I run. I bolt around the stands until I find what I’m looking for, a steep ramp leading into the bowels of the place. I race down, moving so fast the guard at the entrance, distracted by the fight behind me, doesn’t see me. I reach a maze of corridor tunnels, dimly lit by kerosene lamps, and find a split in the path.

I pause, breathing hard. Then a feeling pulls me to the right and I veer off in that direction.

A few turns later, the sound of the crowd and the fight above fading, I arrive at a dead end, and here is a caged-off, padlocked area filled with multiple shelves of weapons and a sign on the wall reading MANÈGE MILITAIRE.

That’s when I smell it—a rotten stink.

I freeze.

A Reaper guards the cage. Wings reach to the tunnel’s roof and walls. Its black eyes swivel and its nostrils flare, taking in the air. But the Wraith around my neck renders me invisible to the creature.

I think about the Reaper that took Bea on the Tube. The fear in my gut. The way it cradled Bea in its wings, the ferocious way it looked at me.

I cut it down.

One thrust, aimed at the heart.

The Reaper chokes and slumps to the ground, bleeding plum-coloured blood. I step over it to the gate…and I smoke right through it.

The room is stockpiled with an array of weapons. Guns, swords, knives. An arsenal. But I’m guided by a feeling in my gut to Malik’s matte-black pistol. I find it on a middle shelf, tagged with his name. I seize it, rip off the tag and shove it down the front of my jeans. Then I grab a clip of ammo next to the gun, and within minutes, I’m sprinting back up the tunnels, listening to the crowd grow more boisterous.

I hurry up the ramp and I’m out and into the periphery of the pit. A wall of noise greets me. Screaming and yelling. The drumming of a thousand feet.

In the Arena, Malik’s opponent has him in a headlock.

They have battled their way right up to the fence in front of me and Malik’s face is pinched like a waffle in the wire mesh.

He sees me and his eyes light up, despite the meaty forearm across his throat.

Now! he shouts into my head.

With a burst of energy, Malik worms out of the headlock. He runs up the side of the mesh-wire and, using his opponent’s heavily muscled arm as leverage, somersaults over his back. He’s free. At the same time, I swing the sword and split open the wire fence. I throw Malik his pistol. He catches it deftly, turns and fires a bullet into the demon’s head. Blam!

The fight’s over.