I reached down and yanked the Ice dagger out of the giant’s knee, making her howl that much louder. Then I buried the crude blade in her neck, puncturing her carotid artery and putting her out of her misery.

One down, four to go.

Blood arched up from the giant’s wound, like water spewing from a fountain. The crowd hushed, and silence descended over the bull pen. They actually thought that I was already dead—until I wiggled out from underneath the giant’s body and got back up onto my feet.

The Fire elemental let out an enraged shriek that she hadn’t toasted me to death, and she reached for her power again, forming another ball of flames in the palm of her hand.

Viselike arms closed around me from behind, trapping my own arms down by my sides. The second giant had snuck up behind me, but that was okay, because I was going to use him just like I had the first one. With me seemingly pinned in place, one of the dwarves advanced on me, an evil grin stretching across her face. She held out her hand, and I saw the gleam of a shiv made out of a blue toothbrush handle that had been sharpened to a daggerlike point. So Dobson had outfitted at least one of the prisoners with a weapon, trying to give them that much more of an advantage. But really, he’d just made it that much easier for me to kill the dwarf, since I was going to bury that shiv in her throat.

Instead of rushing forward, the dwarf kept the shiv close by her side. She wasn’t going to get suckered in as easily as the first giant had.

“You got her?” the dwarf growled.

I made a show of struggling against the giant, as if I were trying to break free of his rock-solid arms, even though I had no chance of doing that.

“I’ve got her,” he growled back. “Hurry up and gut her already.”

The dwarf grinned again and moved forward.

I waited until the last possible moment, then, using the giant as leverage, I lifted my feet off the ground and kicked the dwarf in the face. One of my boots hit her dead-on in the nose, breaking it and making blood spatter everywhere. My other foot caught her in her right cheek, glancing off the thick bone there, although the tread of my boot imprinted itself deep into her skin, making her look like she had some sort of bizarre, red road rash.

The dwarf yelped and clasped her hands to her face, more concerned with her busted nose than with me at the moment. As my feet fell, I used the downward arc to smash my right boot as hard as I could into the giant’s instep. He grunted, but he didn’t let go of me.

The dwarf wiped enough of the blood out of her eyes to raise the shiv and lash out with it at me. I slammed my boot onto the giant’s instep again and again, and he finally wobbled, the tiniest bit off-balance. His arms loosened for a fraction of a second, and I let my legs slide out from under me, dropping to the floor like dead weight, and escaping his tight, bruising grip.

The dwarf realized what I was up to, but it was too late, and she was too committed to her strike to stop. She plunged the toothbrush shiv into the center of the giant’s chest. She’d put all her strength behind the blow, punching the makeshift weapon right through his ribs and up into his chest cavity, where it had lots of vital things to hit, rupture, and tear through.

The giant screamed and screamed, blood streaming down his chest in warm, coppery spurts. He staggered back, ripped the shiv out of his body, and tossed the weapon aside. But his actions only made the sucking chest wound that much worse, and he teetered back and forth on his feet for a few seconds before his knees buckled. He curled up into a ball on the floor, both hands pressed tight against his chest, trying to stop the blood loss, even though it was already far too late for that.

Two down, three to go.

The dwarf’s mouth gaped open, but I didn’t give her the chance to shake off her surprise. I scrambled over, snatched up the bloody shiv from where it had clattered to the floor, and threw myself at her.

I went low, tackling her around the knees, since I was no match for her incredible upper-body strength. She’d been standing close to one of the cell walls, and I shoved her back far, fast, and hard enough to make her head smack up against the bars and rattle her brain around inside her skull.

I was half on the floor, hanging on to the dwarf’s knees like a child clinging to her mother. The dwarf shook off her daze and put her arms on my shoulders, trying to push me off. Even as her fingers dug into my skin, I raised the bloody shiv and rammed it deep into the meaty part of her thigh, twisting and twisting and twisting the weapon in as deep as it would go, before ruthlessly yanking it back out again.

The dwarf yelped with pain, so I stabbed her again, trying to hit her femoral artery so she’d bleed out. I wasn’t that lucky, but I’d put more than enough force behind the blow to make her feel it. The dwarf screamed, her feet scrabbling for purchase on the slick floor. Her worn-out sneakers slipped in a pool of her own blood, and her legs went out from under her. The dwarf slid down the bars, until she was on the floor with me.

I kept stabbing her the whole time.

Punch-punch-punch-punch.

Using the toothbrush shiv, I opened up wounds in her legs, chest, and arms. Whatever I could reach. I wasn’t picky. Then, when she was down at eye level with me, I drove the shiv so far into her throat that there wasn’t enough of the plastic sticking out for me to grab hold of and yank free again.

The dwarf died with a wheeze, pitching to one side, her body scrape-scrape-scraping against the bars almost like she was rattling a tin cup back and forth asking for more food. A second later, she landed on the floor, choking to death on her own blood.

Three down, two to go—

Fingers dug into my hair, yanking me away from the dead woman and making me yelp. The second dwarf had finally gotten in on the action, and he pulled me up and then shoved me forward, mashing my face against the silverstone bars, as if he were trying to push my whole head through them. With one hand, he held me up against the bars. With the other, he slammed his fist into my back and kidneys over and over.

Thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack.

The folks watching the fight hadn’t had much to cheer about up until this point, but they hooted and hollered with delight and surged up out of their chairs as the dwarf pinned me against the bars. Dobson got right up in my face on the other side of the metal.

“How does it feel, Blanco?” he hissed, spittle spewing out of his lips. “Knowing that you’re going to die here tonight?”

Instead of responding, I snaked one arm through the bars and grabbed his silk tie. Then I yanked him forward as hard as I could, making his head bang against the bars just like his nightstick had earlier and adding a third goose egg to the collection on his face. Dobson grunted and fell back on his ass, making the crowd howl even louder.