Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
Raphael Bray’s proxy was a big son of a bitch. While muscle didn’t matter so much in a fight like theirs, reach did. Luis wasn’t exactly short, but Jacob had to have some orc or elf in him somewhere, since he topped out around seven feet tall.
Fuck, he thought, dodging yet another near-miss of the behemoth’s claws.
In theory, the rounds weren’t difficult. There weren’t any rules, and even a glancing blow could end a fight before it truly began. If one had speed and confidence on their side, they could outfox an opponent with relative ease.
The trick, however, came from the same reason the spectators became more fervent with every round: it was exhausting.
If a match went on long enough, reaction times slowed.
Mistakes were made. And since the fights were nearly back to back, with only an hour between them, that exhaustion mounted for the winners.
They went to the final match far less capable than they’d gone into the first. The odds shifted, and bets fluctuated wildly as speculation over who would slip up and who would come in with a surprise finish moved through the crowd.
Luis ducked under another massive swing.
He had to be careful not to lose his footing and even more careful to not allow himself to be backed into a corner.
That required constant movement. Ten minutes into the round and Luis had begun to sweat as he tried again and again to find an opening in Jacob’s defenses.
The other vampire wasn’t fast, which was an obvious disadvantage, but his reach more than made up for it. Any attempt to get close put him within swiping distance long before Luis could touch him.
They’d been circling each other for a while, Jacob stalking and Luis darting from side to side. Neither seemed to be making any headway in wearing down the other and both were rapidly tiring.
Thoughts bombarded him, coming out of the ether in vicious blows that mirrored Jacob’s.
She doesn’t really trust me. Of course she doesn’t. She barely knows anything about me. How can I get her to trust me with her secrets? If she’s in danger, if she owes someone a lot of money, she needs to tell me. Not telling me means she thinks I’m unfit.
Luis blinked sweat out of his eyes. Dissatisfaction clawed at his insides as the memory of her leaping from his lap played out in his mind again and again.
The contract is for thirty days. That’s more time than I’ve ever spent with a partner before, but I don’t think it’ll be enough. I can’t imagine ever getting enough of her.
The urge to look up at the little VIP section where his girl sat was a visceral pull in his gut.
He could feel her gaze on him. It woke an urge he’d never felt before: the desire to show off.
He needed her to see him as fit. Worthy.
He needed her to know he’d take on any threat for her, whether she wanted him to or not, and understand that he was better than every other vampire in the room.
That need electrified him.
The ache in his calves didn’t matter. He didn’t feel it. The sweat sluicing down his naked chest was immaterial. The noise of the howling crowd crammed cheek to jowl in the massive basement was nothing but white noise.
He swore he could hear her heartbeat from across the room. It pounded alongside his, a drumbeat that kept him focused.
Jacob didn’t have that motivation. He was being paid to fight for Raphael. He wouldn’t get a taste of the golden anchor his boss coveted. The desire to stay alive was certainly a motivating factor, but it didn’t provide quite the same vigor as the desire for an anchor did.
An anchor was blood. An anchor was life. An anchor was a chance to breed and a treasure to covet above all things.
Luis had never truly wanted one before, but as his muscles cramped and he narrowly escaped a nasty swipe to the side of his head, he realized that was exactly what he was fighting for. Not her temporary contract, and not the chance to play with her until he got bored.
He was fighting for something that felt vital to his very existence — a future he could feel even if he couldn’t quite understand it yet.
If he wanted those thirty days, that future, or even just the next hour with her, he needed to finish this damn fight.
They’d both been flagging, but Luis’s exhaustion dissipated. His body reacted before his mind did when Jacob took another mighty swing. Doing the one thing he’d been trying to avoid the whole time, he lurched backward into the ropes.
Jacob took the bait. He allowed his center of gravity to swing with his arm, thinking he finally had Luis cornered and could take the risk. But there was no honor in the Blood Games, and Luis didn’t care what he had to do to win.
He dropped.
Jacob lurched into the ropes, his big body thrown off balance, as Luis rolled to the side. One arm snapped out to rake his claws down the length of the other vampire’s leg, tearing through thin athletic pants like they weren’t even there.
A gush of blood exploded from the deep furrows. Skin split, revealing yellow fat and pink muscle as Luis rolled out of the way. A vampire could never be too careful with the blood of their own kind. If even a small amount got in his eyes or mouth, he could die.
And that would be fucking embarrassing.
Luis climbed to his feet just as Jacob collapsed, his shredded leg outstretched on the mat. Blood squirted from between the fingers he hastily pressed into the largest wound. It was nasty, certainly, but Luis was fairly certain he’d live.
Ignoring the roaring crowd, he turned on his bare heel to find Francesca. Catching her eye, he mouthed, “One to go.”
The party, such as it was, had shifted back to the ballroom.
It was necessary to accommodate the influx of spectators and hangers on who’d begun to show up in ever-greater numbers as word spread.
As happened at events like these, alcoholic synth flowed almost as fast as money into the betting pool before the final fight — Luis versus Malachi.
Considering the tension between them and the amount of money currently at stake, Milo advised his brother to make himself scarce. Luis was more than happy to avoid the crowd.
After the debacle that’d been the scene in the parlor, Francesca had been whisked off to the bedroom. Luis, a little more rumpled than before, made his way across the mansion, keeping to the service areas just in case someone happened to be wandering around.
Even well away from the ballroom, thumping music and roaring laughter could be heard. It vibrated the walls and the floor beneath his feet, hinting at just how many bodies would cram themselves into the basement for the final fight.
Realistically, he knew he should sit and rest a bit. Maybe strategize the best way to beat Dale, Malachi’s vicious right hand man and proxy.
Luis figured that if his main advantage was that he was more motivated than anyone else, then he ought to spend as much time as he could in the presence of that motivation. Fill up the tank, as it were.
He was just down the hall from Francesca’s room when he spotted the dark shape of a man he didn’t recognize coming around the corner.
It took a moment for hard features and nondescript clothing to coalesce, but the green glow of his eyes and the distinct, sour note in his scent told him it was another vampire.
Too close, instinct screamed. Too close to my anchor!
Instantly on alert due to the proximity to his girl, Luis abandoned any chance of hiding and walked swiftly toward the primary suite’s doors. The other man changed course, too, aiming directly for the same destination.
“Hey,” he barked, “this part of the house is off-limits. If you—”
Luis didn’t recognize the man in the split second it took before he slammed his shoulder into his solar plexus, but he supposed he didn’t need to. Luis hit the wall with a tooth-rattling thunk. Plaster cracked and rained down on the floor.
He brought his knee up sharply, trying to hit his attacker in the middle, but he was in a shitty position to make anything worthwhile happen. Luis snarled and brought his palms down on the man’s ears.
Howling, the attacker stumbled back just enough that Luis was able to get some room. Swinging his elbow up, he cracked it into the bridge of the vampire’s nose. The attacker roared as blood streamed down over his lips.
A heavy fist shot out. Luis wasn’t fast enough to dodge it completely. Knuckles grazed his eyebrow, splitting it instantly.
“Oh, fuck you,” he hissed, lurching out of the attacker’s range. His hand automatically moved to where he normally kept his gun, but his fingers curled around air.
He’d given Milo his gun when he went in the ring, and his knife had been left used as a skewer for the eyeball he handed back to Malachi. Not ideal.
Figuring the best defense was a good offense, he didn’t wait for his attacker to get his bearings again. He charged, fists raised instead of claws. A vicious haymaker to his jaw disoriented him enough that Luis could slam him against the wall.
Pinning his throat with his forearm, Luis hissed, “Answer me very carefully, asshole: were you after her or me?”
The vampire, a shaggy haired nobody who could’ve slipped in with any number of groups that had shown up, lifted his upper lip in a snarl.
Since it looked like he didn’t intend to answer, Luis reined in some of his protective rage to coolly explain, “You have five seconds before I start taking souvenirs, fucker. I normally prefer fingers, but since I’m missing my knife, I can just rip something off you instead.
What appendages can you comfortably live without? ”
Barely able to choke out the words, the attacker rasped, “Missing a knife, huh?”
Luis opened his mouth to reply, but before he could, the doors to the suite opened a crack. Golden light spilled out into the dark hallway, illuminating Francesca’s sweet, horrified face.
“Luis? What—”
“Back inside,” he barked. When she didn’t immediately follow his order, he added, “Now, Frankie! It isn’t—”
A searing pain sliced down his side.
Luis looked down just in time to see a flicker of bloody silver between his body and the attacker’s as he drew the knife back for another blow.
There wasn’t time to consider the fact that it’d be a lot more useful to keep the man alive.
Luis had a real problem with being stabbed, and in his mind, whoever did it lost the right to keep the ability to speak, no matter his usefulness.
Grasping the attacker’s chin and the top of his head with both hands, Luis twisted until he heard the wet crunch of vertebrae and all the important bits of the brain stem breaking like a celery stalk in a particularly enthusiastic toddler’s fist.
Luis stumbled back with a foul curse, one hand slapping onto the wound in his side. The attacker slumped to the ground in a heap, his head twisted at an unnatural angle and the whites of his eyes gone red with burst blood vessels.
Kicking the knife from the dead man’s fist, he growled, “You know what’s a real kick in the teeth, kitten? He stabbed me with my own fucking knife!”