Girl Enchanted (Book 2 of The Girl Trilogy) (16 page)

“I don’t want to watch a
bunch of predators tear up mers,” Renena said adamantly. “I’m not
in the mood for that tonight.”

“Come on, come on,” Aver
insisted. He turned to the bet taker. “Put a thousand down on Aver
Hainsworth.”

“What?”
Amadathan exclaimed. “You can’t fight!” She grabbed Aver by the
shoulders. “You’re not thinking clearly. You could die!”

“Hey, Aver,” Ailey said
looking at him with his dark eyes. “That’s just suicide. Mers only
have less than a one percent chance against a cage of hungry great
whites.”

“What’s this all about?” I
asked Aver. The whole thing sounded so barbaric like the ancient
games from the Roman Coliseum times.

He gulped down another
bottle of X and laughed. “It’ll be fun! One mer gets put in a cage
with three sharks set before a live audience. The mer has to kill
all the sharks to win, but he can’t take any weapons with
him.”

My eyes widened. A lot of
thoughts rushed through my mind. I whispered in his ear so the
others couldn’t hear, “Can the devil die?”

Apparently, he thought
that was exorbitantly funny because he burst out laughing
uncontrollably. He turned to me with an ironic expression on his
face and said, “Yes, he can.” And then he whispered in my ear, “If
both halves of the devil die, then God will just create
another.”

I looked out on the dance
floor at the mers grooving to the hypnotic beat that was pounding
fast like my heart. The lights were flashing against their bodies.
I just wanted to run away and not deal with this or anything else.
A part of me thought Aver should die. He was the devil. But,
another part of me desperately didn’t want him to die and that part
scared the hell out of me.

I turned back to Aver and
said in a serious tone, “I don’t want you to fight.”

To my surprise, he smiled
softly at me and said, “Ok, I won’t then. I would do anything for
you.” He signaled the bet taker to come back over to us.

“Hey, what is it, buddy?”
The bet taker asked as he typed into the digitized ray
box.

“Cancel me out of the
fight. My girl loves me.”

I shook my head and rolled
my eyes.

“Look buddy. You can’t
withdraw once I placed your entry. You ought to know the
rules.”

My heart sank.

The bet taker straightened
his tie. “The only way to withdraw is if you get someone else to
take your place. The bets have already started.”

Aver turned to me. “I
tried, but it looks like there’s no turning back now. Sorry, wild
child. Don’t worry it’ll be fun fighting those sharks.”

“Go wait with your friends
in the audience,” the bet taker said. “We’ll call you when your
turn is up. It should be quick. There’s a fight up now. The guy’s a
goner for sure. He already lost his arms. Then we’re throwing in
one of the criminals who’s taking an exchange for freedom if he
wins. And you’ll fight next. If you’re the victor, you’ll get the
usual—royal status with a chateau beside the king’s
palace.”

“What about my bet,
chief?” Aver asked.

The guy smiled as he shook
his head. “If you’re victorious, you’ll get ten to one on your
bet—quite a lot of gold because—sorry buddy—the odds just aren’t in
your favor. Good luck!”

16

Aver was pumped up for the
fight with the great whites. He said he loved challenges. And the
fact that he was not allowed to use any weapons made it even more
exciting to him.

“A round of drinks for the
whole club,” he said to the waiter as we all got up ready to swim
to the other room where the fights were held. “Tonight’s my night!”
he chuckled as he paid the waiter in gold coins.

“I can’t believe how
stupid you are,” Amadathan said with tears in her eyes. “This isn’t
funny at all, Aver. We love you—what are we going to do
now?”

“Join me at my chateau,”
he grinned. “We’ll have a wild bash after.” He looked really
blitzed from all the drinking.

“This is just wrong,” Hark
said to Aver, staring at him with his wide green eyes. “Why don’t
you try to escape through the back door? You can leave Azkelon and
find some other place to live. It’s better than being eaten alive
by sharks.”

“I’m going to eat the
sharks,” Aver said with a wry smile.

“This isn’t funny,” Ailey
interjected. He ran his fingers through his black curly hair. “I’ll
escape with you. We can find another life, buddy.”

“We’ll all go,” Renena
said, wiping her light blue eyes. She started crying.

“Yeah, we’ll all go,”
Amadathan said.

Hark looked really
anxious. “We can’t escape. They have security at the doors and
they’ll be hot on our tales in no time. “I’ll take your place,
Aver.”

Renena threw herself on
Hark. “No, you can’t leave me.” Her long red hair was getting all
tangled up against his chest.

“Come on guys,” He
hiccupped and sort of swayed drunkenly. “I want to do this. Had I
known it would have gotten you all so upset I wouldn’t have
volunteered. Or maybe I would have.” He laughed and those sexy
dimples formed on his cheeks. “I’m just selfish through and
through. I want that chateau and the royal position on the king’s
court. And I want Cordellia there with me.” He looked at me through
his thick lashes and then fell over.

Right then, a group of
mermen in official jackets swam over. “Is this Aver Hainsworth?”
one of them asked.

We all didn’t say
anything. But, the bid taker called over from near the bar. “That’s
Hainsworth.”

They scooped up Aver into
their arms and carried him through some doors. We all swam after
him. Aver was fast asleep.

“What are you going to
do?” Renena called out to the mermen who were carrying Aver. “Are
you just going to throw him into the shark cage while he’s
asleep?”

“
If we
have to, then yes,” the tallest of the men said. He had a baseball
cap on his head facing backwards.

It was all Aver’s fault. I
knew that. But, this land of paradise was turning out to be
hell.

We entered the arena at
the end of a fight. There was a huge cage in the center of the room
where the matches took place. It was set up in a way where it was
easy to see the action from the stadium seating around it. But, for
those who wanted a closer look, there were huge cinema screens
elevated by posts that played the footage as it
occurred.

The room was full with a
lively audience. “All right! Eat him up,” one merman with a silly
smile yelled. “Go, go, go,” another merman clad in a lot of gold
jewelry called out. Others were stomping their feet in
excitement.

I was horrified by what I
saw on the screens. The directors were showing a close up of an arm
floating in the water within the cage. Then they cut to another
close up of two sharks tearing a merman’s torso in two. The crowd
screamed at that. There was a loud roar of excitement in the room
now. It was just disgusting and terrible. I had to turn
away.

As we followed the
officials to our seats, I observed the setting more carefully and
saw that there were three other smaller cages connected to the main
cage where they kept other sharks in waiting. It was my guess that
they rotated the sharks to make sure they were hungry for each
fight.

The officials set Aver
down on one of the stadium seats. He slouched over upon the chair
and was snoring lightly. “You can all take a seat. We’ll call Aver
Hainsworth when it’s his turn to fight,” said the merman with the
backward baseball cap.

With that, the officials
swam back to their positions at the doors. I saw one of them speak
into a miniature talker. He was probably relaying to whoever was in
charge that Aver was in the audience now.

“Has anyone ever won one
of these fights?” I asked the group.

“About one in every five
hundred kill all three great whites and assume the victory,” Aily
said as he glanced around the room. He looked like he was trying to
figure out an escape plan for Aver.

“But, those winners were
awake and they had well thought out plans,” Hark said.

“Like what?” I
asked.

Renena looked really
frightened, but she answered, “One mer grew unusually long, thick
fingernails and used them like knives to kill the
sharks.”

“Aren’t fingernails
weapons?”

“You just can’t bring
weapons with you, but if they are a part of your body, they can’t
stop you from using them.”

“Oh, wasn’t there that guy
who killed the sharks with his protruding arm bone after the flesh
got torn away?” Amadathan asked. “He used it like a knife and went
ballistic. The mers who win get really famous and receive a lot of
public honor.”

“We have got to figure out
how to get Aver out of this,” Hark whispered. “We can’t just let
them throw him into the shark cage while he’s sleeping.”

“You’re not taking his
place, so don’t even think about it,” Renena said.

Ailey started to get up
out of his seat, but Amadathan pushed him down. “You either. I’m
not letting you kill yourself in that shark cage for Aver. I love
Aver, but he was the one with the death wish.”

It didn’t seem like anyone
knew what to do. There were guards at every exit. And Aver couldn’t
even help one bit because he was asleep. At least if he was awake
maybe he might have a chance even if it was a slim one. Maybe he
could do some sort of magic trick to get himself out of this
one.

For a moment, Ailey was
just staring at Aver with his intense dark eyes. Then he got out of
his seat and swam over to him. He shook him on the shoulder. “Hey,
come on buddy. You’ve gotta wake up.”

But, Aver didn’t move. No
matter how much Ailey shook him, Aver just kept snoring.

Now that the great whites
had eaten the last of the body in the show cage, the shark keepers
opened the gate and threw a bloody calf into the holding cage that
they wanted the savages to swim into. With the scent of blood in
the water, the great whites swam out of the show cage and into the
attached cage. The three predators attacked the carcass
hungrily.

“Next up is Rodego Zay,”
the speaker sounded. “If Zay kills all three sharks, he will be
released from prison as charged for murder in the first
degree.”

The crowd cheered and
stomped their feet. Officials unlocked the fighter with dark eyes
and dark hair from his seat and took off his handcuffs. A middle
aged mermaid who I assumed was Zay’s mother stood up from the seat
beside him. She was crying and kissing him on the face.

“Don’t leave me Rodego.
Don’t leave me my son,” she pleaded as she wiped tears from her
rosy plump cheeks.

“I love you, Mama,” the
young merman called out as the officials brought him to the show
cage.

At once, the officials
threw him into the show cage and released the new hungry sharks
from the holding cage. The great whites were huge and mean
looking.

Aver’s friends and I sat
in our seats wide eyed with the look of terror on our faces. My
stomach tied in knots. I felt uncontrollably nauseous from
fear.

The sharks were circling
Ray now. He held very still and watched them. The mer on the
speaker was analyzing Ray’s physical strengths and weaknesses. His
chest, shoulders, and forearms were well developed and he was thin
enough that he could move rapidly through the water when he need.
But, he was staring the sharks in the eyes which was a
mistake.

The monstrous screens
showed close ups of Rays long fingernails which the speaker said
could be used to his advantage as fighting tools. But, he also said
they were weaker and shorter than other victors of the
past.

The sharks began circling
fast around Rodego. When they showed a close up of his face, he
looked scared. But, at once, he charged at the largest shark and
started tearing it open with his long fingernails. He made some big
incisions and long tears in its flesh. But, the creature was moving
fast and twisting around as it tried to throw him off. He stabbed
his finger nails hard and deep into the shark’s body and pulled out
a huge chunk of flesh into the water.

The other sharks got
exited and started fighting over the flesh in the water. The second
largest shark finally got the majority of it away from the other
and ate it up.

Rodego held fast to the
largest shark and continued to tear more and more chunks of flesh
from its body. By now, with all the flesh in the water, the other
two creatures were eating in a violent frenzy. They were ravenously
devouring the shark flesh.

But, then Rodego made a
mistake. He swam away from the dying shark before it was dead and
attached himself to the second biggest shark during its feeding
frenzy. Immediately Rodego started violently tearing off its flesh.
But, the largest, dying shark grabbed Rodego by his arm with its
teeth. The arm tore off from his body.

At once, blood gushed into
the water. Now the smallest shark went wild from the smell of blood
and bit into Rodego’s torso.