A Sinister Game (41 page)

Victor straightened
. He
turned,
and his eyes locked onto her as if she were a beacon. Victoria shivered.
To thin
k that Victor Black wanted her
as badly as he did was almost a compliment. A scary, thrilling kind of compliment.

Very slowly,
Victor peeled his
promising
gaze from her and pinned it to the Game Lord
, who was still standing where he’d been before, watching them
.

The Game Lord smiled
and shook his head.
“
You truly
are the best, Black.
Really, if my hands weren’t occupied, I would applaud you.” His gray eyes glittered maniacally. “It’s so
good to
see you’re still with us after all.
I’ll take two rehabilitated Gamers over one any day.”

Victoria
strode toward Victor
and stood beside him
.
If they were going down, they would do so together.

“If you come quietly,
” t
he Game Lord continued
almost conversationally, “
I won’t have to blast you
both
into
a coma first.”

“I think you’re bluffing,” Victor stated, his accent coming through loud and clear.

Victoria
glanced
over her shoulder at
the sound of
more
footfalls.
But rather than more guards
,
Simon, April and Ty
came running round the corner
down the
hall
. She
held up
her hand, signaling for them to stay back.

As they’d been trained to, they obeyed her order and came to a halt.
Then
t
hey saw the bodies on the floor.
Ty and Simon raised their bows
toward the Game Lord
, and April went for her sword, pulling it loudly from its scabbard
.

The Game Lord ignored them. Instead,
he addressed Victor
.

“I can see
why you would believe that,” he said, referring to Victor’s bluff accusation.
He
shrugged. “After all, I’ve already used one black box today. How many could I possibly have created over the last
three thousand years
?
” He chuckled. “
Am I right?” He
tilted his head and his gaze slid to
Victoria.

He winked at her.

“Victoria, run
,
” Victor told her.

“No,” Victoria replied, her own gaze narrowing. Fire pooled in her palms, illuminating the hall with crackling, jumping shadows.

“You heard me
,” Victor repeated
.
“
Get out of here now.”

The Game Lord’s smile turned cruel. He lifted the box and it began to crackle with electricity.

But Victoria
wasn’t about to leave Victor, n
ot again. Not now that he was alive and she had a second chance. “
I said no
,” she whispered. “
Accept it, Gray leader
.”

She could feel
a spike of energy come from him then. He was angry, and the sensation was like ice on
her skin.

For the love of Thor, Victoria, get the bloody hell out of
here,
he mentally commanded.

Forget it.
Her reply was simple a
nd strong. She began to pull her power forward, setting it
in front of them
like a firewall.

That’s my girl,
came another voice in her mind. Victoria recognized this one as Loki’s.

I’m her
e
too, Rose.
Take whatever you need from me,
said her sister.

Victoria closed her eyes as the familiar voice
s swirled through her head and soul
.
She reached out and touched them, drawing from each of them as if they were unseen founts.
She felt stronger than she had ever felt before. Even the drug still coursing through her system fail
ed to bend her concentration. If anything, it
merely relaxed her, took away the fear,
and
made her braver.

Which made her more dangerous.

As if he could sense this chang
e in her, Victor turned and looked down at her
.
Green eyes met gold.

“I’ll give you one last chance, Rose.”
The box in Arthur Zero’s
hands was cra
ckling with more urgency now. “
Think of it, Tyrnan,” he continued. “You’ll be with your
t
eam again. You’ll live forever. You’ll be
happy
.”

Victor and Victoria turned back to regard him.

“Not that I
need
remind you of this love,” Victor told her as he warily eyed the Game Lord
,
“But
I wouldn’t listen to him if I were you
.
He’s a very good liar. And, what’s worse,” he paused, giving Arthur a knowing look. “
He plans to make you his wife.
He’ll implant the memory in your mind first chance he gets
.”

Ty Murrey and Simon Roon let fly with their arrows. The bolts shot through the air, sailing well over Victor and Victoria’s heads toward the Game Lord.

Arthur Zero raised the box in his hands. A flash of light erupted from it. The arrows burst into flames and were diverted. They went flying to the sides to bank uselessly against the walls of the hall and drop smoldering to the ground.

Victoria watched this with a growing sense of doom. Victor
must have been reading the Game Lord’s mind
to know his intentions
. She didn’t want to think about what else he might have read in there. No doubt, he was editing his thoughts for her sake.

But Arthur Zero didn’t deny it.
“The old
gods are all but dead, b
ut
the wall still needs champions,” he said. “
If not by birthright, then by birth, alone.”
He
stared at Victoria, and now she recognized the lust
in his expression
. “You would create beautiful children, Rose.” His eyes reflected an inner hunger. “And
powerful
.”

Without warning, Victor
released a stream of cold energy, no doubt meaning to freeze the Game Lord from the inside out.
At the same time,
both Simon and Ty released a second volley of
arrows.

Again, the arrows were stopped, this time coming to a complete halt in the air and dropping to the floor like rocks.

Likewise, Victor’s col
d stream seemed to bounce off
the Game Lord. The wall to Arthur’s
right
was
caked over with crawling, crackling rime
, but Arthur himself was untouched
.

A muscle in Victor’s jaw ticked. He waved his hand; Victoria recognized the attempt at telekinesis. But the Game Lord stayed put, once more completely unaffected
by Victor’s magic
.

“Very nice, Black. But you can do better than that.”

Victoria
stepped back
when
Victor released his sleep and weakness powers next
. She could feel
the influence
slithering across the hall and fully expected the Game Lord to feel
something
this time.

But he didn’t. The box, however, seemed to hav
e grown brighter in his hands. She frowned. Maybe it was e
ven
larger
.

“
Victor, you have to
stop
,
” Victoria told him, moving forward
to gently grasp his elbow. “You’re
only making him stronger.”

The Game Lord’s eyes glittered. With merriment? Pride? Whatever it was, it wasn’t good, and when it settled once more on Victoria’s form, she could almost feel its weight.

“Yes, indeed,” he commended
. “You’
re as intelligent as you are beautiful, Tyrnan. I believe you will warm my bed quite nicely.”

Victor’s entire body wa
s rigid with pent-up rage. A
t that final
obscene
challenge, he seemed to be able to take no more. He tore from her grasp and strode
toward the Game Lord
just as the black box in
Arthur’s grasp grew completely
transparent.

Victoria could now see a vortex spinning within it. She hadn’t witnessed the Game Lord using the black box the f
irst time
on the cl
earing outside of Ocanus. She’
d been unconscious
at the time
.

But now she had a front seat
view
when the box opened up and a kind of
lightning s
hot
from its core.

The first stream
of white-blue light
struck Victor in the chest
with the force of a focused
hurricane.
Victor was lifted off of his feet and thrown down the hall, the arm of lightning following him as he went.
Victoria spun to go after him, but a
second stream from the black box hit her
next
, knocking her back
as well
.

It felt like an arm of iron had slammed into her sternum, stealing her breath and fibrillating her heart. She failed to
process any coherent thought in that moment
. The impact
was
white-hot
and utterly draining. She slumped
against the wall she was thrown into and slid to the
floor
to land on her
hands and
knees.

Her body was on fire.
It was eating her alive, stealing her vitality from her, leaving her empty.

Victoria….

Victor’s voice
whispered through her thoughts,
barely audible over
the maelstrom of blood rushing in
her
eardrums
. She could have sworn she heard her body
cracking
.

I’m so sorry, love.

She felt his presence slipping away, as the world felt the
withdrawal
of night before the sun rose
.
She knew the bulk of the box’s evil was focused on him. The Game Lord was going to take him out
first. Victor
posed too much of a threat.

She tried to look up, but found herself on the floor
, having to force even her eyelids to obey
. She felt
so
heavy, a
s if she were made of
lead and would even fall
through the marble tiles beneath he
r. She could not move her body,
not at all.

T
he torment continued, draining one
of her
power
s
after another. She could almost recognize them as they passed from her soul to the black box. Telekinesis
first. Then f
ire. Her sister’s powers faded as well
, the ice melting and the cold growing
tepid. All sound within her mind ceased.

Her healing ability began to go
, its molecular mending slipping past like wisps of smoke on a breeze.

But a bellow of rage sounded through the buzzing, lit-up hallway. A cry of surprise promptly followed.

The lightning
suddenly
stopped
, the snapping and crackling no longer piercing her to her core
.
The pain began to recede, dropping away like the sloughing of an acid-lined blanket.

Victoria
moaned. She pushed herself up – and
slumped forward, gasping for breath. A drop of blood fell to the floor
beneath her, splattering into a beautiful many-pointed star
. Then another.

She
tried to sit up again, succeeding a second time. She
wiped
the back of her hand across her nose, knowing full well it would come away covered in blood. She didn’t care.

Victor’s body
lay on the floor
ahead of her.