He shot a furtive glance over her head. “I’m sorry … they’re calling me to the stage.”
Pulse pounding against her temples, Scarlet simultaneously grabbed his left wrist and yanked out her gun. She pressed the barrel against his tattoo.
“My dad saw your tattoo, despite your attempts to keep him drugged up. I find it unlikely that there are two identical tattoos like this, and that you happen to show up in my life the same day my dad’s kidnappers let him go after a week of torturing him.”
His eyes momentarily cleared, but the look was followed by a deep frown, accentuating a pale scar on the side of his mouth. “Someone kidnapped your father … and your grandmother,” he said, slowly. “Someone with a tattoo like mine. But they let your father go today?”
“Do you think I’m an idiot?” she yelled. “Are you really going to try and convince me you had nothing to do with it?”
Wolf peered up toward the stage again and she tightened her grip on his wrist, but he made no move to walk away. “I’ve been at the Rieux Tavern every day for weeks. Any of the waitstaff can vouch for that. And I’ve been here every night. Anyone will tell you so.”
Scarlet scowled. “Sorry if the people around here don’t exactly seem like the trustworthy types.”
“They’re not,” he said. “But they do know me. Watch. You’ll see.”
He tried to slip around her but Scarlet turned with him, her hood slipping back. She dug her nails into his skin. “You’re not leaving until you—” She paused, looking past Wolf at the crowd by the platform.
Everyone was watching them, appreciative looks darting up and down Scarlet’s body.
A man on the platform was leaning against the ropes, smirking. He raised his eyebrows when he saw he’d caught Wolf’s and Scarlet’s attention. “Looks like the wolf has found himself a tender morsel tonight,” he said, his voice magnified by speakers somewhere overhead.
A second man stood on the stage behind him, leering at Scarlet. He was twice the size and a foot taller than the one who had spoken and entirely bald. His hair had been replaced with two rows of bear’s teeth implanted like gaping jaws into his scalp.
“Think I’ll be taking that one home after I’ve destroyed dog-boy’s pretty face!”
The audience laughed at the taunts, making cat calls and whistling to one another. Someone nearby asked Wolf if he was afraid to test his luck.
Unruffled, Wolf turned back to Scarlet. “He’s undefeated,” he said in an explanatory tone. “But so am I.”
Annoyed that he could think for a second she cared, Scarlet sucked in a furious breath. “I already commed the police and they’ll be here any minute. If you just tell me where my grandmother is, you can leave, you can even warn your friends if you want. I won’t shoot you and I won’t tell the police about you. Just—just tell me where she is. Please.”
He peered down at her, calm despite the growing rowdiness of the crowd. They’d started chanting something, the words muffled by the blood flowing through Scarlet’s ears. She thought for a second he was crumbling. He was going to tell her, and she would keep her word long enough to find her grandma and get her away from these monsters who had taken her.
Then she would have his head. Once her grandma was safe at home, she would track him down, and whoever else had helped him, and make them pay for what they’d done.
Perhaps he noticed the darkening bitterness on her face, because he reached for her hand and gently pried up her fingers. On gut instinct she dug the gun into his ribs, though she knew she wasn’t going to shoot. Not without answers.
He didn’t seem worried. Maybe he knew it too.
“I believe your father did see a tattoo like mine.” His head dipped toward her. “But it wasn’t me.”
He pulled away. Scarlet dropped her arm, letting the gun hang limp at her side, and watched the chanting crowd part for him. The onlookers were intimidated, but also amused. Most were smiling and jostling one another. Some were moving through the crowds, scanning wrists, collecting bids.
He may have been undefeated, but it seemed clear that most bets had been placed on his opponent.
She squeezed the gun until the textured metal of the handle left an imprint on her palm.
A tattoo like mine …
What had he meant by that?
He’d only been trying to confuse her, she determined as Wolf launched himself over the stage’s ropes, agile as an acrobat. The coincidence was too much.
No matter. She’d given him a chance, but the police would be here soon and take him into custody. She would get her answers, one way or the other.
Shaking with frustration, she tucked the gun back into her waistband. The thrumming in her temples was beginning to mellow and she could make out the crowd’s chanting now.
Hunter. Hunter. Hunter.
Dizzy from the heat and rush of adrenaline, she glanced toward the building’s enormous opening, where she could see overgrown weeds and wheat stalks lit by the moon. She noticed a woman with close-cropped hair glaring at her like a jealous girlfriend. Scarlet returned the look before shifting her attention to the stage. Lingering at the back of the crowd, she pulled up her hood again, drawing her face beneath its shadows.
The crowd surged forward, carrying Scarlet closer to the fight.
Hunter had ripped off his shirt, displaying a mass of raw muscle as he rattled the crowd. The row of teeth embedded on his head glinted as he bowled from one side of the stage to the other.
Wolf was tall, but he looked like a child next to Hunter. Nevertheless, he was all composure in his corner of the platform, radiating arrogance with one foot up on the ropes, practically lounging.
Hunter ignored him, pacing back and forth like a caged animal. Growling. Cursing. Working the crowd into a frenzy.
The one who handed me the poker …
Scarlet’s gut twisted. She needed Wolf. She needed answers. But in that moment, she wouldn’t have minded seeing him ripped to shreds on that stage.
As if sensing her onslaught of rage, Wolf’s gaze flickered toward her. The smug amusement dropped away.
Scarlet hoped it showed on her face just who she was rooting for.
A holograph flickered to life, hanging over the announcer’s head. The words slowly rotated and flickered.
HUNTER [34] VS. WOLF [11]
“Tonight, our reigning, undefeated champion—Hunter!” cried the announcer. The crowd bellowed. “—takes on undefeated newcomer, Wolf!” Mixed boos and cheers. Evidently not everyone had bet against him.
Scarlet was hardly listening, straining hard at the holograph. Wolf [11]. Eleven wins, she suspected. Eleven fights.
Eleven nights?
Her grandmother had been missing for seventeen days and counting. But her father—hadn’t he said they’d only kept him for a week? She frowned, frustrated from the calculations.
Hunter yelled, “We’re having wolf for dinner tonight!”
Hundreds of hands slapped against the edge of the platform like a roll of thunder.
Wolf’s concentration darkened into something thirsty but patient.
The holograph flashed bright red, then evaporated with the sound of a bellowing horn.
The mediator dropped down into the crowd, and the fight began.
Hunter threw the first punch. Scarlet gasped, the movement almost too quick to follow, but Wolf ducked easily and skirted out from Hunter’s shadow.