WE WALKED DOWN TO THE FIRST FLOOR, TO ANOTHER luxurious hallway pierced with arches. Saiman picked one of the arches seemingly at random and held the heavy rust curtain aside. Beyond the curtain lay a small balcony. Circular and encased by a solid steel railing that came midway to my hip, the balcony offered four chairs upholstered in soft rust fabric and positioned movie-theater close.

I stepped past the curtain to the railing. A huge hall greeted me, too large to be called a room.

Oblong and vast, it stretched for at least a hundred and fifty yards. Its walls were honeycombed with arched balconies arranged in three rows. Each balcony held six to eight people and offered its own exit door, which, if our particular door was any indication, opened to the wide corridor. The management was trying to minimize the chances of a stampede if things went sour.

The walls plunged lower than the ground level. Sunken underground, the bottom floor had no balconies or seats. Bare concrete sloped gently to the center, where an oval arena of sand lay.

A heavy-duty chain link fence defined it, anchored by numerous steel posts. The Pit. Our balcony protruded from the wall much farther than the rest, and if I took a running start, I could have jumped to the fence.

The sand inside the fence drew my gaze. I looked away. "Special seats?"

"The best in the house. Despite our proximity to the Pit, we're quite safe." Saiman pointed above us. A metal portcullis waited above us, obscured by a velvet curtain. "I can drop it with a pull of the lever. And then of course, there are additional precautions." He pointed to the bottom floor.

To the left of us on the concrete sat an E-50, an enhanced heavy machine gun, mounted on a swivel base and manned by two Red Guards. Guns weren't my thing, but I knew this one: it was the Military Supernatural Defense Unit's weapon of choice when facing a loose vampire.

The E-50 fired .50-caliber ammo at more than three thousand feet per second. At two thousand feet, a round from this gun was deadly. At a hundred yards, it would rip through solid steel like tissue paper. At a maximum rate of fire, an E-50 spat out half a thousand bullets a minute. Of course, at a maximum rate of fire, it also melted the barrel after a few thousand rounds, but if you didn't take down a vampire within the first few seconds, you were dead anyway.

An identical gun waited across from us at the far right. Whatever was caught between them would be dead instantly. Unfortunately, even the best gun was only as strong as the guys manning it. If I wanted to cause trouble, I'd take the gunners out.

Just in case the tech failed, two additional teams of Guardsmen bided their time in the opposite corners: one with an arrow thrower and the other with an assortment of weapons.

"I see you don't want a repeat of the Andorf accident."

If Saiman was surprised at my knowledge of Games-related trivia, he didn't show it.

"We don't. But I assure you, we still get plenty of shapeshifter participation."

"How? Didn't the Beast Lord veto it?"

"We import shapeshifters from outside the Pack's boundaries. They fight and we pull them out before the requisite three days are up."

All visiting shapeshifters had three days to approach the Pack for permission to stay within its territory, or it would approach them and they wouldn't like it. "Sounds expensive."

Saiman smiled. "It's well worth it. The price of tickets alone covers most fighter-related expenses. The real money comes from betting. On a good fight the House takes in anywhere from half to three quarters of a million. The highest intake on a championship fight was over two million."

With hazard pay, I made just above thirty grand a year.

I stared at the sand of the Pit. In my head, the building vanished. The fence, the concrete, the guns, Saiman, all dissolved into the blazing sun, blindingly bright and merciless. I heard the noise of the crowd in the wooden stands, the quick staccato of Spanish, the high-pitched laughter of women, and the hoarse cries of the bookies calling out numbers. I felt my father's presence behind me, calm and steady. The reassuring weight of the sword tugged on my hand.

I smelled my skin, scorched by the sun, and blood fumes rising from the sand.

"Shall we sit down?" Saiman's voice intruded upon my reverie. Just as well.

We took our seats. Huge rust curtains slid aside on the far left and right of the chamber, revealing two entrances: the one on the right painted garish gold and its twin on the left in a cheery shade of solid black.

Saiman leaned to me. "The fighters enter through the Gold Gate. Corpses leave through the Midnight one. If you 'walk out gold,' you've won the match."

A long, deep bellow of a huge gong tolled through the Arena, calling the spectators to silence.

A slim woman in a silver dress stepped out of the Gold Gate.

"Welcome! Welcome to the house of combat where death and life dance on the edge of the blade." Her voice was deep for a female and it carried through the Arena. "Let the Games begin!"

"Sophia," Saiman said. "The producer."

The woman disappeared back into the Gold Gate.

A huge scoreboard suspended on chains slid down from the ceiling and stopped just above the Midnight Gate. Two names written on white paper in beautiful calligraphy sat in twin wooden frames: RODRIGUEZ VS. CALLISTO. The odds beneath it said -175+200. Rodriguez was a slight favorite to win. If you bet on him as the winner, you would have to put in $175 to get back an extra $100. If you bet on Callisto and she won, for every $100, you'd get your money and $200 back.

"Both human. Mildly interesting." Saiman dismissed the scoreboard with a wave of his hand.

"The Reapers, Kate? I'm eager to hear your assessment."

"Both Mart and Cesare are fighters?"

Saiman nodded.

"Have you ever seen them bleed?"

"Cesare. During a bout with a werejaguar, he suffered several deep gashes across the chest and back. Mart so far has been untouched."

I nodded. "Have you noticed how perfect Mart's skin is?"

Saiman frowned. "Its tone is quite even, but I don't see your point."

Not surprising. Someone who treated skin like clay he could mold and mash at will wouldn't realize the significance of a perfect complexion. "Pimple" was simply not in Saiman's vocabulary.

"Ordinary people have blemishes. Acne, bruises, blackheads, clogged pores, small scars. Mart has none. His skin is completely uniform and unnaturally perfect."

"Perhaps he has accelerated healing."

"I've seen shapeshifters with scars, and they regenerate broken limbs in a couple of weeks. A normal human's history is written in their skin, Saiman. We have training scars from before we got good enough. But he has none. How long since you first met him?"

"Two months."

"So he has been in Georgia since late summer. Have you ever seen him sunburned?"

"No."

"A man with skin that shade should develop a nice crispy crust after half an hour under Atlanta's sun. Why is he paler than a flowering dogwood? And have you ever seen him with a different hairstyle?"

I could almost feel wheels turning in Saiman's head. "No," he said slowly.

"Hair always at the same length?"

"Yes."

I nodded. "Let's talk about his buddy Cesare. Tattooed from head to toe?"

"Yes."

"Did you notice that all of his ink looks perfectly fresh? First, most people get tattooed over a period of years. A complicated design takes time. The process is ritualistic for many people and as important as the result. Ink fades over time, faster if exposed to the sun. All of his tattoos - at least everything I could see - were the same color, bright black. As if he never goes outside."

"Perhaps he simply planned his tattooing ahead of time and used sunblock."

"I doubt very much that a man could walk into the tattoo parlor and unroll a full body plan of tribal designs. In any case, you said he bled. Deep wounds would cause distortions in his designs, especially considering how intricate his are. A thickening here and there, smudged, broken lines. I saw none."

A troubled expression disturbed the handsome symmetry of Saiman's face.

Once blood, fluid, or any other tissue was removed from the body, the owner could no longer mask its magic. An m-scanner picked up traces of that magic and registered it in different colors: purple for vampire, green for shapeshifter, blue or gray for human. I didn't see the problem: take a blood sample, run an m-scan, anything not blue or silver meant nonhuman.

An m-scan was foolproof.

"Have you m-scanned them?"

"Several times. Both register blue. Pure human."

Odd. "The m-scanner is a hell of a thing to rebut," I said. "But the fact remains: you have two China dolls, one almost albino and the other painted with pretty black swirls. And they really don't like you. I'd get a bodyguard, Saiman. And I would warn him to expect unusual things from your attackers."

Two humans walked out onto the field. Rodriguez was in his forties. Short and wiry, he had chosen a short, curved kukri blade. Front heavy, it was designed to sink into flesh almost on its own. Callisto topped him by a foot and outweighed him by about thirty pounds. Her olive-skinned limbs were disproportionately long. She carried an axe. A silver chain wound about her right arm.

The gong tolled. Callisto swung her axe. Had she caught Rodriguez, the blow would've cleaved the smaller fighter open, but Rodriguez danced away, nimble like a cat. Callisto struck again, a diagonal blow that exposed her left side. Rodriguez refused to commit and dodged instead. The crowd jeered.

I leaned on the railing, tracking Rodriguez across the field. He had both experience and skill.

But a dangerous ferocity tinted the sneer on Callisto's face.

"Who will win, Rodriguez or Callisto?" Saiman asked.

"Callisto."

"Why?"

"A hunch. She wants it more."

Rodriguez lunged. His blade hacked Callisto's thigh. Vermillion drenched her leg. I smelled blood.

Callisto snapped her arm. The chain swung in a pale metal arch and wound itself about Rodriguez's neck with unnatural precision. The end of the chain reared above the fighter's shoulder and at its end I saw a small, triangular head. Metal jaws came unhinged. Small metal fangs bit the air. Callisto pulled. The links of the chain melded into a serpentine body in a shimmer of steel.

The metal snake clenched its coils. Rodriguez chopped at it in a desperate frenzy, but his kukri slid off the steel body. He was done. The crowd roared in delight.

Rodriguez's face turned purple. He went down to his knees. The sword slid from his fingers and plunged into the sand. He clawed at the metal noose constricting his throat.

She just watched him. She could've stopped it at any point. She could've killed him with her axe. But instead Callisto simply stood there and watched him suffocate.

It took fully four minutes for Rodriguez to die. Finally when his legs stopped drumming the ground, Callisto retrieved her chain, its links once again mere metal, and shook it at the crowd. The spectators howled.

I unclenched my fists. It had taken every ounce of my will not to jump into the Pit and pull that thing off Rodriguez's neck.

I hadn't believed I could think less of Saiman. He proved me wrong.

Four men in gray scrubs emerged from the Midnight Gate, loaded the corpse onto a stretcher,

and took it away.

Saiman leaned back in his seat. "As I said, mildly interesting."

"I find it horrific."

"Why? I've seen you kill before, Kate. Granted, you do it with considerably greater skill."

"I kill because I have to. I kill to protect myself or others. I won't take a life to titillate a crowd. Nor would I torture a man for the pleasure of it."

Saiman shrugged. "You kill to survive and to appease your own misguided conscience. Those in the Pit kill for money and the gratification of knowing they are better than the corpse at their feet. At the core, our motives are always self-serving, Kate. Altruism is a fog created by sly minds seeking to benefit from the energy and skill of others. Nothing more."

"You're like a god from a Greek myth, Saiman. You have no empathy. You have no concept of the world beyond your ego. Wanting something gives you an automatic right to obtain it by whatever means necessary with no regard to the damage it may do. I would be careful if I were you. Friends and objects of deities' desires dropped like flies. In the end the gods always ended up miserable and alone."

Saiman gave me a stunned look and fell silent.