Blood Games (5 page)

“Oh, my boy, my boy, my boy,” Vasilov said r
egretfully. “It is too close to the Games. All of the good ones have been scooped up. All of the
bad
ones have been scooped up! All of the old ones, the children, the crippled, the half-dead, if they could be yanked out of the grave and reanimated, those walking corpses would be at the Games, too! Everyone has been bought and paid for two, three times over, yes. I have nothing.”

That was impossible.
Vasilov always had something. Ink swallowed hard, dreading the thought of showing up at the Games with wounded Chaos and stupid Scrapper. “I will pay top dollar.” He’d take out a loan from the bank. He’d
rob
a bank. “Anyone, Vasilov. There must be something you can do.”

“Alas, no.
But the Games will come again in two years, Ink. That is more than enough time to build up a new fighter. Next month I will be flying out of the country to procure some new specimens. Mexico, South America . . .That vaccine never reaches everyone, no, it does not. Oh!” Ink’s spirits lightened, but then Vasilov said, “This autumn I will be going to the southeastern states. There are whole communities of people living there who refuse the vaccine for reasons of God or poverty, or believe that vaccines are part of a mind-control government conspiracy, and are genetically susceptible to the virus. I will find you a prize, Ink. I will bring you a champion!”

“But the Games,”
Ink said, trying to keep wheedling out of his voice. “What am I to do about the Games? I cannot possibly skip them! It will ruin my name.” He would be known as the manager who was beaten out of the ring.

Silence.
It stretched out between them and broke his heart. There was nothing to be done. He closed his eyes and Vasilov sighed heavily. “I would not insult you with the suggestion.”

“Insult me,” Ink said.

“I would not have this insult be spoken any further than from my mouth to your ear.”

“It won’t.
I swear to you. I will do anything to save face.”

Another silence settled over the line.
“You are in southern California, yes. You could try the Zombie Walk in Venice. That is the closest one to you. There is a market there, in a little alley near the boardwalk. But I am ashamed to mention this to you.
Ashamed
, Ink. You are a good client. A good manager. You want quality, as I do. You want magnificence. These things are everything to men like us. Ramshackle creatures are sold at Venice for herbal medication, heavy lifting, backyard fighting . . . even satanic sacrifices.” Vasilov spat and Ink knew that the man was crossing himself. “If I were in your shoes, my boy, my dear boy . . .”

“I will not stay home!”

“Of course you will not! You
must
not! And neither would I! You and I, my boy, we came from nothing. I have made myself
Vasilov
from a poor boy with rocks in his lunchbox! I dine with the richest people in the world today, and they will fall over themselves for the honor of paying for my meal. They request
me
for their guidance. They treat
my
word as law. And I was
nothing
to them once, a child in rags who held out his beggar’s cup in the hopes that their pennies might clink inside. And you, you are making yourself over just as I did long ago. So I would march myself to every pathetic Zombie Walk in America and buy any flea-bitten, lice-ridden, mange-y creature that can stand up straight and throw a punch! I would clean him up and trot him to the stadium under some grand name, some name that inflames the heart and senses! And when people ask about Samson, as they will by the loads, I would say this is my new fighter, and he
slew
Samson! Get them talking and control what they are talking about!”

Vasilov was
now roaring into the phone. Ink did not draw away, hinged on the man’s voice for his sanity. “You write the script, Ink, and you tell people their lines! Not
poor Delwich, did you hear what someone did to him?
They should say
Delwich! My God, look at his new zombie! This one brought down Samson the Great!
Would that we could have seen that battle!
You shall talk about how someone cut the electricity to your stables and this is how it happened, or better yet, you paired them in your home rink to train Samson, and ended up training the new one instead. Yes, this new one will lose at the Games, you will say you expect him to lose, because Samson put up a hard fight on his way to the grave. Give the new one a cut or two to prove some grand battle indeed took place. So when he loses in the melee, as he will, people will expect it because you did. Then you will save your pennies over the next months and I will bring you another Samson. This is what you will do, my brave boy! Someone has seized the reins from you, but a winner seizes them back!”

When they got off the phone, Ink took a shower and got dressed
in grim purpose. Venice was going to be a long drive and he didn’t have a minute to waste. Nadia was already out and about, tending to her packed schedule of meeting friends for coffee, having a session with her personal trainer followed by a massage, and then an afternoon of shopping for an outfit to match Scrapper’s costume. Her life was a feckless thing from sunrise to sunset, one of a princess relieved of all affairs of state. The biggest mistake in Ink’s life had been his marriage, but all of the bigwigs were married, if not faithful, and one did as they did. At least not all of them had children. Ink didn’t have the money for it, and fortunately Nadia didn’t want the stretch marks or the bother.

Samson
. He never left Ink’s mind on the hours of the drive, a trailer being dragged along behind him. Although Ink hadn’t cared last night who was responsible for this, now he was desperate to know. He was hungry for revenge. Samson’s biggest threats in the ring were Hades, Ares, and Dionysus. None of the others had much chance, so removing Samson wasn’t going to boost their odds in any useful way. Ink couldn’t eliminate them from suspicion, but the possibility of them being the culprit was lessened.

It
couldn’t be the Hodgings. For God’s sake, they blew gold coins into their tissues when they sneezed. Gareth managed his family’s zombies now. He clapped and cheered for Hades from his seat in the clubroom at various stadiums, as Ink had watched from the stands. But when Athena was fighting! The man was riveted to every move in the ring. Were he going to take out anyone, and Ink would never believe it, the victim would be one of Gorvich’s most fearsome women, or Maenad. Neither Gareth nor Ink participated in mixed-sex battles at lesser shows. Samson and Athena would not have been in competition at the Games except at the very end when the best male and best female had their points tallied on performance. They only competed in the judges’ calculators. But again, the Hodgings did not need the prize money, and going to Hawaii was nothing new to them. They had homes spread out over half the world, and vacation homes in the other half. Athena was destined to have an impressive career whether she swept the Games or came in second to the top male. And Gareth had enough foresight to predict that all eyes would turn to him with Samson’s murder. It behooved Ink to attend the Games and speak very kindly of the Hodgings to draw those eyes somewhere else.

Since this couldn’t have been done on Hades’ behalf, Ink considered the others.
Sofia Stuart owned Ares. Now
she
was hungry for fame and fortune. A retired school administrator, she was a woman on the waning side of middle age who walked with two canes for support. Had she been the one to do this, she would have had to hire it out. But they were friends! In the wary way of competitors, true, but they had maintained a friendly relationship for years. They often sat next to one another to make mocking comments about the children in the halftime show. Sofia wanted to get into the old boys’ club just like Ink did, but she refused to waste a penny on a child zombie that needed fancy clothes and to be replaced fairly often after melees. There was such a lack of finesse in the garrulous woman that she never even turned around to see who was listening when she made such a pronouncement.

Ink liked Sofia too much to even think about this!
She loathed Nadia and Nadia loathed her, and Ink had been red from restraining his laughter when the two women had met several months ago. Nadia had rarely attended shows until they acquired Scrapper, and making the mistake of describing herself as Scrapper’s manager upon their introduction, Sofia quickly disabused Ink’s wife of her pretensions. No one
managed
children. Children were a fad, and anyone foolish enough to try to build a career on a fad was soon going to find herself out of business. Nadia hadn’t said a word to her since.

This attack had been devious.
Underhanded. Sofia was a hammer blow of a personality. She was bitter when Ares lost to Samson in shows, her goodbyes to Ink frosty, but all was forgiven the next time they met. And she was an honest woman. Hungry but honest. When another manager had been caught giving sleeping aids to his zombie’s biggest competitor, she had found it detestable. If Sofia had masterminded this murder, Ink would be shocked speechless.

What about the owner of
handsome Dionysus? Ink wasn’t friendly with Constanzo Rolf. No one was. He was a bigwig who always stood in the corner of the clubroom windows to watch, not speaking to or looking at any of his jovial compatriots. Dionysus had had a long run as champion and was on his way down. Like Poseidon, the zombie was aging, and soon to age out of the 20-35 category. This would be the last Games in which he fought in the most popular group. Constanzo could have killed Samson to secure one more big win for his prize Dionysus! End the best stage of his career with a bang.

Constanzo
! He had done this. He’d owned Slaughterhouse decades ago, building his career on the blood that solid block of muscled destruction let loose in the ring. That was before Ink had even been born. Since those days, the man had promoted failure after failure, and only maintained a seat in the clubrooms off increasingly aged triumphs and generous contributions to the stadiums. It wasn’t until Dionysus that he regained some glory, and people remembered that this crumpled, crotchety old man had once been the hot young manager with a zombie that wouldn’t quit until his opponent had been eviscerated.

Stuck in traffic on the freeway, Ink skimmed his phone for information on Constanzo.
He was currently in Italy, and not due to arrive in California until tomorrow. This would have had to be done with a thug-for-hire, or one of his personal employees. If Ink accused Constanzo of being behind this, only Ink himself was going to be hurt. The bigwigs would shut him out forever. They did not like Constanzo, but he was one of them. Only if Ink had absolute proof could he point his finger. And he had nothing but suspicions.

He put down his phone and gripped the steering wheel as traffic began to move.
If it had not been Constanzo, then there was a host of small-time managers who hated Ink for Samson beating their zombies. Ink shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking this was about someone stealing the win. It could have been pure vengeance. Samson had killed Adolfo’s best zombie in a melee eight months ago. Every time Ink passed him at a competition since then, Adolfo cried,
hi, Stink!
It was childish, but Adolfo was barely older than a child. This could have been a hotheaded decision of an overgrown boy who lost a big investment and blamed Ink.

Ink should have locked the stables.
He had just welcomed the person in. Here, have my zombies! On his way home from Venice, he would stop at the hardware store to purchase some security. This could become a trend now, people killing others’ zombies, and Medusa had to be protected. A lock on both doors, a camera positioned above each of them or in the aisles, a motion sensor alarm . . . He would see what he could do that wasn’t too expensive.

There was no parking available near the Venice boardwalk, and he had the trailer, too.
People in shorts and tank tops were strolling around everywhere, ejecting from the sidewalks in clumps to get in the way of cars on the roads. At last he retreated several blocks and found a spot in which to park his vehicle. The car in front of him belonged to some happy parent with a license plate holder reading
Final Score: 3 Princes and 1 Princess!
Ink winced. He winced every time he saw those, and he saw them all the time. Maybe it was cute when a four-year-old girl declared herself a princess and demanded a new doll. It certainly wasn’t cute when a thirty-four-year-old woman declared herself a princess and demanded a new car every Christmas.

He had thought
when they married that they would be a team. He had thought wrong.

He walked in the direction of the beach
and swaying palm trees, and missed the alley the first time. Vasilov had told him that he would miss it, and he had. It was dark and narrow, caught between a garish shop for tourists and a packed restaurant with rickety tables both inside and out. An employee of the tourist shop had blocked off the alley with three giant carousels of postcards, birthday cards, and maps. Ink slipped between them and into the gloom on the other side.

You will walk, my boy.
You will not see them at first. Just keep walking, and they will see you.

The noise from the street vanished so suddenly that he turned around
in surprise. But everything was still there behind him, the postcard racks and people going by, a car moving slowly in the road. It had only been a strange pause in the usual commotion. The driver honked his horn at a jaywalker and a man called, “How long is the wait for a table, honey? Did you ask the hostess? Honey?”