After the war, London is in chaos.
Packs are battling it out for dominance in the streets, lycans are killing each other in illegal fight dens. The Royals are being murdered.
All Juliet wants to do is forget - forget Sebastien, forget the wa...
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There was a crowd of lycans gathered outside the Westfield Shopping Centre, all of them waiting for the portal to the fight den to open, when the taxi pulled up outside. Their rowdy laughter and the occasional wolf whistle rang out over the noise of traffic and the atmosphere thrummed with palpable excitement.
I climbed out of the taxi, my eyes sweeping nervously over the group. I hated gatherings like this — it was difficult to pick up individual scents, or voices — but as I approached them, I couldn't help but feel a faint pang of loneliness. There was a part of me that longed to be a part of a community like before. Part of a pack.
I noticed a few stragglers — possible fighters, maybe? — lingering on the fringe of the crowd as I approached. They were sizing each other up, cataloguing every movement, looking for a sign of weakness. It was easy to tell the unaffiliated from the ones who had been inducted; there was an anxious energy about them, like they were hyperaware of the fact that they were trespassing, even now.
We were waiting twelve, maybe thirteen, minutes before the air outside the shopping centre began to shimmer. It was like a mirage; a thin film of magic that rippled in the shape of a doorway, almost invisible but not quite. The crowd moved toward it, rows of people spilling into the portal. When it was my turn, I hurried through it, grimacing at the feeling of cold slime.
The portal brought us into a narrow, underground tunnel. The smell of stale air and blood was rife in the small space, and a rickety looking sign rose up above our heads with the word Howler written in neon red. Lanterns were nailed to the walls, flooding the place with yellow light. We followed the tunnel down onto a derelict train platform, where a set of stairs led onto the train tracks. Another metal platform hung from the ceiling, suspended above the rails by a set of thick, metal chains.
I felt a flicker of excitement unfurl in the pit of my stomach as I moved inside. I remembered coming to places like this with Sebastien when I was younger; I remembered the electric atmosphere that rose above the crowd as each fight kicked off, and the raw, bloody scent of wolves as they were driven to the brink of the humanity inside of them. I'd heard some fighters refer to these dens as a pit — "You can't sink any lower than the pit of Hell." — but it wasn't until this moment that I truly understood what they meant.
Life or death, Juliet.
A woman materialised on the metal platform. She was wearing a skin-tight black dress, the neckline dipping low between her breasts and the hem rising high over her thighs. Bite marks scored her legs and her chest but she swore them like badges of honour, her clothes designed to bring attention to them.
"How're you feelin' tonight, Howlers?" Her voice was artificially loud, enhanced by a projection spell, and it boomed out over the crowd. The lycans gathered reacted with cheers, the sound almost deafening me. "Welcome to another Die Hard Thursday. Are you ready for blood?"
