Demon Games [4] (24 page)

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I said, I don’t like the look of it. I don’t want it as my aide.’

A deep and low sound, like the keel of an enormous boat scraping against the ocean floor, came from deep within Molok. The muscles at the side of his jaws bunched and unbunched, and it was clear to Trey that the demon was doing everything in his power to keep his temper in check. The demon lord closed his eyes and sucked in another huge breath. ‘Very well. We have other aides. You can select a different one.’

‘I can select my own helper?’ Trey asked.

‘Yes.’

The teenager nodded and glanced towards the roof of the barracks, sure that Shentob would be watching everything that was going on.

‘Then I pick Shentob, the servant in the quarters I’ve been staying in.’

‘You cannot pick the servant. We have helpers that have been trained to—’

‘I don’t
want
any of your helpers,’ Trey said.

The demon lord glanced over his shoulder at the last wagon making its way out of the encampment. Trey could sense how desperate Molok was to get under way. He crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows at the nether-creature.

‘Shentob was assigned by one of your trainers to fill me in on how the Games work and what is required of me. Clearly your instructors believe that the servant was a good enough tutor to be assigned to your champion. Are you telling me that they were wrong?’ The teenager narrowed his eyes at the demon lord. ‘Besides, I think it is in
your champion’s
best interest that he stick with the creature who has already schooled him in these things. After all, we wouldn’t want any confusion to impair my ability to fight today, would we?’

Molok’s fists were clenched into tight, knotted balls, and he glared down at Trey with a terrible look. ‘Very well . . .
champion.
Go and fetch your servant, and then get in my litter. We leave immediately.’

Trey smiled to himself as he watched the Hell-Kraken storm off. One of the helpers came running up to the demon lord and was rewarded with a backhander across the face for its efforts. The teenager turned and walked towards the living quarters to tell Shentob the good news.

Shentob was beside himself with excitement. When Trey broke the news to him, the old servant had leaped around the barracks, laughing and dancing and clapping his hands. Trey could not help but smile and laugh along with him. Eventually the nether-creature had calmed down and sidled over to Trey.

‘Shentob?’ the demon said, pointing a gnarled finger back at himself. ‘Old Shentob is to be your aide?’

‘Yes.’

‘How did you do this?’ He grabbed Trey’s hands in his own and raised them to his lips, kissing each one in turn. ‘Thank you, Trey Laporte. Thank you.’

Trey shook his head and pulled his hands away. ‘I’m going to need you, Shentob. I’m going to need your expertise.’

‘And you shall have it! Everything that old Shentob knows. I will watch the other fighters for you, and tell you their weaknesses. Shentob is good at that; he can see their weak points. He will be the best aide that a fighter has ever had!’

‘I don’t doubt it.’

Shentob regarded the teenager again through eyes that had begun to fill with tears. ‘Thank you, Trey Laporte.’

‘Perhaps we should go now,’ Trey said, turning to hide his own embarrassment.

‘Of course!’

The old demon suddenly became very serious. Standing as tall as his hunched frame would allow, he nodded briskly and went off to Trey’s room to collect his armour. When he came out he was carrying the blanket-wrapped bundle and a handful of tunics. Shentob looked up at the teenager with a mischievous grin. He patted the bundle with one hand and winked his one eye. ‘Our secret,’ he said. He turned and started off towards the doors, humming tunelessly.

Despite the terrible anxiety that he felt about what lay ahead, Trey couldn’t help but grin at the sight of the downtrodden demon who seemed to have been suddenly transformed by the news that he had given him. He looked around him at the place that had been his home for the last two days and followed the demon servant out.

Due to Trey’s refusal to morph into his werewolf form for the journey, Molok insisted that he sit at the end of the litter with his back facing the direction of travel, and that the curtains at the boy’s end of the carriage be kept drawn, effectively stopping the crowd that lined the route from getting a glimpse of the demon lord’s new champion. The situation suited Trey perfectly, but he was nevertheless given a running commentary of what was going on outside by Shentob, who, much to Trey’s surprise, had opted to run alongside the sedan chair rather than join one of the wagons in the caravan.

The little demon commented on everything, pointing out landmarks and buildings as if Trey had a clue what they were. It was a stream of babble, and Trey might have asked the nether-creature to stop if it was not for the fact that Shentob’s tour commentary was clearly annoying Molok so much.

‘We’re just approaching the Hill of G’nirk,’ the demon said through the curtain. ‘You can see the bodies of the impaled dead at the summit from here. Shentob climbed that hill once. A long time ago – yes, he did. At the top you can see the—’

‘Will you tell that confounded idiot to SHUT UP!’ Molok shouted across to Trey.

‘It was your decision to keep me hidden,’ Trey said, matching the demon’s look. ‘Shentob is merely helping me visualize the journey.’ He found it hard to keep a straight face as the demon lord glowered out of the window, muttering under his breath.

Eventually the demons carrying the litter slowed, and even without being able to see, Trey could feel the presence of a crowd outside.

‘Look, Trey Laporte,’ Shentob said. ‘You can see the arena.’

This time Trey did pull the curtain aside a little, and looked out at the place where he was to fight for his, and Alexa’s, lives.

It was smaller than he’d imagined. When Shentob had described the place, he’d given Trey the impression of a structure on a much grander scale. Even so, it was impressive. Shentob had told him that the arena had been built over a number of years, constructed from bones cemented together to form a giant icosahedron.

‘It is magnificent, is it not, Trey Laporte?’ Shentob said from the side of the litter. ‘Every one of the twenty sides has its own name and entrance.’

They were much closer to the building now. The high walls rose vertically out of the ground, looming over them as Trey peered up at the arched alcoves that were inset at regular intervals, each one containing a giant sculpture of some nether-creature or other. ‘Great champions,’ Shentob said, following the direction of the boy’s gaze. ‘We will enter through the Gate of Sthuron – the greatest champion of all time! The seats in that section are the most sought after.’

They passed beneath a vast archway, and as they did so it seemed to Trey as if the temperature dropped a few degrees, and an unexpected shiver snaked its way through him. The sedan chair came to a halt and was lowered to the ground. The fear that he’d been doing such a good job of controlling up to this point suddenly broke loose inside him, as if a dam had been breached. A small gasp escaped him, and his heart hammered violently inside his chest. He glanced down at his hands, noting how they were trembling, and when he shot a look across at Molok, he could tell that the demon lord had spotted them too; a cruel smile adorned the nether-creature’s face.

‘All fighters get scared,’ the demon lord said. He pushed open the door on his side of the sedan, and got out. There was a hubbub of noise as people welcomed the demon lord, and Trey heard countless excited questions about his new champion.

Trey took a deep breath, his fingers instinctively seeking out the small amulet that hung from a chain round his neck. The amulet had been his father’s, and his father had fought at the Games and won.

Trey morphed.

He had to almost fold himself in half to get through the door of the sedan chair, and when he straightened up, the crowd that had gathered around the demon lord let out a collective gasp.

‘Friends,’ Molok said in a booming voice, ‘may I introduce my new champion – the lycanthrope Trey Laporte.’

There was no long, drawn-out investigation into what had happened. For the slow-witted Maug guards who discovered the terrible scene in the cell, the simple narrative that Alexa created to explain the events that had led to the deaths of their colleagues and their prisoner seemed to satisfy them. They repeatedly asked Alexa how Philippa had managed to kill both of her jailers, but she stuck to her story, saying that the girl had fought the guards ferociously and would have escaped, had one of them not managed to grab her at the last second and plunge its knife into her. She even managed some tears. After a while they gave up and accepted her account. After all, what else could have happened? The bodies and the evidence bore out her explanation perfectly.

Alexa listened to the guards discussing how they would approach the unenviable task of telling Molok that one of his captives had been killed. They reasoned that if the Games went well, the Hell-Kraken would be in a good mood and they might escape his wrath. For this reason, they agreed that they would simply clean the mess up, remove the bodies and delay telling their master until later.

They did all this quickly in a huddle by the door, but they were nervous, and the sound of their voices easily carried to Alexa in her cell. Eventually one of the guards came over.

‘It’s a shame for you that your friend’s little scheme failed, eh? You’re the only one left now.’

Alexa stared at the nether-creature, a steely look in her eyes. ‘I wonder how many of
you
will be left when Molok discovers how utterly inept his guards are, and how two of them were so easily killed by nothing more than a young puny human girl?’

The demon bared its teeth at her. ‘I’d be quiet if I were you.’

‘Oh really? Or what? Are you going to kill me too? That would go down well.’ The anger she expressed was not all for show. She was genuinely upset about what had happened to the Ashnon. She also knew that the longer they could keep the Maug from discovering the truth, the better chance Philippa would have of getting free.

The other guards began to remove the dead bodies, dragging them unceremoniously out of the chamber, leaving a ghastly trail on the stone floor behind them.

‘You’ll be pleased to know that you’re leaving this place today,’ the guard said with an ugly smile. ‘Molok has commanded that we take you to be his guest at the Demon Games.’ The Maug leaned forward and added in a low voice, ‘But I warn you, little miss. If you say anything about all of this –’ it gestured with one arm towards the other cell, which the guards were now cleaning out by throwing buckets of water on to the floor – ‘you’ll wish it had been
you
that we dragged out of here by the ankles. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Perfectly.’

‘Good. Now get cleaned up and put these on.’ The demon put a fresh set of clothes into the food drawer and pushed it shut so that Alexa would be able to retrieve them. She opened the hatch and lifted out the simple white smock and dark purple belt. She shook her head.

‘This is
so
last season. Don’t you have anything a bit more fashionable? Something designer, maybe.’

‘Just get it on,’ the demon said, already walking away.

Philippa’s escape was remarkably trouble-free. The corridors and hallways were as empty as the Ashnon had suggested they would be, and she crept along them without seeing a single sentry at its post. She remembered everything that the creature had told her, following its directions and instructions to a T, and eventually found her way to the Fae gate. There she stopped, remembering the Ashnon’s warnings about the creatures that lay beyond the dark entrance. She looked down at the ring on her finger. Steeling herself, she took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, at the same time stepping through into the darkness.

Every muscle in her body was tensed. She hunched her head into her shoulders, hands held up in front of her, eyes flicking in every direction in anticipation of an attack by the terrible creatures that inhabited the inky blackness. After a moment, when it was clear that no such attack was forthcoming, she calmed down a fraction, gradually straightening up and looking around her into the void. She was about to take a step forward when a solitary winged creature, its ferocious beauty enough to make her gasp, appeared out of nowhere and hovered just ahead of her. It flew around her, darting about her head in a series of short, sharp movements until it returned to the space directly in front of her face again, where it regarded her, its head cocked on one side. The creature opened its mouth and hissed at her, showing her those tiny transparent teeth, like glass needles. Then it turned its back on her and flew off, disappearing from sight almost immediately. Philippa stood completely still, petrified, and stared at the darkness into which the Fae had just vanished. She stayed like that for some time, unable to move, fixed to the spot by the icy fear that infected every part of her.

But the Fae never returned.

Finally she looked down at herself, aware for the first time of the blue flame that danced and flickered all over her own body. The light was so dim that it hardly penetrated the inky void that she was suspended in, but nevertheless it gave her some comfort.

‘Come on, Philippa,’ she said to herself in a shaky voice. ‘You need to get out of here.’

The dull glow in the distance was the only other source of light, and she instinctively knew that it must be the exit. For the very first time since being captured, Philippa allowed herself to experience the briefest glimmer of hope. She set off towards the light and freedom.

Alexa felt horribly exposed in the tunic that she’d been told to put on. Like the one that Philippa had been made to wear it was short, and she kept the belt around her middle deliberately loose.

The Maug had returned heavy-handed. There were four of them in attendance when they opened her cell: two using the discs to neutralize the barrier, and two standing with their daggers drawn. But before they’d neutralized the magical barrier, the Maug that had spoken to her earlier had placed something in the tray, sliding it shut and nodding for her to retrieve the item.