“I found a stronger chain. After the last fight, I think it might be my lucky charm.” I wanted Pablo to talk, but we needed to change the subject before he started asking too many questions. “How many rooms are there?” I already knew since I’d counted twenty-two windows in the ring, but it seemed like a question anyone would ask.
“Twenty-two. That doesn’t include the second level for larger groups, but no one ever uses those anymore. They prefer being ground level even though it can hinder their ability to see everything.”
“Who put the dagger in the room during our fight? I didn’t know we could bring weapons.”
“The only weapons allowed are the ones we provide.” Pablo stopped by a door on the outside wall and stood beneath an ominous red button. “We open up bidding for those interested. The winner can choose a weapon or any item at all. We once had a customer with a strange sense of humor who put a feather in there.”
“What an asshole. I would have broken the glass.”
“I’m afraid that would have been useless,” he said, retrieving a key card from his pocket. “The glass won’t break, and the doors are steel.” He knocked on the door in front of him to make a point. After he swiped his card on a reader, the door slid open.
I stared at the small space, no bigger than a coat closet.
“Ladies first,” he said.
I stepped inside. “Is this one of those rooms with a secret wall?”
The door shut, and I howled when the floor dropped. I was free-falling before my legs and back met with a smooth surface. In pitch-black, I shot down a slide, into the unknown. It curved in what felt like a large spiral, but the angle was so steep that my descent continued to accelerate. When I reached to grab something to slow down, I felt nothing. Disoriented, I channeled energy into my fingertips and released healing light so I could see a wide cylinder made from polished black material. My stomach lurched, my lungs held on to a scream, and panic flooded my veins. All I could hear was Christian’s voice saying, “What if there’s a tank of hungry sharks at the end?”
As the angle leveled out, my descent slowed until the tunnel spit me into a large room. I tumbled across the floor, my joints striking the hard surface. Dizzy, I lay on my back and stared up, darkness hovering over me from a ceiling that wasn’t there. Torches mounted to the walls flickered and cast shadows across the room.
When the room stopped spinning, I stood up and drank in every detail. The circular wall was similar to the other fighting ring, only this one was right out of the Middle Ages. I looked at the hole in the stone wall from which I’d emerged. On the opposite side of the room was a door, and ahead of me was a gate with thick, rusty bars. Torches flickered from all directions. I tried to pull one out, but it was connected to the mount.
Wow.They really wanted us to put on a show. Weapons hung everywhere like décor—chains, axes, small knives, and even some instruments I’d never seen. Small spikes protruded from the wall in certain places, some at stomach level and others at chest. I passed by a chopping block and raised my eyebrows at the dark stains across the grooved part where a person’s head would rest.
Are those gardening shears next to the whip?
I looked up at dark archways on the second level. “Hello?”
My voice reverberated off the walls as if I were in an old church. The damp air had an earthy smell, and it reminded me of the underground tunnels in the Bricks. Was this an extension of it, and how deep were we?
The door opened, and Pablo stepped into the room. “Impressive, isn’t it?” His gaze steered upward.
I snatched my plastic bag off the floor. “I’m guessing you took an elevator? Thanks for the warning.”
His inscrutable gaze drifted to the upper level. “Fighters aren’t permitted to use the main entrance. Security reasons. At least if someone sneaks in the way you came, they’ll be trapped in the ring.”
“What about leaving? I can’t climb up that slide.”
“We have taken every security measure,” Audrey said. She had the soothing, refined tone of one of those BBC narrators. “Pablo, you can leave us.”
Audrey moved away from the doorway as Pablo made himself scarce. The slit up the front of her black evening gown showcased her creamy-white legs. Like before, her orange hair was styled in the same wavy do, and when she turned, the light glinted off the diamonds on her halo-style emerald earrings.
“Robin, charmed to see you again.” She held out her flaccid wrist, and again I stared at it with no idea what she wanted me to do.
I lightly shook it, and she chortled.
“Darling, we’ll have to work on your manners. You seem absolutely lost, and we need you fit for polite society.”
“I’m fighting. What does it matter?”
“We do have the occasional request from elite clients to have a private meeting with our fighters.”
“For free?”
“Everything has a price.”
“I don’t.”
