Demon Games [4] (27 page)

Alexa sat impassively in her place throughout all this, her eyes never leaving the figure of Trey dressed in the black-and-silver armour that had caused the demon lord to explode in rage the second the werewolf had emerged from the tunnel.

Trey allowed himself the briefest moment of enjoyment at seeing the demon lord’s reaction.

‘Creatures of the Netherworld, esteemed guests . . . ’ Korg had begun his introduction, standing in the centre of the fighting square with a large conical megaphone to his lips. The demon turned towards the section in which the Hell-Kraken sat and bowed deeply. ‘And of course, the sponsor of these Games, the demon lord, Molok.’ The section of the crowd wearing purple and waving purple flags cheered and clapped. Molok was still standing, and he raised a hand, nodding in all directions before retaking his seat. He glared down at Trey, his face a mask of fury.

The announcer looked between his master and the werewolf at his side. Trey heard the demon swallow loudly before lifting the megaphone to his lips again. ‘Lord Molok presents for your entertainment today his new champion.’ There was a brief pause. ‘Forsaking the traditional colours of Molok’s school, his champion fights instead in the black-and-silver armour of Theiss in honour of his father, the erstwhile champion of the Games, Daniel Laporte. Creatures of the Netherworld, may I present to you the lycanthrope Trey Laporte.’

At the mention of his father’s name, Trey felt a chill run down his spine, and he straightened up to his full height and looked around.

There was a moment of silence, as if none of the spectators were sure whether or not it was OK to applaud. The purple-clad supporters in particular stood up in their seats and craned their necks to look around at the demon lord, hoping for some kind of signal as to how to respond.

Molok looked down at the teenage upstart, his lips parted over his teeth in what Trey guessed was supposed to be a smile, but what in fact looked more like a grimace. He slowly raised his hands and began to clap.

The crowd, having been given permission to applaud the black-and-silver-clad fighter, followed suit, the sound growing as it spread around the stadium.

Trey glanced behind him and could just make out Shentob in the shadows of the tunnel. The little demon was leaping up and down on his short legs, shouting and clapping wildly. Trey raised a hand in salute to his friend.

The chariots withdrew along with the announcer.

‘The horn!’ Shentob shouted from the tunnel, pointing somewhere off up above the stands. ‘Remember, the horn signals the start. Be ready!’

Trey turned to face his opponent. The volume in the stadium grew to an incredible level as the spectators roared and shouted, many calling out the name of the fighter that they wanted to win. To Trey it was just a mishmash of noise.

‘Are you ready to die?’ the Gurgot said.

A horn sounded somewhere over his left shoulder.

Trey Laporte’s first fight of the Demon Games had begun.

Shentob was right: the Gurgot was ugly.

Its skin was a sickly greeny-grey colour and it looked out at Trey through little red eyes sunk deep into the flesh beneath a prominent brow. There was no nose, just a flat area with two nostrils covered with flaps of skin that opened and closed with every inhalation like blowholes. The bottom section of the creature’s face was truly horrific. It was crab-like: two articulated mandibles, complete with pincers, projected from its cheeks, framing a heavy jaw, the lower tusks of which curved up out of the mouth and over the upper lip.

The two fighters circled each other, Trey keeping to the Gurgot’s left as he’d been instructed by Shentob. Trey glanced at the creature’s arms. They looked all
wrong:
the forearms were almost twice the length of the upper arm, and because of this disproportionality the demon was forced to hold them out before it, like the arms on a forklift truck. If Shentob had not warned Trey of the speed with which the demon could move these appendages, the teenager might have been inclined to think that the nether-creature would be clumsy. It certainly looked it. But there was no doubting the reach advantage the creature had over him. And at the end of that reach, protruding from each arm was a curved, deadly-looking, sickle-like claw.

As if on cue, the Gurgot shot out its right arm, piston-like, the claw scything the air a hair’s breadth from Trey’s face in a vicious hooking motion. Trey dodged the attack, parrying the creature’s arm away with his own and quickly rocking back on his heels as the left arm came swinging in behind. The Gurgot shot out another right, but Trey had already moved and the shot flew well wide.

A small ripple of applause for the Gurgot’s opening attack went through the crowd.

Trey continued to move to his right, keeping on the side furthest away from the Gurgot’s deadliest weapon. His opponent feinted with its left this time, but the lycanthrope wasn’t fooled. Shentob was correct: the Gurgot strongly favoured its right side.

‘Did you come here to fight or to dance?’ the Gurgot snarled, turning in a tight circle as it looked for another opportunity to attack.

The crowd began to get restless. A small group of spectators began to boo and hiss, and somewhere off to his left Trey heard a nether-creature urging the Gurgot to rip the werewolf’s head off. The teenager flicked his eyes in the direction of the sound.

It was the tiniest lapse, but the momentary slip in concentration was enough to make the Gurgot – its senses and fighting instincts honed to perfection – react. The demon shot out that piston-like right arm again, and this time the bony barb bit deep into Trey’s thigh. The lycanthrope roared as the demon pulled the hook free, a shower of bloody droplets tracing the course of the retreating arm in the sandy ground between them.

‘Maybe that’ll slow your dancing down and make you more willing to fight.’

‘Keep your distance, Trey Laporte! Keep your distance!’ someone was shouting from behind the teenager, and Trey realized it could only be Shentob; every other voice was screaming for him to engage with the fighter in front of him.

The sight of the werewolf’s blood had brought the crowd to its feet, and the noise in the stadium had risen to a new level – an oppressive wall of sound that pushed in on both fighters. The vast majority were clearly supporting the qualifier in the yellow colours, clapping their hands and stamping their feet in time to the chants of ‘Kill, kill, kill, kill’.

The pain in Trey’s leg was terrible. He didn’t look down at the wound – he was not going to make the same mistake twice – but he could feel the blood running down his thigh and calf muscle, and he knew that the gash was a deep one.

Trey made a feint of his own, shifting his weight forward, but not too much, inviting a counter-attack. He kept his eyes glued on his opponent’s right shoulder. Sure enough, the Gurgot shot out the stronger arm again, but this time Trey was ready.

The lycanthrope ducked beneath the limb, reaching up at the same time to grasp the demon’s forearm just above that terrible hook. He twisted as he stood, not relinquishing his grip, so that the pressure on the Gurgot’s elbow joint and shoulder forced the nether-creature to bend forward at the waist, its back to the lycanthrope. Trey smashed a forearm into the elbow joint and was rewarded with a terrible cracking sound, accompanied by a howl of pain from his opponent; in the same movement, he let go his grip on the arm, reaching forward across the creature’s face and raking his claws backwards in a swift and deadly motion. Great bloody valleys opened up in the demon’s flesh, and one of those terrible mandibles was ripped loose, flying up into the air before landing on the ground behind Trey with a wet
flop.

The Gurgot sank to its knees and then toppled forward into the sand of the arena floor, where it lay unmoving.

There was a moment of perfect silence, and then the entire stadium erupted in a wave of noise which hurt the werewolf’s sensitive ears, making him flinch as if he’d been struck. When he straightened up and looked around, the spectators were going berserk: the purple flags of Molok’s school waved, and even supporters from other schools were applauding and shouting. A chant of ‘Lyco! Lyco!’ started up, quickly taken up across the crowd.

A chariot carrying the MC emerged from the tunnel again, and Trey turned to see Shentob running out behind the vehicle. His aide was grinning from ear to ear, shouting out the boy’s name and pointing with both hands in the werewolf’s direction as he scampered across. Drawing closer, the little demon slowed, his expression changing as he noted the shocked and bewildered look in the lycanthrope’s eyes.

The chariot came to a halt beside Trey, and Korg leaped off, the megaphone already to his mouth.

‘Creatures of the Netherworld, I give you our winner and semi-finalist . . . fighting for Lord Molok . . . the lycanthrope Trey Laporte!’

Korg lifted Trey’s arm. And the crowd erupted again.

Shentob was by the teenager’s side now, and Trey was aware that the little demon was trying to usher him back on to the chariot.

‘Come, Trey Laporte. We need to get your injuries looked at.’

Trey was hardly aware of the pain in his leg any more. He felt completely numb, and when he stared down at Shentob it was as if he was looking through somebody else’s eyes. As though he was detached from his body and viewing the scene from above. He looked back at the dead body on the sand.

‘Please, Trey Laporte,’ Shentob said, pushing ineffectively with all his might against the lycanthrope. ‘You need medical attention. We have to stop the bleeding. We need to get you away from here.’

Trey allowed himself to be ushered on to the back of the vehicle, and was taken from the arena to the sound of the crowd’s applause.

He sat on the edge of the bench while Shentob stitched up the wound in his leg. The little demon had refused the services of the Games doctor, telling Trey that they were all butchers and he would do better to allow Shentob to do the job. Then the little demon set about persuading the teenager that it would be easier to suture the wound if Trey would transform back into his human form, reasoning that he would be able to do a neater job if he didn’t have a fur coat to contend with. For some reason the boy was reluctant to do this, and Shentob had to repeat his request over and over until Trey finally morphed back into his human state and allowed his aide to pull a fresh tunic over his head.

To the demon aide, there was little doubt that the boy was in shock, and this was confirmed when Shentob got to work on the injury; the boy sat silently on the bench, staring off into space as the needle dipped into his flesh repeatedly. He didn’t flinch or cry out once.

‘Shentob is a better cook than he is a seamstress,’ the demon said. ‘Although maybe Trey Laporte would say otherwise, eh?’

‘Hmm?’

The nether-creature tied off the last stitch, biting the black cord with his teeth. He looked at the job he’d done and, satisfied, came round and knelt in front of his young charge, taking Trey’s hands in his own.

‘You had no choice,’ the demon said. ‘You did what you had to do to survive.’ He nodded. ‘If you had not done what you did, it would be Trey Laporte lying out there in the fighting-square sand. You must not to let this upset—’

‘I’m upset because I enjoyed it,’ Trey said in a flat voice. He looked back at his friend, his eyes properly focusing for the first time since they’d arrived back in the room.

‘What?’

‘Not at first. At first I was petrified. I couldn’t think straight through all that fear. But when the demon hurt me, when it gashed my leg, something inside me switched. I wanted to hurt the Gurgot back, but more. I wanted to . . . ’

The door crashed to the floor, causing them both to look up in alarm.

‘What in Agrash’s name do you think you are playing at, boy?’ Molok asked, his face rigid with fury. ‘You have humiliated me. At my own Games!’

Some of the rage that Trey had felt in the arena surged up inside him again, and he stood up to face the demon lord.

‘Was my
performance
not up to scratch, Molok? Was the bloodletting insufficient for you?’

‘You know what I am talking about! That armour! How dare you wear that armour as my champion?’

There was a roar from up above them, and the walls and floor of the room shook in response. The last of the quarterfinals had begun.

‘I wear what I want to wear. I agreed to fight under your name at these Games.
That
was our agreement. I heard nothing about a dress code!’

‘It was implicit in my terms!’

‘No, Molok! It was not!’ Trey took a step towards the demon lord. The human showed no sign of being intimidated by the massive Hell-Kraken.

Rapturous clapping broke out overhead.

The two of them eyed each other for what seemed an age, neither one wanting to be the first to back down.

‘Shouldn’t you be up there?’ Trey said eventually, pointing up at the ceiling without taking his eyes from Molok’s. ‘You’re missing your Games.’

There was a pause. It seemed as if the demon lord was considering how to reply.

‘You have not heard the last of this. And as for you the demon lord pointed a long, clawed finger at Shentob, ‘I will enjoy thinking up a death so exquisite for you that it shall be talked of for millennia!’

There was another roar from above, followed by an
oooh.

The demon lord’s anger was the perfect antidote for the guilt and pain and disgust that Trey had been feeling. He forced a smile on to his face and addressed him. ‘Be a good bloke and put the door back in the frame on your way out, would you?’

The Hell-Kraken stormed off, shouting obscenities and threats to anyone who would listen.

Trey turned to Shentob, who was grinning up at him. ‘Old Shentob always wanted to be famous. It’s a shame that it’ll be for his death!’

Trey couldn’t help but laugh.

They sat back down on the bench together, turning to look up when another figure appeared in the doorway. This time it was the master of ceremonies, Korg.

‘We know,’ Shentob said, rolling his eyes. ‘The armour. But it’s the only armour we brought, so Molok will have to—’