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The locked box in my mind rattles its chains. The darkness inside longs to be unleashed.
I force myself to angle my body away and focus on the arena. Two men lock together in battle, naked except for horned masks and tight athletic shorts that reveal hard, muscled thighs. They fight bare-knuckled, with no weapons apart from their bodies. There are no rules. They fight having decided that only one of them may go home at the end.
The older fighter is drenched in blood. He has some fancy footwork and a mean left hook. But it’s the other – the one they call the Barbarian – who arrests my attention. He’s young – around my age, I guess – with hard shoulders and the kind of long, delicious legs I want wrapped around my body. But it’s not his youth that captures me, it’s the way he moves. He throws his whole being into every punch, every kick and grapple, as if he knows it will be his last and he intends to make it count.
This boy is wild. He bites, scratches, roars, and rains down blows like he’s an avenging angel. He fights like someone who has gone numb on the inside. He needs the taste of blood and the bite of pain to feel alive.
It’s hot as fuck.
I press my thighs together, aware that the slap of skin on skin as the Barbarian pummels his opponent flares heat deep in my core. Aware that even though I’ve never slept with a guy before, that the last person who touched me did so without my consent and is sitting ten feet away from me right now, I’m not immune to the raw, feral scent of lust.
Of longing.
My breath catches in my throat as the Barbarian goes for a chokehold but ends up slammed against the wall of the arena. Blood spurts from his nose, drenching the wall, but he whirls around and attacks like he doesn’t even notice. He moves… exactly like Antony. I know it’s not my cousin beneath that mask, because I can see him standing on the end of the gangway, watching intently. But this Barbarian has Antony’s same desperate energy, his wanton revelry of pain.
He’s been trained by the best.
What could have driven that boy into Antony’s hands? What’s happened in his life that makes him come here and throw himself into the fray?
Applause erupts from the crowd as the Barbarian knocks out his opponent with an uppercut so fierce I half expect brains to fly out his ears. Antony walks down into the ring, shakes his bloody hand, and lays a laurel wreath around the horns of his mask. The crowd roars as the Barbarian glares blankly into their depths, still swimming in the adrenaline haze of his fight.
Antony wraps his hand around the Barbarian’s wrist and raises his arm in a salute to the Imperators. The Barbarian looks up then, right at me. From behind the mask, his eyes graze my face before falling to my body. A shudder rocks through him like he’s seen a ghost.
The Barbarian turns to Antony and slams his fist into his nose.
What the fuck?
Antony’s head snaps back. Chaos erupts as the crowd reels, as soldiers storm the arena. They try to pull the Barbarian off Antony, but he’s unstoppable.
I can’t watch any longer. I fling myself away from the edge, spilling my cocktail down my dress. I run for the stairs. I shove my way through the heaving, cawing crowd, into the train sheds.
Antony… is he…
I can’t get any closer. I’m hemmed in on all sides by people. The crowd has become a wild beast – a herd that’s scented a predator on the breeze and are stirring to bolt in a million directions. I hug my arms to my chest. If I’m not careful, I’ll be crushed.
As I try to shove my way toward the arena, I catch a glimpse of a blonde head moving the opposite way. Toward me. I start at the sight of her. It’s not just that she’s young to be attending the fights. It’s not that she’s beautiful, although she is.
She’s a mirror image of me.
In every way.
Except…
Except for the blood streaked across her face.
“Hey, wait!” I try to push myself toward her, but by the time I’ve broken through a wall of men, she’s gone. Sucked back into the crowd, or never there at all.
A memory made real. A birthday gift from Brutus that I will never, ever forget.
Claudia
A killer is in my house.
I reel, squashing down the panic that threatens to overwhelm me. I reach through the absinthe haze that’s swallowing me, punching my hand through air thick as molasses to close my fingers around my knife. I know they say you should never bring a knife to a gunfight, but they haven’t crossed Claudia August.
The fire flickers higher, licking at the edge of the table where Gabriel still sits in his absinthe stupor.
“Take that!” Gabriel springs into action. He tosses the first thing he gets his hands on at the flames. Unfortunately, that’s the bottle of absinthe. He grins in triumph, clearly expecting the liquid to douse the fire. Which it doesn’t, because science. Instead, the flames roar to life – a column of blue fire that sizzles as it climbs the wooden table leg and reaches for him.
