Lost (43 page)

"We have a
challenge ring in the center of the house. Follow us there if you're
really ready to die."

The tiniest
part of me wanted to scream out that I didn't want to die, but it was
surprisingly easy to silence those screams. I was going to die no
matter what happened at this point. The only remaining question was
how
. I was resolved to die in the way that would do the most
good.

I was going to
give Celeste and her people whatever measure of protection I could,
and maybe in the process I could create a stronger legend for Alec, a
legend that might mean at some point people would surrender to him
rather than fighting until the bitter end.

I stood with a
faint grin and gestured for Onyx and Nicolas to precede me. "By
all means. You will have to lead the way. I couldn't be bothered to
memorize the floor plan of a house that will be a charred ruin in
just a few days or weeks."

The challenge
ring turned out to be a large auditorium set on a massive slab of
concrete. Most of the furnishings were of a utilitarian nature, bench
seats for the spectators and industrial fixtures for lighting, but
there was a raised dais at one end of the room that didn't look like
it had been poured at the same time as the floor. The dais and the
throne on it were proof that Onyx had grander designs than just
ruling a single pack in New Orleans.

He'd probably
figured that he could move into town and suck what was left of the
Hunt family dry over the course of just a year or two before moving
on to establish himself as a major power on the Coun'hij. Instead,
Celeste and her mom had held him off for decades. A few decades
didn't mean much to a hybrid like Onyx, but the Hunts had bought the
rest of us something more precious than money.

They'd bought
us time of comparative freedom, a world in which the Coun'hij had one
less weapon to hold to our heads.

I'd never
shifted back after killing Onyx's man at the dock, but now Nicolas
and Onyx both changed forms as well. A few more people trickled in,
and I realized that Onyx had ordered the whole pack gathered to see
my death.

The collection
of people who formed a tiny ball around Celeste and Jax looked
battered and scared, but I gave them all a reassuring smile.

"Your king
is aware of your situation. If I fall here it will be only a
temporary setback. He will free you. Today, tomorrow, next week, it
matters not. His arm is mighty and his reach unending. Even tyrants
like Onyx can't hope to escape his justice forever."

Onyx clapped
sarcastically. "Ah, yes. More empty promises, more worthless
grandstanding. The truth is that Celeste has been a very bad girl.
She has been conspiring with our pack's enemies in the hopes of
overthrowing me. Unfortunately her would-be allies are so weak that
they couldn't send the army she asked for. They sent one hybrid,
little more than a child really, as a salve to their conscience so
that they can say that they tried to free you.

"The truth
is that nobody wants you. You're a group that the rest of the world
would simply let starve.
I
protect you.
I
keep you safe
from the threats out there in the wider world.
I
am your king,
and as your king I've invited you all here to see the pretender's
pawn fall to our very own Nicolas."

Onyx dropped
his hand and Nicolas blurred towards me. He was every bit as fast as
I remembered, but I'd seen this very same attack a thousand times
inside my dreams. I acted without thinking, ducking to the right and
then reversing back to the left at the last second and raking my
claws through his stomach and side as he tried to compensate for my
abrupt shift in location.

My claws
scraped against a sheath of bone where there shouldn't have been
anything other than muscles and organs, but the wound was still
surprisingly deep, all things considered.

"That was
for my friend Ash. Too bad he doesn't have your…advantages."

Nicolas' eyes
narrowed, probably partially because I'd referenced—however
obliquely—the fact that he shared a common heritage with Alec
and Jasmin, and partially because it had been a very long time since
anyone had managed to bleed him like that in a fight without help.

"Apparently
Carson taught you more than I gave you credit for. That's good; I've
grown weary of fighting incompetents."

He came back
towards me, moving with more caution, and we swapped feints for a
couple of seconds before he stepped in with the hybrid equivalent to
a straight jab. I should have stepped back and tried to slash his
arm. That was my normal reaction to those kinds of attacks, but this
time I stepped into him, blocking his claw-tipped jab with the side
of my arm, and then slamming my right fist into his stomach.

His other arm
came at me from my right, but I stepped to the side and slammed his
arm with my right elbow before slicing him across the chest and
backing away.

Fighting a
hybrid was liberating after so long fighting lamias. Nicolas didn't
have scales capable of at least partially turning my blows and I'd
done such a large amount of damage to him in such a short amount of
time that I could scarcely believe it.

He wasn't going
to bleed out in the next two minutes, but losing so much blood was
going to eventually have an impact even on a hybrid. If I could avoid
clinching with him for a minute or two, he would start to slow down
slightly and I would have more options. Even better, if I could
manage another strike or two like the last two, then he'd start
feeling pressure to finish the fight more quickly, which would mean
that he would be more likely to make mistakes.

It was too
early to start celebrating though. Two minutes was still a lot of
time and if he managed to get close enough to put me in one of the
holds that Carson had favored, I would still lose.

We circled,
gauging each other's reaction times and technique. Even wounded like
he was, he was still the slightest bit faster than me, which was
extremely bad. He was bigger than me too, which meant that he had the
advantage when we were fighting further apart.

His claws
licked out once, twice, and then a third time. I was bleeding from
three different spots on my arms, and I'd only managed to land one
blow on him in return. He was still bleeding faster that I was, but
he'd just proved that he was going to win if I tried to wait him out.

His advantages
at long range meant that I couldn't afford to keep fighting him out
at the distances we'd been fighting at, but by the same measure, I
couldn't afford to let him get in close where he could turn this into
a grappling match. There was an extremely narrow band of distance
where I seemed to have the advantage, but if I erred even by just a
couple of inches too close or too far away, then he would make me pay
in blood and pain.

I was like an
amateur with one trick going up against a seasoned pro with a whole
arsenal of techniques, but there wasn't anything to do but try to
force the kind of fight that I had at least some chance of winning.

We exchanged a
couple of more jabs before I saw my chance. As his fist came towards
me I knocked it high and to my left so that his body was uncovered as
I stepped in. My right fist shot forward with the speed and force of
a piston, but it was too similar to what I'd already done.

As I moved
forward in an attempt to get inside of his reach, he'd already turned
slightly so that my claws only managed a glancing blow, and then he
hit me with way more force than anyone should have been able to
generate from such a short charge. None of my normal techniques were
going to be able to get me out of this bind. I couldn't move forward
without guaranteeing him exactly the kind of clinch he was after, and
I wasn't fast enough to get out of his reach, not as fast as he'd
come at me. The fight was over at that moment, and I knew it, but
some part of my subconscious apparently didn't agree.

Instead of
dodging or stepping into him, I threw myself backwards with every
ounce of speed and force I could muster. Even my best effort wasn't
enough to avoid him completely, but I hadn't expected it to be.

His claws
closed on the outside of my arms, tearing into my muscles as my feet
came off of the ground and I pulled them up against my chest. His
fangs were headed towards my neck, but I managed to get my hands up
just high enough to push him back away from my vitals.

We were moving
in slow motion now and it seemed as though I could read his mind. He
didn't care that I'd stopped him from ripping my throat out because
every rule of physics was now working in his favor. We were going to
hit the concrete more than hard enough to drive him past my
ineffectively scrabbling claws and let him end me.

Our fall
stretched out for what felt like hours, but no matter how hard I
tried, I couldn't get my claws into anything important. His control
of my upper arms was giving him too much leverage, and then there
wasn't any time left to continue trying.

We hit with
enough force to knock a human being out cold, but hybrid bodies are
made out of much sterner stuff and rather than having Nicolas crush
me into the ground, my legs had somehow contorted enough to put my
feet between the two of us. I converted all of that energy into a
throw that launched Nicolas into a row of empty bleachers.

I rolled to my
feet at the same time that Nicolas disentangled himself from the
wreckage and stumbled down to the circle.

Neither of us
was in very good shape by then. My arms were still functioning
despite all odds, but I was losing a lot of blood and I was starting
to feel the faintest bit lightheaded. Nicolas' wounds from earlier on
in the fight had now been joined by two sets of deep punctures in his
chest. I'd missed sticking a talon through his heart out of nothing
more than sheer dumb luck, but he was obviously approaching the end
of his endurance.

"Who the
hell are you?"

Despite the
pain competing for my attention, I felt my lips pull back in a smile.

"I thought
that we'd already established that, Nicolas. What was it that your
boss called me? A worthless pawn?"

"No,
you're not Isaac Nazir. I fought Isaac Nazir and trounced him
soundly."

"What's
the matter, worried that Carson showed me stuff that he never trusted
you enough to pass on to you?"

The flare of
power and rage out of Nicolas was white-hot. It wasn't the kind of
demonstration you expected out of a hybrid on his last legs, it was
the kind of thing that only the most powerful dominants ever
produced. My beast should have responded with a burst of energy of
his own, but he didn't. It was more evidence that I didn't have much
left to give.

My beast was
too far gone to care about posturing, all he cared about was trying
to survive.

"There was
nothing
that Carson didn't show me. I was his prize pupil. I
was the one he wanted his daughter to marry. The old fool had no idea
who he was dealing with until it was too late."

As Nicolas
charged in towards me with a roar, I experienced another of those
moments when everything slowed down and I became hyper-aware of my
surroundings. Celeste looked worried, Jax looked scared, and Onyx
looked concerned. None of them had expected for me to last this long,
but I couldn't hold that against Celeste. I hadn't expected to last
this long either.

My beast was
lethargic, as though his attention was directed elsewhere, or maybe
he was just making peace with what was coming.

The fight could
still go either way, but I was nearly out of tricks, and Nicolas'
anger seemed to be giving him the strength he needed to move like he
was fresh and uninjured. Time sped back up to normal speed and
Nicolas was now less than two steps away from me.

His claws moved
towards me impossibly fast, and once again I blocked and stepped
forward. It was obvious that my training and reflexes had let me
down. It was the same attack that Nicolas had just finished trumping.

It was the
end…only it wasn't. Instead of parrying his blow to the
outside, I'd parried it to the inside, which meant that his own arm
was in the way of any follow-up attack he could launch and his chest
and side were completely exposed.

I stabbed him
in the chest, puncturing his lung. I would have preferred a straight
shot at his heart, but I'd opened up the wrong side of his body for
that. It was a vicious, debilitating attack nonetheless, but it
wasn't enough to stop him from bringing his arm back around and slamming
his elbow into the side of my head.

He knocked me
back on my heels and then before I could recover, he wrapped me up in
a giant bear hug and lifted me off of my feet. It was the last thing
I would have expected out of someone like Nicolas. It was the attack
of an enraged bruiser rather than the slick technique of a
professional killer, but that didn't stop it from being effective.

Even assuming
that I could have matched his strength, I didn't have the leverage
that I would have needed to break free of him. My hands were trapped
between us, pinned by a combination of our bodies and his vicelike
grip around my upper arms.

I tried to get
my talons into play. I was cutting him up, but I couldn't get to
anything important. He was bleeding so fast that I knew he didn't
have much longer, but I could feel one of his hands digging into my
back in an attempt to sever my spinal cord.

He was having a
hard time getting past all of the ribs and vertebrae, but it was only
a matter of time. I was betting that he'd succeed in paralyzing me
before he bled to death.

I happened to
be looking at Onyx as I struggled in a vain attempt to free myself. I
could see the worry and concern disappear, replaced instead by
satisfaction as my struggles started to weaken. Just when I was on
the point of giving up, I felt Nicolas weaken as the cumulative blood
loss finally started to catch up with him. It was a very slight
change, but it was all I needed to get one hand just enough free to
sink it into his chest.