I stared up at Madeline, my gray eyes locking with her green ones. Her smile widened, and she gave me a cheery wave, as though I were a knight going into battle to earn the favor of some fair maiden, instead of a prisoner who was about to be beaten within an inch of her life before she was summarily executed. I wondered if Madeline would come down here and do the deed herself with her acid magic, or if she’d let Dobson open the cell door and put a couple of bullets through my skull.

It didn’t much matter what she had planned—it wasn’t happening either way.

So I dropped my gaze from Madeline and focused on the people who were the most important right now—the five prisoners locked in the cell with me.

Two giants, two dwarves, and an elemental with a ball of Fire flickering in her hand. The giants were tall and wide, the dwarves short and stocky, and all four of them had thick, barrel chests and rock-hard muscles that bulged against the sleeves and legs of their gray jumpsuits. No doubt they’d augmented their natural strength by obsessively lifting weights, the way that so many prisoners did. Any one of them could easily beat or strangle me to death with his or her bare hands.

I studied the elemental for several seconds, watching the ebb and flow of the orange-red flames coating her palm. She had a decent amount of juice, but she wasn’t in my league, and I could easily overcome her magic with my own Ice and Stone power. That’s probably what Dobson was counting on. Having the Fire elemental keep me busy blocking her scorching power, while the giants and dwarves surrounded me, hammering on me with their fists until they cracked through the protective shell of my Stone magic. Then nature would take its course, and my face, skull, and ribs would cave in from the heavy blows. Once I was down on the floor, it would all be over except for the screaming, and Dobson or even Madeline could enter the cell and kill me at leisure.

My hands clenched into fists, my fingers pressing into the spider rune scars embedded in my palms. Not going to happen. None of it. Not tonight.

Not to the Spider.

Finally, all the bets had been placed, and all the money had been collected. Dobson bang-bang-banged his nightstick on the cell bars and let out a couple of loud whistles to get everyone’s attention. The crowd quieted, and folks sat down in the chairs around all three sides of the cell. The five prisoners inside the bull pen spread out in a single line in front of the door. I finally got to my feet, moved over in front of the toilets so that I was directly across from the prisoners, and stared them down, my face even colder and harder than all of theirs were combined.

“Well, as y’all can see, we have a new, shall we say, challenger in our humble arena tonight,” Dobson crowed, his gravelly voice harsh with excitement.

Hoots and hollers filled the air at his words, but I tuned out the roars and stared at my enemies, trying to gauge their strengths and weaknesses and, most important, how I could beat them all. While everyone was busy cheering, I put my hand on the marble wall above one of the toilets, making sure that my plan, my Ice magic, was still in place. Everything was as it should be, and I dropped my hand before anyone noticed what I was doing.

Dobson droned on and on and on, psyching up the crowd for my death match. He really should have been a ringmaster the way he twirled his nightstick around and around in his hand like it was a baton. Apparently, the good captain thought that his prattle was supposed to scare me, because he finally wound down and peered through the bars at me.

“Well, Blanco? Any last words? Any begging for your life you want to do?”

“The only one who will be begging by the time this is over with is you, Dobson.” My voice was as cold as death. “You’d better hope that Madeline or Emery kill you before I get my hands on you. Otherwise, there won’t be enough left of you to slurp up with a straw.”

Dobson’s brown eyes narrowed, but he didn’t respond to my taunt. He thought that he’d already won. So did Madeline. But they hadn’t. Not by a long shot.

“And now,” Dobson said, drawing out the words, “let the game begin!”

All around the perimeter of the cell, people yelled and cheered and clapped and whistled. For a moment, it was almost like I was back in Southtown, facing down Beauregard Benson in the middle of the street, while that crowd of gangbangers, hookers, and bums looked on. But those folks had been more or less on my side. The only thing the people here were cheering for was my bloody, brutal death.

Dobson dropped his hand, which must have been some sort of signal to the five prisoners inside the cell, because they all shouted and charged forward at once.

Five on one. Not bad odds. I’d figured that Dobson would pack so many inmates into the bull pen that they’d tear me apart on sight and I wouldn’t even have a chance to fight back. But the giant had left me plenty of room to maneuver, a mistake that I planned to take full advantage of.

For my family, I thought. For me.

Then I screamed and charged forward as well.

12

Unlike the five folks coming at me, I had more of a plan in mind than just charging wildly at my enemy. When I’d built up enough speed, I dropped to my knees, sliding, sliding, sliding across the slick marble floor. Even as I zoomed forward, I reached for my magic, forming a thick, jagged dagger out of elemental Ice. I grinned. I always felt so much better with a knife in my hand.

I slid right into the middle of the oncoming group of prisoners and lashed out, driving the Ice dagger deep into the side of one of the giant’s knees. She howled¸ her legs flying out from under her, and landed flat on her back. Her head cracked against the floor, and her eyes rolled up into the back of her head. But she was just stunned, not dead, and I wasn’t done with her yet.

Even as the Fire elemental pulled up short and reared back to throw her ball of flames at me, I threw myself on top of the dazed giant, grabbed her shoulders, and then used my momentum to roll her heavy body over on top of me.

The flames punched into her back a second later.

The Fire elemental must have had orders to kill me as soon as she could because her first blast would have been plenty enough to do it, if I hadn’t been using the giant as a human shield. The giant screamed and screamed as the flames scorched through the thin fabric of her jumpsuit and then her skin beneath. Her blond hair went up in a puff of smoke, and the stench of burning, charred meat filled the room. I was dimly aware of the cheers, jeers, and shouts of everyone watching, but I ignored the sounds and focused on the only thing that mattered right now—surviving.