When it was over, Graham caught his breath through gritted teeth. He had a broken rib, probably, and was glad it wasn’t worse than that. He could still walk, and he could still fight, and that was what mattered.
Someone had a microphone, and was shouting loud enough that they could hear it over the noisy roar of the generator. “Ladies and gentlemen... are you ready? He’s a seven-time event winner... The muscles with menace... Our very own angus shifter, Cinderblock!”
The shifter who walked into the spotlight, posing and raising his fists, was taller than Graham by a handspan, and proportionally wider, built like a mountain. He raised a folding chair over his head, and casually twisted it into a pretzel.
The crowd went wild.
Instinctively, Graham measured him as an opponent, feeling the familiar rise of adrenaline. Cinderblock was a big man, but he moved gracefully; his range of movement and speed weren’t hindered by his strength, and he would be a tricky opponent even if Graham hadn’t already been softened up.
Graham knew he ought to feel afraid, but the emotion welling up in him felt more like excitement. He knew what to do next, down to the very bones. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t his choice... it was a fight he was ready for.
They were at the edge of the lit area around the cage, standing just in the shadows out of sight, very near the loud generator.
Past the crowd, the nearly-full moon was rising and movement in the sky caught Graham’s eye.
“Let him say goodbye to his girlfriend,” Cyrus said, loudly to be heard over the generator. He allowed Alice step forward to put her arms around Graham; she had struggled out of her bindings and one of her hands was free. The rope still hung from the other wrist, but the others clearly didn’t consider her a risk. They knew that they only had to control him to keep her in line.
“Be... careful,” Alice said, softly, as he cradled her face in his hands. She was blinking back tears, clearly trying to keep a brave face for him. “You aren’t this,” she reminded him near his ear. “You are Graham.”
Graham kissed her without trying to explain that this was exactly what he was, and stepped back from her, ignoring the ache in his side that had nothing to do with the broken rib.
One of the guards pulled her back when she might have tried to keep him from going and Graham had to turn away so he didn’t try to jump uselessly to her defense.
He eyed Cyrus, who was watching him closely.
The crowd was beginning to tire of Cinderblock’s showboating, and the announcer, catching their mood, moved on to the introduction of Graham. “Out of the fighting circuit for ten years... the act you’ve been waiting for... one of the meanest fighters to grace the cage... lion shifter and lady lover... put your hands together for... the King of the Jungle!”
The crowd broke out in jeers and insults; Graham was clearly not the favored fighter.
They were expecting a slaughter, he realized, and he had to wonder if they were expecting it to be literal. The crowd at his last fight had had that same timbre, he thought. That same blood-thirsty lust.
Cyrus smiled slowly, savoring the moment. “Look at you,” Cyrus mocked. “You can feel the thrill in your blood. You’re still a fighter. You’re still Grant Lyons, King of the Jungle.”
There was another flicker in the sky.
“You’re wrong,” he said. “I’m Graham Long now.”
“You’re just the same as you’ve always been,” Cyrus scoffed. “Graham isn’t any different than Grant.”
Graham smiled slowly.
“Except that Graham has friends.”
Then a flaming dragon appeared above the arena, lighting the grass around the cage on fire and roaring a challenge to the crowd as it swept overhead.
Graham turned on the three guards who had been prepared to escort him to the cage, using their surprise to wrest their weapons from them as chaos erupted around them.
Chapter 35
Alice was looking too hard at Graham to notice Bastian’s aerial approach, but she was quick to take advantage of the distraction to grab the gun from the guard holding her. She might not be much of a fighter, but she knew he wouldn’t be able to shoot anything with her weight hanging from his gun.
A bear, a panther, and a lynx stalked out of the darkness like the start of a bad joke, and she cried out in warning, “They have Beehag’s anti-shifting drugs!” She wasn’t sure if they would hear her bellow over the sound of the generator.
Shots—real shots—scattered off a wall somewhere nearby as one of the guards fired wildly in their direction.
“And real bullets, too, apparently!” Alice added in a panic. She fought harder to get the gun from the guard she was grappling, and it ripped free into her hands. She swung it at the guard like a club, missed and nearly unbalanced. The guard, with more honed reflexes, recovered first, and balled up a fist to hit her in the jaw.
Blinking stars of pain aside, Alice saw a charging deer of impossible size, followed by a pair of leopards, one silver and white, one gold and black. They didn’t pause to battle any of the guards or shifters in fighting gear who were starting to gather; their goal seemed to be to clear a path for a human figure who was running behind them. Big bears charged after her, one polar bear, one big grizzly, and they bowled over the event staff that briefly attempted to stop them.