Treasure of the Fire Kingdom (The Elemental Phases Book 4) (8 page)

Then,
Little Bo Peep winced and muttered, “Great.  And
now
, I lost today’s
round of the game.  Hang on.”  She sat up and brushed at her clothes like she
expected some kind of do-over.

…And
Jom actually moved back to give her space.

Richter
glanced away from the woman long enough to give his brother a frustrated
shove.  “What the fuck are you doing?  Don’t listen to her!  Stop letting a
nice ass distract you.”

“Bite
me.”  Jom shoved him back even harder.  “I just don’t want to kill this girl,
yet.  We have another full minute before Vessar and Ghames come in, so we have
to drag it out until the last second.  Think!  Do you want the crowd to be
disappointed in the show or do you want to raise our standing?  Huh?”  Most of
the gladiators sought the approval of the crowd as a way to secure better
fights and win their freedom.  “We have to make it just a
little
bit
interesting, don’t we?”

The
woman used their distraction to scramble to her feet.  She still didn’t have
her sword, though.  She frowned prettily and --honest to God-- mouthed, “Oh
dear.”  Her head went right and then left, scanning for it on the ground.

Kingu
had killed so many people, he’d lost count, but he’d never wanted to strangle
someone more.  “Damn it, woman!  It’s behind you!”  Although it seemed
pointless to bother, he pointed to the weapon and bellowed the order so she
could hear him.  “Right there!  Pick it up!”

Instead
of driving for her sword, like any sane person would have, she turned to look
right at him.  Somehow, she met Kingu’s gaze across the huge expanse of the
arena.

Midnight
Blue.

Her
eyes were midnight blue and, when they locked on him, he felt his heart stop. 
She’d been wearing sunglasses before, so he hadn’t seen the color. Now he
wished he’d left it a mystery, because they seared through him.  It was like
looking straight into the heaven he would never be allowed to see.

For
a full second, he was transfixed.  He didn’t have a soul, but this tiny,
hopeless Phase certainly did.  He peered into the crystal clear depths of it,
the mesmerizing swirls of velvet blue pulling him deeper than he wanted to go. 
This woman could make him a slave all over, again.

No.

She
stared up at him, no fear or revulsion on her face.  Instead, stepped closer to
his box.  Closer to
him
. 

No
.

Panicked,
Kingu pulled back with an oath.  “It can’t be her.”  He moved away from the
railing, desperately shaking his head.  “Anyone else, but not her.  I don’t
want this girl.”

She
was… dangerous.

This
woman with the haunting eyes and silly clothes could finally break him.  In
that split second, he believed it and
still
he had the overwhelming
temptation to claim her.

“Bullshit. 
I can fucking
see
that you want her.”  Zakkery snapped.  “You haven’t
looked away from her once since we got here and you never even bothered to
glance
at the other women I brought you.”  He hesitated, his gaze quickly shifting to
the girl again as if willing her to survive for a few more minutes, and then back
to Kingu.  “Listen, this woman is special.  I give you my word.”

Kingu
believed him.  That was the problem.

“I
won’t have her.”  It took all of his willpower, but he turned away from the
arena.  “Find me a different girl.  One without those eyes.”

****

It
didn’t take years of Fire House training to realize she was losing this fight.

If
Hope didn’t get her stage fright under control, she really was going to die. 
For once, it wouldn’t be her bad luck that ruined her day, but her useless
panic.  That couldn’t happen.  It would be humiliating if she didn’t at least
kill one or two of her attackers.

She
tried to calm down and focus.  Tried to remember Frankie’s training.

Tried
to remember where her sword had gone.

Unfortunately,
her mind was a whirling, chaotic mass of anxiety and self-doubt.  Hope looked
around for the weapon in the dirt while the two gigantic gladiators argued with
each other.  Okay, where the heck did she lose it?

“Oh
dear.”  Why did she always lose things?  It was like her belongings fled from
her, hiding in self-preservations.  Once she’d lost her favorite hairbrush for
two weeks, finally finding it inside a VCR.  She had no idea how it got there.

“Damn
it, woman!  It’s behind you!  Right there!  Pick it up!”

The
infuriated bellow broke through her foggy confusion.  Hope was used to
bellowing.  She lived with the world champion bellowers of all time.  Alder and
Djinn didn’t even know
how
to speak below a dull roar and the rest of
them weren’t much better at using their indoor vices.  This man’s volume was
comfortingly familiar.

Hope’s
head swung around instinctively looking towards the sound.

The
monster was glowering down at her, his beautiful flame colored eyes judging her
performance and deciding she was unworthy.  Whatever people he’d once been a
god of, they must have been really obedient or really smited down.  There
wasn’t a lot of give in this man.

The
rest of the audience was watching this fight.

Kingu
was watching Hope.

His
eyes stayed fixed on hers like he could see straight into her soul.

Hope
had never had any tangible powers, but she could suddenly feel… something. 
Something new.  Something she couldn’t explain.  Hot and glittery, kind of like
a sparkler was suddenly lit inside of her.

Rule
number two of being a Fire Phase:  When you meet your Match, you’ll know it.

She
couldn’t have a Match, but she’d never felt anything like this before. 
Everything in her was saying this man was hers.  She knew it.  Knew
him
. 
Hope took an unconscious step in Kingu’s direction and was surprised when he
retreated deeper into the shadows.  She hadn’t expected a god to retreat from
anyone, let alone her.

Was
he leaving?

Hope
didn’t even process Richter and Jom stalking towards her.  Her eyes stayed
locked on the box high above her head.  The monster was no longer visible.

He
was going away.  She was being left behind, again.

If
Hope had one panic button, it was the idea of being abandoned.  The fact that
she’d feel so bereft about a complete stranger’s departure was ridiculous, but
then so many things about her day had been.  Her heart rate accelerated to
humming bird speed, a familiar tightness seizing her throat.  She suddenly
couldn’t get any oxygen, the breath wheezing from her body in a jagged rush.

Asthma.

Her
larynx swelled and it seemed like her chest could no longer expand far enough
to let in air.  Not only was she basically the only Elemental in constant need
of Weight Watchers, she was also one of the few who suffered from asthma.  Was
it from the stress of seeing the monster abandon her?  That might have
triggered it, but something else was making it worse by the second.  Usually it
was related to her allergies, so what was contributing to the attack?

Her
gaze went to the spikes of Richter’s mace.

Wait…
Had he smeared those spikes with red frog juice?  The creatures themselves were
poisonous, so sometimes Phases smeared their sticky skin along weapons to make
the blades extra lethal.  Obviously, Hope reacted badly to poison.  Everyone
did.  But, unlike most Phases, she was also extremely allergic to the smell of
the frogs.  Just being in the general vicinity of their slimy miasma sent her
into fits of wheezing.

Damn
it, she didn’t have time for this.

Hope
dug into her pockets for her inhaler.  In that moment of struggling for breath,
she was instinctively more worried about getting air than dying in combat. 
From the depths of her leopard print skirt she pulled sheer lip gloss, an
orange flavored taffy, a handful of random human coins, two mismatched
earrings, a lighter shaped like an electric guitar, and a lucky pink rabbit’s
foot that Missy had given her as a joke.

At
least, she
said
it was a joke.

“What
the hell are you doing?”  Zakkery shouted.  “Concentrate on the fight!”

Hope
ignored that.  All of the debris from her pockets got dumped to the sand as she
searched for the inhaler.  Desperately sorting through the mess and coming up
empty, her gaze swung around the ground.  Darn it, had she lost it, too?

She
stepped back, scanning for her medicine, and the heel of her sequined shoe came
down on the hilt of her fallen sword.  In response, the blade levered up a
sharp angle.  Which really
wouldn’t
have been a big deal –just her usual
clumsiness and the expected Newtonian response of an equal and opposite
reaction-- except Jom was coming up behind her at that exact moment.

His
sandal clad foot came down on her fallen lip gloss, the tube rolling and
knocking him off balance.  He legs shot out from under him.  As if in slow
motion, he tried to steady himself and overcompensated.  Jom toppled forward…

…Right
onto the lethal length of the blade.

Hope
turned in time to see Jom inadvertently impale himself on the sword.  It sliced
clean through his neck, coming at the other side in a geyser of arterial blood
spray.  Not even a Phase could live through that.  Especially not when gravity
and Jom’s own weight sent his body sliding off to the side and severed a huge
section of his throat.

He
died instantly.

Hope’s
eyes widened in horror.  “Oh dear.”  It came out as a wheeze.  “Sorry!  Wow,
sorry about that.”

The
words were basically meaningless, what with Jom being dead and probably not in
a forgiving mood.  They echoed around her as the arena went eerily still.  For
an endless moment, silence reigned.  No one could quite believe what had just
happened.

The
hundred-to-one shot had just won the first round.

Kind
of.

Total
accident or not, Hope still felt kind of proud of herself.  Mostly because she
knew Oberon would have been thrilled with her accomplishment.  Plus, she wasn’t
dead, yet.  Maybe she
could
win this fight.

“She
did it!”  Zakkery’s whoop of
un
mourning broke the trance.  “That was a
neck shot.  Did you see that!?  That counts as decapitation on the point
spread.”  He pointed at her in triumph.  “Thank God, I actually bet on you, you
adorable little killing machine.  Do you know what the odds were on
decapitation?
”

Holy
cow, but she hated him.

“Uhhhh….” 
There announcer clearly had no idea what to say, his stunned voice creating
feedback as he hunting for words.  “Jom falls to the human’s mighty blade. 
What an… unexpected turn of events.”

“I’m
not a human.”  Hope was getting sick of everyone saying that.  She glanced over
at Richter who was gaping down at Jom’s corpse.  Obviously, he’d never visited
the Fire Kingdom, because he looked transfixed by the sight.  “Time out,
okay?”  She went back to looking for her inhaler.

He
didn’t seem to hear her.

Poor
guy.  Back home, you got used to the occasional victim laying in the yard. 
None of them had been
Hope’s
victim before, but it wasn’t like Jom had
been some innocent school teacher or something.  He’d been trying to stab her…
from behind!  Where was the honor in that kind of attack?  If he wasn’t dead,
it would have been a good lesson for him about sportsmanship.

And
where the heck was her inhaler?   Her wheezing was getting worse.  A telltale
pins-and-needles sensation prickled her throat, signaling that her attack
wasn’t going to abate without her medication.

Darn
it.

“You
can’t call fucking
time out!
”  Kingu was back by the railing, apparently
lured by Zakkery’s chortling.  “Are you
out of your mind?!
  Pick up a
gods damn sword!”

Hope
looked up at him and her tension level decreased.  He hadn’t left!  What a huge
relief.  She couldn’t lose him, now that she’d finally found him.

A
loud buzzer sounded and the crowd let out an expectant cheer.

“Thaaaaat’s
right folks!”  The announcer sounded a little steadier, now.  “Round two!”

One
of the plastic gates opened and two more gladiators stepped out.  These guys
carried spears and what looked like nets.  Tall golden boots reached their
knees,
Iliad
looking helmets covered their heads and in between they
wore what looked like togas.  Stopping with choreographed precision, they
reached down in unison to untie the gold tassels at their waists and drop the
bed sheet get-ups to the ground.  Underneath they sported diapers.

 Honest
to Gaia, they wore white fabric briefs that looked
exactly
like old
fashion cloth diapers.  Alder would have laughed his ass off if he’d seen them.

“Vessar,
of the Gravity House and Ghames, of the Radiation House join the fray!”  The
announcer yelled.  “Will they be the ones to stop the human’s rampage or will
Richter have revenge for his fallen comrade?”