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“Where are we?” I asked Marco.
He looked at me like he did not want that job. “I’m going to let the ijit explain that one.” He winced a little as he swung out of the car too quickly.
He joined me on the passenger side, and I looked him over.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked.
He nodded. “Healing like a fucking charm.”
“I’m sorry,” I said to him, again.
He shook his head. “I will not tell ye again,” he warned.
He’d told me plenty of times it wasn’t my fault. It still felt like it was. Maybe If I hadn’t given myself away, he might not have had to fight so hard. Maybe if I hadn’t run to Bieityn in a fit of annoyance at Apollo, he wouldn’t need to be healing at all.
I opened my mouth, and he made a noise that told me exactly where to stuff my next thought. I snapped my mouth shut and nodded.
“It is my privilege to keep an eye on ye, missus,” he said carefully, like he was really telling me something. “Don’t diminish it just because it’s new to ye. We Angels have taken and will take worse again for our God.”
I took a breath and nodded. That made sense. “Okay. I won’t. Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For taking the time to explain things to me like I’m not an idiot.”
“Ignorance put on you by our world doesn’t make you an idiot, missus,” he said as he led me to the door. “I sometimes wonder if ignorance really is bliss.”
Marco held out a hand for me to stop before banging on the door. A clichéd little eye slot opened up and two bloodshot eyes stared out at us. They were close set and narrowed as though who dared to try and enter such a secretive and exclusive establishment.
“Marco, ye’re late,” the booming voice said.
“God has me on chauffeur duty,” Marco answered.
The eyes swivelled to me. “He wanted her here?”
His incredulity and Marco’s reticence wasn’t filling me with confidence, neither about what type of place this was nor what was going to happen in it.
“God’s word is law,” was all Marco would say.
The eyes seemed to shrug. “All right, then. Welcome to the Club, Miss Vanguard.”
He pulled away, slid the slot closed and wrenched the door open. And all my worst fears were confirmed. Beyond the door was clearly an underground fight club. Even to the person who knew nothing about the realities of such things. I knew enough about popular culture to recognise one when I walked into one.
There were disgruntled, dirty men everywhere, with booze and/or a smoke in hand, and not just tobacco by the smell of it. Now and then, I saw the slightly more put together styling of a Saint, or one of their older male family members. I was sure I saw Gage and a couple of other Saints in the corner sniffing something harder off a woman’s naked body. And in the middle of the warehouse was a cage the likes of which I’d seen in relation to MMA fights, however I’d managed to ingest anything about that. But it was so much less clean. The two fighters in there just adding to the blood splatter as the gathered men cheered or booed them on.
The lighting was poor, and my eyes watered against the smoke as much as the smell, as Marco ushered me to the bar. He stayed behind me, one hand on my elbow, and I assumed he had the best vantage from behind me in case anyone came out of the shadows.
“Drink, missus?” he asked, and I nodded, still not bold enough to actually say anything.
Why in the hell had Apollo wanted me here?
Marco held two fingers up to the woman behind the bar and she brought us two glasses of amber liquid. I didn’t care the glasses were a little dirty, I just threw it back and nodded for another.
“In need of some courage, missus?” Marco teased, but there was a hard glint to his eyes.
“Why am I here, Marco?”
“I would say it was because God was worried about his top Angel getting in that cage later tonight.”
