Mammon was true to his word. Within an hour, a cadre of demons came and escorted them upstairs, taking them through the casino as hushed whispers circulated, no one daring to shout any encouragement or abuse. They went up in one of the elevators to the eighteenth floor where George, Alain, and Kurt were each given a large suite with all the amenities. Junior was put in with Alain, but within minutes of the demons leaving them to their preparations, Alain brought him over to Kurt's suite. The boy wanted to stay with Kurt.

It hurt Alain immeasurably that Junior didn't want to be with him, wouldn't communicate with him, but Kurt had hit it on the head with his Lost Boys thing. Junior had waited 60 years for Alain to rescue him. While Alain spent his years basking in the glow of Marie's love, this little boy had been in a prison cell.

Sitting in his suite, Alain couldn't rest, couldn't sleep. He was consumed with guilt. After all he'd gone through, he'd considered himself brave, fearless. He'd spent the last sixty-plus years with this unflappable image of himself as a righteous and caring person, and the sight of that one little boy, as unquestionably a part of himself, a part of his soul, as anything in his life, sitting there behind his walls of pain and fear, had shot that image to shreds.

After Kurt and George had rested, because rest was what they needed more than anything, the whole group gathered in Kurt's suite to eat. Anything they wanted was available and it was all imported. The one thing about demons was that they'd lie to you ten ways to Sunday, but when they made a deal, they stuck to it. You had to look for the loopholes in the deal because they'd exploit every one to its fullest, but this was a simple deal. Mammon had presented them the conditions, stated explicitly in writing, for final approval.

The meal was heavy, but simple. The first course was a salad of tomato, cucumber, and onion with a light vinaigrette. The second course was a hearty chicken soup with lots of noodles, chunks of chicken, and big slices of carrot. This was followed by a main course of steak, mashed potatoes with gravy, and corn on the cob. And it finished off with apple pie for dessert. It was traditional fare, something to remind them of home, but the only one who might have had a chance of it truly being a homey meal was George. For Alain, home was Marie's roast chicken. For Kurt, home was a plate of Mom's brisket with potato latkes. Still, stuck in a luxury suite in Hell, the meal somehow said "America" and gave the three men a sense of pride and unity despite their different backgrounds.

Alain had primarily steered it to that because he didn't want the three of them ordering last suppers. If they spent these two days acting like condemned men, they were going to lose the fight before it started.

Junior didn't join them at the table, sitting in a corner by one of the stereo speakers, slowly eating a Snickers bar Kurt had ordered him and drawing with some crayons. They'd returned the packs, sans weapons, and Kurt had plugged his iPhone into the stereo.

As they pushed their plates away, settling back to give themselves a bit of time to digest the steaks before dessert, the silence weighed heavily on Alain. No one had talked during the meal. They'd all eaten slowly and somberly, each one seeming afraid to broach the subject that was on all their minds.

"Kurt," Alain asked, "have you had any training in hand-to-hand combat?" The sentence hung in the air like a bad fart.

"A little boxing at the Y when I was a kid," Kurt said, putting his napkin on the table.

"Shit," George mumbled.

"Well," Alain said, "Reese and Vinnie both have. I'm not going to force anything on you, but if you want, George and I are both more than qualified to give you a few pointers."

"Why?" Kurt asked, pushing his chair back and standing up. "Vinnie's a vampire, like you. I tried fighting him before and he kicked my ass."

"The bigger they are, the harder they fall," George said.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"What it means," Alain said calmly, trying to counteract the frustration that was apparently boiling in Kurt, "is that Vinnie's overconfident. He thinks he'll take you easily. I'm hoping to be the one who does the dirty work and keep you out of it altogether if I can, but if you end up in the ring with him, that attitude is going to be his Achilles heel. It may not win the fight for you, but it could keep you alive long enough for me to get in there."

"And what if I'm in there because you've already been killed?" Kurt asked pointedly, angrily.

Alain hadn't wanted to think of that possibility, but now that Kurt had aired it, it had to be dealt with. "Then you may just be screwed. But if you go down without a fight, you're a punk, and you'll have to remember that every time someone shoots a flaming arrow at your eye... for eternity. You have to put up the best fight you can, even if it seems hopeless, and George and I can help your best become better between now and then."

As Kurt considered the proposition, Alain looked beyond him. Junior had stopped coloring and was watching them intently, his partially eaten Snickers bar resting on the table next to his crayons. Alain tried to smile at him, but it came out wrong, the seriousness of what was going on making his smile into something more like a grimace. Junior turned back to his paper and hastily picked up a crayon, leaning over and setting himself to the task of coloring. Alain's attempted smile disappeared.

"Okay," Kurt said. "I don't know what good it's going to do, but I might as well give it a shot."

"Thank you," Alain said sarcastically. "Your show of confidence in us is overwhelming."

---

The roar of the crowd didn't energize Kurt. It made him cringe. Standing behind a curtain at the edge of a ramp leading down into the center of the arena, Kurt felt like an idiot. He'd been stupid to accept the bet. He'd been stupid to even hope that they might have a chance of winning. And he'd been stupid not to back out when his costume was delivered to his room. It was a silver, sleeveless unitard, gold stripes coming down from the shoulders and merging into a lightning bolt on his chest. He wore lightweight golden boots and a gold belt, and he felt ridiculous. He hadn't even been able to laugh at Alain when he saw him dressed in the same outfit, his embarrassment had run so deep. Luckily, George had been there to do enough laughing for the both of them.

Music began to echo through the arena, slightly muffled by the curtain. They'd been allowed to choose their entrance music, and they'd debated various songs on Kurt's iPhone for about an hour. Kurt had eclectic tastes, often listening to a song and thinking how it would soundtrack a movie scene, so he collected songs that fit various themes. After a number of rejects, ranging from the "Hallelujah Chorus" to "We're Not Gonna Take It" to the theme from The Last Starfighter, George had suggested AC/DC's "Big Balls" in honor of the huge balls it was taking to go through with this. Kurt and Alain had both shot that down, but it made Kurt think of AC/DC's "Thunderstruck", which got the consensus vote. Kurt couldn't help but think the thunderbolt on his costume was because of the song choice and he could only wonder what the costumes would have been like if they'd gone with "Big Balls".

On the first chorus of "Thunder!" the curtains opened and Kurt looked out on the arena. Twenty thousand demons, damned souls, and assorted other denizens of the netherworld packed the house, screaming and yelling. The path to the ring, which seemed so far away, was lined on each side with crosses, buried in the concrete upside down, a damned soul crucified on each one. Mammon set the pace, striding forward into the fray, Kurt and Alain following behind.

George and Junior sat somewhere in the crowd, but Kurt couldn't locate them. As he shuffled down the ramp, the demon behind him gave him a two-handed push in the back. "Keep it moving," it shouted as the crowd screamed happily in response. Nothing like the home-field advantage, Kurt thought miserably, moving closer to the ring.

The heavy music thumped out of speakers all around and there were succubi dancing a lascivious ballet in the ring, writhing around one another, their hands running over each others' bodies in slow syncopated movements. It wasn't the kind of ring he'd seen on television. The posts were wooden and the ropes were actual rope, tied directly to the posts. There was no padding, the canvas looking like there was nothing but hard floor beneath. There would be no theatrics here, Kurt thought. Wrestling might be fake, but this was fatally real.

Approaching the ring, Kurt saw something just before it that horrified him. He ran ahead and knelt in front of one of the crosses. "Mick!" he shouted at the soul on it.

Mick stared blankly at him. His arms stretched out to the sides, Kurt looked at his left hand. The pinky hadn't grown back, a wrinkled nub where it had once been. "Move it," Kurt heard as a large demonic hand grabbed his arm and jerked him to his feet, shoving him forward. Kurt looked back over his shoulder at Mick. He'd kept Mick's pinky in the pocket of his jeans and it now rested in the side pocket of his pack back in his room. So many people were relying on him and Alain to win this fight; Mick, George, Junior, even Alain.

The succubi parted as a demon held up one of the ropes for Mammon to enter the ring, Kurt and Alain following him, and moved to greet them as they stood and waited. Kurt shuddered as the tongue of a demoness flicked at his ear while another ran her hand slowly down his chest, cupping his genitals and massaging them roughly. Gritting his teeth, Kurt reached down and grabbed her by the wrist, jerking her around in front of him. Releasing her wrist, he put his hands on her shoulders and shoved as hard as he could, sending her flying back, bouncing along on her ass before coming to a stop.

The audience went into a frenzy, cheers and angry shouts mixing into a wall of white noise. "That was beautiful," Mammon shouted, patting him on the shoulder, "incredible showmanship." Kurt whipped around and shoved Mammon, sending the demon stumbling back. The two larger demons stepped in, grabbed Kurt's arms and restrained him, but the audience was already insane with shouting, so loud that no one noticed when the music switched to "Bad Boys", no one watching as Vinnie and Reese entered the arena. The majority of the crowd only spotted them when the duo was already halfway to the ring.

The succubi ran to the other side of the ring, seductively beckoning them forward. Vinnie and Reese were dressed in matching black robes, cowls covering their heads and obscuring their faces. They looked like the avenging monks of a mad god and the crowd cheered them forward. The audience wanted blood. Lots of it.

Entering the ring while the succubi held the ropes for them, Vinnie and Reese moved to the center, throwing off their robes in a simultaneous set of grand flourishes. Each was barechested, wearing black stretchpants and black boots. They waved to the crowd, smiling as it cheered them on, chants of "Vinn-eee, Vinn-eee," arising from pockets of the audience.

The demons released Kurt and stepped out of the ring as the ring announcer stepped in, walking to the center. Wearing a white tuxedo, he was human, or perhaps a vampire. He grabbed a microphone that lowered from the ceiling and shouted into it. "Ladies and Denizens," he yelled, "Mammon Enterprises, in association with the Azmodeus Arena and Hades Box Office, presents the Grind in Gehenna, the Prosecution in Perdition, the Havoc in Hell! A no-rules, no-referee, tag-team fight to the death with damnation on the line."

The audience shouted and clapped, thumping the floor with their feet, raising a loud din. "Fighting out of the white corner, weighing in at a combined weight of three hundred and ninety-four pounds, wearing silver with gold trim, Kurt Gray and Alain Beaudreaux, the Pillagers of Pandaemonium!"

Loud boos rose up from the crowd. Crumpled pieces of paper and plastic cups were thrown toward the ring. "And fighting out of the black corner," the announcer said as a round of cheers went up, "weighing in at a combined weight of three hundred and seventy-eight pounds, wearing nothing but black, Vinnie Rinaldi and Tommy Reese, Hell's Avengers!" The cheering grew louder, the foot-thumping beginning again.

"And now... let's gird our loins for baaattllle!!!"

Letting go of the mike he exited the ring, followed by the succubi. "All right, Kurt," Mammon shouted in Kurt's ear, slapping him on the shoulder, "you're on first."