The fight goes the full three rounds. I can’t tell who won, though I suspect it might have been Dean. His face is almost unmarked, other than a small bruise under one eye.
The judges—Professor Howell, Professor Bruce, and the Chancellor himself—bend their heads over their scorecards. The crowd silently waits. The Chancellor gives Dean an approving nod as he announces the unanimous decision.
The Seniors howl with rage. They’re out of the Quartum Bellum without even the dignity of advancing to the final round.
Dean looks angry instead of pleased. He probably wanted to win that fight outright, not by decision.
“I can’t believe it!” Anna cries. “We’re safe!”
“Yup,” Leo says with a strained smile.
“That was intense,” Anna sighs.
“Dean’s a good fighter; that’s why I picked him,” Leo says, trying to keep the jealousy out of his voice.
Anna catches it anyway. She grabs his face and kisses him.
“You’d knock the shit out of any of them if you were down there,” she says.
Leo smiles, mollified. “I don’t know about that. I’d definitely beat that fucker Calvin Caccia though, wouldn’t I, Zoe?”
“That’s right.” Zoe grins.
With only Sophomore and Junior fighters remaining, the matches continue for bragging rights, and possibly an advantage in the final challenge.
The last pairing is Kenzo Tanaka against Jasper Webb.
I know who I want to win, and not just because I’m supporting the Sophomores. Any friend of Rocco deserves an ass-kicking.
Jasper Webb climbs up in the ring. He looks calm and unphased, even as the surrounding students scream down at him. He shucks off his shirt, revealing a chest and back tattooed in the same manner as his hands, with a perfect anatomical representation of the bones beneath the skin.
“Why do you think he did that?” Zoe says quietly, beside me.
“I don’t know,” I say. “To remind himself of our inevitable end, I suppose. Or he just thinks it looks scary.”
I say it mockingly, but in truth Jasper does cut an imposing figure as he tosses his long, dark red hair back out of his face. His body is lean, hard, and pale, with ripples of muscle beneath the tattooed bones. Even from up here, I can see that his green eyes are vivid as my sister’s, though infinitely colder.
He faces off against Kenzo Tanaka, who has his dark hair brushed into a retro-style pompadour, and his shirt likewise stripped off to show the dragon tattoo running from thumb to shoulder.
“It’s the battle of the ink,” Leo says. He’s trying to sound casual, but his eyes are fixed on the ring. He wants Kenzo to win. He wants the Sophomores to triumph.
We’re all destined for disappointment. Kenzo starts out strong, hitting Jasper with some vicious kicks and punches to the head. Jasper barely seems to feel it. He takes blow after blow, never staggering.
The second round begins, and Jasper walks to the center-ring as fresh as if the fight is just beginning. Kenzo fires a few more combinations at him. Jasper slips them easily. Waiting patiently for an opening, he shoots the gap and hits Kenzo with a single hard right-cross straight to the jaw. Kenzo goes down limp and boneless.
The crowd roars. Jasper isn’t popular, but no one can deny the perfect precision of that punch. Professor Howell hoists Jasper’s arm in the air. The cheers are deafening.
Howell calls a short break before the second round of fights. Only a couple of students leave the bleachers. Though the final round of the Quartum Bellum is already assured, the Sophomores and Juniors are still intently interested to see whose fighter will triumph. The Freshmen and Seniors likewise seemed glued to the ring, eager to see who will have to fight Silas next and whether Jasper will be able to employ that sledgehammer punch against a different opponent.
Miles scales the side of the bleachers, squeezing into the gap between Anna and Zoe.
“Where have you been?” Zoe says, her cheeks flushing pink just from the sight of Miles.
“Thought you might be getting hungry,” he says, passing around a paper bag of fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies. They’re warm and soft, the chocolate chips still melty from the oven. I scarf my cookie down in two bites.
“A present from your friends in the kitchen?” Zoe laughs.
“I told you, they’ll trade their souls for the right baggie.” Miles grins.
“No milk?” Leo complains.
“Only for Zoe,” Miles fires back, pulling a chilled glass bottle out from under his shirt and ripping off the paper top.
“Zoe. I will pay you five hundred dollars for that milk,” Leo says, eyes fixed on the bottle. “I’ll do all your homework for a year. Please. I need it.”
“There’s plenty,” Zoe says, taking a sip and passing it along. “I’m happy to share.”
“And she doesn’t want your homework help,” Anna laughs. “It wouldn’t improve her grades.”
“I’ve been studying this year,” Leo says, pretending to be hurt.
“Not as much as Zoe.”
“Well if that’s the standard, then none of us study.”
“Except Ares,” Zoe amends.
I’m only half-listening to the conversation because I’m looking across the ring at the double rows of seats reserved for the teachers. Miss Robin sits at the edge of the second row, her red hair flaming in the sunshine and her lumpy, oversized cardigan ill-suited to the warm spring weather.
“Look at that,” I say to Zoe. “Miss Robin came.”
“It’s funny seeing her in sunlight,” Zoe says.
“Well, now you know for sure she’s not a vampire.”
“I bet she’s finally getting comfortable at the school,” Zoe says. “I’m glad—I’m sure it takes a while to get used to this place. And the other professors.”
“I like Miss Robin,” Miles says, taking the milk back from Leo and washing down his cookie. “She did me a solid the other day.”
“What did she do?” Anna asks.
I see a quick, amused glance pass between Miles and Zoe.
“She found my textbook in the lost and found,” Miles says.
Professor Howell climbs up into the ring, easily vaulting over the top rope though it’s chest-high on him.
“Ready for the second round?” he shouts up to the crowd.
The students roar their approval, not nearly satiated yet.
The fighters draw lots again, and this time there’s an audible gasp as Silas is paired up with Jasper Webb. Jasper barely had time to recover from his last fight, but he takes his position, looking cool and uncaring even in the face of Silas’s granite bulk. Jasper cracks his knuckles, the sharp popping audible all the way up in the stands.
The fighters raise their fists. Professor Howell rings the bell.
This time Jasper is careful to avoid Silas’s blows. He dances and dodges with a speed almost approaching Dean’s. Silas is ferociously strong. When he clips Jasper with even a glancing blow, the impact is brutal. Jasper begins to bleed from nose, lip, and eyebrow.
Still, he’s giving almost as good as he gets. Sniper-like, he fires off sharp, snapping punches that hit Silas precisely where Jasper intends. He opens a cut over Silas’s left eye, then hits him again in the same spot, sending a torrent of blood into Silas’s eye, half-blinding him. Staggering around off balance, Silas is struck again and again.