A holograph flickered to life, hanging over the announcer’s head. The words slowly rotated and flickered.

HUNTER [34] VS. WOLF [11]

“Tonight, our reigning, undefeated champion—Hunter!” cried the announcer. The crowd bellowed. “—takes on undefeated newcomer, Wolf!” Mixed boos and cheers. Evidently not everyone had bet against him.

Scarlet was hardly listening, straining hard at the holograph. Wolf [11]. Eleven wins, she suspected. Eleven fights.

Eleven nights?

Her grandmother had been missing for seventeen days and counting. But her father—hadn’t he said they’d only kept him for a week? She frowned, frustrated from the calculations.

Hunter yelled, “We’re having wolf for dinner tonight!”

Hundreds of hands slapped against the edge of the platform like a roll of thunder.

Wolf’s concentration darkened into something thirsty but patient.

The holograph flashed bright red, then evaporated with the sound of a bellowing horn.

The mediator dropped down into the crowd, and the fight began.

Hunter threw the first punch. Scarlet gasped, the movement almost too quick to follow, but Wolf ducked easily and skirted out from Hunter’s shadow.

Hunter was impressively fast for his bulk, but Wolf was faster. A series of blows were deflected, until Hunter’s fist finally connected with a sickening crunch. Scarlet recoiled.

The crowd erupted, pushing and screaming against her. The frenzy was palpable, the crowd salivating for blood.

Moving as if it were all choreographed, Wolf aimed a solid kick to Hunter’s chest. A loud thud shook the ground as Hunter was knocked onto his back. He was only down for a moment, before jumping to his feet. Wolf inched away, waiting. Blood was dribbling from his lips, but he didn’t seem bothered by it. His eyes glowed.

Hunter attacked with renewed vigor. Wolf took a punch in the stomach and crumpled over with a grunt. It was followed by a blow that sent him careening to the edge of the stage. He stumbled to one knee, but was up on his feet before Hunter could come closer.

He shook his head in an oddly doglike manner, wild hair flying, and then crouched with his big hands poised at his sides, staring at Hunter with that peculiar grin.

Scarlet wrapped her fingers around her sweatshirt’s zipper, wondering if that tick was how Wolf had gotten his nickname.

When Hunter came barreling across the stage again, Wolf lunged to his side and aimed a kick square in Hunter’s back. Hunter collapsed to both knees. The crowd booed. A roundhouse kick, this one at Hunter’s ear, sent him sprawling on his side.

Hunter made to get up, but Wolf aimed for his ribs, sending him back onto the stage. The crowd was in a fervor, screeching and calling foul.

Wolf stepped back, allowing Hunter time to pull himself up by the ropes and settle back into his fighting stance. There was a new glint in Wolf’s eye, like he was enjoying this, and when his tongue darted out to lick the blood from his mouth, Scarlet grimaced.

A raging bull, Hunter charged again. Wolf blocked one punch with his forearm but took another in his side. Then his elbow shot out, catching Hunter in the jaw, and Scarlet knew he’d taken the hit intentionally. Hunter stumbled backward. A heel in the chest nearly knocked him off his feet again. Wolf landed a punch to his nose, and a spurt of blood oozed down Hunter’s chin. A knee in Hunter’s side had him crouching over, groaning.

Scarlet flinched with each blow, her stomach roiling. How people could stand to watch this, to enjoy this, baffled her.

Hunter fell to his knees and Wolf was behind him in a breath, his face violently contorted, his hands on each side of Hunter’s head.

… handed me the poker …

And this man—this monster—had her grandmother.

Scarlet clamped both hands over her mouth, smothering the cry, as her ears waited for the snap of Hunter’s neck.

Wolf froze and blinked at her. His eyes flickered, empty and mad one moment, then almost dazed. Surprised to see her there. His pupils widened.

Revulsion burned through Scarlet’s nerves. She wanted to look away, wanted to run, but she was anchored to the ground.

Then Wolf leaped back, letting Hunter slump to the stage under his own weight.

The horn blared again. The crowd was a mixture of cheers and boos, delight and anger. Outright glee at seeing the great Hunter defeated. None of them minded the blind cruelty, or the fact that they’d almost witnessed a murder.

As the mediator climbed up onto the ropes to announce Wolf as the winner, Wolf peeled his focus away from Scarlet, shoved past the man, and hauled himself over the ropes. The crowd surged away from him, shoving Scarlet backward. She barely kept her balance as she was nearly crushed from the shuffling crowd.

Wolf sprang up, using his hands and feet to propel him forward. Sprinting full speed, he disappeared through the yawning exit and dashed off into the silvery weeds.

Red and blue flashed in the distance.

The crowd swarmed, buzzing with confusion and curiosity. The muttered consensus seemed to be that Wolf was a new hero, but a savage one.

It wasn’t long before someone else noticed the lights and panic swept through them, people at first spouting defiant words against the police, before rushing for the door and scattering across the abandoned farm.

Scarlet was shaking as she pulled her hood up and fled with them. Not everyone was running—someone behind her was trying to call order. There was a gunshot and mad laughter. Up ahead, the girl with the zebra hair was standing on a storage crate, pointing and laughing at the cowards who would flee from the police.

Scarlet escaped into the midnight air and the noise faded without the warehouse’s echo around her. She could hear the sirens now, mixing with the thrum of crickets. On the dirt road outside the building, she spun in a full circle as the crowd jostled around her.

There was no sign of Wolf.

She thought she’d seen him turn right. Her ship was parked to the left. Her pulse was racing, making it hard to breathe.

She couldn’t leave. She hadn’t gotten what she’d come for.

She told herself that she would be able to find him again. When she’d had time to gather her wits. After she talked to the detectives and persuaded them to track Wolf down and arrest him and find out where he’d taken her grandmother.

Tucking her hands into her pockets, she hurried around the building, toward her ship.

A sickening howl stopped her, sucking the air out of her lungs. The night’s chatter silenced, even the loitering city rats pausing to listen.

Scarlet had heard wild wolves before, prowling the countryside in search of easy prey on the farms.

But never had a wolf’s howl sent a chill down her spine like that.

Nine

“Argh, get it off, get it off!”

Cinder spun, steadying herself on the curved, slick concrete walls as she cast the flashlight behind her. Thorne was writhing and squirming in the cramped tunnel, swatting at his back and emitting an array of curses and unmanly shrieks.

She sent the beam of light to the ceiling and saw a thriving mass of cockroaches scuttling across it in all directions. She shuddered, but turned away and kept moving.

“It’s only a cockroach,” she called back to him. “It’s not going to kill you.”

“It’s in my uniform!”

“Would you keep quiet? There’s a manhole up ahead.”

“Please tell me we’ll be exiting through that manhole.”

She scoffed, more preoccupied with the map of the sewer system in her head than on her companion’s squeamishness. Even though the thought of a cockroach beneath her shirt did make her squirm, she figured it would still be preferable to walking through the ankle-deep sludge with one bare foot, and she wasn’t whining.