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  A Sinister Game by Heather Killough-Walden

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  A Sinister Game

  By Heather Killough-Walden

  Copyright © 2009

  In a world ruled by Game Leaders, a dark and dangerous man proposes a wager....

  “If you can escape me for seven rounds, Victoria – if you can keep from being taken off of the board for that long, I will admit defeat and step down as Gray leader. But if I find you," he let the words sink in. "And if I capture you….” His voice trailed off just as his gaze trailed over her lips, her throat, her breasts.

  His green eyes locked on hers again and she felt she would die right there at that table.

  “Then you’ll join me. You'll give yourself to me for one night.” His smile was the devil’s promise. “This is the wager.”

  But this is a game far more complicated and far more deadly than either of them anticipated. As the real world unfolds around them, what they thought they knew becomes obsolete, and the rules are ruthlessly changed... in this SINister game.

  A word from the author:

  Many of my readers will remember this book as The Game, one of the first books I was ever brave enough to release as a stumbling, scared-to-death indie author back when indie authors were actually a new thing. After leaving The Game up on Amazon for a short time, I turned around and unpublished it. I’d just signed on with a print publisher, and through the rigorous and ruthless editing process an author undergoes via print publishing, I learned a few tricks, recognized my “mistakes” in my earlier manuscripts, and pulled a few of them in for re-vamping. The Game was one of them.

  However, in my to-do limbo pile The Game sat. Book after new book and series after new series was created while The Game remained unpublished and gathering dust. Finally, several years later, I’d received so many requests for a re-release, I decided it would be a good idea to perhaps give the book another shot.

  I put aside the seven other novels I was working on (and am working on again) and popped the cover, so to speak. What I found inside created a dichotomy of reactions within me.

  On the one hand, it was raw and untamed and unedited, and the point of view jumped from person to person within a scene, giving the reader a broad range of emotional input. On the other hand – it was raw and untamed and unedited, and the point of view jumped from person to person within a scene, giving the reader a broad range of emotional input.

  It was a print publisher’s nightmare. I recognized that in every page. Nothing is more frightening to a print editor than a gorgeous diamond in the very rough. An outright chunk of coal can be ignored. A polished gem can simply be published. But a diamond in the rough requires loads of work, hence the nightmare.

  At the same time, the original manuscript possessed a kind of power in its virginity. It was sort of like a white page that had not yet seen red ink, or a fallen snow before trampling.

  I was torn. I had a choice to make: Tear madly through it and put it back together in the cookie cutter framework of most print novels (I say “most” because there are a few novels printed outside of this mold, such as the award-winning “The Girl Who Could Fly”) or leave its foundation intact and merely fix the minor things?

  As you’ll see when you read Sinister, I settled somewhere in-between…. Well, more on the heavily edited side, but I did manage to stop somewhere short of plastic surgery.

  The points of view, I kept diverse and plentiful. This ads depth and three-dimensionality to the book. A few of the minor plotlines, I altered, but the adventure, I allowed to unfold in its entirety. The characters, I maintained in their diversity. The grammar, spelling, unnecessary text and so forth, I of course corrected.

  In the end, I do hope that I did the manuscript justice – and that you thoroughly enjoy my efforts. 

  Warmest wishes,

  - Heather

  (P.S. See if you can find the small cross-over between A Sinister Game and Death’s Angel. *wink*)

  With thanks to Mary Moritz, for her help.

  Chapter One

  That was too close. It had been so hard this time.

  Victor Black was breaking her down little by little, Game after Game.

  If she’d had any sense at all she would have turned herself over to Game Control and allowed someone else to take over her team. But she couldn’t do that. They were her team. She had trained them from the very beginning. They depended on her and in return, she needed them. Her team was her purpose, her very reason for being. If she stepped down as Red Command, what would she do next? Where would she even go? What in the world would she become?

  No. She shivered at the thought. I won’t back down. He will not win.

  “He’s getting to you, isn’t he?”

  Victoria spun in her chair from the control center monitor to face the source of the voice behind her. Max stood in the doorway, his large frame eating up most of the light coming from the other room. He was gazing down at her with blue eyes as troubled as stormy skies.

  He knows, she thought. She suddenly wondered if every member of her team knew. Probably. Hell, I trained them to be observant, didn’t I?

  “Yes,” she replied, simply. She hated to admit it, especially to Max. But she had never lied to them, and she wasn’t about to start now.

  “You’re not thinking of resigning, are you?” he asked next, and the anxiety in his handsome features kicked up a notch.

  She stared hard at him. “I wasn’t planning on it. Not yet anyway.”

  He seemed to relax a bit. Then he came into the room and sat down at the command seat next to hers. Victoria watched as the muscles beneath his t-shirt rippled with his movements. It was a well-trained body, toned and strong. She couldn’t help but admire it.

  If he noticed her watching him, he had the grace not to let it show. He turned those blue eyes on her again and pinned her to her chair with them. “You’re doing fine, you know. You aren’t the second place Competition leader for nothing,” he said.

  That was Max, always at her back and trying to take care of her.

  “Thanks,” she sighed. She didn’t know what else to say. It was embarrassing as hell that Black had come as close as he had.

  Victor Black was the Game leader of the Gray Team and had been for as long as anyone could remember. It was this span of time, this eternity of leadership, that made Black as powerful as he was. He grew more powerful every day.

  Victoria was the Game leader for the Reds: Victoria Red.

  Victor Black.

  Their real names had been erased, along with their previous identities, the moment each of them had been chosen to lead a team on the Field.

  But unlike Black, Victoria had only been in charge of her team for a decade, since she was fifteen and Game Control had noticed her innate talents during one of their required school aptitude exams.

  As they did with all promising Game players, they “acquired” her, gave her a new and fitting name, and placed her in charge of her own team, the Reds. Victoria had stepped up to the honor and proven herself time and again. The Reds were currently in second place on the Field.

  Being a successful Game leader had its advantages. At twenty-five, she was just reaching maturity. At around twenty-five to thirty, Game players ceased aging.

  Black had been Gray leader for hundreds of years. He’d stopped aging long ago and looked no older than thirty.

  Victoria frowned as she pictured the man now. His eyes were older. There was always something in a person’s eyes that could not
be held in the check of time. Knowledge could always be glimpsed there, through the windows of a person’s soul.

  Victor Black’s jade green gaze was replete with experience and secrets untold. No one on the Field was older.

  As Red leader, and hence leader of the second most powerful team on the Field, it was Victoria’s job to prepare the Reds for Black’s attacks, for the Gray Team’s assaults, and for whatever plans their incredibly intelligent, frustratingly clever leader might be hatching. The Grays would attempt to take over a quadrant of the Field, and the Reds would thwart them and take it for themselves. On and on this went, until the final team was defeated and another, new team would take its place to challenge the winner.

  This “Game” – not as if asked by the timid questing of a child, but spoken with 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 when she found herself freezing, going suddenly completely and utterly still, and really wondering what it was all for.

  Why do we play? Why do we keep going like this?

  There was never an answer; it was just how things were done. Their world had been like this forever; no one could recall a time when it had been different.

  On the Playing Field, there were “good” teams and there were “bad” teams, otherwise known as “light” teams and “dark” 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 what 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 better Dark leader than the handsome, cunning, and enigmatic Victor Black. The Red Team 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, wanting 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 were pulled 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 smiled a gorgeous white smile.

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

  “Good,” he said simply, and turned away.

  As he left the control room through the archway that led to the meeting area beyond, Victoria let out a long sigh and returned to the monitor in front of her. “Show me current Gray Team 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 fist 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 goblet 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 peering 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 everything. 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 ministrations. It must be frustrating.”

  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; he 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 left and right, backward and forward, zeroing in on elements within the four quadrants of the Playing Field.

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

  Finally, Black turned to face him. “Hmm?” he 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 nerve. 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 like stepping out of a painting – and 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 reaching 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, it 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, not any more. And he recognized that same dubious dissatisfaction in the stunningly beautiful Victoria Red.

  Black smiled to himself. It 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 within himself like a treasure. It was a boon safely hidden somewhere near the dar
kness 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 surrender. If she would only give in and join him… they 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 her Game portrait. It was the portrait that every leader possessed. 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 was any indication. 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 Team’s current location, pinpointing each member.”