But Robin’s safe.
Safe for today.
It’s all the consolation I’m going to get.
I can’t even see the lizard, not with the way they’ve changed the playing field. It’s just those scarred and inhuman faces moving with uncanny speed, twisting and creeping limbs, eyes red, and black tongues.
I don’t want to go down like this.
Of all the ways to die…
Slam!
The Deathball drops down an inch from my skull.
One type of terror morphs into another. This faun cannot have beaten Robin.
I stumble out from beneath the deck, searching for him.
“Marco!” he shouts. “Grab hold!”
“What the fuck are you doing? Kill him!”
Robin lets out a cry as the faun’s foot slams into his back, but the fiddler, for whatever reason, keeps playing.
“Not without you!” he shouts. “Fucking grab it.”
“You’ll fall!”
“Marco!”
A vicious howl from behind me turns my logic to jelly. Survival mode kicks in, and I leap. The sharp barbs of the Deathball sink into my hands, but it’s less painful than what’s coming.
Robin hauls the ball up, even as a swift kick slams into his ribs. His grip on my lifeline never flinches. The chains break into the wood beneath him, I slam a hand down on the platform, then his hand takes mine, and he hauls me up next to him.
“You’re mad.”
He breaks an exhausted smile. “Kill that fucking faun.”
It’s the least I can do. In one fluid movement, I grasp the ball, swing it, and cave the faun’s head into his shoulders. The music stops. The fiddle falls to the stadium floor, and the body slumps down in a dead heap.
The crowd erupts into a celebration, and I reach an unsteady hand for Robin. He’s here beside me, breathing hard, shaking as badly as I am, both of us waiting for the next trick.
But all we hear is one loud, guttural cry, and can only watch the last of the infected drift away from us, winding their way to the far side of the stadium, where they, as one crawling, creeping mass, climb onto the lizard, and devour it.
The announcer speaks. I hear our names, something of a celebration, but all I can see is the fear in those large, dying eyes. A creature taken from its land, forced to fight in this arena. To die here. Never to see its homeland again.
My hand wraps tight around Robin’s. Tighter than it should here on this platform, in this arena, in front of everyone.
I’ve still got him, flesh and blood and real, next to me. Alive.
But this time, it’s Robin who hauls my arm up into the air. “Smile, Marco.”
And I do. Across the bridge they extend for us to climb onto. Up into the winners’ bay with the two thrones they tell us to sit on. Through my speech and through Robin’s speech. And all the way along the dark corridors that lead us back to the costume room where Evander awaits.
“Get out,” he barks at the guards. “I’ve got work to do.”
Just as soon as he gets the door closed on them, he crosses the room and steps out the one on the far side. “Two minutes.”
