A Sinister Game (42 page)

Not again.

Several yards away, Maxwell Blood and the Game Lord were locked in a mortal
embrace. Max’s sword
had been sunk into the
Game Lord’s abdomen
and protruded
disturbingly
from the other side
, red and shimmering with blood
. She saw Max give it a brutal twist, even as the black box in
Arthur’s
clutched fists sent bolt after vicious bolt of drainin
g electricity into Max’s
body.
It stole not only his powers, but his
very
life.

For Max,
the power drain
didn’t matter. He’d been trained as a fighter, a
t
eam captain. With or without his
d
ark leader abilities, he was a cha
mpion
,
a
nd his sword arm was as deadly as his mind.

But he was dying.

Victoria
crawled
forward until she knelt beside Victor.

She watched Max.
Another twist
,
and Max pulled the sword back out
of his opponent’s chest
.
Then
he
thrust it back in.

The black box finally clamored to the marble floor.
The Game Lord would have fallen
but for the length of Max’s blade holding him up
like an insect on a pin
.

Howeve
r, Max’s own knees gave out then. Both men
fell to the floor.

“
Max,
”
Victoria
said his name
.

Forgive me, Victoria.
Max’s head
bowed in deathly weariness
as the Game Lord’s eyes closed. Max removed his sword, yanking it out in one final, defiant show of strength. The Game Lord slumped forward
to fall
onto the box he had dropped.

Max
looked up.
Slowly
.

His blue eyes were no longe
r glowing. But they were beautiful
nonetheless
, and c
lear as the Mare on a summer morning.

Forgive me
, his mind whispered again. It was a plea, soft but urgent.
His life slipped away.

Her response was vital.

She swallowed an impending sob and
nodded.
I forgive you.
Her vision blurred with tears,
and she let them fall.

He smiled at her then
. It was a small smile, but it was enough.

As he fell, Victoria closed her eyes. She could not watch. She couldn’t watch him fall for the las
t time. He’d been her captain. He’d been h
er best friend. And despite everything, in the end he had sacrificed himself to save her.

“Victoria,” April
was beside her, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder.
Vi
ctoria opened her eyes and looked
down at the Gray leader. She couldn’t believe that in the space of seconds, she’d lost them both.

Gently, and with shaking fingers, Victoria brushed a loc
k of raven
hair from Victor’s forehead. Even in death, he was impossibly beautiful.

They’d never finished their Game. Distractedly, she realized they would still have a several hours left in it.

Another tear
escaped to travel down her
cheek. She would have surrendered to him willingly.

H
e’s not dead, Rose
.

Victoria blinked. She hiccupped.
What?

There was no reply, but that didn’t stop Victoria from placing her hand over Vi
ctor’s heart. She felt no heart
beat. He wasn
’t breathing. There was nothing – 

There.
One
single beat. Faint, but present.

He was alive.

With a cry of alarm, Victoria placed both hands over his chest and furiously focused what remaining energy she had.
Her ability to heal was the last power the box had tried to take from her. It was the only one it had failed to steal.

She imagined Victor as he
had been only moments before: t
all, strong,
intact
. She imagined him perfect, b
ecause that was what he was. In all of his darkness
and all of his dangerous glory, he was perfect.

Do you really think so love
?

Victoria’s eyes flew open. He still appeared to be asleep. But beneat
h her palms, she felt his heartbeat kick again. It was s
tronger this time. And again. Her own breathing
hitched with hope just before his chest rose and fell beneath her hands. He was breathing.

“Victor….” She glanced down at her hands
, transfixed with his expanding and contracting chest
.

When she looked back
up again, it was to find him
gazing steadily at her.

She went to mo
ve her hands from his chest
, suddenly self-conscious.
But his mo
vement was lightning fast. H
e had her wrist in his
firm grip
before she could pull away.

Her breath caught
. The contact was like fire and ice.

Slowly he sat up, his gaze never leaving hers.
She watched him in mute fascination, her eyes wide.

He leaned toward her
, his green eyes glittering with nothing short of triumph as he came close enough that his next words whispered across her lips.

“Got you.”

A revolution is like mourning. It comes in stages.

First, there is a disbelieving quiet, like the restless, electric silence just before a storm. Then a ripple of noise erupts across a nation, and the people awaken to a different world.

The Playing Field was a skeleton of a beast now that its muscle had been killed. The wall was no longer operational – and in fact, no longer
there
. Once power was returned to the gods, the wall simply vanished.

Suddenly, the Field and the outside sectors were
side-by-side
, touching, intimate whether they liked it or not.

There had been so much to do after the Game Lord’s death, so much to set right and tend to, it had taken a gathering of every leader who had once played on the Field to keep control of the situation and handle one issue at a time.

As expected, fights broke out.
Offices within the various buildings on the Field were raided, and rehabilitation machines were set on fire or destroyed through other means.
A few players were distraught or even terrified.

But trouble was kept to a minimum. The gods were once more in command, and memories had been restored. People understood what had transpired. It was hard for many of them to deal with, but others helped them through it, and the gods offered strength when it was really needed.

Some former players mourned the loss of loved ones and the theft of years of their lives and their family’s lives. Others raced as quickly as they could to get back to the villages they’d been taken from and see if anyone they knew still remained alive.

It was a
bittersweet
victory.

The Game had gone on too long and the outside world had been torn down to a dwindling, aged population. For far too many players, there was simply nothing to go home to.

And so, Victor and Victoria, whom everyone seemed to turn to in this crisis, began making preparations to change the Field.

The foundations of a civilization were already in place. There were buildings and there was a technological infrastructure. There was food, there were jobs, and there was medicine.

While a few Gamers chose to leave the Field forever and return to the villages to help build them back up again, those from outside the wall who desired to see the Field were carefully and slowly brought inside.

Sections were designated, people were assigned tasks, and time passed. Each morning dawned on a Field a little less frightened and a little more certain than it had been the day before.

Now, six full weeks after Arthur Zero’s death, Victoria stood at the railing of her suite in the former Red Tower and looked out over the land below. The night breeze sent her long gold locks playing about her face and painted her red gown to the slim, graceful lines of her body.

It had been an historical day. Today, Simon Roon, now the chief of operations for the entire Field, had finally gotten to work on the black boxes. There had indeed been many created by the Game Lord.
Hundreds
.

Each one represented the deaths of two champions of the gods.

In a memorial ceremony honoring those who had been lost in this manner, Simon opened the boxes all back up again. The display of light was dazzling. Cold and fire mingled in rising streams from each
makeshift
lantern, crackling and sparkling as they rose to the heavens.

A wind picked up in the clearing, and the hundreds of players remaining on the Field lowered their heads in a show of respect.

Victor and Victoria alone were the only two who had been left alive by the Game Lord and his use of the black boxes. When their box was opened, the streams of cold and heat strode, not toward the sky, but toward them instead.

The Game Lord had drained Victoria of every ability but one, her ability to heal. But when her light beam hit her and surrounded her in a cocoon of energy, she closed her eyes and felt reborn. She was once more whole – a champion of Loki, a true light leader again.

Now, Victoria touched the crystal pendant she still wore around her neck. She smiled a strange smile. There was a kind of sadness that came with successfully changing the world. When it was done… it was done.

She sighed softly and lowered her hand to place them both on the railing. She peeked over it to see the Gamers far below, their torches and candles lit, their firecrackers sizzling across the ground. They were partying as if there were no tomorrow. In a way, they were right on one count. Now that the wall had been removed, everyone would age at a normal rate. Hence, there were far fewer tomorrows left now than there had been before.

They were waiting for her down there. Victor was waiting. He was treating her to dinner tonight.

But… she hesitated.

It would be the first time they’d had a chance to be alone since….

Since he’d proposed his Game.

Victoria recalled the way he’d held her wrist after she’d used the last of her strength to save his life. She saw the look in his eyes. She closed her eyes as she remembered his words: “Got you.”

A shiver coursed through her, a tremor of the kind that sent warmth spreading across her stomach and made her mouth water. Her skin tingled at the next breeze.

But if I find you, and i
f
I capture you
….
Then you’ll join me. You'll giv
e yourself to me for one night.

The words of his wager echoed through her mind. She heard his voice form them, his accent bend them, and her knees grew weak.

Suddenly, she was wishing that t
he rumors about a light leader’s ability to fly had
not been just that – rumors
.

It turned out there were actually two things to fear in the world. One was never getting what you wanted. And the other was getting it, after all. For there was no denying that Victoria wanted Victor Black. But the man terrified her. He was six and a half feet of black-clad muscle that seemed to positively tower over her. He was a maelstrom of power encased in a hard body. There were those lips of his that smiled at her with just a hint of cruelty, and that hair that looked like raven’s wings and made her want to run her hands through it over and over.

And those eyes….

Those impossibly green eyes that took everything in.
Everything
. He missed nothing. He was smart, Victor Black. How could she not fear him? Never trust a perceptive, intellectual man, especially when he also looked like a god.

Giving in to him, letting him touch her…. Oh, it might just kill her.

“Fly away,” she whispered to the wind. If she could fly away, she wouldn’t have to worry. She would have at least
one more day
.

The wind picked up around her, brushing through her hair, and Victoria smiled. It felt good. She lifted her arms at her sides and relished in the feel of the hard, chilled air wrapping around her as if it were pulling her into an embrace.