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  "There are other choices, but none with consequences that I can live with. I will meet whatever challenger you judge most appropriate. May I go get my queen before we begin?"

  Five minutes later Celeste and I had been led to a large cave on the far side of the valley that had a sandy circle in its center. Conscious of the fact that there wasn't any way to get hold of replacement clothes here in the enclave, I stripped down to my ha'bit and shifted forms with an explosion of power that told me that my beast was ready and willing for another fight.

  I stepped into the circle and sank my talons as far down as they would go, testing the depth of the white sand. It was deep, much deeper than I would have expected. The lamias hadn't just poured some sand on top of the floor, they'd bored down into the rock, creating a depression at least a foot deep before hauling in sand to fill it up.

  Assuming that it had all been done by hand—I hadn't seen any kind of machinery since we'd arrived—that was a lot of work. The lamias obviously took their challenge matches very seriously.

  There were enough glow bulbs hanging from the ceiling to illuminate the cavern with the bright, white light of an operating room. Every detail was thrown into stark relief so that those watching wouldn't miss any of the fight's nuances.

  I stretched my massive hybrid arms, making sure that I didn't have any residual stiffness from my most recent injuries. Everything seemed to be in working order, which was good, because my opponent had just stepped into the far end of the circle.

  Based on his height, I was up against another worker, but he was more muscular than my first opponent had been. All of the lamia were muscular, but this one was built more like a consort than a worker.

  It wasn't something designed to make me enthused about the fight. They'd picked out someone more dangerous to fight me this time, but there had been a healthy dose of luck involved in my last victory. I wasn't sure that I could win a fight against someone who was even faster and stronger.

  Set looked back and forth between the two of us to make sure that we were ready and then clapped his hands. My opponent didn't charge forward. I was pretty sure that this lamia hadn't been there for my last fight, but apparently news of my tactics had made the rounds and this guy was adjusting his tactics accordingly.

  We moved slowly towards the center of the sandy ring, mirroring each other's movements and I started working my way through a threat assessment. He was big, nearly as tall as me, but massive in a way that told me I couldn't hope to match him in a straight-up contest of strength. He moved well too, obviously comfortable with the sand and unintimidated by being in a fight for his life, but his step was a shade heavier than I'd expected.

  That was probably a bad sign. It probably meant he was even heavier and stronger than I'd realized, but it did give me the barest beginnings of an idea.

  Our first exchange was tentative. He jabbed at me, leading with the claws of his right hand while I batted the blow away. Against another hybrid I would have drawn a decent amount of blood—nothing crippling, but something to begin weakening him. Instead I got only the smallest trickle of red to show for my efforts.

  I darted towards the lamia and then shifted to the side at the last second. I wasn't trying to actually score on him, although I did manage to nick him in the side. I wanted to force some motion into the fight and test out his footwork.

  He was good, but then I wouldn't have expected anything less from the second opponent Set had selected for me. He shifted his feet exactly like he needed to. He didn't cross his feet or do anything else wrong, but he wasn't as fast as he should have been.

  He was used to fighting two-thousand-pound alligators and werewolves. Against enemies like that he needed to be fast, but even more importantly, he needed to make sure he didn't get bowled over in the first few seconds of the fight. If he could get even just one shot with his venom in then keep his feet, it would be just a matter of time before he would come out on top.

  I couldn't go toe to toe with him. Maybe Jasmin could have, but I knew that would just get me killed. Instead I needed to make him fight the kind of fight that he wasn't used to fighting. I needed to work the perimeter and make him move around as much as possible.

  I started circling him, varying my speed and tempo, always trying to stay just close enough that he could almost reach me if he lunged. At first he was content to just turn in place so that he could keep me from getting around behind him.

  That lasted until the first time that I started to sprint left and then planted and went right instead. He'd already anticipated that I'd keep going left and he committed himself too heavily.

  I darted in close, knocking his left hand away with my right, and then I slammed the claws on my left hand into the meat of his thigh. I hadn't expected to be quite so successful, or I might have passed up the chance to stab him in the thigh and just gone for a clinch from behind.

  I still tried to get behind him, but now I wasn't quite fast enough to make it happen and he connected with his elbow to the back of my head. The blow sent me flying, but I hit the ground in a roll and came back up in time to just barely avoid being impaled through the chest by his claws.

  He still managed to catch me with a long, raking attack across the ribs, but I moved laterally and kept him from landing anything else while I blinked away the spots in my vision. It had been a long time since I'd taken that much blunt trauma to the head in a fight and I'd forgotten the sheer shock of being hit unexpectedly.

  My opponent was feeling his oats and he charged me again, trying to keep me off balance, but I broke to his left and he couldn't quite keep up with me with the added stress on his injured leg. Realizing that wasn't working, he slowed down and stopped in the center of the circle again, waiting for me to make the next move.

  I resumed circling, feeling out his footwork and response speed now that he was injured. He was compensating, but I could tell there was a difference. He darted forward and managed to slice me across the outside of my arm before I twisted away, but I didn't riposte with an attack of my own.

  It was tempting to try to make him pay for the blood that was now coursing down my arm, but I couldn't afford to get sucked into the kind of close-quarters pounding match that favored him. I needed to stay mobile and figure out why his footwork seemed different than it had been a few moments before.

  We traded two more sets of lightning-fast blows, little more than jabs really, before I figured out what was going on. I was bleeding from my left arm and the right side of my chest now, but it had been worth it.

  The lamia was compensating for the wound on his leg by anticipating that I would go to his weak side again the next time I made a move. He was good, he wasn't committing too drastically, but even so he was a little bit slower now going either direction than he'd been before.

  Part of me wanted to go towards his weak side again. I'd beaten him off the mark once before he'd been injured and there was a good chance that I could do it again. If I could, there was a chance that I could cripple that leg once and for all, which would end the fight.

  It was a powerful lure. I moved the slightest bit closer, circling to the lamia's right, to his strong side, and then I sped up nearly to full speed. He was tracking me right up until I did a stutter step. He was banking on the fact that I was going to change direction, but instead I threw myself forward, continuing around his strong side and slamming the claws on my right hand home in his right leg.

  I didn't try to block his right hand as it came around in an attempt to claw my neck as I went past. There wasn't time, not if I wanted to land the blow to his leg, but it was the riskiest thing I'd done up to that point in the fight.

  It's one thing to duck a punch in a human-style boxing match and know that they might clip you as they bring their fist back in. It's a completely different situation when your opponent might rip your throat out on the backswing.

  My gamble paid off. I managed to stay half a step ahead of him, just far enough away that the tips of his claws
went whistling past my ear, and then I was back to circling. He was definitely slower now. He was having a hard time tracking fast enough to keep me in sight, which meant that I should be able to get much cleaner shots at his legs now if I wanted them.

  I reversed direction, more to test out his footwork again than because I expected to generate some kind of opening, and my opponent tripped himself up when one of his legs caught on the sand rather than lifting up high enough to cleanly respond to my movements. I didn't even think about what came next.

  I charged in and rammed him with my shoulder, knocking him off balance even further, and then I slashed the outside of his right leg with everything I had. The semi-impenetrable scales that had been so effective turning my attacks when he was able to angle his body to turn them into glancing blows weren't up to the challenge now and my claws tore through flesh with an ease that would have been sickening if not for the bloodlust bleeding into my mind from my beast.

  I jumped backwards to avoid the lamia's attack, and managed to sink the tips of my claws into his arm as it went whipping past my face. He was as good as done and we both knew it. Even now he was trying to get his collapsed leg underneath himself so that he could face me again.

  I looped around behind him, moving fast enough that he didn't have any chance of keeping up with me, and then I darted in and savaged his other leg. He would have fallen to the ground then, but I grabbed him by one shoulder, steadying him before his legs could completely give way.

  "I've won. He's at my mercy. Go ahead and declare me the victor."

  Set met my eyes with something that looked like sadness in his expression and shook his head. "I'm sorry, but honor doesn't allow for such a thing. We've been commanded by our queen to fight to the death."

  I opened my mouth, but before I could get the words out, Set hissed something to the worker and my opponent thrashed around in my grip. I thought for a second that the wounded lamia was trying to get one last blow in and I tightened my grip on him, but the precaution proved to be unnecessary.

  Rather than trying to hurt me the worker reached up and shoved his own hand into his chest. I looked at the corpse that had been a person, albeit a strange one, a few seconds previously and then slowly lowered him to the ground. I was in shock. I'd never seen anything like it, and hoped to never see anything similar ever again.

  "You are victorious, Isaac Nazir. Are you ready to claim the boon that tradition provides for you?"

  I shifted back to human form and shook my head before turning to go, sickened by the whole proceeding, but Celeste grabbed my hand before I made it to the entrance of the cave.

  "Don't waste this, Isaac. You may not get many more shots at having the lamia offer you anything in their power."

  She wanted to tell me what to ask for. I could see the desire in her eyes, but she didn't say anything else. She just sat there, my hand in hers, and waited for me to make a decision. There was no way of telling what made her stop short of actually suggesting a particular request. It was possible that my words from our first day inside the enclave had finally sunk in and she didn't want to generate any more ill will with Set and the rest, but I didn't think that was the reason—at least not all of it.

  The boon was something that I had earned, something that I'd risked my life to obtain even if it hadn't been the primary reason for agreeing to fight. I'd earned it and it was mine to choose.

  Even more, she was right. That had been another close fight; there wasn't any guarantee that I'd win the next one, not if the opponents kept getting tougher and tougher.

  I stopped and looked back at Set for several seconds as I considered what it was that I most wanted in the entire world. Jess certainly, but the lamias couldn't give her to me anymore than anyone else could. Only Jess could give herself to someone.

  An end to the war, victory for Alec and the rest of us rebels, but that felt like it was beyond what the male lamias could provide me. The thought of scores of lamias descending on the Coun'hij and wiping out Puppeteer's werewolves with their venom, was tempting, but I was fairly sure that only their queen could decide to enter the war.

  I wanted to talk to my friends and family, I wanted to learn more about the lamias, but none of that mattered if I didn't survive the next challenge match. It hit me like a wrecking ball. That was it, I needed an edge, some way to survive however many fights I had left before the queen finally agreed to see us.

  "I want you to train me. That is the boon that I request. I want you to do everything you can to give me an edge in the coming challenges."

  Set looked at me for several long seconds and I got the feeling I'd asked for something that didn't mean what I thought it meant by the time he finally nodded his agreement.

  "Very well, I will come find you tomorrow morning and begin your training."

  Chapter 16

  Isaac Nazir

  The Lamia Enclave

  Ash and Kristin were still sleeping when I rolled out of bed the next morning. I could hear Celeste breathing in her room, but I didn't disturb her. She wasn't sleeping as much as I was, but she was still sleeping more than normal.

  I couldn't blame her. Until we were finally granted an audience with the lamia queen there wasn't anything for her to do other than sit around and take care of Ash and Kristin.

  Boredom had started setting in a long time ago, but it was more than that. Having time to think was helping me start to put some of my demons to rest, which was something that was long overdue. All of that time seemed to be having the opposite effect for Celeste. There had been a couple of times recently where I'd been woken up by screams and assumed it was Kristin again before realizing it was Celeste.

  I hadn't said anything to her about it yet. She didn't seem like the type to welcome prying questions and I didn't want to trigger any kind of confrontation between us. Things had been going well enough ever since she'd helped me out that first night and I didn't want to rock the boat.

  I rolled out of bed, grabbed a light breakfast of one of the more citrusy fruits growing in the kitchen, and then headed outside to see if I could find Set. The transition to an all-fruit diet had gone better than I'd expected.

  Normally a shape shifter had to keep plenty of protein in their diet if they wanted to keep control over their beast. All I could figure was that one or more of the odd varieties of fruit that we'd been eating must have decent amounts of protein in it.

  My beast had actually been quite a bit easier than normal to keep under control since we'd arrived at the enclave, which made me wonder if part of the issue over the last several months had been that I'd been missing something key from my diet. It was something to keep in mind for when I went back to the normal world, assuming I survived that long.

  I went to the entrance to the main lamia cave and asked the guards if they knew when Set would be looking for me. They didn't answer, but one of them hissed something to someone inside the cave and five minutes later Set came outside.

  "You are ready, Isaac Nazir?"

  "Yes, but we don't need to start right now if it's not convenient for you. I was just trying to find out when to expect you."

  "Now is an appropriate time."

  I followed Set to the circular cave where I'd fought the day before and then transformed and stretched to loosen up some of the knots. I'd been expecting Set to jump right into teaching me techniques. He'd never been overly verbose before, but this time he assumed a kind of parade rest and examined me for several seconds.

  "I was perhaps hasty in my agreement to train you, Isaac Nazir. I am still willing to do so to the best of my ability, but honor compels me to tell you that I may not be able to deliver that which you requested."

  "I don't understand."

  "You did not ask for only training, you asked for an edge in the challenges you may face in the future. I can provide training, but the act of doing so will skew my perception of your abilities, causing you to qualify to face stronger opponents. It is a problem that is…circular in nat
ure."

  I cocked my head to one side, interested in seeing where he was going.

  "That would be challenge enough, but there are other considerations. If you continue to defeat your other challengers, you and I will face each other in this very circle. If that were to occur, my having trained you would possibly make you less likely to defeat me."

  Looking at Set's massive bulk and knowing that his own people considered him one of their best fighters, I almost told him that I didn't expect to last long enough for that to be an issue, but something stopped me.

  "You seem the kind of man not to present a problem without first arriving at a solution, Set. What do you suggest?"

  He bowed his head slightly as though in appreciation of a compliment. That made me wonder how many of his mannerisms were copied from his interactions with humans and shape shifters previously and how many were the result of actual parallels between our races.

  "In this instance I have not been able to see a solution that satisfies the full demands of honor. I have just come from speaking with my queen in the hopes that she would be able to illuminate my path."

  My pulse sped up. The lamia queen was an enigma. She was the reason that we were here cooling our heels. I'd already killed two of her people for no good reason that I could see. If she had agreed to talk to us then the deaths wouldn't have needed to take place, but I saw no indication from Set or the others that she cared about the deaths of her people.

  That could indicate someone who was so caught up in her power that she no longer viewed her subjects as real people, but that didn't seem to match up with the fact that Set had gone to her for advice when stumped on a question of honor. Even more confounding was the fact that she was supposed to be capable of seeing things the rest of us couldn't.

  Celeste's ancestors had stopped short of claiming that the queen was some kind of omniscient deity, but they'd walked right up to that line. How could someone like that allow unnecessary deaths when she knew how the challenge matches were likely to end even before they started?