Demon Games [4] (25 page)

‘Molok tells us that you’re a bit of a sorceress,’ the Maug said. ‘He also told us to tell you that should you try anything of that sort,
anything
at all, he will happily kill your boyfriend. But just in case that isn’t a big enough deterrent, he also wants you to wear what’s in that drawer.’ The demon gestured again and Alexa opened the hatch on her side to see what it was she was to put on.

It looked like a small dead red-and-black snake. She bent down and picked it up.

‘It’s a sorcery serpent. It’s used to—’

‘I know what it is,’ Alexa interrupted.

‘Good. Then you know what it does,’ the demon said, grinning at her. ‘Put it on.’

Alexa turned the thing over in her hands, studying it. Putting it on was the last thing in the world that she wanted to do, but she’d little choice. She draped the creature about her neck, offering the tail and head ends to each other.

The creature suddenly came to life. The heavy lids that had covered its eyes snapped open and it moved in Alexa’s hands. Stretching its mouth wide, it lunged forward, taking its own tail into its maw and greedily swallowing itself until it formed a tight collar round her neck.

Alexa stretched her neck and reached up to touch the sorcery serpent that now circled her throat. The creatures were the stuff of legend, and Alexa had read tales of how they’d been used to punish practitioners of magic in the Netherworld. She’d never truly believed that they were real, but the cold scaly necklace she now wore gave lie to that. The creature around her neck would cause her no harm unless she tried to use magic of any kind. Even the simplest of spells was enough to activate the serpent, which would feed off the magic and swallow its tail, the tourniquet becoming tighter and tighter until the wearer was first strangled and finally decapitated. The serpent would continue to swallow itself until there was nothing left but a tiny ball of scales, out of which a new serpent would eventually emerge.

‘Very fetching,’ the Maug guard said, nudging one of its colleagues. ‘Don’t you think it suits her?’

The demon suddenly became serious again. ‘Right, let’s get her out now.’

Alexa waited for the magical force field to be deactivated. There was no point in struggling or trying to escape. Her living collar had put paid to any chance of that. Without her magic she felt helpless, and it occurred to her that this must be how Philippa had felt during her time alone here.

‘You are a guest of honour at the Demon Games. It would seem that Molok wants you by his side throughout,’ the demon continued, leering at her. ‘Just in case your boyfriend forgets what he’s fighting for, eh?’

Alexa lifted her chin and looked the demon square in the face. ‘When I am free of this place, I will make it my business to ensure my father exacts a terrible retribution on you, Maug.’

The guard grinned back. ‘Oh, I don’t think I need to worry about the
terrible retribution
of Lucien Charron.’ The other guards laughed at this, the sound filling Alexa with a terrible dread, as if the world had dropped out from beneath her feet.

‘Why do you say that? What do you know about my father?’

The demon’s grin stretched even further, revealing more of its teeth. The nether-creature was enjoying itself. ‘The Arel have your father. We’ve had word that they have captured him and he is now in their power. And you know how much the Arel despise your father’s kind. If he’s not already dead, he’ll wish that he was.’

It put her in manacles to which it fastened a length of chain. Alexa stood without moving, staring ahead of her, numb from the news she had just received.

‘Come on,’ the Maug said, dragging her out of the cell. ‘We don’t want our guest of honour to be late, do we?’

At Trey’s insistence, he and Shentob had taken up seats in Molok’s VIP section to watch the opening round of the games. Trey was in his human form, and the sight of the teenage boy in the stands had initially raised some unwelcome looks, but within moments of him taking his seat word must have got out about who, and what, he was, and now the spectators nearest to him had switched their attention back to the arena floor.

In its layout and design, the arena was like those that Trey had seen in the human realm. Tiered seating was arranged on each of its twenty sides, each tier sandwiched between steep, stepped aisles which were punctuated by arched entrances up and down their length. Through these archways nether-creatures of every size, colour and description moved in a constant stream, many carrying refreshments which they took back to their allotted place. Most of the stadium was full, but there were sections, mainly in the more sought-after areas like the one Trey and Shentob were now in, where the seats had not yet been occupied. Shentob explained to Trey that the first two rounds, where the number of fighters shrank from 256 to 64, were of little interest to those nether-creatures that considered themselves to be the
elite
of the Netherworld.

‘They say that the early stages are grotesque.’ Shentob shrugged.

Having watched the opening spectacle, Trey could understand why. The arena floor had been crammed with contestants, many of which jostled with those around them for space. The sandy fighting squares that would be used for the later fights were obscured beneath the mass of nether-creatures. Demons, djinn and hellish creatures of every description faced each other, the combatants remaining still, their eyes locked on each other’s, until a horn sounded somewhere off to Trey’s right, at which point all hell broke loose.

It was not so much a contest as a chaotic bloodbath.

It was impossible to make out any particular fighter in the melee that ensued in those opening moments. Limbs were sent flying through the air to crash into other fighters, and blood fountained from countless wounds. Screams and shouts and grunts and snarls filled the air, but these were barely audible over the noise from the crowd, many of whom were on their feet and roaring their approval at the gore-fest. Some demons, having won their own fight, turned on the nether-creature nearest to them, their bloodlust causing them to lose all control and lash out with tooth and claw. Trey commented on this to Shentob, who nodded his head and pointed out one particularly vicious demon which seemed to have gone utterly berserk, swiping out at anyone and anything in its vicinity.

‘Watch,’ Trey’s aide said, and moments later a black arrow found its home in the demon’s chest, the shaft quickly transforming into a snake-like creature that burrowed its way into the berserker’s body, causing it to scream and drop to the floor, dead.

Shentob turned to look at his young master. ‘Sometimes a demon will be sent into the first rounds with instructions to take out certain combatants from another school. To the casual observer, that fighter –’ Shentob nodded in the direction of the now dead demon – ‘was just lashing out at random. But he killed three demons from the same opponent’s school. And two of those were winning their fights. The umpires are on the lookout for this, and the archers deal swiftly with offenders.’ He winked at Trey. ‘That is why the champions are all given byes to the later rounds. We wouldn’t want to be down there in that, would we, Trey Laporte?’

The teenager could not see how Shentob was able to take in everything that he’d just described. To Trey it looked like wholesale slaughter. But he agreed on one thing: he was glad not to be down there in that chaos.

Trey tore his eyes away from the carnage and looked around him at the seated sections, noting that these had clearly been segregated; fans wearing the colours of whichever fighting school they were rooting for filled entire blocks, atop which flew pennants of the same colours. Even with the arena only two-thirds full as it currently was, Trey could see that it would be a spectacularly colourful affair when it was filled to capacity.

He watched as many of the spectators, all waving flags or wearing items of a certain hue, stood up and roared their approval as one fighter or another was dispatched. Then, like an unruly football crowd in the human realm, they would turn towards a different-coloured section of the crowd, gesticulating wildly and jeering at their loss.

‘Is there often crowd trouble?’ he asked Shentob. ‘They look like quite a partisan bunch.’

‘Hmmm? Oh, some trouble, yes. But if it gets out of control, the archers usually put a swift end to it.’

‘They shoot the spectators too?’

Shentob looked back at him as though this was the most ludicrous of questions. ‘Of course,’ he said, and went back to watching the fighting.

‘They’re
that
accurate?’

‘Accurate enough.’

Trey closed his eyes and pressed the tips of his fingers against them, but the terrible scenes that were being played out below him were simply waiting for him as negatives on the other side of his eyelids.

‘Look at that demon,’ Shentob said, pulling at Trey’s tunic.

Trey tried to follow Shentob’s finger. ‘The green one with the huge head?’ he asked.

‘No! The one just to the left. The black one wearing the red armour.’

Trey saw the creature Shentob was referring to. ‘What about it?’

‘That is Hurg. Once a champion. Retired unbeaten. Hurg is making a comeback, but now has to fight to get through to the later rounds like every other contestant.’

‘Was Hurg good?’

‘One of the best. He fought out of the Azael stable.’ Shentob nodded towards the section of the arena festooned in red. ‘Now it appears he fights for Thamuz.’

‘But not as the school’s champion?’

‘No.’

‘Why would he come out of retirement? Why would anyone choose to participate in
that?’

‘Why does any fighter enter the Games? Because they have been made an offer that they cannot refuse.’

Trey thought about Alexa. Molok had told him that she would be brought to the stadium to see him fight.

‘I’ve seen enough,’ Trey said. ‘I’m going back down to my quarters.’ Trey, as a school champion, had been given his own changing room to use during the Games.

‘Old Shentob would like to stay and watch the second round,’ the little demon said. ‘Is that OK with you, Trey Laporte? He would like to see which demons get through and how they fight.’

‘That’s fine. You stay as long as you like.’

The old demon touched the side of his nose with a gnarled finger. ‘Shentob will discover who is good and who is not, and he will work out how they can all be defeated.’

Trey glanced at the carnage again. The first round seemed to be drawing to a close. Most of the fighters that had won their battles were standing around and watching the conclusion of the few fights that were still ongoing. A number of carts had drawn up around the perimeter of the arena floor, and Trey guessed that they would soon be piled high with dead bodies. ‘I only hope you can, Shentob.’

The demon winked his wink again. ‘Trey Laporte will not regret making Shentob his aide. Wait and see. We will be victorious at these Games.’

Trey tried to smile but failed. Shaking his head instead, he turned and left his demon aide to it.

Still dressed in his tunic, Trey sat on the edge of the bench and stared at the floor beneath his bare feet. Moments earlier there’d been a loud knock at the door followed by a muffled voice announcing that he would be fighting as soon as the current bout was over. A small green beetle crawled across the rough stone floor, pausing now and then as if looking for something, before moving on busily. Trey lifted his foot to allow it to pass underneath.

The noise from the stadium was loud. Even here, in his changing room beneath their stand, the walls shook every time something particularly exciting brought the spectators above him to their feet. Every time this happened, the noise and shaking sensation were enough to set his nerves on edge and reignite the bone-aching terror he felt about what he was about to do.

Even during everything that he’d been through since discovering the terrible truth about what he was, Trey doubted that he’d ever been this scared. The fear occupied every part of him. His legs had turned to jelly, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to walk, let alone fight some crazy nether-creature in an arena packed with a crowd baying for his blood. He couldn’t let the fear consume him like this, and he tried to counteract it by turning his thoughts to Alexa and the possibility of winning her freedom.

Another roar went up above him, and a small, unexpected whimper escaped his lips. Tears threatened to come again, and he balled his hands into fists and pressed them against his eyes in an effort to stop them. He wondered how his father had felt when he’d been here, forced to fight for information about the killer of Trey’s mother. He’d been seeking revenge. Had he been as scared as Trey was now? Had he sat on a bench like this and wanted nothing more than to run away? Trey closed his eyes and tried to picture his dad. He wished he’d known his father better. Known the kind of man he was, instead of having to rely on secondhand impressions of him from the likes of Lucien and Shentob. Unable to conjure up his father’s face, he opened his eyes and glanced across at the blanket-wrapped bundle of armour that Shentob had carried all the way here from the fighting school. Daniel Laporte had fought, and won, at the Demon Games. He had won against the odds.

There was a knock at the door.

Trey took a huge breath, pulling the air in through his nose and completely filling his lungs before blowing it out through his mouth. ‘Come in, Shentob.’

The door opened, but the demon lord Molok, not the old servant, entered the room. He looked at the boy, narrowing his eyes at him.

‘You are not in your armour,’ he said.

‘No.’

‘You fight next.’

‘I know. I’ll put it on when Shentob gets back.’

The demon lord pulled a face at the mention of the aide’s name and took another step towards the teenager. ‘I brought someone to see you.’

He stood aside, beckoned to the guards waiting outside the door, and Alexa was dragged between them to stand in the doorway.

‘Trey,’ she said, trying to break loose from their grip.