Lost (35 page)

"I'm
sorry, Celeste, this is something that I have to do."

Set was still
shaking his head. "It does not have to be like this, Isaac
Nazir. You can change your mind right now, but once I go tell Pal of
your challenge there will be no going back."

"I
understand, Set. Please let him know that I'm ready to meet him
inside of the challenge circle at his earliest convenience."

Set bowed his
head in acknowledgement and then turned and left. I already knew that
Celeste wasn't going to be as easy to convince, but then again I
didn't have to convince her. She couldn't stop me any more than I
could stop her from going to the queen and asking about a way to save
her pack rather than asking for the location of the Coun'hij's base.

"You're a
fool, Isaac. You don't have to do this. You don't need to prove
anything to me. I already know that you're good and moral and
fearless."

"I'm
sorry, Celeste. This isn't about proving anything to you; it's about
proving something to myself. Besides, if I win it will mean that we
both get what we want. I'll have saved Set and you'll get a few more
days to try and get your audience with his queen."

"I don't
want you to throw your life away in a fight you can't win."

"I owe Set
this."

"He
doesn't want this."

"I know,
but that doesn't change the fact that it's exactly what he needs. I
might win, but even if I don't I can still guarantee that Pal isn't
going to be challenging Set by the time I'm done with him. He's going
to be hurt, which means that Set is going to have a chance to recover
before Pal takes him on."

She looked like
she was going to cry, which just made me realize how much I still had
to learn about women. She turned away from me as though planning on
running to her room, but I grabbed her elbow.

"Do me a
favor if I don't make it?"

"Maybe,
depends on what it is."

Her tone drew a
smile out of me despite the seriousness of what I was about to go do.

"You're a
terrible liar, you know that? You should have just told me yes and
then not done it if it was that distasteful."

"Maybe,
but I don't want to break my streak. I haven't lied to you yet,
Isaac. I haven't told you everything, but I haven't knowingly said
anything that wasn't true."

"I
appreciate that."

Tears were
starting to leak out of the corners of her eyes, but she turned her
head so I couldn't see her face.

"What do
you want, Isaac?"

"Tell Ash
that I'm sorry I couldn't save Kristin for him. There's a file on my
tablet with his name on it. It's got all of my notes on it. I think
it will be enough for him to be able to run the hack that the two of
us discussed. Donovan and Alec can help him run the team. It won't be
quite the same, but I think it will still work."

"Is that
all?"

"No.
Kristin isn't the only one I'm sorry I can't save."

"Whatever.
Words are cheap. Don't expect me to be there watching today."

I let her go
and headed outside. It wasn't how I'd wanted to end things with her,
but there wasn't anything I could say to make her okay with what I
was about to do. Besides, I didn't dare stay there with her for much
longer or there was a chance that I'd lose my nerve.

It wouldn't
change anything. By now Pal had already been informed of the fact
that I wanted to fight him, but losing my nerve would make it that
much harder to win.

I pulled my
clothes off as I walked, and then shifted into my hybrid form as I
reached the cave that held the challenge circle. Nobody else was
there yet, but that was fine. I knelt down in the sand and closed my
eyes in an attempt to clear my mind.

It must have
worked because I didn't hear everyone arrive. One moment I was
floating in silence and then in the next I heard Set saying my name.

"Are you
ready, Isaac Nazir?"

I nodded and
opened my eyes as I stood. The cave was smaller than it had ever been
before, but the size of the circle hadn't changed. Despite their
smaller numbers, the spectators filled the cave up to capacity.

Most
surprisingly, Celeste was there. I gave her a sad smile, but she
refused to meet my eyes. I shrugged and put her out of my mind. It
wasn't easy, but it was something that had to be done.

Pal stepped
into the circle and hissed at me.

"I know
what you're trying to do, beast. You hope to beat me and thereby save
Set from having to face me himself, but all you've done is give me
the pleasure of killing you days before it would have otherwise
happened. You'll still be dead, and Set will still have been
dishonored by having turned to you to save his miserable life."

I shook my
head. "Set didn't ask me to do this. In fact, he would much
prefer that I not fight you, but my honor is of a different sort. I
will not stand by and see him killed for doing the bidding of your
queen. You're nothing more than a traitor. We know how to deal with
traitors where I'm from."

I stepped into
the circle before I'd even finished speaking, and Pal charged me.

He was fast and
he was bigger and stronger than I was, which meant that he was
holding all of the important cards. All that was left was for me to
try to take him by surprise.

We exchanged
fast, probing strikes and both reeled away bleeding. No surprises
there. His scales gave him a decided advantage against raking
attacks, and he was scary fast for someone so big. Going just off of
who was bleeding the most he was already ahead.

If we kept on
like we were doing so far he'd win simply by bleeding me out. I
needed to manufacture some kind of opportunity, which was going to be
difficult to do without opening up a dangerous vulnerability on my
side.

"Is that
the best you can do, mutt?"

I didn't bother
responding, saving my breath as I tried to work around the perimeter
and tire him out. I managed a nice slash across the same spot that
I'd hit earlier and smiled as his arm started really bleeding.

It wasn't going
to bleed him out quickly, but it was a start and I'd just managed to
confirm that his scales had been weakened in the process of
deflecting my first attack. We were back to being even.

I picked the
pace up even more in an attempt to stress him, but slowed down after
just a few seconds. He didn't have the shoddy footwork that had
allowed me to take down one of my earlier opponents, which meant that
I couldn't count on bringing him down that way either.

He stepped into
me with even more speed than he'd shown so far, and slammed the claws
on his right hand home in my stomach. I flowed into a technique that
Carson had showed me. It was an arm bar designed to take an opponent
down to the ground and hold him there.

I'd executed it
correctly—I could feel that much as I grabbed the outside of
Pal's hand and flipped it over so that I could apply pressure above
his elbow—but something went wrong. Maybe it was because Pal
was just too fast for me, or maybe the pain, dull though it was
because of my hybrid nervous system, just slowed me down. It was even
possible that Pal was just too strong.

Whatever the
reason, I felt the hold start to go sour a split second after I
started to apply it, so I changed courses instantly and rammed the
claws on my left hand into his back where his kidney would have been
located if he'd been a human.

I still had
control of his wrist, but I didn't make a clean escape once he tore
his hand out of my grasp. All he managed was another shallow slash on
my arm though, so I counted it as a fair trade. He was probably still
ahead, but I was hanging in the fight much better than I'd been
worried I might.

We danced back
and forth again, but while he was still fast, the blinding speed he'd
shown earlier didn't make another appearance until the next time that
he stepped into me and slammed his hand home again.

This time he
tore a scream out of me. His claws had penetrated a lot deeper, deep
enough that even as a hybrid the blow had been excruciating. Despite
the pain I reacted with a smoothness that surprised even me.

I dropped my
inside knee slightly and brought my full weight down on the inside of
his arm in an elbow strike that could have splintered a small tree.
The force of my blow brought him down and slightly forward, so I
turned into him and threw him into the ground with everything I had.

It was the same
hip throw that I'd used against Nicolas, but this time I was using it
against someone who'd never learned how to take a fall. Pal hit hard,
a lot harder than I expected, but apparently lamias were built even
more solidly than I'd realized.

Hitting the
ground that hard would have snapped a hybrid's neck. Maybe it would
have done the same thing if I'd used it on a worker, but Pal simply
bounced and then rolled back to his feet.

"Is that
all you've got? A real fighter would have killed me rather than
throwing me at the ground."

Pal's words
were full of contempt, but I could see the worry in his eyes. I'd
just hit him with a technique that was completely outside of his
experience and we both knew that if he'd landed a little differently
the fight would have been over.

More
importantly, I'd just realized that he was a glory hound. He wasn't
interested in
being
a better fighter as much as
looking
like a better fighter. He was fast and strong, and his technique was
good, but he'd honed that one technique—stepping into his
opponent and driving his claws into their stomach or chest—to
blinding perfection, and I was pretty sure that he'd done it solely
to be able to drop werewolves with a speed that nobody else could
match.

It worked
perfectly if you were injecting someone with poison, but otherwise it
wasn't as effective. He would have been better off hitting me
somewhere else that last time, but his reflexes were too wired into
that one attack to deviate from it. He probably didn't even
consciously think about throwing that punch, he just launched it
whenever he saw the opportunity.

I could use
that.

We slowly moved
back towards each other and I smiled at the way he was opening and
closing his right fist. He was trying to work feeling back into his
arm. My elbow strike might not have shattered the bones there, but it
had still affected him.

I let my hands
drift ever so slightly apart and he reacted just as he had twice
already. He blurred forward, claws seeking my guts, but this time I
wasn't where he expected me to be. I'd already started moving to the
right and turning my body counterclockwise. It left my back exposed
to his left hand, but he never got a chance to take advantage of that
fact.

My right hand
shot forward and I took him in the forearm, spearing him with my
claws as I stepped into him. The pain made him pull his arm back, but
that was exactly what I wanted him to do. I latched on with my left
hand as well and pulled against him as I sank the talons on my feet
into his legs and side.

It was the
exact same attack that I'd tried to use against the Coun'hij enforcer
back in the first fight we'd had after leaving Alec and the others,
but this time it worked. I straddled his arm with one foot buried in
his chest and the other deep in the meat of his shoulder, and
wrenched his arm with every ounce of strength I possessed.

He tried to
resist, but he failed. Maybe it was the numbness from my elbow
strike, maybe it was the fact that blood was still pouring out of his
arms where I'd stabbed him. In the end it didn't actually matter that
much because the net result was the same.

I kicked off of
him, propelling myself a safe distance away from him, and hit the
ground rolling. I came back to my feet to find that his right arm was
hanging limply at his side.

"It's
over. You can't beat me now, not with your arm dislocated like that.
Yield so that I don't have to kill you; the enclave can't afford to
lose another consort right now."

Pal shook his
head at me and hissed something unintelligible at me before
responding in English. "I'm not going to give Set the
satisfaction of executing me for failing to finish the fight. You'll
have to come kill me yourself."

"Is that
true, Set?"

I asked the
question without taking my eyes off of Pal, but Pal attacked anyway
in the hopes that I'd be too distracted to stop him. He was wrong. I
knocked his claws away, forcing them across his body as I stepped
forward.

The momentum of
his charge tried to carry him past me, but I didn't let him get far.
I checked him with a glancing blow from my shoulder to slow him down
slightly and knock him off balance, and then I stepped around behind
him and wrapped my right arm around his neck at the same time that I
wrapped up his left arm.

This wasn't
something that Set had taught me, it was pure old-fashioned hybrid
combat. It was a textbook kill position, and I felt Pal go instantly
still as he realized that I could easily open up all of the major
veins along the side of his neck with a flick of my wrist.

"Is it
true, Set? Are you going to kill him if he surrenders?"

"I'm
sorry, Isaac Nazir. I can see what you are trying to do, but it is
our way."

I opened my
mouth to tell him that their practice was wasteful and bloodthirsty,
but I never managed to get the words out.

I'd wrapped
Pal's left arm up, but I'd wrapped it up the way that I would have
wrapped up a hybrid. For this hold with another hybrid the primary
concern was stopping them from raking your other arm. The way that
our shoulders were hinged made it almost impossible for us to strike
down and back around our own bulk, but apparently lamias didn't face
the same kind of restriction.