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Tyr let out a low whistle as a connecting punch sent a grown man to the blood-slicked floor. The sound was lost in the resulting jeer of the crowd. His spot awarded him a beautiful view and the illusion of solitude, privileged that it was. He could almost taste the bloody spittle as it flecked the air, the mat with the man’s wheezing groan. Above him stood the victor. She wiped the sweat from her jaw and smeared red across her mouth in a way that curled Tyr’s lips into a mean grin.
She’ll do, he thought, giving the referee a meaningful look. If the crowd’s excitement were any portent, she’d do just fine.
“And we have our winner!” screamed the referee, his voice just barely making it over the audience’s din. As he grabbed the fighter’s wrist and drew her arm into the air, Tyr pushed off the wall and made his way around the roped-off ring, the shouting audience, and the other fighters lingering on the edges. “Let’s hear it for this week’s champ!”
The gathered crowd screamed as if they didn't think this week's winner might be next week's trash. They celebrated bloodlust as it came, reveled liked nothing mattered in this moment beyond the combatants in the ring. Tyr loved this place most for that reality. Humanity liked to paint itself as better than the base animals lurking beyond the firelight and fence posts, but it was all just an act. The truth of the matter came forth in moments like these, when civility fell away and even the most decorous being devolved into a beast hungering for the sight of more carnage. It felt truer to form, Tyr always thought. Every human had a monster inside them. It made it easier to keep company with the real monsters, whether they knew they shared seating with them or not.
Here and there, heads turned to watch him as he went. Some recognized him from his own stint in the ring. To those, Tyr nodded, maybe even smiled. Others were denizens of the club itself, Triarii both old and new who looked to him for guidance, regulation, and a reliable source of blood. A few were curious—he could see it in their eyes and would bet his remaining one they’d hunt him down after the room cleared out to ask him the usual sort of questions—but most seemed to know what was in the air tonight. Their gazes were wary but sedate. They trusted him to make good choices, even if it did mean increasing their numbers.
Tyr spared those he passed as little attention as he could give them to keep them in place and out of his face. A smile here, a veiled look there: Tyr cut through the milling herd and vanished up a set of stairs winged by two veterans who knew which way the wind blew and did their best to let it go on its intended way. They kept quiet as he sidled through their makeshift wall. The rest of the noise decreased with every upward step he took, and, by the time he reached the door at the top, the sound deafened to nothing but a far-off rumble, one he felt through his boots more than heard. He opened the door. He let himself in.
The club wasn’t anything official or polished in any sense of either word. Repurposed from an old warehouse and situated just shy of forgotten edges of Chicago, it was, on the outside, one call away from condemned in the eyes of the city itself. The interior, though, served too much of a purpose to let the facade speak for it. The office space up here was clean if spartan. The furniture was secondhand and well-used. The desk wasn’t cluttered—Tyr tried to stay organized—but the pair of scuffed boots resting on his desktop didn’t help things much.
Tyr huffed, half laugh, half scoff. He’d expected the visit, but as he’d long grown to expect when it came to his sire, he knew better than to expect manners to come with him. “You’ve definitely made yourself comfortable.”
Situated in the leather chair and plucking at the duct tape holding the arm onto the frame, Ryker raised a brow. “It’s my office, isn’t it?”
“If it’s anyone’s, it’s mine,” Tyr corrected as he closed the door behind him. Not that it was anything to brag over. His office wasn’t anything lavish, anything grand. It was barely big enough to do the work he had to do to keep the club operating while Ryker wandered like a tom cat. “Just because you bought it doesn’t make it yours.”
“I’ve been around enough Luminaries to feel the urge to tell you that yeah, it actually does.” Still, Ryker capitulated. He swung his legs off the desk. The impact rattled the floor. The mountain of a man rolled his shoulders, easing out invisible kinks as he braced his hands on the desk and made a show of taking Tyr in. “But that’s what they’d say, isn’t it? Sick of it, I really am. I’m only here for a few days while the current brat-of-the-week visits the Elder. Hopefully, you’ve got some new stock for me to meet this time. It’d do wonders for my mood.”
“Craving something a bit less selfish?”
“You’ve no godly idea.”
Tyr did, actually. He had enough trusted Triarii in place at this point to make it easier to leave the night-to-night operations to them while he pursued his outside work. Keeping company with a Nicciave didn’t always lead to rubbing elbows with the Luminary elite, but Tyr didn’t do things by halves.
Still… he had nothing on his sire’s exploits, that was for damn sure.
“You’re in luck,” Tyr said, folding his arms over his chest. “I’ve actually got some stock for you this time around.”
Ryker pulled a doubtful face. “It’s been six months since I felt the same. How many did you manage to scrounge up this time?”
“Just one.”
“One? Tyr, brother . I didn’t come all this way just to look at one measly runt.” Ryker leaned back in the seat and turned his fiery gaze towards the water-spotted ceiling. “We should consider moving locations if you’ve exhausted the viable stock around here. I can’t keep coming back here for nothing more than single-servings.”
“Quality over quantity, isn’t that the saying?”
“Sure, in an ideal world, but you’re not the one fielding interference with Luminaries. When a princess demands a pony, there’s no telling her there’s no good one in stock, you get me?” Ryker met Tyr’s gaze. Beneath his thick, ruddy beard, his mouth was firm, his jaw tight. “Beggars can’t be choosers, that’s the saying I’d like to tell them, but they aren’t the beggars. We are.”
“...I’ll do some digging,” Tyr relented. There wasn’t much else he could do, save start poaching. As lenient as Ryker could be when it came to things, Tyr doubted he’d sign off on something like that. “It’s been awhile since we’ve advertised.”
“Colleges will start filling up in the next couple of months. Have some of the younger ones linger around the campuses. There's always some cocky sons-of-bitches wandering around looking for fights there. That might plant us some seeds come spring. Until then…” Ryker grimaced a little. “I’ll just take what I’ve got now. What’s the deal with this one you’ve found?”
Tyr made a mental note to vet the regulars for good recruiters. If he were sitting at his desk, he’d just write it down. He eyed the yellow legal pad that had been trapped beneath the sole of Ryker’s dirt-caked boot. The topmost page was ruined. “They call her Ares.”
Ryker snorted. “They think that highly of her?”
Tyr shrugged. He stalked over to the desk and picked up the legal pad. He tapped its spine against the wood to clear it of dirt clods, grabbed a carpenter’s pencil from the cup on the corner, and made his notes while Ryker watched. “Maybe it’s all natural, like me.” He grinned widely over the paper pad as his sire rolled his eyes. “She never tried to correct them. Figured it was better to let her have it than force the truth out of her.”
“And you think she’d be a good fit?”
“She’s passed all the usual tests. The gauntlet didn’t even faze her.” The rules of the club hadn’t made her blink either. Tyr hadn’t been the one to introduce her to the place, so he couldn’t pretend to know how she’d taken it when she began to notice that poor fighters vanished, strong ones stopped showing their faces during the day, or that their mysterious benefactor rarely—if ever—showed his face. But he’d taken notice of her, and that only happened when a candidate proved they weren’t a wasted investment.
Tyr ran his tongue along the sharpened point of his developing fangs and tossed the legal pad back onto the desk. The pencil he tucked behind his ear, and in the process, he pushed back a few fallen strands of ashen hair that had escaped from his poorly tied excuse for a ponytail. His regimented, all capital lettered print stood out starkly against the yellow page. “Eden did some digging for me. She’s got no family, no connections outside our circles now. As far as I’m concerned, she’s a shoe-in.”
“Oh, Eden told you? That’s still going on?”
Tyr’s single eye narrowed as a grin split his lips. “Jealous?”
“Me? Never.” Ryker leaned back in his chair, laced his fingers over his stomach, and kicked his feet onto the desk. The loud thunk of his heavy boots striking the wood undercut Tyr’s jovial laughter. The wood gave a worrisome groan, buckling just a bit beneath the weight. Ryker raised a ruddy brow and smiled. His, Tyr couldn’t help but note, failed to hide his fangs at all. “Nicciave can be hard to trust. I just want to know if the information is good.”
“We’ve got an understanding. Trust me, it’s good.”
“The info or the pussy?”
“You’d trust me if I said both, right?”
“I’d trust you less if you didn’t.” They both laughed and laughed and laughed. Visits from Ryker were rarely ever intended for pleasure alone, but Tyr never had a bad time with his sire around. They sobered slowly and Ryker sent him a fond look that Tyr eagerly returned. “You’ll have to let me have a chat with your little slice of Eden sometime soon. I’ve met their sire a time or two. If that apple fell anywhere near that particularly rotten tree—”
“You’d live longer not mentioning the tree in their general vicinity,” Tyr warned, still smiling. “Trust me.”
“Something tells me that’s more than fair. But still, I know the fruit that made the wine. Rot aside, the info is probably the one concern I wouldn’t have coming from them. This Ares… She’s the one who won the fight downstairs.”
“Yeah. They were making the victory rounds as I was coming up here.”
“What about her opponent?”
“Dead—dying, I should say. Probably died on my way up the stairs. Blunt-force trauma to the brain, from the sound of things. He never stood a chance.”
“And her reaction?”
Tyr shrugged. “Her eyes weren’t focused on him. Doubt she cared. Doubt she even knows. All she wanted was to win.”
A dark, subdued smile blossomed over Ryker’s lips. “Send her in,” he said, “and I’ll handle the rest.”
“You gonna finally give me a little sister, daddy?” Tyr asked with a laugh. “It’s lonely being an only child, you know.” But Ryker just shooed him towards the door and rolled his eyes.
“Not my style,” he said, folding his arms over his barrel of a chest. His eyes narrowed as he met Tyr’s gaze. “Never was much one for child-rearing. You’re lucky you raised yourself else I’d have left you in a gutter years ago.”
“We’re both lucky. Without me, you’d actually have to do your own bitch-work.”
“You’re right. Being a bitch looks a hell of a lot better on you.”
Tyr laughed with his sire as he opened the door with one hand and flipped him off with the other. He did consider himself lucky, though he’d never tell Ryker that. They both got along well with one another, were cut from the same cloth. One look at Eden’s messy everything made the alternative look a hell of a lot less appealing. Sacrificing his desk for a night every so often was a small price to pay for this level of camaraderie.
As he began to close the door, Ryker called out to him. “If you’re a real good boy, maybe I’ll let you turn the next one.”
Tyr paused halfway through the threshold. He looked over his shoulder—nearly had to turn around to put Ryker in his narrow field of vision and not in the blindspot. “You serious?”
Ryker shrugged. He’d laced his fingers over his chest and gave a winsome smile. “What, you’d rather have a pony?”
With a snort, Tyr shook his head. “We’re more alike than you think, brother, and the last thing this world needs is me turning into another you.” A fledgling… What would he even do with one of those? More trouble than they were worth, that was the impression he got from all the things he’d seen, all the people he’d met. “Hold tight to any more bad ideas you may get tonight. I’ll be back with the new blood in a minute.”
“Don’t say I never offered,” came the casual reply.
“Don’t say I ever asked.” Tyr closed the door and shook his head on the landing. A fucking fledgling. It had to be a joke, and unlike most of the ones Ryker told, this one wasn’t all that funny. Eden would get a kick out of it, he bet. They’d laugh themself silly at the thought alone.
“A fledgling or a pony? Did you tell him you’d rather be ridden than the rider? You, a sire. God, could you imagine?”
On second thought… Tyr grimaced as he took the stairs two at a time. On second thought, maybe he’d just keep that offer to himself. It wasn’t a serious offer, and if it was, Ryker only asked it to see how receptive he’d be to taking on even more of his workload. Ryker never turned the prospects himself. The fact that he turned Tyr alone was monumental. No, Ryker just wanted to save himself time hunting for a prospective sire for the future initiates. As he’d learned quickly after taking the bite, no one worked harder to work less than Ryker fucking Fournier.
It was a lesson a lot of fledglings would have to learn, both in regards to Ryker and other oldbloods in general. Their life wasn’t easy just because it never had to end. Doublespeak and subterfuge encapsulated every conversation their kind had, and Ares… She would encounter that just as soon as she opened the door at the top of the stairs. Ryker wouldn’t gussy it up for her. He’d give it to her straight. It’d be a choice, but in the end, it wouldn’t be worded like much of one. If she were good stock, she’d realize that. She wouldn’t take it without a fight.
She was a smart one. From what Tyr had seen of her in the ring, she was also one hell of a fighter; she’d make the right choice, just like he had. And if she didn’t…
Tyr ran his tongue over the sharp points of his canines. The corner of his lip tugged upwards, half smile, half leer. The sound of the crowd downstairs slowly grew louder with every step he took. They would’ve scraped that loser off the floor by now, thrown him into the back. He’d be long dead by now, practically cold. Quick ones would drain him before rigor mortis set in, and the slow ones would wait for the next just entering the ring now.
Or Ares, he figured, if she told Ryker yes. But she was a smart one, and Eden was never wrong.