Timesurfers Page 23

  He dropped his head and stepped back. “Kill it today, Catherine.” He strode after Mortez.

  Austin let go of her and scratched his head. “What’s with the ‘never touch me’ thing? If he was inappropriate or hurt you—”

  “Calm down. It’s nothing like that.”

  Mortez hugged Balthazar, Melchior, and Gaspar and kissed them on both cheeks.

  “They have a close working relationship.”

  Austin looked puzzled. “They’re her sons.”

  “No!” Mortez’s sons had practically been living at her house for the last five years. Her powers of deduction sucked.

  “This is your first and final warning.”

  Cate jumped as a loud, nasal voice whined from somewhere overhead.

  “All nongrommets must leave the holding area. Failure to comply will see the lions eating well tonight. No exceptions.” People darted toward the exit.

  Austin’s fingers curved around her shoulders, and he rested his forehead against hers. “Those lions can be mean. Be alert.” He rubbed his scar. “You don’t want to end up with a permanent reminder of your GTs like me.”

  She traced the scars down Austin’s face and neck. “Oh my...” She was having trouble breathing. If the lions had gotten that close to Austin, she was dead.

  “Settle. I know you can do this. You’re fast and strong, and Rose is a kick-ass teacher.”

  “Ten seconds!” the same nasal voice as before whined.

  Panic flared in Cate’s chest. The room was nearly empty now. She should tell Austin about Jonah erasing his memory, but she wanted him to leave before she collapsed in a puddle of fear. “Go, or they’ll feed you to the lions.”

  Austin kissed her forehead and rested his chin on her hair. “Don’t die. I’d miss you.” He slapped her on the backside and jogged through the marble opening as an iron gate slid across it.

  She wilted onto the floor. Her tears made little wet splotches on the dirt. Other grommets were limbering up and getting into their fighting zone. There was no one else crying, that was for sure. The grommets on either side of her spoke French and another unrecognisable language.

  Mortez’s three boys stood clustered together. They were dressed to fight in long sleeved, tight fitting black T-shirts and black cargo pants covered in pockets. All the other grommets looked like they’d been plucked from whatever they were doing and plonked in the room. Thankfully, she had been sleeping in jeans and not teddy bear pyjamas when Naitanui turned up. She resisted the urge to poke her tongue out at the three boys, whose eyes were fixed on her. Should I go over to them? Will they come to me?

  “The weapons room is now open.” The nasal voice whined over the PA. There was a jaw clenching grating sound, and the ground vibrated. An enormous portal opened on the wall behind her. “Grommets will be admitted alphabetically.”

  “Perfect!” With a surname starting with Z she would be in the last group.

  The nasal voice droned its way through the alphabet. There was a commotion at L when a slender boy with scraggly, shoulder-length hair shot fifty feet into the air and exploded, showering the grommets near the weapons entrance with sizzling chucks of flesh. “Cheating will not be tolerated,” the nasal voice announced. “The portal is now open to those with last names that actually start with L.”

  A world that asked people to fight lions was always going to be brutal. She stared into space until someone prodded her thigh.

  “Hey, ugly. You coming?” Balthazar offered her a hand up. “They’re calling the Zs.”

  “You’re a Z?” Cate had never heard anyone call Balthazar by anything other than his first name.

  He smiled. “There’re four of us today.” Gaspar and Melchior scooted through the portal.

  “So you three are brothers?”

  Balthazar rolled his eyes. “Didn’t the fact we’re named after the three wise men give you a hint?”

  “No normal person would ever make that connection.” She turned Balthazar’s arm over, and ran her eye down his quantum indicators. The last number was 2017. The lone number 2014 shone in blue ink on her arm.

  “I apologise for the nondisclosure,” Balthazar said. “It was by order of Mortez.”

  “Who I now find out is your mother.” Cate jogged to keep up with him as he strode toward the portal. She groaned at the near-bare walls. This was like being a day late to the end of year sales. A coiled rope sailed through the air toward her.

  “Heads up!” Gaspar called.

  The coarse plaited end flicked the side of her face as she grabbed the rope. “Ouch.” She rubbed her stinging face and scowled at him.

  “Toughen up!” Gaspar tossed a wicked looking silver dagger her way. She focused on the handle as it twirled through the air, resisting the urge to close her eyes at the moment her fingers grasped what she prayed wasn’t the blade. The absence of pain made her smile. The glow in her chest fizzled as Balthazar caught a knife in each hand.

  “Do you guys have a plan? Should I have a plan? Should we make a plan?” she asked.

  Melchior strode over with a bronze sword in each hand and a scary looking black, metal spiked ball wrapped around his waist. “Our plan is don’t die.”

  “You never were a detail man, Mel.” Cate pressed her hands hard against the top of her head. “What’s with your and Gaspar’s shaved heads?”

  “A few weeks ago we got caught in a disgusting lice outbreak in Germany back in 1705 on a mission involving the composer Bach. We both had to shave our heads when we came back,” Melchior said.

  Austin had been off on a mission that had something to do with Bach when Cate left the shack with Rose to start training. That seemed like months ago. Not weeks.

  “We got off lightly. The four most common diseases in the seventeen hundreds were smallpox, typhoid, scarlet fever, and dengue fever. They’re all fatal, so lice wasn’t so bad.” Gaspar ran a hand over his nearly bald head.

  Cate’s head itched at the mention of lice.

  “I had hoped Austin picked up smallpox. He looked disgustingly healthy strutting out of here though.” Melchior crinkled his nose with distaste. “Is your butt healed where the bullet hit you, Gaspar? Cate could probably do something for you.”

  “Austin shot you in the butt?” Cate asked Gaspar.

  “No, Mel shot me—”

  “Accidently—”

  “Don’t get them started.” Balthazar’s eyes lit up. He raced to the wall and grabbed what looked like an enormous roll of duct tape.

  “How come you three haven’t done the GTs before?” Cate asked.

  “Only Naitanui demands his recruits complete them. Mortez makes it optional. We were waiting for a reason. And you’re it.” Balthazar ripped a length of tape and handed it to her.

  “No pressure.” She copied the boys and wrapped the tape around her arms and legs. Her nerves stepped up a level. “Is the future me out there watching?”

  “She can’t watch because you’re here. There’s an aura clash. She’s running a horrendous temperature, and will be until midnight our time. At midnight the fever will break and she’ll remember everything that’s gone on with you in this alternate history. Assuming you’re still alive.”

  “What?”

  “You die, she’s dead.” Gaspar gave his scalp a vicious scratch and shuddered. “I can still feel them crawling around.”

  “Grommets proceed to the holding pen.” The nasal voice was back. They shuffled into the holding pen with around fifty other grommets, who all kept glancing sideways at the three boys.

  “If I survive, I’m going to find the person who owns that voice and sew their lips together. It’s like nails down a blackboard on steroids.” Gaspar dug his elbow into her rib cage. “Stay behind us and we’ll get you to safe ground. Then you should just wait until the stadium is secure. Understand?”

  Common sense would have her agree, but unsurprisingly, her pride got in the way. “That’s never going to happen.”

  “Predictable.”
Gaspar sighed with resignation. “Idiotic too.”

  She took a deep breath, preparing to argue, when a putrid smell burned her nostrils. It settled in the back of her throat and she gagged. She attempted to step away from the stench, but so many grommets were jammed into the small space that no matter how hard she pushed, no one moved. “That smells like dead...something.”

  “Grommet probably,” Gaspar said.

  A low guttural rumble made the wooden rails surrounding the holding area shudder. Luminous yellow eyes flecked with brown peered through the gaps in the enclosure. The lions’ pale eyes floated along the fence as they padded the perimeter restlessly. When they paused to sneer with frustration through the fence, hot air, dense with the foul, rotting flesh odour, wafted across her face. The deafening roar that followed made her ears ring.

  “That would be those pesky lions.” Cate chewed on her bottom lip. She had really been hoping that they had changed the format and the lions wouldn’t be here.

  Gaspar nodded. “Yep.”

  The girl directly to her left sobbed hysterically. An acidic smell cut through the stench of stale sweat and rotting flesh. Cate forced what she hoped was an encouraging smile onto her face and lowered her gaze. The source of the acidic smell became evident. The girl had urinated, and it was trickling along the dirt floor.

  Cate peeled the damp hair off her neck. Rivulets of sweat trickled down her back. The three boys were meditating. Panic and blind terror invaded her mind, rendering any attempt to tap into calm fruitless. Regardless, she took a few deep breaths and was overcome by a coughing fit as all the putrid smells mingled in her nose.

  Mel gave her a thumbs up as he adjusted the spiky metal ball tied around his waist and shook out his arms and legs. It was oddly comforting to see him loosening up the same as he did each day before training. His face was devoid of emotion as he focused on an imaginary spot directly ahead of him. With his brutally short hair, he now bore a striking resemblance to Austin.

  “Can you not stare at me like that?” Mel interrupted her thoughts. “It’s weirding me out.”

  An enormous roar erupted in the arena. There was a bucket load of people out there watching.

  “That’s the prematch entertainment finished. We’re up. Check your weapons.” Balthazar adjusted the curved broadsword on his hip. The jagged edge of a double-sided dagger glinted in the sun near his shoulder as he wrapped silver wire around each of his wrists.

  The stone handles of the boning knives strapped to Cate’s legs were smooth and cold to her touch. She adjusted the thick, prickly rope slung across her shoulder away from the soft, leather pouch resting over her heart. Balthazar grabbed her hand and squeezed. She squeezed back. They stood silently, hands clasped. The heavy wooden gate groaned, shuddered, and slid open with a rush. “Is it too late to back out?” she whispered.

  Chapter 24

  Game On

  Balthazar’s eyes burned with the fierce intensity of a true warrior. “Pretty much.”

  She shielded her eyes from the glare of the sun as the grommets surged forward into the stadium. Thunderous applause and a vociferous roar rolled around the arena. The stands were packed with thousands of hazy faces and muted colours. Something brushed past her head, ripping at her scalp. Her fingers came away warm and sticky, stained crimson. The grommet to her right smashed face first into the dirt, an arrow protruding from his back. She slammed to the ground, flattening herself against the dirt.

  The twang as multiple arrows left their bows was followed by the wet, dull thunk as they found a target. She scrambled away from a lifeless body that collapsed across her legs and searched frantically for the source of the arrows.

  Blindfolded Timesurfers lined the stone edge of arena’s roof. Arrow feathers glinted over the curve of the archers’ bare shoulders. Black singlets pulled taut across their chests as they reloaded silver bows and fired with mechanical precision. An arrow grazed Cate’s arm. She scrambled over a motionless lion and ducked behind it. Her cheek pressed against its surprisingly soft and warm belly. Multiple arrows protruded from its body. Blood seeped around the gaping holes in the grimy tan coat. It resembled a ghoulish Dalmatian.

  Balthazar commando-crawled her way, gesturing frantically. Timesurfers who lined the other side of the arena catapulted flaming metal balls into the air. He threw his body across hers, and a flaming cannonball bounced off him and rolled onto the dirt.

  “You’re fireproof?”

  He nodded.

  She snatched an arrow from the air heading directly for Balthazar’s ear. The smoke from the flaming balls made visibility poor. Cate closed her eyes and listened for the arrows and flaming balls. All that time training blindfolded with Jonah now had a purpose. She grabbed Balthazar’s shoulders and rolled them both to the left. An arrow landed exactly where their heads had been a second before.

  “Thanks.” Balthazar launched them both over the dead lion. A hail of arrows embedded in the ground where they had lain. They landed with a thud, followed by a solid crack as her head smashed into Balthazar’s nose. Warm, wet blood sprayed across her cheek.

  “Not the thank you I was looking for,” Balthazar groaned.

  “Sorry, sorry.” She put her fingers over his nose, which now had a definite lean to the right. “Be better, be better, be better.” In less than a second, his nose was perfect again. There was no hint of the bloody mess from a few minutes before. The blood was even gone from her hands. It was like she’d pushed a rewind button.

  She crawled to a grommet with three arrows protruding from his chest, unaware if he was dead or alive. She grasped his hand. He thrashed and struggled to his feet. His eyes glowed violet as he scurried to the other end of the arena. He had been dead. “You’re welcome,” she muttered. The crunch of bone shattering and fiery pain that tore through her leg signalled one of the flaming balls had struck her thigh while she had been distracted.

  “Hold still.” Balthazar pressed her hand hard on the charred flesh of her thigh. “Clear your mind and heal it.”

  She howled some very unladylike words at him. Black spots floated across her eyes and the noise around her dulled. Chills rippled through her body as ice crept along her veins. Her head slumped against the earth, now damp and tacky with blood.

  “Don’t be such a girl. It’s barely a flesh wound,” Balthazar yelled.

  “Are you calling me a girl and attempting to quote Monty Python?”

  Balthazar grinned. “Yes indeed.” He touched his ear and pointed to the sky. “Hear that?”

  It was silent. The arrows and fireballs had stopped.

  Balthazar jumped nimbly to his feet for such a big oaf. “Mend your leg because I have better things to do than protect your sizable butt all day. Let’s regroup. Preferably well away from the dead lion that the very-much-alive lions are coming to eat.”

  She braced against the dead lion’s back and squirmed into a sitting position. The fiery pain in her thigh spiked each time she twisted. Shards of bone protruded from what looked like a mangled, raw steak. Shredded sinew and charred flesh had melted on her jeans. Her stomach heaved, and she leaned away and vomited.

  Balthazar held her hair back from her face. “Gross. You never were good with blood. Put your hand on your leg and make it better.”

  “B...b...b...better,” she stammered as tears welled in her eyes.

  “There’s no crying at the Grommet Trials,” Gaspar snapped from over Balthazar’s shoulder. “Warriors don’t cry. Move away from that dead lion. I’ll do weapon recon.”

  “I’ll go and investigate possible alliances and collaborations.” Balthazar jogged toward the group of grommets at the far end of the area.

  The pain vanished from her leg and the mangled mess disappeared. Her clothes were no longer torn and the blood was gone. Battered grommets lay scattered around the arena. Those dead were silent and glassy eyed. The pain and fear of their last moments would remain frozen on their faces forever. Pleas for help punctuated the tortured moans of
those close to death. Shrieks of agony hung like a thick fog in the air.

  Two lions lay dead. Sinew and skin rained down as the three other lions ripped and tore the arms and a leg from the girl who had stood next to her in the holding pen. The lions flopped on the blood-soaked ground; the wet, squelching sounds of teeth chewing flesh mixed with the snapping and crunching of bones turned her stomach. There were fourteen grommets left, including her.

  “The ‘don’t die’ plan is working a treat so far.” Mel placed his arm, now freckled with blood, on her shoulder and winced. His shirt was soaked crimson from a huge gouge down his side.

  “I’ll try and mend your injury.” Her voice sounded robotic and flat.

  Mel winced as he lifted his arm. “It’s self-inflicted. I fell on the flail. That’s one sharp, pointy ball. It’s excellent for smacking lions with though.” A wide grin spread across his face.

  Mel might be enjoying this bloodshed a little too much. Her fingers squelched against his bloodied shirt as she touched the spongy gash. Before she closed her eyes or even thought about it healing, the skin had mended and his black T-shirt was clean again.

  He shuddered. “That freaks me out every time. Your ability to turn back time and delete a little pocket of history is awesome.”

  “I can turn back time?”

  Mel nodded.

  That was why the blood always disappeared.

  Gaspar zigzagged across the arena, his arms loaded with weapons collected from the dead grommets. The lions’ incandescent yellow eyes followed him as they continued to chew lazily, their muzzles and teeth coated crimson with sticky blood.

  Balthazar was back from speaking to the grommets huddled at the far end of the arena. “I can’t get the other grommets on board. You’d think the fact Mortez is my mother would make them scared enough to do what I ask, but apparently not.”

  “We stand a better chance if we work together. Surely they see that?” There was desperation in Cate’s voice. Her calf muscles had started to cramp, and her arms felt heavy.