“No one here will welcome you,” my father agreed. “You might not be killable the way we are, but all gods depend on humans for their power, and yours relies on others perceiving you as the lord of champions.” His flashed the Gameskeeper a sharp-toothed smile. “Tell me, Spirit of the Arena, what happens to your power when the god of winners loses?”
The Gameskeeper went still, his eyes shooting wide. “A-all champions fall sooner or later,” he stuttered at last. “But people forget, and new champions rise!”
My father chuckled and looked up at the flock of drone cameras that were still hovering under the supports of the broken dome. “I don’t think they’ll forget this.”
Before I could ask my father what he meant by that, the Great Yong plucked the Gameskeeper off the sand and ate him. Literally shoved him whole into his mouth and snapped his teeth closed. Since spirits didn’t have blood, it wasn’t the gory spectacle it should have been, but I still recoiled in horror, backing away so fast that I lost my hold on his scales. The moment our connection broke, something inside me kicked hard, making me double over with a grunt. When I opened my eyes again, I was back in my body, lying gasping on the sand with Nik’s nervous face hovering over me.
“Hey,” he said as I coughed, his worried expression turning to relief as he reached down to brush the hair out of my face. “Are you okay?”
“Are you okay?” I asked, sitting up in alarm.
Nik looked horrible. I mean, he’d looked bad before with his chewed-up neck, but this was even worse. There was a huge bloody gash on his forehead that I swear hadn’t been there when I’d lain down, and the bulky plates of his crush-proof armor were riddled with bullet dents and scorch marks.
“What the hell happened to you?”
Nik shrugged. “The usual,” he said, scooting over so that I could see past him.
My eyes went wide. The sand around us looked like a war zone. There’d only been a dozen or so terrified security people shooting at us when I’d gone to help my dad. Now, the small stretch of arena that hadn’t been taken over by the Gameskeeper’s duel was littered with groaning, wounded bodies. Mostly hired muscle in security armor, but there was one unarmored figure I recognized immediately.
“Holy crap, is that Kauffman?”
“No other,” Nik said with a cruel smirk. “Pro tip: next time you decide to stab someone full of glass, make sure you cut him enough that he stays down. Those cowards were content to make a show of shooting at us until he showed up and started screaming about how the Gameskeeper was always watching and halfhearted obedience wouldn’t be tolerated. Things got serious after that.”
“I see,” I said, looking at Kauffman, who was lying on his back with his face looking even worse than the last time Nik had punched him. “Looks like ‘serious’ didn’t end so well for him.”
“Actually, he was doing great until your dad started burning the Gameskeeper,” Nik said, reaching up to apply pressure to his head cut, which was still bleeding sluggishly. “I was about to grab your body and make a run for it when the Gameskeeper started going down. Once that happened, Kauffman’s company line stopped working. All the guards who could still move broke and ran, and he suddenly found himself all alone.”
“You’d think he’d learn,” I said, shaking my head at Kauffman’s groaning body. “Good on you for not killing him, though.”
“I really should at this point,” Nik grumbled. “For all his ‘just business’ talk, bastard doesn’t know when to quit. I’d be saving myself a lot of trouble if I offed him. But I don’t do that crap anymore, so I guess I’ve got no one to blame but myself when he shows up with a grudge in a few months.”
“When that happens, we’ll deal with it,” I promised, rising up to kiss him on the cheek. “But I’m proud of you for sticking to your principles.” I wasn’t sure I would have been that strong. After all the trouble he’d caused us, a dead Kauffman sounded like a lovely turn of events to me.
Nik was grinning when I sat back down. He was leaning in for a proper kiss when a deep growl interrupted him, and we glanced up to see my father towering over us.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he said, not sounding sorry at all. “But I need to check on my daughter.”
“I’m fine, Dad,” I said, too happy that was true to be miffed by his hovering.
Now that everyone was alive, it was starting to sink in that we’d won. Actually won this time. The Gameskeeper was gone, and his arena was pretty much destroyed. My mother was leading the last of her troops back over to my father as I watched, bowing before him as she reported that the entire Rentfree chasm was now under their control. My father nodded approvingly and lowered his head to whisper something in her ear. Whatever he said made my perfect mother blush scarlet, and she darted away, practically bowling her guards over as she raced to the nearest helicopter parked on the edge of the arena. When she came back a second later, she was holding a man’s dark suit, white shirt, and mirror-black leather shoes in her arms.
“Wait,” Nik said as she presented these to my father with a bow. “She brought him a change of clothes?”
“Dragons are naked when they go back to their human shapes,” I explained, turning my back politely as my father’s scaly body vanished in a poof of smoke. “You learn to travel prepared.”
“I can see that,” Nik said. “It’s just…I mean…is there anything your mother doesn’t think of?”
“Of course not,” said a deep voice behind
