A Sinister Game (2 page)

This “Game
”
–
not as if asked by the timid questing of a child, but spoken wit
h a booming voice like thunder,
GAME
–
it was never ending.
It was eternal.

At times it baffled her
. There were moments in her young
life whe
n s
h
e found herself freezing, going suddenly completely and utterly still, and
really
wonder
ing what it
was all for.

Why do we
p
lay?
Why do we
keep going like this?

T
here was never an answer
; it was
just how things were done. Their
wor
ld had been like this forever; n
o one
could recall a time when it had been
different.

On the Playing Field, t
here were
“
good
”
teams and there were
“
bad
” teams
, otherwise known as “light” teams and “d
ark” teams
. It
was
the thrust of these two forces
and the ebb and tide of their gains and losses
that supposedly
kept the world turning as it did.
That was wh
at every player had been taught:
The Game was essential to their very survival.

Victoria
couldn’t
let the Grays win.
She was too strong, too determined for that.

There had never been a b
etter Dark leader than
the handsome,
cunning, and
enigmatic Victor
Black.
The Red T
eam
was
now
the last Light team left
on the Field. It was up to them
to maintain their ground where everyone else had failed and fallen beneath Black’s advances.

“I think this break will do me some good
,
”
she
said
aloud
, want
ing to get her
mind off
the gravity of the situation.
If she lost, the Red team would be broken up and reassigned to new colors and then lined up to fight as needed while the Game continued. None of them wanted that to happen. It was a very effective incentive to keep fighting as hard as they could.

Max watched her
carefully for a moment. Just before the weight of that gaze would have become uncomfortable, it lifted and he stood. “I agree.
We’re heading to the TGB later tonight. Will you join us for a drink?”

Victoria chewed her lip
. She normally didn’t drink. She wanted to keep her mind clear and sharp and ready for anything
that might happen at a moment’s notice
. But there were parts of her that felt as if they we
re pulle
d so
tight,
if she didn’t
do something to loosen them
soon, they would snap. And then she would have to step down for sure.

“Yeah,” she finally said
.

Max smil
ed a gorgeous white smile
.

“I’ll b
e there in a few
,
”
Victoria
finished.

“Good
,
”
h
e said simply, and turned away.

As he left the control room through the archway that led to t
he meeting area
beyond, Victoria let out a long sigh and returned to the monitor in front of her.
“Show me
current Gray
T
eam
locations,” she issued
softly.

The computer lit up
,
and a
hologram
of a map appeared before Victoria
. There were no
lights
of any color
anywhere on it.

“Current team
locations are unknown,” the computer told her.

Victoria blinked. “Son of a bitch,” she muttered. Black had
just begun another Game,
made another move.
And now she had no way of knowing what it was.

* * * *

Victor closed his eyes, clenched his teeth, and slowly pulled his fi
st
back out of the wall he’d
shoved it through. White dust and chunks of plaster clung to the black leather of his glove
for a moment before crumbling
to the floor.

He turned in place, his boots crunching the chalk into more dust on the marble, and made his way back to the table at the other end of the room
. A decanter of wine waited atop it,
along with the
crystal
go
blet he’d just finished draining
.

He poured himself another drink. Maybe this one would help where the other had not.
He raised the glass to his lips and stopped, his green eyes pe
ering over the rim
at the man who had just entered the room.

He lowered the goblet and waited for the other man to speak.

“She’s getting to you, isn’t she
?
”

Black stared at his him. Every team consisted of a leader, a captain, and three players. John Storm was the Gray Team captain, a stout man with gray hair and ample musculature to handle any necessary
hand-to-hand
combat on the Field.

It was a good long while before Victor
deigned to respond. When he did, it was with the slow, careful deliberation with which he did everythin
g. He
placed the still-full goblet back onto the table beside him and then crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the wall. “What of it?”

Captain Storm
smiled and shrugged. “Nothing, really. It is only that no other team leader has taken this long to fall before your mini
strations. It must be
f
rustrating.”

A muscle in Victor’s jaw ticked.
“She will lose
in the end.” He pushed away from the wall and strode to the command seat that awaited him. “They always do.”

“Aye,
but Red is different, isn’t she?
”

John Storm
was not a young man; h
e knew almost as much about the Game and all of
its idiosyncrasies as Black
. Right now, the man’s inherent ability to detect things where they were supposedly hidden was getting under Victor’s skin.

“Did you have a
reason
for coming
in here?” Black asked without looking at him. He appeared to be focused on the machine in front of him and the maps it showed him as he deftly waved his hands this way and that, moving holograms le
f
t and right, back
ward
and forward, zeroing in on elements within the four quadrants of the Playing Field.

The captain of the Gray T
eam just watched him for a moment in silence.

Finally, Bl
ack turned to face him. “Hmm?” h
e pressed.

Storm
smiled again. “No sir,” he said
. “I’ll be on my way.” He turned to leave, calling over his shoulder just before he stepped through the archway into the other room. “We’ll be at the TGB taking full advantage of the break.”

Victor watched him go, the jade in his eyes darkening.

Storm
had struck a ne
rve. Victoria Red was different
indeed.

Victor had been
leading a team in
the Game for more than four hundred years. Time became something other than simply time when it lasted that long and a person’s brain was around to witness it. It was like giving the cosmos an audience. It both sped up and slowed down. It became
astronomical
and diminutive. The things that would take forever still took forever, but it was a slightly faster forever than it would have been had he not been there to see it.

It was li
ke stepping out of a painting – a
nd then stepping
further
back
to view the whole thing
.
He was cursed with a vision of the big picture.

Victoria Red seemed to be able to see it, too.

Despite her youth, despite the fact that she was only now rea
ching maturity, Victor could recognize
the knowledge there in her golden eyes.
Eyes like the sun….

Victor swallowed and turned away from the door to peer, unseeing, at his controls once more.

How many hours – how
many
– had he spent manipulating the aspects of the Game from these controls?
Enough.
However
many it had been
,
i
t was enough
.

Questioning the Game was pointless. No one understood why it existed or why it seemed to be the lifeblood of their world. They only knew that it had to go on.

That
wasn’t good enough for Victor, n
ot any more.
And h
e
recognized that
same
dubious dissatisfaction
in the stunningly beautiful
Victoria Red.

Black
smiled
to himself
. I
t was a nasty smile. He knew
that
she didn’t even remember her
real
name.

But
he
did.
He
knew who she had once been.
It was a knowledge that he kept buried w
ithin himself like a treasure. It was a boon safely hidden
somewhere near the darkness where his heart had once been.

Now he stood and paced back to the goblet of wine that he’d neglected a few minutes before. Hastily, he lifted it and downed its
entire
contents, closing his eyes as the liquid fire roared past his teeth and down his throat, warming him from the inside out.

He’d almost had her tonight.

But she was strong
,
and her
willpower
was unbreakable.

Victor set down the goblet with a loud thunk and ran a hand through his wavy
pitch-black
hair.
If it
weren’t
for the Game and
her fear of what would happen should it ever end, he would
have had her long ago. He was certain of it. She understood. She
knew
. There was a part of her that empathized with him in a way that no one else on their forsaken world
ever had
.

If she would only surre
nder. If she would only give in a
nd
j
oin
him… t
hey could change the world together. Their combined abilities would be insurmountable.

They could end the Game.

Victor pinched the bridge of his nose; a headache was coming on.

The Game. This
endless
, pointless, worthless
fucking
Game
.

He straightened and turned to the control panel, closing the distance to it in two long strides. “Show me the Red leader.”

The computer’s holographic lights flitted and flashed and then Victoria Red was smiling back at him from h
er Game portrait. It was the portrait that
every leader po
ssessed. Even that
irritated Victor. The idea that other leaders had a piece of Victoria made his blood
heat uncomfortably.

The picture was a current one, taken just recently
,
if the length of her caramel
-
colored hair wa
s any i
ndication. The long, shimmering,
wavy
locks fell past her shoulders and over the
swell of her breasts beneath her snug
Game leader uniform.

Her golden eyes sparkled, clear and bright and keen. Her teeth were straight and white, her lips perfectly pink, her complexion slightly tanned. She’d spent some time outdoors
before the photo was snatched
.

Victor
took a slow, deep breath and let it out through his nose.
He
un-fisted
his hands, which had curled tight at his sides. The leather of his gloves
creaked.
“Show me the Red T
eam’s current location, pinpointing each member.”