Into the Fire(37)

He shoved the dog off him and heaved himself upright.

The bleachers were in a frenzy, gamblers standing and screaming, waving their tickets, cords standing out in their necks. The bouncers stared down uneasily.

Evan drew his ARES and fired straight up into the ceiling.

The gunshots broke the bloodlust spell, cheers turning to shouts, the gamblers stampeding for the exits. The bouncers backed away from the pit’s edge, turning to run.

Another noise rose now above the din—police sirens, maybe a few blocks away.

The pit-mastiff collided with Evan’s leg, mouthing his calf around the belt. Evan tore his leg free and kneed the dog aside. The dog spun up onto his paws again, lowering his head. The wide jaw of his square head pulsed, the belt snapping like a rubber band, freeing his fangs.

Evan ran across the arena, jumped onto the far crate, and leapt from there up onto the knotted rope ladder.

The dog followed on his heels, sailing in his wake, growling and snapping right up until he collided with the dirt wall just below Evan. Still snarling, he fell away.

Evan hoisted himself up, gasping, and flung himself over the side.

He knocked into something—a plastic gate—and landed on his belly.

He looked up to see that he’d taken down the wall of the warm-up pen.

Three revved-up dogs-in-waiting charged him.

He had no time to react, let alone cover himself from three sides. This was how it would end, then. Torn to shreds in the cafeteria of a defunct local TV station.

At the last instant, the dogs jerked away from him, flying backward, yelping in pain.

Each had hit the end of its respective chain.

Now they turned and tried to attack one another, but the chains had been measured to keep them just out of reach. Another strategy to hold them at the red-hot edge of attack, fired up and ready to go.

They raged against their choke-chain collars, their snarls amplified off the high ceiling.

On all fours Evan backed away slowly, rose, and turned to go.

The cafeteria was largely empty by now, the last of the gamblers making for the exits. But the man who’d injected the dogs remained, bald pate shining, wisps of sweat-darkened hair rimming his shoulders.

He must have twisted an ankle during the stampede, because he bent one leg back now to hold his foot off the floor. His hands were raised defensively at Evan as he hobbled back another step toward the door.

“Look, man. I’m sorry. They told me to let them loose. I don’t hurt people, man. I’m just the vet. I just wanna—” He stepped wrong and winced. “Please. I’m just in charge of the fighters.”

The sirens were louder now, compounding the racket inside the cafeteria. In the arena below, the pit-mastiff was going insane, hurling himself against the wall beneath the rope ladder.

Evan glared at the vet, his teeth grinding. He felt the weight in his holster, the ARES calling to him.

But he turned to head for the far exit.

At the periphery of the chained fighters, just out of reach, another animal lay facing away, a hump of fur matted with blood. At first Evan wasn’t sure what it was. A mammal yes. But it took a moment for him to register that it was a dog.

He took another step and saw the duct tape wrapped around the dog’s muzzle, depriving him of the use of his mouth. The tape had been in place long enough to start digging through the flesh, the surrounding skin inflamed. Another ring of shiny silver tape bound his hind legs. His chest had been gashed, and a flap of skin hung loose from his cheek.

A strip of reversed fur down his spine identified him as a Rhodesian ridgeback, like the one Evan had grown up with in Jack’s house. This guy looked to be a puppy around a year old, tall but not yet filled out with muscle. Oversize paws showed that he was going to be a big boy.

He’d been bound and tossed to the larger animals to rile them up further.

A bait dog.

He’d managed to squirm his way barely out of the orbit of the fighters, who snapped at him now from either side. Quivering, he lay on the tiny patch of safety between the snarling mouths.

His eyes rolled imploringly to Evan.

Evan’s jaw set. He looked at the bait dog, debilitated and thrown to the others as a living plaything, an appetizer to whet their appetite for blood.

Evan turned around. Glared at the vet. Dangling from a loop on his tool belt was a roll of duct tape.

The vet stumbled away from Evan on his twisted ankle, circling the edge of the sunken arena. Below, the pit-mastiff roiled, raging against the walls. “Look,” the vet said. “It’s necessary to rile up the main contenders. It’s just my job.”

Evan said, “If you ever do anything like this again, I will find you. And I will do to you what you did to that dog.”

“Okay,” the vet said, holding up his hands, the stink of fear emanating from him. “Oka—”

The dog nearest him lunged, fully airborne before the chain snapped him back to earth.

The vet jerked away, stumbling on his injured ankle, and slipped over the edge. He screamed on the way down.

A clang as he hit the metal crate.

More screaming. And then the sounds of the pit-mastiff doing what the vet had primed him to do.

Evan rushed to the edge and peered down, but it was too late, the vet’s screams terminating in a failing gurgle.

Evan staggered back to the bait dog. The prong collars forked into the flesh of the surrounding fight dogs as they strained to tear the puppy to shreds. Crouching, Evan grasped the ridgeback’s bound rear legs and slid him gently through the narrow safe zone, fishing him free.