Kate Daniels 03 - Magic Strikes

qualifying bout should give you little trouble and third-tier fighters shouldn’t be that fresh. Group one will take the second-tier bout. We will come out together for the championship fight.”
    Jim flipped a page on his legal pad. “You’re going up against the Red Demons this afternoon. From what I’ve heard, they will be fielding a werebison, a swordsman, and some type of odd creature as their mage. You will have magic for the fight. They try to schedule the bouts during the magic waves, because magic makes for a better show. Try to appear sloppy and incompetent. The weaker you look, the more our opponents will underestimate the team, and the easier time we will all have. My lord, no claws. Kate, no magic. You’ll need to win, but just barely.”
    He looked at his notes again and said, “About the murder law. Doesn’t apply in the Pit.”
    Curran said nothing. Jim had just given the shapeshifters permission to kill without accountability with Curran’s silence to reinforce it. Just as well. Gladiators died. That was the reality. We had to be there. The rest had volunteered. And given a chance, every member of the opposing team would murder any one of us without a second thought.
     
     
    THE SAND CRUNCHED UNDER MY FOOT. I COULD already taste it on my tongue. The memories conjured heat and sunshine. I shook them off and looked across the Pit.
    In the far end, three people waited for us. The swordsman, tall and carrying a hand-and-a-half sword. The werebison, shaggy with dark brown fur, towering, angry. His breadth was enormous, the shoulders packed with hard, heavy muscle, the chest like a barrel. He wore a chain mail hauberk but no pants. His legs terminated in black hooves. A dense mane of coarse hair crowned the back of his neck. His features were a meld of bull and human, but where the minotaur’s face had been a cohesive whole, the shapeshifter’s skull was a jumble of mismatched parts.
    Behind them reared a nightmarish creature. Its lower body was python, dark brown with creamy swirls of scales. Near the abdomen, the scales became so fine, they glittered, stretching tight over a human upper body, complete with a pair of tiny breasts and a female face that looked like it belonged to a fifteen-year-old. She looked at us with emerald-green eyes. Her skull was bald and a hood of flesh spread from her head, resembling that of a king cobra.
    A lamia. Great.
    The lamia swayed gently, as if listening to music only she could hear. Old magic emanated from her, ancient and ice-cold. It picked up the sand and rolled it in feathery curves to caress her scales before sliding back to the Pit.
    Behind me, Dali shivered. She stood in the sand with a clipboard, an ink pen, and a piece of thin rice paper cut into inch-wide strips.
    I eyed the swordsman. Weak and sloppy. Okay, I could do that.
    The crowd waited above us. The hum of conversation, the clearing of throats, and the sound of a thousand simultaneous breaths blended into a low hum. I scanned the seats and saw Saiman on his balcony. Aunt B, Raphael’s mother, sat on his left, and Mahon, the Bear of Atlanta and the Pack’s executioner, occupied the chair to his right. Sitting between the alphas of Clan Bouda and Clan Heavy. No wonder Saiman had been persuaded to give up his spot to Curran.
    Behind Aunt B, I saw a familiar pale head. Couldn’t be. The blond head moved and I saw Julie’s face. Oh yes, it could.
    “You bribed my kid!”
    “We reached a business arrangement,” he said. “She wanted to see you fight and I wanted to know when, where, and how you were getting into the Games.”
    Julie gave me a big, nervous smile and a little wave.
    Just wait until I get out of here, I mouthed. We were going to have a little talk about following orders.
    “I know what the problem is.” Curran pulled his shoulders back and flexed, warming up a little. I stole a glance. He had decided to fight in jeans and an old black T-shirt, from which he’d torn the sleeves. Probably his workout shirt.
    His biceps were carved, the muscle defined and built by countless exertions, neither too bulky nor too lean. Perfect. Kissing him might make me guilty of catastrophically bad judgment, but at least nobody could fault my taste. The trick was not to kiss him again. Once could be an accident; twice was trouble.
    “You said something?” I arched an eyebrow at him. Nonchalance—best camouflage for drooling. Both the werebison and the swordsman looked ready to charge: the