Argos stumbled over one of his own feet. Several of his heads wagged back and forth, as if they were trying to shake off exhaustion. Or disorientation. Gallagher could have dealt a death blow right then, but he only backed away from the hound. The crowd booed, but where they saw weakness, I saw nobility.
Vandekamp and his staff could make Gallagher kill another creature forced into battle, but they couldn’t make him press an advantage. Instead, he waited until Argos turned and relocated his opponent. The wounded heads looked stunned, but the three in the middle were back in the game.
The hound ran at him again, snarling, snapping and hissing, and when Argos got close, Gallagher lunged to the left. But instead of rolling out of the way, he grabbed the nearest disabled head and pulled himself onto the dog’s back. The outermost heads were too injured to arch back for him, and the middle one was out of range. Gallagher grabbed another double bouquet of snakes and twisted them fiercely. When they hung limp, he wrapped both hands around Argos’s central head—the one wearing the collar—and snapped the dog’s thick neck.
The center head fell limp, and the crowd roared its approval. Argos stumbled, then fell onto his left side. Gallagher’s leg was pinned beneath the beast’s weight, but he pulled himself free, and the crowd cheered again in anticipation of the death blow.
Gallagher stood over the dying body of the celebrated Cerberean hound, but there was no victory in his expression as the remaining heads snapped weakly at his shins. There was no joy and no relief. Gallagher’s eyes held nothing but grief for the life he was about to take.
He bent over Argos and efficiently, mercifully snapped the two remaining necks. Putting the poor, spasming beast out of his misery.
The crowd leapt to its collective feet, stomping as it cheered. The arena had a new victor. A new monster to ogle and bet on. But I knew what they did not. He could have given them a much bloodier show. He could have literally ripped the hound limb from limb, leaving pieces of him spread across the sand.
Instead, he gave Argos as merciful and dignified a death as he could.
Gallagher had not performed for their amusement. He was not their champion—he was mine.
Willem
Stadium fixtures lit the indoor arena like sunlight, glittering on sequined dresses and diamond rings as the crowd mingled. On the sand, the body of the Cerberean hound lay just as it had fallen in the final bout, broken necks ringed by manes of limp snakes. Canine jaws gaping, tongues sprawled onto the ground, dusted with sand.
Willem Vandekamp stood inside the challenger’s gate at one end of the oval ring, hidden by deep shadows as he assessed what he could see of the crowd. The after-party was always well attended, but tonight, almost everyone had stayed. Patrons spilled into the hallways lining the perimeter of the arena and down onto the sand itself, eager for a close look at the felled beast.
But neither the number of guests nor the size of their respective bank balances could put Willem at ease as he watched them mingle, accepting glasses of wine and bite-size appetizers from waiters in silver vests and matching bow ties. Willem was looking for a specific face in the crowd.
Light footsteps tapped on the concrete behind him, in a rhythm he knew well. “How does it look?” Tabitha appeared at his side in a floor-length gray satin gown, her shoulders bare but for a layer of appliquéd chiffon.
“Gallagher was a hit. But it doesn’t look like Bruce Aaron stayed for the party.”
“Are you sure he came at all?”
Willem nodded. “I comped him a box. Olive said he brought Senator Wilson and Senator Pickering and his wife. They’re both on the committee. This could be very good or very bad.”
“But the fight went well?”
“It was aflawlessdemonstration of the technology.”
When he couldn’t put off his entrance off any longer, Willem took his wife’s hand and stepped into the ring. The first cluster of guests who noticed them began to clap, and everyone else turned to look. Within seconds, the entire arena had burst into applause.
Willem nodded, graciously accepting approval he knew he deserved. Yet still he scanned the crowd.
“I hate the sand,” Tabitha whispered as she subtly clutched his arm for balance in her heels. “Can we let them come to us?”
“Of course.” Willem led his wife a few steps farther into the ring, then stopped as the first cluster of guests approached.
“Great show tonight!” A man in a shiny blue button-down raised a glass of red wine, and his friends followed through with an informal toast. “That last one—the red hat?”
“Redcap,” the woman to his left corrected as her elaborate cascade of curls caught the light.
“Yes, the redcap. He was something. You said he’sfae?”
Willem nodded. “Fear deargspecifically. They’re a race of warriors required to dip their caps in the blood of their victims to survive.”
“How perfectly savage!” The woman with the curls smiled, her blue eyes alight with excitement. “He’s a killing machine!”
“Yes, he is.” Tabitha Vandekamp gestured to the corpse of the massive hound, where it lay on the sand fifty feet away. “You can see the result for yourselves.” At her invitation, they moved toward the body, breathlessly recapping the hound’s demise as the next group of guests came forward.
Willem settled into his postfight routine, answering questions about the competitors and accepting praise from enthusiastic fans of the event as they ate and drank. In the stands, a crowd had formed around Olive Burnette, who was taking ticket requests for future bouts on her tablet, increasing the Spectacle’s cash flow with every order she took. But Willem didn’t begin to truly enjoy himself until he spotted a familiar pair of gentlemen standing with a woman in her fifties on the opposite side of the ring, studying the hound’s corpse from a respectable distance.
