City of Cruelty and Copper (Temperance Era) (7 page)

“You won’t need a costume.”

If I could feel anything, chills would have run up my spine. Cray extended a hand towards me as he entered the elevator. I steeled myself, unsure of what he was planning and stepped into the elevator next to him, without his help. I wasn’t about to let his grimy hands touch me, even if turning him on amused me. The elevator eased to a smooth start, moments passed in silence. I eyed Cray out of the corner of my eye, but let on nothing of my growing tension. It coiled my muscles, tensed the small of my back, crunched my legs, but I remained still.

The elevator stopped, the doors opened and that was when I realized something was wrong. The stands were bare. Usually it was booming, people shouting for me, throwing gifts into the Arena. It was dead silent. Colin Cray unlocked the grate to his right, a place I hadn’t been in hundreds of years.

“You don’t think I’ll run?”

Cray winked at me. “You’ll like this I promise.”

I stalked forward, each of my steps feeling like I had giant boulders attached to my feet. Cray lead me around the back of the Arena. Periodically there were openings for the stands, and then there were doors, leading to spectator boxes. Those were reserved for the founding families. Cray passed four openings and four doors before he stopped at one and opened it wide. I stepped inside and he closed the door behind him.

“What is this—“ My airway was cut off as Cray grabbed me, throwing me against the far wall. He slammed my wrists into adamantium chains and left me there, dangling against the wall, nothing but the tips of my boots touching the floor. “This is some dirty trick Cray,” I seethed.

Cray laughed, putting his thumbnail in his mouth and chewing it off. He winked at me again. “I think you’ll actually enjoy this Fable.” He sat down on the black leather couch and lit what I could only call a cigarette. It was made of aluminum and smelled like cinnamon. I cringed at it until something out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. Cray pushed a button on the wall and a window opened, a window into the Arena. Grating covered it in little black squares. The Arena looked different from this angle. The big sandy floor seemed endless. When I was busy jumping hoops and fighting off science experiments it wasn’t the same.

Doors I couldn’t see opened and a team in biohazard suits began spraying down the Arena. “Isotopes again?” I glared at Cray. He took a puff of the makeshift cigarette and chortled.

“That’s water.”

I waited, watched them douse the Arena, watched them wheel in large contraptions concealed underneath sheets of canvas. They placed them in a circle around the Arena, seemingly arranging them like they would at a circus. I’d been there before, circus theme, it was nothing new. What was new was populating the Arena long before the people of Temperance arrived.

“You see Fable, I’m jealous.” Cray said, breaking the silence in the room. Other than the puffs on his cigarette and my even breaths in and out it was silent, nothing but the creaking from the things being brought into the Arena.

“Of my stunning good looks?” I suggested.

Cray shot me a deadly look. “Immortality. We all want it and yet you, crass, unpolished, unkempt, you are the only one who has achieved it.”

I let out a guffaw. I was a cynic, but I blamed thirteen-hundred-and-ten years on that. I used to be a good Christian girl, I used to help my parents with their business. I never got into trouble with the law or boys. I cracked a smile at Cray, my eyes softening in their sockets.

“I’m still a virgin.”

Cray choked.

I sighed. “You know what happens when you’re fifteen and you become immortal? People protect you, they make laws because of you, they lock you in a lead box. They don’t touch you, they don’t do anything to ruin your purity.”

“But we’ve burned you! We’ve . . .” He paced, the horrors of the thirty seven Temperance days he had witnessed showing on the leathery mask of his white face. He looked like a ghost. I reveled in every emotional moment of it. From the nervous tick in his fingers to the way his jaw muscle spasmed. I loved the glassy look he gave me as he eyed me from chest to waist, to lips.

I turned cold eyes on him. “I wanted those things! Anything to . . .” I didn’t want to say it. Hundreds of years tucked away in an ever growing society of stupidity. They were bringing things back from the remainder of the world every year. I’ve seen more and more of it show up in the Arena, rusty cars, refrigerators, cell phones, microwaves, satellites.

“Die?” Cray offered. He raised his chin, looking satisfied with himself. “Well then consider today a favor.”

“I’ll consider your death a favor.”

Cray put a finger to his lips to shush me. I listened, the stands were filling. I closed my eyes wondering what Hattie had done when she went into the tomb and found me missing. I held my breath, my eyes fixed on the Arena as the din rose to an unbearable sound. People shouted at the top of their lungs, greeting their neighbors, wondering what was underneath the thick canvases. I had my thoughts about it. One of the shapes looked like an old fashioned Ferris Wheel. The rest of it could have been anything of the sort, carousel, buggy ride, tea cups, by the looks of it.

“You know Hattie is going to be furious.”

Cray shrugged. “Hattie won’t know the difference.”

My stomach turned to invisible sludge. I hadn’t eaten anything in twelve hundred and some odd years. My body began rejecting food around the hundred year mark and from then on I had lived off the single droplet of water from the Fountain of Youth. My eyes widened.

“What do you mean?”

Cray sniffed the air, which was repulsive. “Watch,” he whispered, pointing at the Arena.

Rab Ketterling appeared in the center of the Arena, wearing the same uniform as Cray. The crowds erupted into a shower of cheers as he smiled widely. Whispers about what was under the canvases shot through the crowd and Rab laughed. His shoulders shook with the sound.

“Welcome to the thirteen hundred and tenth annual Temperance Day Celebration!” he shouted as the crowd grew silent. The speech went on, chronicling our journey from discovery to present day. I checked off the chain of events in my brain, being present and alive for every single one of them. I wondered when Hattie was going to find out that I was chained to one of the view boxes, that I wasn’t coming out until Cray let me. She should have been there by now. I should have been waiting in the wings, watching Rab through a metal grate.

I tried to remain calm even though Cray looked smugger by the minute. “What did you plan Cray? Don’t give the people their show?”

He kept staring at the Arena and completely ignored me.

He succeeded in making me angry. “Let me out of these damned chains you bastard!” I raised my legs hoping to wrap my heavy combat boots around his neck. Snap, snap, wouldn’t take much even with his oversized body. He slid out of the way, my boot colliding with his cheek. I smirked as he dropped the cigarette and rubbed his face. I expected him to get violent, but he didn’t have to.

Rab and a couple of servants removed the first canvas. It
was
a big Ferris Wheel, an exact replica of the ones I used to ride in Canada when we lived in Ontario. My heart sputtered, doing a double take as memories of my childhood – a childhood thousands of years behind me – attacked my mind. Water filled my mouth and I swallowed back the urge to burst into tears. There were only a few things that got me sentimental. Things that reminded me of my parents did the trick every time. Rab unveiled a carousel, teacups, and a boat ride, the tank full of water, little kiddie boats floating along the surface. My eyes widened, taking it all in, remembering again what it was like to be four years old. I realized Cray was staring at me unabashedly. His jaw muscles went slack as he saw probably the most emotional response I had emitted in centuries. I turned my stony black eyes on him.

“You knew the theme.”

He smirked. “I requested this theme ten years ago. The Senate chose it this year.”

I didn’t know whether to think of this as sympathy, a grudge or something else entirely. The crowd stomped wildly on the bleachers above and the sound interrupted our quiet moment of contemplation.

A trap door opened and a platform underneath the sandy floor rose from it.

I screamed. It wasn’t even something I was aware I was capable of anymore. I flailed against the chains matted to the wall. I kicked but Cray was on the other side of the room, far enough away that my anger did nothing.

There was a young girl in the center of the Arena. She had fiery red hair. She wore a costume that was meant for me. Light blue sparkly jeans covered her spaghetti legs while a Canada Wonderland t-shirt covered her barely defined chest. She clutched a ratty brown teddy bear in her left hand. She looked disoriented, like she had just woken up from a long nap. To me she was the epitome of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, only, they were going to find her and rip her to pieces.

“Fable the Immortal!” Rab Ketterling shouted as the crowd went wild.

I begged the girl to scream, to say something but she moved to her feet, dumbfounded, nodded blithely and Rab grabbed her hand and held it up for everyone to see.

My stomach churned. I was a dare devil, stunt woman, insanity case. She was just a girl, a real fifteen year old girl that was in my place. If they cut her she would bleed, if they burned her, the skin would blister, if the animals or the zombies bit her, she wouldn’t heal. If they brought out the maze, she’d be crushed.

I had no words.

Of all the dirty things I thought Cray was capable of, this wasn’t one of them. My shock registered with him and he winked at me, actually winked. I wanted to strangle him, put him in the Arena, make him face the things they threw at me.

“I told you there was more than one way to kill Fable the Immortal.”

“I’m going to kill you.”

“Go ahead, nobody will care once their beloved Fable the Immortal is found out. We can stop these silly celebrations and start doing what’s really important.”

I was listening now. I was also watching the fake Fable as she numbly walked over to the rusted Ferris Wheel and sat down in one of the carriages. It shuddered to a start and soon she was flying around and around. It went slow at first, and sped up incrementally, tossing the fake Fable around in the chair. Normally I would have been doing acrobatics, twirling, climbing around the thing, dangling at dangerous heights, but all I wanted fake Fable to do was hold on tight. Don’t let go.

“You want to know who she is don’t you?”

I growled. “Get to the point, she’s not going to last five minutes and you know it.”

“Fine. I don’t agree with the other Crays. I think Immortality is a mistake. We should be out there rehabilitating the Earth. We need to find other civilizations, we can’t be the only ones that survived.”

The Ferris Wheel stopped, a dizzy fake Fable stumbled out from it, shielding her eyes from the sun. She tottered on her stilettos and pitched forward, slumping in the sand until the carousel lit up, the painted horses spinning up and down. The crowd booed. They thought this was all part of the act, my act. They thought I wasn’t giving them what they came to see, me doing death defying stunts and impossible feats. They came to watch me burned at the stake, impaled by knives, shot by tommy guns, decapitated, shredded by bears. They came for the danger and the carnage and the fact that they never had to feel guilty for their sick obsession because no matter what they did to me, I lived.

Fake Fable stumbled to the carousel and narrowly jumped, catching one of the ponies by the neck and sliding down to the metal floor. I watched her grip the boxy metal stirrup with both hands as the carousel spun at incomprehensible speeds.

“So you want me dead.”

“I want the public to think you’re dead so they can vote on Nuclear Expeditions.”

“You want them to forget the Fountain of Youth.”

“Yes.”

I hummed, my heart careening out of control. The carousel slowed to a stop and the girl fell off it, landing on her back. She didn’t move. “Sounds noble. Except for her.”

Cray moved a fraction of an inch closer to me, putting his fingers on his lips. “I know what you’re thinking. We stole some unsuspecting girl from the East Side, drugged her and put her in the Arena. Or she’s a clone. Or she’s a great grandchild of yours. Or she volunteered.”

I tasted bile in the back of my throat. Who would knowingly volunteer to be tortured and killed in front of a crowd?

Fake Fable sat up, faced with a Gladiator, one of the guys I regularly sparred with when it wasn’t Temperance Day. He picked her up and threw her across the Arena. She skidded as she hit the sand, her body slamming against the metal crate of the boat ride. Her arm looked broken. I begged him to realize it wasn’t me but the crowd was on their feet, shouting at the top of their lungs.

“FAY-BULL! FAY-BULL! FAY-BULL!”

They chanted my name like it might convince me to fight against the Gladiator. A whip caromed off the metal boat basin and I cringed as the tip flicked fake Fable’s ankle. Her mouth formed an O as she gasped and cried out, the wound on her ankle gushing blood. I remembered my first shaving experience at twelve, only three years before I was made immortal. I nicked myself, a fresh line of blood spilling from my fair white skin.

“This is going to cause a riot.” I wanted to close my eyes but I couldn’t stop watching the girl in the Arena. She whimpered as she dragged her body around the basin away from the succession of whiplashes that struck the metal, coming dangerously close to her skin. I knew what was on the edge of that whip, barbed wire. It was added when they realized that the regular whips did nothing to my skin, not even welts. It wasn’t fun if I didn’t heal instantaneously in front of them.

Cray glanced at me sideways. “It’s going to start a civil war.”

Probably.

If I died there would be an uproar.

Somehow I cared less about that than about the girl in the Arena risking her life on my behalf. Maybe she thought this was for the greater good. She was the spitting image of me in a lot of ways, maybe she was trying to end my suffering by making the people think of me as dead. Whatever her reasons were, I hated all of them. She didn’t deserve to be in that Arena, I did. There was no way I was going to stay in captivity, hidden from their city until the end truly came. There was no way I was going to consume the isotope poisoned orange juice Cray had offered me for weeks before Temperance Day. I wanted him removed, replaced.