Into the Fire(36)

The bouncers appeared at the lip, leaning over Evan. They were laughing, which did not strike him as good news. Beyond them loomed the jeering gamblers in the bleachers.

The dirt was moist, warm, sticky. When Evan lifted his hand, his palm came up bright red with blood. Not his own.

The crowd roared. Feet stomped vociferously on bleachers.

And he heard growling coming from either side of him.

He swung his heavy head and blinked through the tangle of his bangs.

The scene down here took a moment to assemble.

Near the dirt wall by a knotted rope ladder stood a man with a bald crown, a horseshoe of stringy hair curtaining his shoulders. His gut bulged out between his dirt-stained T-shirt and tattered sweatpants. He held an empty syringe in each hand.

Not a fighter.

Evan blinked again, trying to clear his head.

There was a stainless-steel transport crate just in front of him.

And another behind him.

Each crate was ventilated with narrow slits through which he could see a creature snarling violently, cords of saliva dangling from scarred pink jowls, yellow eyes bulging with steroidal rage.

And each cage had a guillotine door on the end.

Tied to the top of each guillotine door was a rope that stretched up out of the arena and looped around a suspended pulley.

That’s when it dawned on Evan.

Terzian hadn’t been running a street-fighting ring.

He’d been running a dogfighting ring.

The man who’d administered the steroid shots to the dogs finished hoisting himself up the knotted rope ladder and out of the pit.

He looked down at Evan from the rim. A carpenter’s belt hung around his waist, filled with the tools of the trade. One of the bouncers grabbed the man’s arm. Evan couldn’t hear his words over the hyped-up crowd but he could read the bouncer’s lips.

Do it.

The man dropped the syringes and grabbed the ends of the ropes.

There was a screech of metal against metal as the guillotine doors lifted in unison and the animals shot free.





20



Living Plaything





From both directions the dogs flew at Evan, barrels of muscle tapering to bared fangs. One looked to be a pit bull–mastiff mix, the other a bully kutta with leopard spots and cropped ears. Their heads and chests bore scars from battles past.

Each was easily 180 pounds.

Evan got his foot up just in time to ram it into the bully kutta’s jaws. Caging his head with his forearms, he rolled sideways and the pit-mastiff blasted past him, claws skidding in the dirt.

Clamped onto the abrasion-resistant outsole of Evan’s boot, the bully kutta shook his head violently, flinging Evan’s leg back and forth.

Evan felt his boot rip free. The bully kutta reared up, jaws still locked around the boot as the pit-mastiff collided with him.

Overhead the audience thundered.

Evan had an instant to draw his ARES and shoot both dogs, but the Tenth Commandment—Never let an innocent die—applied here as surely as anywhere else. He couldn’t hurt a victim even if that victim wasn’t human.

The pit-mastiff regrouped, readying to sink his fangs into the bully kutta’s flank.

Evan’s belt, still looped into a noose, had landed in the dirt to his side. Rising to his knees, he snatched it up and slung it over the pit-mastiff’s head from behind just as the massive dog lunged.

The dog’s momentum yanked Evan off his knees, scraping his chin through the blood-softened earth. Even so, he held on to the belt, a fallen water-skier refusing to release the tow rope.

He pulled himself up onto the big animal’s back and ratcheted the belt tight, forcing the jaws agape. He fought the prong through the tightest punch hole, gagging the dog and shoving him clear just as the bully kutta dropped Evan’s boot from his mouth and attacked.

Evan got an arm under the muzzle as the dog landed on him, pounding him into the earth. Claws dug at Evan’s chest, the snapping teeth inches from his face. The dog’s steaming breath smelled of meat and the sour chemical tinge of the juice firing his system.

Evan had to turn his cheek to the dirt to avoid having his nose taken off. At the far side of the arena, the pit-mastiff was shaking his head furiously, gnawing at Evan’s belt with his molars and making headway.

Evan groped on the dirt, his fingers finally closing around his chewed Original S.W.A.T. He rammed his hand through the throat of the boot and shoved it at the bully kutta’s face. The dog took the bait, snatching the boot, twisting it off Evan’s fist, and flinging it aside.

Evan rolled back over his shoulders onto his feet and dove for the transport crate. He landed on top with enough force to dent the stainless steel.

Charging in his wake, the bully kutta skidded into the crate, claws scrabbling for purchase on the metal floor. The crate rocked when he struck the far end.

As the dog regrouped below, Evan grabbed for his Strider, snapping the blade open as he whipped it from his pocket.

He swiped at the rope tied to the guillotine door, severing it. The stainless sheet screeched down an instant before the bully kutta collided with it, trying to escape. This time the impact rocked the crate up off the ground, sliding Evan neatly off the top and depositing him back in the dirt.

The pit-mastiff was on top of him instantly, gathering him between his legs and pressing his gagged-open mouth to Evan’s shoulder. Miraculously, the belt held, but even so the distributed pressure of the oval of teeth pressed into Evan’s skin.