Page 52 of Taste of Forever
“Hey.” I nudged another vampire beside me. “How many fights have there been already?”
The guy blinked slowly, his eyes bloodshot and yellowed with draitrium use. Great. He counted on his fingers. “Four, I think.”
“Cool, thanks.”
He wiped his eyes and sniffed before pulling an amber glass bottle out of pocket. “Want some? Twenty bucks a drop.”
“No thanks, I’m good.”
“You sure? It’s the good shit. Twenty per is a steal.”
Judging from the broken capillaries in his eyes and the way he kept rubbing them, I’d bet he got ripped off on a bad batch. Maybe the draitrium was cut with something else to increase the dealer’s profits.
“I’m sure. Maybe grab some Visine, buddy. Your eyes don’t look too good.”
“Fuck off,” he growled before disappearing into the crowd.
“Such a fucking waste,” Cyan griped at my side. “This group over here’s talking about staying up to watch the sunrise after the fights. Can you imagine?”
“I know,” I commiserated. Daytime wasn’t our world. Watching sunrises was not in a vampire’s nature. Even while on drae, it was incredibly risky to be out while the sun was up. Most draitrium-related deaths weren’t actually due to overdoses, but misjudging how long the sun protected lasted, then getting burned up while caught outside with no protection.
The surrounding lights shut off and the crowd let out a collective roar. Only the cage remained illuminated. Cyan and I shared a grim look. The next fight was about to start.
About ten feet away from us, the crowd parted to form a lane. I was tall enough to see over most people’s heads, and spotted three figures coming through the cleared space toward the cage.
Two vampires entered the cage with a third person, blindfolded with their hands tied behind their back, between them. The bound person looked male, shirtless with tattered shorts, bare feet stumbling up the short steps to the cage door.
He was untied and his blindfold removed, then shoved inside, the chain-linked door shutting and locking firmly behind him.
“Fuck,” Cyan bit out at my side.
I agreed but was too dismayed to say anything. The guy in the cage was a brusang. Newly turned by the looks of it. He gazed around at the crowd in stunned horror, then looked down at his hands. Touched his stomach, the bullet hole looking-injuries that had probably killed him, and then touched his face. He looked young, just on the cusp of adulthood.
The crowd laughed as he began to panic, crawling to the edge of the cage and curling his fingers through the gaps in the wires. His mouth formed the word, “Help,” but it was impossible to hear him. Impossible to save him.
Another lane formed in the crowd across from where the terrified brusang made his entrance. Spectators turned their attention that way and raised fists in the air as they yelled and cheered.
Much like with the first fighter, two vampires escorted a bound prisoner between them.
“Aw, shit.”
“How bad?” Cyan asked.
“Looks like a Marrower.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
The brusang wasn’t scrawny by any means. He was probably of average build for a human. But an average Marrower had twice the heft and muscle of an average human. They were usually at least a foot taller too.
It was almost comical how the escorting vampires brought the Marrower up the steps and untied him. He could have broken their faces with a swat of his hand, but something wasn’t right. The Marrower was slow, sluggish. That was, until one of the escorts pulled out a large syringe and stabbed the Marrower in the thigh with it, using a fair amount of strength to push the plunger all the way down.
The Marrower seemed to wake up from a stupor, rolling his massive neck around on his shoulders and snapping his jaws.
“That doesn’t look like drae,” I observed. The substance in the syringe looked like blood, but it was impossible to tell.
“We need to find out who they are.” Cyan jerked his chin at the escorting vampires now hurriedly shutting the cage door behind the prisoner. “They have no clan insignia but these fighters are clearly brought here from somewhere. They don’t seem to be here voluntarily.”
