“What do you think I’ve been doing, sitting on my ass and twiddling my thumbs?” Cyrus folded his arms, facing down his father. “I understand you want me to hide my form as if I’m a disease-riddled monstrosity, but you know, I have to work with what I’ve got. And it turns out that what I’ve got stands up pretty well in fights against other dragons, pretty good in fights in general really.”
His father opened and closed his mouth a few times. “Do you plan to keep fighting or was that a sole performance just to piss me off?” he hissed.
“Depends. I like the idea of pissing you off to be honest.”
“Do you have an agent? A trainer?”
“No.”
Torag pointed a finger at him. “Well, if you plan to keep fighting, I’m getting you an agent and trainer. As long as you wear that damned mask and make sure people don’t get wind of who you actually are I’ll support you.”
“No.” The last thing Cyrus wanted was for his father to gain a hold over him again. If that happened, then who the hell knew when he’d be released from the contract, released from the shadow of his father? “I’ll find my own agent and trainer. I don’t want you anywhere near me. But I will promise to remain masked and to never reveal who I am, though it’d be an interesting PR stunt if I did.”
His father’s expression soured further. “You’re making a mistake. You really think you and Aleera can hide from me? You think you can escape my reach?”
“If you have even an ounce of decency in that miserable soul of yours, you’d leave us alone – let us do our thing. You still have three perfectly obedient children; your empire will be just fine.”
Torag glared, but Cyrus knew his father wouldn’t do anything as drastic as order a hit on his wayward children. Torag wanted to promote the idea that he was a great family man and sometimes being a great family man meant allowing certain children to slip away – so then he could blame the wildness of the child rather than the efforts of the mother and father.
It all fit into his reputation.
“If you don’t have an agent and trainer within a month, I will make sure you can’t fight in this arena again,” his father said. “No matter how much you want it.” He threw Cyrus a dismissive glance. “I doubt you’ll ever have those odds again, by the way – unless you lose some.”
Cyrus snorted quietly and left his father. In his street clothes and without the mask, people in the club wouldn’t recognize him. He went around and entered the main betting booth room, a little curious as to who exactly bet on him. It was nearing the end of the bouts and people were lining up to collect their winnings. Many were leaving, as usual, those who gambled away their savings on fights, never knowing that at least a quarter of them were fixed.
The fighters did their best, but some were so wrapped up in their contracts that they had to lose some fights to make sure that nottoomany people ended up walking away with a lot of money. That was how it went.
As for the fighting itself, winning meant an automatic twenty thousand being sent to his bank account. Not that he needed the money, but it was something.
He watched as the crowd thinned, and in the gleam of light, he spotted the woman he’d noticed before in conversation with one of the employees.
“Damn, girl,” the succubus employee said. “You had three winners out of the six you bet on. That’s Deep Chasm, for one hundred and thirty. He was a sure winner, so his odds are not the best for earning money unfortunately. That’s Verdant Fire for three hundred dollars, not bad. And… well. Let’s not say this one out loud.”
The woman grinned, and Cyrus wondered for a wild second if she’d bet on him. He remembered the way she looked at him before he had to focus completely on the fight. And judging by the scent he picked up from her–she was ahumanwoman.
Now that he was closer, he could see her features better: blonde hair; eyes that were on the lighter side, though he still couldn’t quite tell their color; attractive — very. Possibly she was in danger, especially if she came here alone. Most of the supernaturals didn’t mind a human in their midst. After all, they shared their world with humans, often in chaotic symbiosis. Humans were drawn to the supernatural, to the magic. Many a human hoarded blessed or cursed heirlooms from their interactions.
However, some supernaturals liked to… prey on humans, particularly lone ones. A few people recognized him and bowed or nodded toward him, but mostly his focus was on the human – and on an incubus eyeing her from the side.
When the woman collected her earnings and began to make her way out of the club, Cyrus followed as discreetly as possible, his eyes both on her and the incubus. As he’d suspected, that incubus had plans for her.
You shouldn’t have come here alone,Cyrus thought, not sure why he followed and why he’d decided in this moment to keep watch.
Chapter Three – Sasha
Finally, she hadmoney.Ten thousand, four hundred and fifty dollars, to be precise. Of course, she needed to wait for it to fully transfer to her account, but holy hell. Shefinallycould live somewhat decently.
Not that the money would last for long. She’d need more in the end, but this gave her breathing room. She didn’t need to work so hard just to stay ahead of her rent and food and bills. She would have time to prepare, to dream, to even engage in an online university course and gradually work toward a degree. It was enough to let her feel like she wasn’t being crushed under the weight of a great anvil.
Even so, it could have all gone wrong. She might have lost all the bets and ended up in an even worse state than before.
Never spend money that you need for yourself.Wise words from her mother.Never invest anything you need.Not that she planned to invest–that type of market felt even more volatile to her than gambling on some supernatural fights in a shady underground arena – but now she could do it.
Her mind started thinking of all the ways she would spend the money and all the little things she wanted to do, including paying back her parents the money they had loaned her when she moved out. Maybe she would treat her mother to a big shopping splurge, so at least for a few weeks, she didn’t need to walk around the shop using her phone’s calculator and painstakingly removing each food voucher in her wallet.
No more scraping by the skin of her teeth. Hopefully, she wouldn’t need to come back to the arena for a while. It hadn’t been so bad in there, though. There were a lot of stares, but otherwise, they left her alone, so long as she didn’t make a scene or draw any more attention to herself than necessary.
The one thing that made her uncomfortable was how easy it might be to accost someone walking out here on the outskirts of town, where there were few people and a few too many spots where someone might jump out at her from a dark alley or from around a corner. She sped up, hurrying to where she knew the subway to be. She glanced behind her a couple of times to make sure she wasn’t being followed. Two vampires walking in the street ignored her, but she saw a shadow slipping out of sight just as she looked at them.