Chapter 1
Wizard fights. They're a thing.
Here's what they're not: Ancient, long-bearded men casting lightning at each other from distant mountaintops. Teenage children waving around wands while everyone around them ignores the phallic implications. They don't happen in a boarding school, an enchanted forest, or far underground where the dwarves dug too deep.
Think a lot less Gandalf and a lot more Thunderdome. They are brutal, bloody affairs of magic and MMA in a no-holds-barred battle mixing fireballs with double collar ties. Even in a "respectable" fight-we've got our own league and everything-people still lose limbs, get disfigured, die.
"I remember a time you were down there," Alice says. We're watching a fight in the Pit between two mages who are kicking the living shit out of each other. One of them has mastered the art of pushing air with his punches so by the time he slams his opponent in the face his fist is really more of an afterthought.
"That was, literally, a lifetime ago," I say. "I was young and stupid. Now I'm just stupid."
Alice doesn't really care who comes to fight or how they fight. Or in my case, how old they happen to be when they fight. I was seventeen.
Alice lets the fighters sort it out themselves for the most part. Before anyone goes in the Pit, the fighters fill out a card saying what they are or aren't okay with. Standard league rules? No fighter leaves until one of them's unconscious? No fireballs, lightning storms, or summoning dead rats? That last one wasn't a thing until I came around.
The cards get sorted to the closest match and that's who you fight. No match? Then you get the leftovers and hope you walk away at the end of the evening. And if a few mages die, well, that's not Alice's problem.
Animate a couple thousand dead cockroaches to go running up the other guy's legs and pretty soon most people don't want to fight you. The ones who do are the meanest, ugliest, hardest motherfuckers around.
More often than not they'd use their fists, not their magic. I learned a lot fighting those guys. Mostly how to get my ass kicked, but after a while, how to not get my ass kicked.
Alice and I are in their office overlooking the Pit, the bleachers, the money booths. There's nowhere they can't see when they watch the fights.
"You could have gone pro," they say. I have to laugh at that.
"One, I wasn't that good," I say. "And two, nobody would have let me into the league." There are certain knacks, the type of magic a mage is really good at, that are banned from fighting professionally.
Necromancers creep people out and everybody thinks we can do all sorts of shit we can't, like summon their greatest fears: spiders, clowns, third-grade schoolteachers, alcoholic fathers. Mesmerists get the other guys to punch themselves in the face too often-it's pretty funny to watch. Erotimancers . . . those fights tend to turn into something entirely different, though equally entertaining, on the mat.
They're all fair points, though why anybody has a problem with the erotimancers I honestly don't know.
Necromancy has a stigma, and why wouldn't it? Dealing with death is confronting and when you're in the middle of doing something where you might actually wind up dead, people get weird.
Also, everybody seems to think we've all got huge armies of the dead. Like we've got that much freezer space lying around.
"Still," they say. Alice, or Quick Change Alice as they're known to most, is currently a tall Persian woman with glowing golden eyes. "I could have made a lot of money off of you."
"You say the nicest things. By the way," I say, "I like the look."
"Thank you," they say. They look down at their body and run their hands down their skirt, smoothing out a couple wrinkles. "I only have it for a few more days. I think I've got a Taiwanese stockbroker next. I have to check my schedule. A man this time. I don't like him much, but you work with what you've got."
Alice, in case you haven't guessed, isn't human. I'm not sure what they are. They don't actually have a corporeal form, or if they do, I've never seen it. Instead, they borrow other people's skins.
The skins are from those who've lost too much at the fights, or at one of Alice's casinos over in Hawaiian Gardens. It's their IOU. If you can't pay your debts, Alice will take your marker; for a few days every year for the rest of your life, you're going to black out and Alice gets your skin. I hear it hurts a lot.
"Well, this one suits you," I say. "That our guy?"
One fight has just ended and another is about to start in five minutes. The Pit is in a converted airplane hangar at Long Beach Airport. It's moved around a bit since the airport opened in the twenties, but it's been there in one form or another as long as the airport has.
Alice has put wards and protections on the place that not only keep it invisible from prying eyes, but fold the space around it. A normal, or someone with insufficient magical ability, won't see it, and the space that it exists in simply isn't there for them. It's impressive work.
Mages see it fine. The fold covers the hangar and a sizable chunk of parking space to accommodate at least as many people as she has seats.
Every one of which is filled right now. The place isn't huge. Stadium seating to hold five hundred tops. Usually you'd see fifty, maybe sixty people here on a good night. But right now the place is packed.
In the middle of the ring stands an illusion of Quick Change Alice, a persona they've developed over the years that builds on their primary skill. It changes every few seconds, an old Asian woman, a young black man, boys, girls, men, women, announcing the next fight.
To hear Alice tell it, they can't do anything like that. They take a skin, and yeah, they can do it fast, but not that fast. And once they're in it, they're stuck until the time runs out.
But over the years they've shown up to enough people in different guises to make capitalizing off the lie easy. Everyone assumes Alice could be anyone, which technically is true, but practically doesn't really work that way. It's a useful story they go out of their way to promote.
It's helped keep the rabble away as well as helping Alice maintain some sort of public identity, something they need if they're going to run an operation like this.
"Yeah, that's him on the left." Two fighters are getting ready in their respective spots, stretching, getting hydrated, whatever. The one Alice is pointing out is young, early twenties, got a physique you can only buy from the right sorts of mages. He moves like he's still trying to figure out how his modified body works.
An airhorn blows and a countdown begins. When it hits zero, gates in the cage slide open, letting the fighters in and then closing up behind them.
The Pit's different from when I was fighting. Used to be just dirt blocked off with sandbags. With all that magic flying around, if you sat in the splash zone you deserved what you got.
Now it's an octagon with chain link fencing like you'd see at any MMA style fight, only more so. The entire thing is encased in a sphere of ensorcelled and warded chain link that keeps any magic from going out or coming in. More or less. It's got some gaps.
The last thing the audience wants is to get flash-roasted from an errant fireball. The last thing the fighters want is the audience tossing random spells in to help their favorite.
The fighters come out onto the mat and it's obvious that the guy who recently bulked up doesn't know how to fight worth a damn. He's running away from his opponent, blocking with weak shield spells, but he's not engaging.
Then he gets close and throws out a palm strike that connects with his opponent's chest, who immediately falls down limp onto the mat. Fight's called, guy goes out on a stretcher.
At least, that's what everybody else sees.
"Huh," I say.
"You know what he did?" Alice says.
"Oh, yeah," I say. "This happens every time?"
"One shot, guy goes down, doesn't get back up again."
"Yeah, they won't. They're all in comas now, right?"
"That's been kept kinda quiet."
"So, nobody's connected them all together and looked at the one thing they had in common yet."
"I'm not stupid," Alice says, annoyed. "That's why I asked you to come take a look. I think I know what he's doing, but I need a professional opinion."
"How long's he been at it?"
"A month now? Maybe two. Noticed it the first week he was in the ring. I mean everybody else has, too, but all it's done has shifted his odds."
"And now his opponents' odds are so bad that if a fighter bets on himself, he makes a fuck-ton of cash if he wins. Only he never does. You're raking in cash on the backs of the desperate, ya know?"
"Well, duh," Alice says. "Been my business model for a hundred years. Or it was. He was a hell of a draw. Still is. But he's too good. He's fucking with my bottom line. His odds are so high the payout sucks and nobody wants to bet on his opponents because everybody thinks they're gonna lose."
"Sounds like they're right," I say.
"They are. That's the problem. I need him gone."
"Ban him."
"Tried it. The minute word got out that I might do that, everybody went all batshit. A lot of the folks down there watching, they're getting off on this."
"They don't even know what he's doing," I say.
"They don't care. They just like blood sports without all that messy blood."
People are fucking weird, mages more so. I understand the thrill of watching a fight. It's exciting, the energy's infectious. But none of the people watching are aware that a murder is happening right before their eyes. If they did, they'd pay double to get in.
"I'll go have a chat," I say. "Don't let him out of the building, and if any of your people see him, have them shoot him if he gets within twenty feet."
"My people don't carry guns," she says.
"Might be time they did."
The hangar has been partitioned into separate sections. The arena and seats, a set of locker rooms, showers, rudimentary medical-which is really just a closet with a bunch of first aid kits and a foldable stretcher.
The Pit has corridors made of the same ensorcelled chain link fencing leading to individual locker rooms. Each opens onto an octagonal corridor that rings the Pit and leads to a wide doorway that lets out next to the betting booth.
It doesn't take long for me to find the right room. The fighter goes by the name Lightning Johnny. No idea what that's all about. I didn't see any lightning. Maybe Cold-Blooded Murderer Johnny was taken.
He's standing at the sink staring into the mirror. I can see his lips moving in the reflection. Whatever he's saying, they're not his words.
From the door I can tell he's definitely been enhanced through magic. It looks almost like one of those Halloween muscle suits but not as severe. There are bulges in unusual places that give it away, and he hasn't gotten used to walking yet. Other than that, there's nothing particularly noteworthy about him. Not quite six feet tall, red hair, light freckled skin. His skin is bright red from the fight, slick with sweat. For all that he's shivering.
I go in and close the door behind me. The noise grabs his attention. He jerks around to face me but doesn't say anything. He has prison tats, a couple of . . . I don't know what the fuck they're supposed to be. Really screwed up swastikas or Nazi SS symbols? One on each pec. The ensemble is completed with an 88 on his belly that looks like the artist was on too much meth at the time. Tats like that should get him into all the right parties.
But the thing that sticks out is his eyes. They can't decide what color they're supposed to be. Brown, blue, brown again. Shapes in his irises flow like clouds blown about by stormy winds.
"Nice fight out there tonight," I say.
"Thanks," he says. Distant, but at least he's acknowledging me. The high must be wearing off.
"How many are you up to a week now?"
"Fights? Two, three. Hey, if you're, like, a promoter, or something, I'm not interested." He turns back to the mirror and ignores me.
"I get that," I say. "You go pro, you're gonna get a lot more scrutiny. Folks might start to put some things together. Maybe figure out what you're really doing. Can't have that."
He turns back to me, startled as if seeing me there for the first time. "The fuck are you still doing here?"
"Having a conversation," I say. "That's all." I don't stop moving, just slowly walking toward him, hands at my sides, empty.
"Yeah, well, go fuck off. I'm not-"
"They're like potato chips, aren't they? Can't eat just one. And the best part? Nobody knows what you're doing." He glances from me to the door and back. I can almost see the wheels turning in his head. "I don't think you want to do that," I say.
"What?"
"You think you can get through me and out of here. You won't."
"Who the fuck are you?" He starts to pull power in from the local pool of magic, but he's not very good at it. He might not even realize he's doing it. It's like he's an engine that can't quite start.
"Nobody important," I say. "Where'd you do your time? Corcoran?"
"If you don't get the fuck out of here in ten seconds I'm gonna kick your ass."
"That where it started? Prison? Stress can bring out latent talents."
"I'm countin', man. Ten."
"Must have been easy there. You walk by, bump into somebody in the yard, and down he goes."
"I ain't killed nobody," he says. "Nine."
"Horseshit and you know it. They're more dead than if you put a bullet in their brain."
"Eight."
"Bodies are just meat," I say. "But souls are where the flavor's at." I'm about five feet away from him and he's getting really nervous. He looks like he should be able to take me, but that'll never happen.
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