Chapter 20
Lazaro Reyes
Conditions with my father had been icy ever since the meeting with Nemesh. Perhaps earlier, when my uncle Ricky Moreno had passed on. When I’d killed him.
Months had slipped by without Santos Reyes summoning me to his office or his home.
However, despite the freeze on our relationship behind closed doors, it apparently didn’t extend to public displays.
I couldn’t get inside my father’s head to figure out what game he was playing by inviting me to Peter Fenton’s next match.
He may have simply wanted to avoid rumors of a weakening Reyes family spreading, or it could have been the beginning of a campaign to mend the bridge between us.
All I knew for certain was that I’d have to be prepared for anything as I led Selena on my arm through the casino owned by the family.
“I always used to think casinos had no windows so that the people gambling couldn’t judge how much time was passing,” Selena mused.
“That’s a valid enough explanation,” I smirked at her.
“Really, it’s because they’re all secretly run by vampires. Am I right?” More or less, she was right. Vegas was a vampire’s paradise, if one already had a foothold. Even smaller establishments like ours were perfect businesses for our kind.
A security guard opened the door to the fighting arena as we approached.
The crowd was already rumbling, too loud for my tastes.
I’d never cared for fighting, not like my father and his contemporaries.
I’d managed to avoid it for most of my life until it had become a matter of family, with Peter working his way up the ranks in this slice of the underworld.
He fought beyond his age, and the personality that was so grating in person made for a persona that the crowd had grabbed onto and run with.
Some loved Peter, others loathed him, and either way, he drew vampires in and made them feel strongly enough to put down money on his fights. In the end, the Reyes family won.
A wave of cheers swelled as we approached the row of reserved seats.
Some other fight was in progress, an opening show to whet the appetites before the main event.
It hadn’t been long ago that Peter had been one of these rookie fights.
I held Selena’s hand and let her slip past a few associates, giving them professional greetings on the way to our own seats.
Santos stood and kissed Selena on the cheek, and I shook his hand. He leaned closer with a wide smile that surprised me.
“It’s been too long. You look good, Vicente,” he rasped in my ear. I ripped my hand from his. Vicente? The warmth in his eyes dissolved into confusion, which turned to stone.
My fiancée sat beside my father, as we’d planned before coming, and so I had no choice but to take the spot beside her.
The arena was too loud for me to hear the conversation between the two of them, but I kept a watchful gaze on my father.
He gave Selena’s forearm a pat, and she pulled out an invitation for the night of her turning to give to him.
She leaned in to explain, and he nodded and tucked the envelope into the pocket inside his jacket.
He’d called me Vicente, the name of his brother who ran things in Santa Fe.
He looked at me now with the typical mix of hot and cold anger and disappointment, though.
What kind of mind game was this? I settled into my seat and focused on the heat of Selena cuddling into my arm.
I glanced over her head to Santos again, and his eyes had narrowed on me.
He nodded towards the square ring where the fight was coming to a close.
Had it been an honest mistake? Perhaps I resembled Vicente, both of us fairly tall with dark hair.
The screams and the blood must have been a distraction that had caused a slip of his tongue.
“He’s excited for me.” Selena’s hot breath tickled my ear.
It would take some time to get over the loss of her human warmth once it was gone.
The fight ended, and I hadn’t seen a single moment of it.
One vampire was slipping off the raised platform, and a group of handlers tended to his needs with a towel and a black bottle filled with blood.
The other vampire was being peeled off the ring floor.
Knocked out. That wasn’t easy to do to our kind.
“I’m excited for you, too.” I kissed the side of her head.
Selena had become single-minded about turning since setting the date.
After months of witches studying the stars and the calendar for the right date, I’d begun to grow more comfortable with the idea of Selena never becoming a vampire.
Now, it was all she talked about. Her other dimensions were fading, and I bitterly yearned for the woman who had been so alive, lecturing me on magic and literature, dancing through her charmed life, enchanting me with her vitality.
With the relative quiet between matches, Selena leaned back to speak with my father.
I scanned the seats, taking in the faces, and after I’d nearly made it all the way around the room, I realized I’d been looking for one familiar person.
I couldn’t help scoffing at myself. Peter may have been in love with the Hunter, but he wouldn’t have been foolish enough to bring her here.
A smirk curled onto my face as I went back over the lucky encounters she and I had shared of late.
The gala had been a twisted delight, seeing her as Fallon, stripped of her stakes and her sensible hunting clothes.
That soft, human vulnerability of hers had been…
Well, whatever it was, she’d brought out the total opposite that night in Peter’s apartment, when she’d lunged at me with stakes held high before asking a single question.
She’d been all Hunter then. Her body had been hard, a weapon, but there was always the hint of seduction to the way she fought.
Perhaps that’s what kept me from ending her.
Of course, it had been satisfying to flex my unrestrained power and put both those young fools in their place.
It was a shame she wasn’t here now. I never minded another run-in with my little Hunter.
It would be a shame when our game came to its end.
The arena shook again with shouts and applause, so loud it vibrated through my seat, all the way into my worthless viscera. The announcer welcomed the first entrants of the fight to come, and the vitriol thrummed through me like a dark heartbeat.
“Joining us all the way from Europe, we have Szofia and Marcell Almasi. Vampire hunters, married and in love, looking for another notch in their stake.” The MC’s tinny voice, amplified over the speakers, could barely be heard over the hateful jeers.
“He’s fighting humans?” Selena asked.
The vampire hunters stood in their own corner, half-way embraced with their foreheads pressed together, whispering words of encouragement, or perhaps declaring their love for the last time. I looked away from the display of frail human affection.
“This vampire needs no introductions at this point, right, guys?” the announcer continued, and the sound changed, turning mostly to praise. “Love him or hate him, don’t pretend you don’t already know his name! Peter Fenton!”
It was several moments before Peter emerged from the north tunnel.
He pumped his fists to the air, doing a slow spin before he grabbed onto the top metal rope and flung himself dramatically over it in a showy backflip.
A group of human girls behind us screamed, setting my spine straight.
His silly little groupies. Peter gave away that he was taking this fight seriously when he took his black t-shirt off before starting, tossing it down to his handler instead of doing his usual ridiculous striptease for the audience. Maybe this one would be interesting.
The fight started with the ring of a bell, but even Peter was slow and poised.
The pair of hunters worked as one, and for the first time in all the matches I’d ever seen, Peter was on the defensive, avoiding the twin danger of their stakes.
I’d never thought I’d care for the man who thought of himself as my little brother, but my muscles were clenched with worry as husband and wife picked and dug towards the vampire with their deadly wood.
The man sliced a trench down Peter’s back, and his pained growl was only just drowned out by the shocked reactions in the audience.
“Ow, goddamn it, Lazaro,” Selena hissed, pulling her hand away when I loosened my crushing grip. I couldn’t look away to apologize, but I’d more than make it up to her later.
I let out an uncomfortable rush of air that had been overfilling my lungs.
Peter was fast, grabbing the man’s forearm and jerking him just as the woman had jumped and lunged at a false opening with her stake.
She cried out when the wood plunged into her husband’s chest, and the cries around me were feral with bloodlust. Peter’s fangs tore into Marcell Almasi’s neck, holding the man firm despite his desperate attempts to get away, and his life drained away like the converging lines of blood down his body.
Instead of succumbing to the grief of watching her husband die, Szofia exploded with a doubled desire to kill.
Peter had loosened up, and he was back to his usual antics, dancing and dodging and making a game of flirting with death.
I relaxed into my seat again. It was back to pure entertainment.
Peter could drag it out as long as he wanted, but the victory was already his.
I glanced to Santos. Had this been an attempt at offing Peter, his failed bastard? Being locked outside my father’s world was a cold place to be, and I wanted back in.