Page 15 of Reaper (Quincy Harker Demon Hunter #10)

P ete knocked on my door just as I was finishing up my morning ablutions.

He knocked, waited about five seconds, then opened the door, walking in with a tray of eggs, bacon, and grits.

He tossed me a bottle of orange juice-esque substance, fished a bottle of water out of his back pocket, and set the whole lot on the nightstand.

“Okay, you’ve got three days before your next bout, so most of that time you can spend however you like. This’ll be the last time you get room service, so enjoy it while you can.”

I put down the towel I’d been rubbing my hair dry with and looked at him, confused. “Three days? I thought you only did fights on Saturday.”

“Nah, we do Wednesday night fights, too. No main events, but it’s a good way for you undercard guys to maybe move up.”

“So I’ll be scrapping with somebody else who won their first-round bout this Wednesday?” I opened my connection to Becks wide so she could hear everything going on. This was good. I’d been worried that I’d be stuck here trying to figure out how be Murray James for a whole week between matches.

“Yep, or maybe somebody who lost a Tier Three fight on Saturday. You should probably hope for the other Tier One winner, though. Usually the guys who got busted down a tier are really pissy.”

That made sense. I could imagine how grumpy I’d be if I was used to sleeping in a bed and had to spend a few days in the Tier One cells. “How many tiers are there?” I asked.

“You really don’t know anything, do you? How did you even find us?”

This was dangerous ground, but fortunately it wasn’t much of a stretch to feign ignorance. “I don’t know anything, really. I heard there was an underground fight league for people like me, but nobody would talk about it. I guess most paras adhere to your boss’s philosophy on PR.”

Pete chuckled. “Kinda. We’ve got a hell of a YouTube following, but most people think it’s all fake, like indie horror films or something.

There’s five tiers. Tier One is where you were.

Not all the Tier One guys live here; some just volunteer to fight now and then to blow off steam.

Tier One is fight until first blood, knockout, or submission, so there usually aren’t any serious injuries. ”

Until some asshole bites a guy’s nose off , I thought. “Usually,” I said, letting a little color into my cheeks. I wasn’t really bothered by chewing Biker Bro’s nose off. It was far from the worst thing I’d done in a fight. At least he lived.

“Well, sometimes a fighter gets carried away. And sometimes his opponent has to be carried away, if you get what I mean. But we’ve got healers on staff for anybody who’s going to be sent home. We don’t want word to get out that our fighters are maimed for life. That would cut down on recruitment.”

“Tier Two is where the fights start to get interesting. That’s where you are now.

Magic-users get to throw some spells, but your access to power is still limited.

Shifters can assume their animal form, but they can’t do that half-man, half-beast thing.

If they pause midway through a shift, they get tranked and forfeit the bout. ”

“What about vampires?” I asked.

“Vamps go straight to Tier Three. Vampires and certain types of demons are just too powerful for Tiers One and Two. There wouldn’t be a challenge for them at the lowest tiers.

We do get faeries sometimes, depending on the type, and a bunch of cryptids.

Not Sasquatch, though. They’re too badass. They jump right to Tier Three.”

“So Tier Three the gloves are off, then?” I asked. “No restrictions on power, no limits to what magic we can access?”

“Mostly. The collars help us regulate your magic, so you’re not at full power yet.

That’s Tier Four. That’s when the gloves come off.

The only thing you can’t do in Tier Three is intentionally murder somebody.

So if you like threw a fireball at a vampire’s face right out of the gate, you’d get disqualified. ”

“And what happens if I get DQ’d?” I asked.

“You don’t want to know. But let’s just say that spending a week in the Tier One cells would be a vacation by comparison.”

“So what’s Tier Five?” I was pretty sure I knew the answer, but wanted to hear it.

“Tier Five is the Main Event. We only do one Main Event fight per week because those are always to the death. You don’t have to move up to Tier Five if you don’t want to, though.

But there’s no real paycheck at any of the other tiers.

You get some cash into your accounts in the early rounds, but you can’t access it until Tier Four or Five.

And even then, you can only use it to bet on the fights.

You can bet on yourself, or on other fighters.

Just tell me where you want to put your money. If you get that far.

“Up until Tier Four, you’re mostly fighting for fun and bloodlust. But Tier Five? You win four fights at that level, go undefeated for a whole month, and you get fifty grand and retire as a Grand Champion.”

Pete’s face practically glowed when he talked about this, but I didn’t expect it to be nearly as rosy as he seemed to think. “Anybody ever do that? Take the money and retire?”

“Not since I’ve been here,” he admitted after a pause. “A couple guys have won three in a row, but then they always meet up with somebody stronger.”

“No matter how much of a badass you are, there’s always somebody badder,” I said. Especially when the Boss can bring in a ringer at any point. “Do you ever get fighters that come in at the Main Event? Or does everybody climb the ladder?”

“Sometimes there’ll be a special attraction come in.

We had a dragon one time. An honest to God, no bullshit dragon .

Boss set it up so four Tier Four fighters went up against it.

Didn’t matter, though. One blast of fire, one swipe of that long, spiky tail, and one big chomp, and it was all over. It was kinda disappointing, actually.”

“Well, it can’t all be WWE now, can it?”

“I guess not. Anyway, eat up. You’ve got exercise time in half an hour.”

“Exercise time?”

“Yeah, you go to the arena and spar with other fighters in your tier. It lets you get an idea who you’ll be facing Wednesday.”

Great, I thought. Now I just have to get through a sparring session without murdering anyone or getting recognized.

* * *

There were three other guys in the Colosseum when I stepped out onto the sand again.

I looked around, but apparently they scooped up all the bloody sand like cat litter at the end of every fight night because there was no sign of me biting a guy’s nose off to be found.

I immediately pegged one guy for a faerie of some sort as he practiced martial arts, his feet barely touching the ground as he moved from pose to pose.

He was pretty, kinda like a dark-haired Legolas with lethal intentions.

Another guy had “werewolf” written all over him.

He wasn’t lean and tall like Saint, but built like a fireplug, with excessively hairy arms, bushy eyebrows, and a permanent snarl etched on his face.

He was definitely a ronin wolf, packless.

He stared at me as I walked in, challenge written all over his face.

The last guy was more of a mystery, but a dapper one.

He looked human and wore a crisp black suit with pinstripes and expensive Oxfords that looked like ostrich.

Ostrich Oxfords. That gave me a chuckle.

Until I looked at his eyes and saw red. Not like I got pissed off but like his eyes were red.

He was a demon, and whether he was wearing a human suit or he was a body-hopper like Mort, that meant that he was the craftiest, most dangerous motherfucker in the arena.

Until I got there.

I walked in and looked around, then called out, “Hi guys! Murray James. I’m new here, and Pete over there says we’re supposed to spar. So, uh, who wants to get some practice in?” I pasted on the stupidest grin I could imagine and looked from fighter to fighter.

Nobody spoke, but they all exchanged glances then rushed me.

Good, I wanted to get it out of the way.

The werewolf got to me first, and he had the thick arms of someone who could do some damage if I let him.

So I got right to the “not letting him” part.

I vaulted over his head and flicked out a kick to the back of his skull, sending him sprawling to the sand.

Then I pounced on his back, grabbed his left wrist, and pulled his arm back until I heard the unmistakable pop of a shoulder dislocating.

I left Fuzzy screaming on the sand and stood up just in time to see Faerie Ninja almost on top of me.

He threw a dizzying array of kicks faster than any human could react.

Good thing for me, I’m not human, and even better for me that my normal sparring partner is the most badass vampire in history.

When you get your ass kicked on the regular by Dracula, you learn to anticipate an opponent’s moves before they even know what they’re going to do next.

I took one punch to the jaw, then a kick to my right thigh, then I retaliated with a feint at his head, an uppercut to his jaw, and a knife-edged chop to his throat.

I finished him off with a punch right to his forehead that I’m pretty sure left an imprint of my knuckles on his cerebellum.

That left the real threat. Not the demon.

Not really. The bigger threat was that the demon would recognize me and blow my cover.

Not all demons have been around since The Fall, and most of the really powerful ones wouldn’t be stuck in Tier Two, but it was definitely possible that this was someone I’d killed before, reconstituted into a new body, and returned to Earth to wreak more havoc.

The demon and I circled each other like two cats vying for the same mouse, each measuring the other and looking for an opening, a weakness to exploit.

I had the distinct feeling that whoever made the first mistake was going to have a really bad afternoon.

Turns out my mistake was made several heartbeats earlier, when I dislocated the shifter’s arm but didn’t render him unconscious.

Because just as I thought I saw an opening to go after the demon, two hundred pounds of fur, fangs, and halitosis slammed into my back, driving me to the dirt and sending all my breath out in a whoof!

I tried to roll, but Fuzzy had me pinned, and as he clasped his jaws lightly around the back of my neck, I heard the demon chuckle from ten feet away.

I tapped the ground, signaling surrender, and the werewolf hopped off me to sit on his haunches and stare at me, tongue lolling in a doggie grin.

“Nice one,” I said. “I forgot that your shoulder would be fixed as soon as you shifted. Well played.”

He shifted back to human form faster than almost any were I’d ever seen, and walked over to me, hand extended.

Like most shifters, he had no sense of modesty, and his junk was just swinging in the breeze as we shook hands.

“Thanks. Good job on the arm bar, yourself. If I was anything but a were, that might have ended my night.”

“I’m just glad he didn’t bite off any of our parts,” said the Faerie Ninja, joining our impromptu circle of mutual admiration. He held out a fist, and I pounded it, then looked over at the demon, who hadn’t come any closer.

“Don’t worry about him,” Ninja said. “He’s just here for the bloodshed. He keeps moving up and down the tiers looking for new people to eviscerate.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, honestly a little confused.

“He’ll win a few fights, then throw a fight right before Tier Five so he doesn’t have to fight to the death. I think he just likes to hurt people.”

Well, that didn’t narrow the field on what kind of demon he was, but it definitely meant he was the one out of this bunch I had to watch out for. So naturally, he was the one I got “randomly” paired with on Wednesday night. Yay, me.