‘I will.’ Tom glanced around at Jasmine, Stacy and Rico. ‘But maybe you guys should hang back here and—’

‘Forget it,’ said Jasmine.

‘People might get hurt,’ said Stacy. ‘I can help.’

And Rico nodded too. ‘’S’time to get even.’

‘Then let’s go,’ the old man said, moving off into the wreaths of smoke coiling from the charred hole in the doors.

g

Kate had finally managed to work her mouth free of the tape that gagged her. She bit and chewed at the knotted ropes that bound her wrists, trying desperately to free herself. All around the arena the fighting was escalating, far more slick and savage than the scrappy bouts she’d witnessed here before. Swagger was right; these people had been trained, conditioned to fight for their survival. The fighters worked with their team-mates, pitilessly targeting their victims. There was something feral about these men and women as they tore through the opposition, drugged-up and blank-eyed, that chilled Kate to the bone.

Across the arena, in the safety of the bleachers, she saw her mother watching rapt beside Takapa, palms pressed together as if praying the carnage would never end. Her father looked on at the spectacle impassively. If she could only signal to him …

She gasped as the mesh net lurched and dropped a little lower. Joints of meat went tumbling as the net tilted, and fell around the maniacs fighting below.

A woman looked up, wildly, as if suspecting an attack from above. It was the bleached-blonde girl who’d tricked Polar back in the locker room. Her eyes were gleaming yellow. Saliva flooded from her leering jaws as her body began to warp into lupine form.

Kate knew what a tempting target she must make, trapped here helpless, surrounded by a half-ton of bloody flesh; and she knew with horrid certainty the woman meant to kill her. Sure enough, with a frenzied roar the blonde leaped for the net, her broken nails extending into talons mid-jump.

The creature scraped against the chicken wire close to Kate’s head, then fell back down. Kate realised she must still be out of reach. But for how much longer?

A man rushed to tackle the blonde before her metamorphosis was complete, pounding his fists down on her distorted face. But others had noticed the net was disgorging its bloody haul. And more and more of the fighters were starting to turn.

Kate bit at the knots in the rope with a new desperation. The net shook again and she saw another ’wolf had jumped up and was hanging from the thick chicken wire with its claws. But the metal soon gave way and the animal fell to the concrete with a thud, soon set upon by two more slavering, brutish lupines.

Then suddenly Kate heard a sharp, percussive crack. Before the echoes had died away, the entire arena seemed to shake with a single bellowed cry.

‘Enough.’