Page 18 of Reaper (Quincy Harker Demon Hunter #10)

T hat sleep lasted about three hours before I woke up, everything pruned as a motherfucker, with my back hurting all over again from falling asleep sitting in a hard-ass bathtub.

I drained the tub, showered again to loosen up my muscles, dried off, pulled a thick comforter over my naked body, and sprawled across the plush queen-sized bed for another few hours.

I felt a lot better when I woke up the second time, around six in the morning.

I took another shower, this time to mostly wash the sleepy off, and got dressed.

They did pretty well with sizes, so I grabbed a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt, and was just looking through the mini-fridge for something to eat when Pete knocked on my door, waiting all of half a second before entering.

I guess my promotion to Tier Three came with some privacy, but not really.

“Ready for breakfast?” he asked, beaming.

I don’t trust people that are happy in the morning, but for all I knew, Pete was some kind of weird fae that didn’t sleep, despite his claims of humanity.

“I forgot to tell you that you have unrestricted access to the mess hall now, so you don’t have to eat in your room.

Breakfast runs until ten, then lunch starts at eleven.

Dinner is from five to midnight, but there’s always some food available if you get peckish in the middle of the night. ”

More reason to think he might be a faerie. Nobody says “peckish.”

“So my door isn’t locked?” I asked. If there was an opportunity to snoop around unescorted, I was sure as fuck gonna take it.

“Oh, it’s locked, but if you flip the red switch by the door, someone from security will see the alert and open the door for you.

” So much for snooping. I can cast a glamour to make me invisible, but I’m not good enough at illusion to make it look like I walk to a dining hall, fix a plate, and eat, all while I’m really sticking my nose somewhere it’s not supposed to be.

That’s some David Copperfield shit right there.

Yes, David Copperfield is a real wizard. So is David Blaine. Criss Angel…not so much. “Okay, so if I don’t need an escort to mealtime, why not just send me a message? Why come yourself?” I asked.

“One, I kinda like you, Murray. You’ve got a little bit of an underdog vibe, and that’s something people like to root for.

But not everybody. So I wanted to be there while you got the lay of the land around the other upper-tier competitors.

And two, I’m hungry, so I thought I’d grab you and show you around the mess while I get myself some grub.

Kind of a kill two birds with one stone thing. ”

Okay, that made sense. He wanted to keep an eye on me, he wanted to make sure that I didn’t get murdered my first breakfast with the other kids, and he wanted a snack. I could understand all that. “Okay, but I have a really important question before breakfast?”

“What’s that?”

“Is the fucking coffee decent? Because if it’s instant, I might murder somebody.”

* * *

The coffee was decent. The mess was about a third of the way around the circle of rooms from my dorm, at least as far as I could guess from our walk.

It seemed to be nestled under the bleachers at the far side of the arena from where I entered for my fights, although I still had no real sense of the scale of the building.

The Colosseum itself was a flat oval with steeply raked sides leading to several rows of seating, but I couldn’t tell how much space might be under those risers.

All the dorms/cells that I’d occupied were arranged on the opposite wall, but I had yet to see any corridors branching out to what might be an exit.

Maybe we were underground and the only way out was up the bleachers?

I promised myself I’d work on that mystery after I found some food.

The breakfast spread was set up cafeteria-style, with eggs, bacon, sausage, grits, assorted fruits, different types of cereal and yogurt, and even an omelet station.

I got a cheese omelet with bacon, some fruit, and some home fries, then sat at an unoccupied table.

I’d looked for a seat with my back to a wall, but those were all taken when I arrived.

You put a bunch of hungry predators in a room and you aren’t going to find a lot of people willing to sit facing away from the door.

We’ve all watched the same movies, after all.

I’d just taken the first bite of my grits when a lanky man in his twenties put his tray down and sat across the small table from me.

All the tables were metal picnic benches, and they were all bolted to the floor, a wise design choice when everyone in the building was there to beat the shit out each other.

“Mind if I sit?” the newcomer asked, dropping bonelessly down onto the bench.

“Go for it,” I said. “Murray.” I extended a closed fist.

He bumped knuckles with me and said, “Anthony. I’m fae. Summer Court. You?”

I put on my best Hagrid impression and said, “I’m a wizard, ‘Arry.”

Anthony chuckled and took a bite of some sort of melon. “They feed us a lot better here than at Oberon’s basic training. I swear, sometimes I think he wanted us to exist on honeysuckle and sunbeams. You Tier Three?”

“Yeah, just got promoted.”

“I figured. I haven’t seen you in the mess before.

They save the good food for those of us who make it to Tier Three.

Or who start here.” He jerked his chin at a pale man sitting alone with a large glass of red liquid on the table before him.

Every once in a while he’d take a long drink, letting a tendril of blood run down the side of his mouth.

Vampire. And an old one, given how energetic he seemed this early in the day.

Vamps don’t have to sleep during the day.

I’ve seen Luke go for a week without closing his eyes when we’ve had to, but it’s not ideal for them.

I didn’t recognize this bloodsucker, but I instantly disliked him.

His eyes scanned the room constantly, not just looking for threats, but looking for weaknesses, too.

He wanted to find something he could exploit in the arena, which was smart, but also felt kinda shitty.

People should be able to at least eat without watching their backs.

But apparently that wasn’t how this place worked.

And the whole blood trickle thing? That was just showing off who he was and how tough vampires are.

Drinking blood freaks out most people, but I was willing to be good money that no one in the dining hall qualified as “most people.” So that just made it ostentatious, and an ostentatious vampire is pretty quickly a dead vampire in most environments.

“You missed a spot, Maris!” a thickly muscled man from the next table called to the vampire, and he and his friends all laughed like they’d told the funniest joke ever.

I looked at Anthony. “What’s this shit about?” I pointed to Vamp and Muscles. “They got beef?”

“Yeah, sorta. The vampire is called Maris, and the guy with muscles on top of his muscles is an Alpha were from Hungary named Yannis. They fought in Tier Four last night, and Maris left Yannis laying in a pool of his own blood. He didn’t even drink it, which Yannis took as an insult.”

“He didn’t take ending up on the floor bleeding like a stuck pig as an insult?” I asked. Wounded pride—the downfall of more Alphas than silver or wolfsbane. Which works on all weres, not just wolves, by the way.

“I’m sure that didn’t help his mood,” Anthony replied. “And neither did getting bumped back down to Tier Three. Yannis is looking to win out, and losing to Maris, and not even on a Saturday night when the betting is good, doesn’t help his chances.”

I cocked an eye at Anthony, and he went on.

“The amount of money wagered on your bouts is what determines how easy or hard your fights are. It’s not rigged per se, but if you’re a shifter with a lot of money bet on you to win, you get a tougher fight, or worse odds.

And a percentage of everything wagered on a fighter is held in escrow for when you leave, so if you make it all the way to the Main Event and leave as a champion, you’re pretty much set for life.

You probably don’t have enough to buy your own island, but you could live comfortably for a long time. ”

“Anybody ever make it?” I asked. Pete had already told me that he’d never seen it, but maybe Anthony knew some gossip that didn’t make it to the staff.

“Not all the way through,” he said with a shake of his head. “But when you make Tier Four, you get a choice after every match. You can cash out and take whatever your cut of the wagers is, or you can keep fighting and try to become a Champion.”

“Ever seen anybody cash out?” I asked, a suspicion starting to form.

“Oh, yeah. Just last week a shifter that had been here for almost two months, bouncing up and down between Tier Three and Four won his Four match and opted out. He said he was tired of fighting all the time and missed his old life, so he took the money and left. I hope he’s happy.

He…never seemed like he liked the fighting all that much. ”

Sounded like Willy, the dead shifter whose body on the golf course had put this whole thing in motion. “How did he get started with the fights? He get shanghai’d like I did?”

“Not at all. It’s pretty rare that anybody who’s conscripted actually wins a fight.

Usually you guys are just picked up, get your asses kicked in an opener against some Tier Two weenie who lost his last fight, and then you get dumped in an alley with a hundred bucks in your pocket.

But Will got into betting on the fights, lost more than he could afford to lose, and started fighting to pay off his debt to the house.

He was doing good, too, but you could tell his heart wasn’t in it.

I knew he’d take the out. He wasn’t a killer.

The Main Event scene was never going to work for him. ”

“What about you?” I asked. “You a killer?”

“Nah, I’m a lifer, man. I fight on Tier Four one week, lose, fight Tier Three the next, win, then back to Four for another loss.

I don’t want to kill anybody, either, but I like the fight.

And I’m a faerie. I know as long as they don’t kill me, I’ll outlive all these idiots anyway, so as long as I’m young, I might as well have some fun, bust some heads, and eat for free.

Plus this way, I don’t have to do whatever shit duty Oberon wants to make me do as punishment. ”

Okay, now I was intrigued. “Why would Oberon want to punish you?” As someone who the King of Summer absolutely fucking hated , I was always interested in hearing from another party on Obie’s shit list.

“I might have banged one of his maids,” Anthony said, dipping his head in mock embarrassment.

“I thought faeries weren’t into the whole monogamy thing?” Certainly none of the ones I’d known back in my Studio 54 days had been.

“They aren’t, but Oberon looks at his maids as more his property than his servants, so in his mind, I may as well have slept with Titania herself.

Not that I would ever—” He held up his hands as if to stave off any possible offense.

I waved his protests aside with a strip of bacon.

The cooks in this joint were really good.

The bacon was that perfect shade of almost burnt.

“I get it. You would never dream of besmirching her Royal Hotness in such a way. Plus, you’re scared she’d rip off your junk and stick it on her mantel alongside all her other former lovers’ equipment.”

“You’ve heard that story, too, huh?”

“Everybody’s heard that story, bud. At least everybody who deals in magic and might ever encounter a faerie.

” I added that last part as I realized that not everybody had probably heard that story, and even fewer had seen the evidence with their own eyes, but that’s a story for much later.

“I get it. Titania’s hot, but so far off limits as to be on another plane of existence. ”

“Exactly,” my newfound friend agreed.

Titania’s hot, huh? Becks chimed in, reminding me yet again that there was a perennial hitchhiker on my dirtiest thoughts. I think this is another conversation we’re going to have when you get home.

Losing in the Main Event gets more appealing with every conversation I want to avoid, I replied.

Oh, no, Harker. You don’t get off that easily. If anybody murders your ass, it’s gonna be me.

Or him, I thought, looking up at the shadow that had just fallen across our table. Gotta go, babe. I think it’s time for the obligatory fight in the prison mess hall scene.

The heavily muscled were called Yannis stood glaring down at Anthony.

“You talk too much, Tony. Tell too many stories. I shut you up now.” He talked like a cliche of a Russian mob goon, but from the look on Anthony’s face, he had the skills and strength to back up his threats.

I guess it really was time for the fight in the dining room.

I shoved the last of my bacon in my mouth as Tony stood up, palms out to try and defuse the situation.

I knew I was about to get in a fight, but that was no reason to let good bacon go to waste.