I grudgingly accepted the handkerchief, but only because my nose was really starting to run. I took a perverse pleasure in blowing a huge wad of snot into it, and handing it back to him.
“So, what do you think of my skybox?” Boss Marz smiled, gesturing to his surroundings with a delicate wave of his hand.
I realized for the first time that the office was actually a lofted room suspended over the warehouse, with a wall made of windows that looked out onto the floor below. Now that I was free to look around, I was surprised to discover the walls were hung with original Warhols and Harings. A bronze statue of Shiva the Destroyer, garlanded in skulls and snakes, sat in a recessed alcove.
“This is where I come when I weary of the twunts down below. I can retire up here and check my market portfolio while enjoying a hot-oil massage.”
Rather than dwell on the mental image of Boss Marz receiving a rubdown, I looked out the windows. On the ground floor was a large octagonal hole, ringed with razor wire, over which was suspended a set of boxing ring lights. Grouped around the pit was a set of raised bleachers, three tiers high, jammed full of swearing, screaming, yelling men frantically waving fistfuls of cash at one another as they watched as whatever hapless creatures below them battled to the death.
I turned back to stare at Boss Marz, who was puffing on his cigar. It did nothing to mask the odor of scorched metal that radiated from his body.
“How can you do this?” I asked. “You’re a man of sophisticated tastes. I can tell that by the works of art on display here. How can you appreciate things such as these and then turn around and pit those poor creatures against one another?”
“I do it for money, of course,” he replied matter-of-factly. “What do you think
paid
for these paintings? Nothing gets the twunts more excited than blood sports. It gets their juices flowing, makes them wager big. They pay a cover to get in, and the house gets a cut of every wager, win or lose, on top of that. As for the creatures that fight in the pits; in the end, they’re just dumb beasts—who cares if they die here or in the slaughter yard?”
“‘Just dumb beasts’?” I shook my head in disbelief. “What about Lukas and the other shape-shifters? They’re sentient, thinking creatures, with families who love them.”
“Don’t kid yourself, girl,” Boss Marz said with a humorless laugh. “Shape-shifters carry beast blood in their veins. It swims in their DNA. That makes them no different than pit bulls or fighting cocks, in my book, except that they can talk and have thumbs. I’ll grant you that they’re smarter, savvier fighters in the ring than the true beasts—but they’re also more savage. The twunts love shape-shifters because they know they’ll get their money’s worth out of them. And I’m all about giving my customers what they want.”
I looked away, in case the crime lord saw the disgust in my eyes and took offense. Despite his fondness for tailored suits and his taste in art, Boss Marz was a bigger beast than any of the creatures he kept locked away in his kennels. As my gaze fell on yet another Warhol, I reminded myself that the Nazis had appreciated art as well. It didn’t make them kinder, gentler beings; it just meant they were murderous assholes with stolen Old Masters hanging in their studies.
“Come, Bonzo,” the Malandanti leader said, motioning for his familiar to join him. “It’s time we joined the rabble.”
The hell-ape grunted and jumped onto the desk, changing into his tiny squirrel-monkey aspect. The transformed familiar scampered up Boss Marz’s arm and took his place on his master’s left shoulder.
“Nach will show you downstairs,” Boss Marz said as he fished a pistachio from his pocket and handed it to Bonzo. “You certainly don’t want to miss your friends’ big fight. I’ve arranged ringside seats for you—that way you’re sure to see
everything
.”
While Nach escorted me out of Boss Marz’s “skybox,” I paused to look one last time at the ruins of my own artwork, which lay heaped beside the door. As I stared at the jumble of dismantled sculptures, I realized something was missing from the pile of mangled pistons, typewriter keys, and repurposed transmissions.
Where was the Cyber-Panther?
Chapter 22
As Nach led me down the wooden staircase from Boss Marz’s private “skybox” to the open floor below, my mind was racing, desperately trying to figure out a way to get out of what was, without a doubt, the worst clusterfuck of my entire life.
As screwups went, this one left the time I got busted joyriding in my dad’s BMW in the dust. Enduring my mother’s tongue-lashing and my father’s icy stare seemed like absolute heaven in comparison to what I had to look forward to. Despite the danger I was in, I was more worried for Hexe and Lukas than for myself—especially for Hexe. The thought of losing him tugged at my heart like a fishhook.
The first floor of the warehouse was filled with stacks of crates, save for the open area in the back where the pit was located. It was a huge open space, with high ceilings, exposed rafters the size of railroad ties, and a pyramid-style skylight high overhead. Bleachers were set up on each side of the pit, rising high enough so that the paying customers crowding about could get an unobstructed view. The place smelled of blood, animal waste, sweat, and death. A pall of tobacco smoke hovered above the assembled gamblers, adding to the general miasma.
The “twunts” as Boss Marz called them, were a mix of coked-up wannabe-thugs decked out in Affliction T-shirts, Jager-bombed Bridge and Tunnel douche bags in Ed Hardy gear, overweight middle-aged men with shaved heads and graying goatees wearing Tap Out shirts, Triad gang members in flashy Hong Kong suits, and older, well-dressed businessmen with three-hundred-dollar haircuts. Those in the last category creeped me out the most since they didn’t shout and hoot like the others, nor did they seem intoxicated. Instead, they intently watched the carnage taking place before them, eyes shining like wet stones in otherwise unreadable faces.
The audience wasn’t composed entirely of humans, as I first thought. I spotted several Kymerans and other paranormals sprinkled throughout the stadium seats, including a smattering of ghouls and the inevitable leprechaun or two. The only other woman in the room besides me was a sloe-eyed maenad dressed in a moth-eaten leopard skin, selling warm beer and cigarettes to the crowd from a tray slung about her neck. A dozen Malandanti croggies, dressed in the prerequisite boxy suits and dark sunglasses, prowled the makeshift stadium, ensuring the twunts didn’t get too rowdy between matches. A couple of seedy-looking satyrs were working the crowd, giving odds and taking wagers.
All of the bleachers had three tiers of stadium seating, save one, which was outfitted like the emperor’s box in the Roman Colosseum, with a huge thronelike chair draped in silks and embroidered tapestries. As Nach pushed me up the risers that led to the grandstand, I looked down into the octagon, the top of which was wreathed in razor wire.
The pit was at least twenty feet deep with wooden walls, its floor covered in sawdust. A couple of Kymerans dressed in janitorial jumpsuits were removing the carcass of the lion I had seen earlier. There was a fist-sized puncture wound in the big cat’s chest and a somewhat smaller exit wound on its back, as if someone had rammed a pike—or a unicorn’s horn—through its heart. A third flunky tossed shovelfuls of sawdust onto the floor to absorb the gore from the previous battle and provide a fresh playing surface for the next fight.
I was forced to stand beside Boss Marz’s throne while Nach kept an eye on me in case I made a break for it. The moment I stepped onto the bleacher, the twunts began shouting obscenities at me. I realized I was still wearing my sexy black dress, the one I had picked out for my gallery show. No doubt the mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers thought I was just another victim of Boss Marz’s come-hither spell. I was nothing more than meat to them, no different than the creatures that fought and died for their pleasure. A minute later Boss Marz ascended the grandstand, followed by the werewolf Phelan, and the catcalls changed into cheers. All hail the patron of the feast.
A door in one side of the pit opened, and Hexe was shoved into the arena. He was stripped to the waist and the metal globes removed from his hands in exchange for an elaborate bondage-style harness that kept his right arm securely strapped behind his back. In his left hand was the silver knife. He raised his knife hand, using his forearm to shield his eyes against the glare from the overhead lights. I knew he was looking for me. I stepped forward to call out to him, only to be yanked back by Nach.
I desperately searched the crowd for some sign of surprise or shock on the faces in the bleachers, but all I saw was bloodlust. These men had already witnessed several murders that night—what was one more to them? For a second I thought I spotted a glimmer of recognition in the eyes of an older Kymeran, but there was so much going on, I couldn’t be sure. One thing of which I was certain was that if there was any help to be found, it was not coming from anyone who had paid handsomely to see things die.
As I looked down at Hexe, my heart ached as if there were an iron fist inside my chest slowly squeezing the life from it. A cold, numbing dread spread through my body, as if I had been dipped into ice water. The spit in my mouth dried up and as much as I did not want to see what was about to happen, I could not look away.
“
Quiet down, you bastards!
” Boss Marz shouted, holding up a beringed hand for silence. After a second or two, the cheering died down to a ragged murmur. “This man before you conspired to keep me from what was rightfully mine! By offending me, he has offended the ancient order of the Malandanti, we who proudly walk the Left Hand Path! He thought, because of the accident of his birth, he could flaunt the will of the Malandanti without fear of repercussions! But tonight, all of Golgotham shall learn that no one—prince or pauper—is immune from our vengeance! Release the beast!”
A panel on the other side of the arena slid open and, accompanied by an angry roar, Lukas came bounding out on all fours. He was almost entirely puma, with no human attributes, and the shock collar was once more around his neck. I involuntarily flashed back to the night he chased me through the garden maze. There was no sign in those burning green eyes of the sweet, goofy teenager I had come to know—only that of a ravening animal. Despite myself, I gasped and cringed in fear at the sight of my friend.
The moment Lukas hit the sawdust, the gamblers crowding the ringside began to yell even louder and wave even more money at the satyrs, who dashed back and forth, hurriedly taking bets. Lukas warily circled Hexe, who was careful not to let the were-cat get behind him. Lukas flattened his ears against his tawny skull and hissed at the sight of the silver knife in his friend’s hand. Although the drugs in his system had erased his human inhibitions, he still recognized danger. Lukas swiped at Hexe with his forepaw, but he was able to quickly sidestep his friend’s razor-sharp claws.
“I told you to
fight
, not dance!” Marz bellowed. “You know what happens if you don’t give me a show. Now mix it up!” Bonzo screeched and leaped from his master’s shoulder onto me, clawing my face and pulling my hair with his tiny, filthy paws.
Startled by the unexpected attack, I screamed and tried to swat the familiar away, only to have the little bastard bite my fingers with his needle-sharp teeth. Spurred by the sound of my shrieks, Hexe lunged forward and slashed at Lukas with the knife. Lukas countered by raking his claws across Hexe’s exposed torso, knocking the weapon out of his hand. A second later, four long streaks of wet red suddenly blossomed on Hexe’s left side. Lukas screamed in excitement as he caught the scent of his opponent’s blood and quickly placed himself between Hexe and the knife.
Boss Marz prodded me in the ribs, pointing at Lukas. “See what I mean about the shape-shifters putting on a better show?” he said excitedly. “A true mountain lion wouldn’t have the brains to put itself between its opponent and a weapon.”
I watched in horror as Hexe lunged for the knife, only to have Lukas pounce on him like a house cat going after a mouse. The moment the were-cat landed on his back, Hexe dropped to the ground and curled into a ball like a hedgehog. He tucked his chin in, grabbing the back of his neck with his left hand to protect the top of his spinal column, while drawing his knees to his chest to keep from being disemboweled. Ironically, the leather harness used to restrain Hexe’s right arm behind his back provided him at least a modicum of defense from the tearing fangs and slashing claws of his attacker.
Although there was no way I could possibly stop what was happening before me, I had to try, no matter the cost. I could not stand by and watch the man I loved being savaged by the friend I held as close as a brother. Wresting myself free of Nach’s grip, I threw myself against the railing that separated the grandstand from the pit.
“
Lukas! Stop it! He’s your friend!
” I screamed.
“Hexe is your friend!”
To my surprise, Lukas stopped his attack on Hexe and turned his head in my direction. His green-gold gaze locked with mine, and I saw recognition flicker in his eyes, if only for the briefest moment. I had definitely caught the were-cat’s attention, but I had no way of knowing if he understood me.
“Get away from there, you crazy nump,” Nach snarled. Lukas hissed angrily upon catching sight of the Malandanti goon as Nach grabbed my arm and brusquely yanked me back in line.
“Keep that stupid bitch quiet,” Boss Marz snarled.
Nach nodded his head and clamped his metal hand over my mouth. I winced in pain as the overlapping fish-like scales bit into my flesh. I cried out in protest, only to have my cry reduced to a muffled moan.
Hexe began edging away from the distracted were-cat and crawling toward the knife. Lukas caught the movement at the corner of his eye and spun back around, swatting Hexe hard enough to flip him onto his back. Hexe lifted his head from the sawdust, keeping his eyes on Lukas. He knew the second he looked away the were-cat would be on him. Although his opponent seemed completely helpless, Lukas slowly edged forward, as if wary of a trap.