Page 24 of Property of Scar

- Cali

I hit send.

Then I set the phone down, pull my jacket off the back of the chair, and start checking my weapons, one by one, methodical and precise. Because whatever Scar is, whatever he makes me feel in the half second before I lock it down, he is still a five-hundred-year-old vampire, VP of a criminal empire, and walking into a conversation with him unarmed would be the last mistake I’d ever make.

And I do not intend to make it.

Chapter Seven

SCAR

The arena hits like a punch to the face the second you walk in. Noise crashes from every direction. Bodies crush tight against the cage. The whole place vibrates with bloodlust while everyone waits for the violence to start.

And that’s the thing.

It’s never really about the fight itself.

It’s about the seconds before it kicks off. That ugly stretch of anticipation where everybody in the room already knows someone’s leaving broken, bleeding, or dead, and they came here hoping to watch it all happen up close.

I’ve stood in a hundred rooms like this one over five centuries. The faces change, but the desperation doesn’t. I move along the upper walkway, cutting through the press of bodies below, not hurrying, because the moment you start moving fast in a place like this, you announce that something has your attention. In my experience, nothing good follows from that. The Kings run this arena the same way we run the others, clean enough that the bodies that leave in bags are counted and accounted for, dirty enough that no human law enforcement is going to find a thread worth following.

It’s a balance I’ve spent decades calibrating.

Tonight, I am not the entertainment.

Tonight, I am the accountant.

Gregor, the promoter, is an ogre-blood, broad and solid, built as if he’d rather go through a wall than around it. His handshake is unpleasant, and his eyes refuse to hold mine since I put a man through his front door three years ago over a discrepancy in the Kings’ cut. He doesn’t try to hold them now. He presses the envelope into my hand with both of his, which is a nice touch if he thinks it buys him goodwill and says everything is in order.

I count it without looking at him.

It is in order.

This time.

I pocket the envelope and turn my attention to the pit below, where the fight has been going for four minutes, which I know without checking a clock because I can hear the crowd, and the crowd tells me everything. The roar hasn’t peaked yet, meaning neither fighter has found the decisive edge and is still in the grinding middle. The demon is working the werewolf’s left side, which is already compromised, and the werewolf is bleeding from a gash along his ribcage that keeps pulling his attention in the wrong direction. The demon is leaner than it looks at a distance. He is also faster, the kind of speed that’s deceptive because you don’t realize it until it’s already happened.

The werewolf doesn’t know that yet.

He will in about thirty seconds.

Money changes hands in the rows below, folded notes disappearing into pockets and fists, the whole economy of desperation running its own quiet current beneath the screaming. Maul drifts along the far wall, shoulders broad enough to block the exit without meaning to, his eyes on the crowd rather than the fight. That’s the job, you watch the people, not the spectacle. He catches my eye, holds it for exactly the length of time it takes to communicate ‘all clear,’ then moves on. Maul doesn’t waste motion. It’s one of the things I value in him.

Coil is working the east corridor, which means he’s not visible unless you know where to look, and I do. The merchandise he’s moving tonight came off a fae shipment last month, enchanted weapons that were headed somewhere they’re not going anymore, which is a problem that got solved in a manner I don’t need to document. The buyers tonight are discreet. The kind of clientele who understands that asking too many questions about origin is a good way to stop being a client at all.

The demon finds the edge. It’s quick, brutally quick, the kind of decisive shift in momentum that makes the crowd erupt before they have fully processed what they are seeing. One moment, the werewolf was defending, and then he wasn’t. The demon is on him, driving him into the chain-link with an impact that vibrates all the way up to the walkway where I’m standing. The roar tears through the space, raw and deafening, fists slamming against anything solid in reach, the ancient, completely unsubtle joy of watching something lose.

Below, to my left, two voices cut through the chaos.

“Twenty on the demon.” Rhett’s voice carries that almost-subtle quality he thinks he’s pulling off, but isn’t. He’s never been subtle. He sounds like a hellhound who learned to talk and is still figuring out the volume settings. “He’s got that hungry look.”

“Gambling…” Bennett says, like he’s already done the moral math and expects the rest of us to fall in line, “… is a sin.”

“So is being boring.” Rhett chuckles, his grin wide and mischievous. “Fifty on the demon.”

Bennett stares at him in disdain.

Down in the cage, the werewolf scrambles to get his footing back, all instinct now, no strategy left. Panic is starting to creep into his movements, making him sloppy.