. It looked good.

“One of our many-tattoo friends used a shield
built into his tattoos and got beaten with his own arms,” I
answered.

“A danger in rigid defenses,” he said softly,
chuckling a little. “Learning anything?”

“I’m getting better at reading people,” I
said, “but that’s about it. I still don’t know how to do what
they’re doing out there. I’m pretty sure I can avoid getting hurt
by what they’re doing but I don’t think I can do anything back to
them.”

“That is why you have tools,” said Kieran.
“And apparently they know how to be used to their best effect. I
just don’t know how good that is.”

The field had cleared again and started to
refill. There wasn’t a full eighty this time, so this was obviously
the last round. No one in particular stood out here, but I picked
out one couple and watched it play out, almost exactly to what I
expected. Two tattooed men fought against each other and it was
brutal and bloody and steel was involved. I don’t think the loser
would be walking for a while afterward.

Once the field was cleared, the referees
walked the perimeter once, then spread out over the field chanting
softly. They exerted light touches on the energy of the field,
leveling spikes and dips leftover from previous battles. The
chanting, though, had nothing to do with leveling the playing
field. It was all about lowering the power level on the playing
field.

“Kieran, why are they doing that?” I asked.
“I mean, the Pact says their grammar is horrible, but what they’re
doing will eventually lower the available power levels. Why would
they do that?”

“That is a good question,” Kieran said. “I
don’t know. But since we are forewarned, let’s be prepared for the
point when we’re the mouse in front of the cat.”

“Peter, have you tried charging that battery
I gave you?” I asked him.

“No, hadn’t thought about it,” said
Peter.

“Start trying while there’s plenty of energy
floating around,” I said. “I’ll see if I can’t collect enough for a
fourth.”

“How did the Pact tell you what they were
doing?” Kieran asked.

“Not really sure, but it only translated what
they were saying. It gives me a sense of it,” I told him. “It seems
to be the fifth or sixth dialect off the third Elven tongue.”

The referees filed off the field in a chain,
chanting until the last member left the field. Then elves filed out
from either side of the Arena, Unseelie from one side, Seelie from
the other. There was a definite difference in their looks as well
as the feel of their power. The Summer elves were lighter in every
way from their Winter counterparts, from hair colors down to their
choices in clothing. It wasn’t a shocking difference, but
definitely an obvious one. What was shocking was the animosity they
felt for each other—that was huge and long-term, older than these
elves had been alive.

Unlike with the human face-offs where forty
groups paired off in enclosed spaces, forty members from each side
squared off in a line and the field itself was used as one big
enclosure as the walls started rising out of the ground only at the
sidelines but higher than before. Much higher.

The first bell tolled and both lines readied
for their first attacks on their opposite opponent. The second bell
tolled and the pull of power was enormous, almost emptying the
Arena’s floor of energy and immediately warping the work the
referees had done earlier in leveling the field. On the third bell,
havoc broke loose at an amazing speed. The elves used their power
in a much different method than the humans did. They used it to
power their bodies and weapons and they used their weapons with
deadly proficiency. In an unimaginable flurry of activity as Summer
caused plants, thrown as seeds, to grow in the chests of their
opponents, while Winter froze it solid to crash down on Summer to
kill three or four of Summer’s knights, then used shards of the
frozen plants as weapons again. Swords simply cut down others, some
even while in the act of cutting down another. It was a gruesome
event. Within minutes, the field was cut down to only ten, six
Winter and four Summer, and the walls receded into the ground to
show the devastation more clearly. The battle lasted less than four
minutes.

“That was… nasty,” said Peter.

“Master McClure?” A warden stood at the gate,
calling to Kieran.

“Yes, warden,” answered Kieran.

“I am your escort to the battlefield. We
should leave by the end of the first level of combat, sir,” the
warden said.

Kieran sighed heavily and stood. “I think
we’ve seen enough.”

We filed out the gate and followed the
warden.

The warden offered to stop at an armory but
Peter declined and he was the only one without weaponry. I’d seen
both Ethan and Kieran pull swords out of the ether before and
Kieran’s was pretty awesome. Shrank had stayed at the apartment
apparently, which was good. I wouldn’t want to have to watch out
for such a little guy even though I was pretty sure he could have
kept himself fairly safe. He just kept a low profile here for some
reason and I didn’t see any reason to argue about it.

When we disappeared into the stadium, I
glanced back at the sun. We still had a little over an hour before
noon, assuming time matched up and noon would be when the sun was
dead overhead. The warden led us to a large room down narrow but
tall hallways on the west side of the square Arena. Glancing
through the doorways we passed, ours was a very small group. Most
teams looked to have at least ten members of various sizes, mostly
big. Really big. The army of “You-and-what-army” big. Each doorway
had a warden posted at the door and there was at least one door
closed. Farther down the hall, I could see other wardens standing
idle in doorways.