Five - Evangeline
As soon as I’d stepped through the door of the pits and headed down the long dark corridor, I’d been able to hear the soft roar of a crowd. It’d grown in deafening volume until I had entered the large room with three stories of wrap-around mezzanines. In the middle of the floor was a stage area with a domed cage taking up all of it. Three fighters had been attacking each other inside it, spraying blood and teeth.
The pulse of the music vibrated the walls, a magic beat that kept in tune with the intensity of the fight. I smiled, feeling at home surrounded by cutthroats and criminals who would cut off their right hand to kill me and collect one of the many bounties out on Evangeline Sinclair.
Leaning up against the bar, a drink in hand, I shouted for the woman to stab the guy in the eye already. I loved eyes for some reason. They were just so squish-able, and they looked great in glass jars.
Raising the glass of whisky to my lips, I surveyed the crowd, looking for the informant I’d come here for.
She was the assassin known as Smoke, the rising star of the Nameless Gang, and we often met up here to battle it out in the cage, exchanging deals beneath the spray of blood. She was the only one who knew my real identity in this face. Not even my own ants, the agents of FI-9, knew the disguises I held in my back pocket. It was safer that way – both for them and me.
Spotting her beside the cage, cheering on the fighters, I finished my drink, then placed it on the bar and headed over. She didn’t seem to look at me, her light-green eyes glued to the meatsacks exchanging blood beneath knives and fists, but I knew she’d spotted me the moment I had her.
She wasn’t a rising star just because she was lethal. She was smart and aware of everything that went on around her. If she wasn’t such an asset by being outside of FI-9, able to get me information my ants couldn’t, I would have recruited her years ago.
Being an ant was basically just being an assassin with a license to be a dick, so she would have crossed over fine.
Granted, the pay in FI-9 was nowhere near as good, hence why I often visited to fight for money in the pits.
She fought for the pleasure, loaded as all out.
I stood on the other side of the cage and watched as the two fairies beat the shit out of each other. The man ended up on his back, the woman slamming her fists into his face. “Gauge out his eyes!” I screamed, bummed I’d lost mine at the diner.
Her hands gripped his head, her thumbs pressing into his squishy orbs, but the coward tapped out before she could really get started. I booed with the rest of the crowd, but she jumped back, ever the honourable fighter. Screw that. Fighting wasn’t some hippy ‘how-do-you-do’.
This isn’t a fight to the death, Aurelia reminded me.
Every fight is if you’re motivated enough.
She rolled her eyes. Ignoring that, this is a business. Do you know how annoying it would be to have to find new candidates all the time? Marketing is a bitch, and then they would have to increase the payout to counter the risk of dying… The cost isn’t worth it.
Okay, killjoy. Bet you’re fun at parties.
I’m you, you dumbass.
Uh-huh.
As the two fighters left the pit, I rolled my shoulders back and looked at Smoke. She nodded ever so subtly, her black hair cut short so it couldn’t be grabbed. Black tunic and black shorts that she could easily twist out of. Her targets rarely ever got the chance to even look at her before she died, so on missions she dressed more casually, often wearing dresses and six-inch heels because it ‘made her feel pretty’. But in the pits, fighting me, she brought her A-game. As valuable as she was to me alive and as much as I liked her, I had a tendency to forget we were fighting as cover rather than the real deal.
My therapist said I was ‘over-competitive’, but that’s not even a word, let alone a condition, so what does he know?
“A lot more than you…” Aurelia said.
“Psssh.”
Hopping up onto the platform, I grabbed the shoulder of the woman about to enter the cage and flung her back off it. She shouted at me, but I ignored her as I entered my end and Smoke entered the other.
The doors closed behind us and sealed with magic. They wouldn’t open again until one of us tapped out.
Raising our arms, we circled each other, both looking for an opening, both clearly remembering all the pain of our last fight. She’d nearly bit off three fingers, and I’d nearly opened her face up like a pinata.
“This is it, folks, the fight of the night!” the announcer cried as he jumped on top of the metal cage. “Two all time favourites are back again! Elana the –”
Darting forward to the roar of the crowd, I cut his opening short. There were no rules inside the cage. Just pure adrenaline. And I kicked out at Smoke’s face.
She dodged to the left.
I jumped, my other foot still in the air, and spun a full three-sixty while snapping my other leg out to nail her in the side.
One of her arms wrapped around my calf before I could pull back, and the other landed a solid blow to my knee. I crumpled to the ground from the force even as I grabbed her hand, pulling her with me. Rolling her over my head, I landed on top of her. We grappled in a tornado of elbows and knees, smiling like maniacs and muttering under our breaths.
“You took your time getting here,” she said, hitting me in the ribs. “I was starting to get worried.”
“Eh, the cafe job just ended up being more interesting than I was expecting.” Grunting, I blocked her hit. “The Raveni are in bed with the Alzans,” I said, pinning her to the ground and slamming my fists into her arms, which she’d raised to protect her face.
She brought her legs up, one to knee me in my spine, the other to hook around my neck. Yanking me back, she jumped on top of me and returned my previous love taps. “There’s been no whispers of that anywhere. Are you sure?”
Her fist swung my head to the left. Spitting out blood, I punched her in the side, digging my knuckles right under her little rib. Hitting it would have broken it, and realising that, she cursed and rolled off me.
Jumping to my feet, I watched her with a smirk, my arms up and spitting more blood from my busted lip. Her eyes narrowed. Her chest rose and fell rapidly.
She lunged forward with two quick kicks, and I blocked both before punching her into the cage. Pressing her up against the metal, I grabbed her head.
“My leg’s here, but they could be being framed.”
I slammed her head back into the wire.
“It’s my only lead though, so I’m going to have to chase it.”
“Luckily for you,” she said, kicking me in the shin, then in my stomach to push me back, “I have something that’ll help.”
She kicked my knee, forcing me to the ground, then kneed me under the chin. Stars exploded behind my eyes as I fell onto my back. A smile curled my lips even as darkness wrapped its greedy little hands around me.
Her weight pressed down on me, her forearm digging into my throat. I pushed both hands against her, trying to protect my windpipe. Muscles strained as the coppery taste of blood mixed with the sweat dripping into my mouth. The crowd exploded into chaos, chanting and screaming along with the announcer.
“I’ll tell you where Ashema is going to be for the next week if you let me kill Pyr Fillington.”
My eyes widened. Pyr was the lead witness to a Raveni mob hit that had seen a whole family slaughtered in their beds. Without him, the killer would walk, so he was under FI-9’s protection. Normally, it would just be the police watching him, but this particular killer was suspected of being a family member of someone in the Royal Court – a confirmation we wouldn’t get unless we could get him a new identity. I was to change his face tomorrow, finally learning who the killer was.
But who cared about that? Ashema was the head of the Raveni – a woman who’d never been spotted in her three-hundred-year reign. We didn’t even know if she had been alive that long or if those after her had kept her name to cash in on her terrifying reputation. Either way, nailing her would open up her entire organisation.
“You know where Ashema is?” I asked, lifting my legs to wrap around Smoke’s neck, choking her rather than pulling her off. Her eyes narrowed as she struggled to decide if she should stay on the offensive or –
Her jaw clenching, she released my neck to claw at my legs. Deep red lines gouged into my flesh, and I released her, knowing the bitch was about to reveal one of my legs wasn’t real.
She coughed as she crawled on her hands and knees and I rolled to my feet. Standing on the other side of the cage, she glared at me, one hand to her neck. We circled each other, the crowd a madhouse wanting to win their bets. Adrenaline pumped through my veins as I waited for the next piece of information.
Spreading her wings, she launched into the air, the cage allowing us to fly up roughly four times our height. I jumped to meet her, dodging a kick to my face. We fought close so we could talk in quick breaths.
“No. I know where she will be from tomorrow on.”
“Stop beating around the bush.” I kicked her in the cunt, making myself chuckle. She elbowed me in the jaw, stopping said chuckle.
“She’s going to Midnights for the extended weekend, you know, for couple’s therapy.”
Holy shit!
Slamming me into the top of the cage, Smoke held me up as she punched me in the stomach. I didn’t even feel her blows, my nerves too high on excitement.
Midnights was an exclusive couples retreat that catered to the mafia. It was never hosted in the same place and to get in, you had to meet with the Dame in person.
“Tell me you have more than that?” I asked as I blocked Smoke’s next punch.
She grinned, exciting the hairs on my skin. “I just so happen to have been hired to kill a couple who were going to attend, so there’s now an open spot and I have a way to get in touch with the Dame. You’ll need a date though. You can’t go in solo.”
Kicking her off me, I then flew at her to shove her into the cage. This back and forth shit was really annoying, but the crowd loved it and it allowed the fight to go on longer.
“You know anyone?” All of my agents were occupied. If they weren’t, they would’ve been fired – the budget cuts harsh this year.
“Nope.”
Dammit.
“So we have a deal?” Let her kill an important witness and make some money while doing it in exchange for contact info that may or may not get me into Midnights?
We dropped to the ground, our arms up.
Fuck it. Pyr was a dick. Charging at her, I kicked at her face. She jumped back, then darted in just as my foot hit the floor. I dropped low, then grabbed a knife, making her hesitate. Releasing the blade still in its sheath, I sprung up, wrapped my arms around her body, and arced back. Her face slammed into the ground.
Flipping over her, I twisted her beneath me as Smoke stared at the ceiling in a daze. With her on her stomach, I lay on her back, pinning her down. “Yep,” I whispered in her ear.
She grunted, the knock having been a bit harder than I’d intended.
“Go on, tap out,” I teased, twisting her arm until it was on the verge of breaking.
“You’re supposed to let her win,” Aurelia butted in as Smoke stilled beneath me. “That’s what Dr Soffdik keeps telling you.”
“Only because he’s a sore loser. There’s no way hyper-competitiveness is a real thing, let alone something that needs to be fixed. It’s good to be competitive.”
“It’s unhealthy.”
“No. Unhealthy would be being on the ground with my arm about to be broken.” I applied a bit more pressure to prove my point.
Exhaling harshly, Smoke tapped out, and I released her immediately with a smile.
Rolling to her feet, she turned to face me as the mob went mad and the announcer called out my name. Well, my fake name, but that still counted. I won. She didn’t. Booyah. Nah nah nah nah nah nah.
Aurelia shook her head. “What’s the point of going to therapy if you never listen to the advice?”
Rubbing the back of my neck, I headed for one door as Smoke exited through the other. “Taking advice is like eating at a buffet,” I replied. “You pick and choose what you’re in the mood for.”
“That’s not –”
“Also, it’s free. So, you know.”
Sighing, she walked away. I wondered where she went when she did that. Did she exist when I didn’t think about her?
Don’t actually go crazy, Ev. You know she isn’t real.
My chest tightened, hating that truth.
She’d deserved the world. As frustrating as she’d been trying to save everyone regardless of their allegiance or past actions…Aurelia had been the epitome of hope. She’d always been so optimistic and had kept her innocence despite everything we’d gone through. She’d made me want to be better. And although she would have made a shit queen of war with her soft heart and see-the-best-in-everyone attitude, she would’ve thrived in this new world King Morningstar had created in memory of her. She deserved to be alive, sitting on the throne he occupied.
Tears burning my eyes, I ducked my head as I took a deep breath. Locking it all down, I steeled myself from the pain and focused on checking my pockets for the note Smoke had slipped in one of them sometime during our fight. At the feel of a folded piece of paper in my trousers, I smiled.
Opening it, I was met with a time and a place for a meeting. I should have known I wouldn’t be able to call the Dame of Midnights. All phones worked via telepathy, and anyone not telepathic had to connect to the global network of telepaths. They all claimed to only hire people who could ‘think without thinking’, allowing them to pass on what we thought word for word without them actually listening to it, but many doubted that was true.
The Dame was clearly one of them.
My eyes scanning the note, they widened at the time of the meeting. It was in two fucking hours.
Why the fuck did she let our fight last that long?
Shoving the note back in my pocket, I weaved through the jostling crowd for the exit. I’d pick up my winnings later. Two hours was not enough time to get ready.
And fuck. Where was I going to find a date this last minute?
Aurelia laughed. Maybe you can ask that good-looking chef. You know, since he no longer has a wife and all.
That’s a great idea! What better way to sort things out between us than with a couple’s retreat?
Maybe then he would make me more of those delicious burgers.
No. Wait. Evangeline! That was sarcasm. Evangeline!
But I was already heading for the door, whistling a merrily tune...