Page 45 of Into the Fire

The dirt was moist, warm, sticky. When Evan lifted his hand, his palm came up bright red with blood. Not his own.

The crowd roared. Feet stomped vociferously on bleachers.

And he heard growling coming from either side of him.

He swung his heavy head and blinked through the tangle of his bangs.

The scene down here took a moment to assemble.

Near the dirt wall by a knotted rope ladder stood a man with a bald crown, a horseshoe of stringy hair curtaining his shoulders. His gut bulged out between his dirt-stained T-shirt and tattered sweatpants. He held an empty syringe in each hand.

Not a fighter.

Evan blinked again, trying to clear his head.

There was a stainless-steel transport crate just in front of him.

And another behind him.

Each crate was ventilated with narrow slits through which he could see a creature snarling violently, cords of saliva dangling from scarred pink jowls, yellow eyes bulging with steroidal rage.

And each cage had a guillotine door on the end.

Tied to the top of each guillotine door was a rope that stretched up out of the arena and looped around a suspended pulley.

That’s when it dawned on Evan.

Terzian hadn’t been running a street-fighting ring.

He’d been running a dogfighting ring.

The man who’d administered the steroid shots to the dogs finished hoisting himself up the knotted rope ladder and out of the pit.

He looked down at Evan from the rim. A carpenter’s belt hung around his waist, filled with the tools of the trade. One of the bouncers grabbed the man’s arm. Evan couldn’t hear his words over the hyped-up crowd but he could read the bouncer’s lips.

Do it.

The man dropped the syringes and grabbed the ends of the ropes.

There was a screech of metal against metal as the guillotine doors lifted in unison and the animals shot free.

20

Living Plaything

From both directions the dogs flew at Evan, barrels of muscle tapering to bared fangs. One looked to be a pit bull–mastiff mix, the other a bully kutta with leopard spots and cropped ears. Their heads and chests bore scars from battles past.

Each was easily 180 pounds.

Evan got his foot up just in time to ram it into the bully kutta’s jaws. Caging his head with his forearms, he rolled sideways and the pit-mastiff blasted past him, claws skidding in the dirt.

Clamped onto the abrasion-resistant outsole of Evan’s boot, the bully kutta shook his head violently, flinging Evan’s leg back and forth.

Evan felt his boot rip free. The bully kutta reared up, jaws still locked around the boot as the pit-mastiff collided with him.

Overhead the audience thundered.

Evan had an instant to draw his ARES and shoot both dogs, but the Tenth Commandment—Never let an innocent die—applied here as surely as anywhere else. He couldn’t hurt a victim even if that victim wasn’t human.