Page 125

I dropped the sword into the sand and wiped sweat from my face with my forearm, which only smeared it. "What now? This is the tenth fucking take, Adam!"

“You're too slow, Lore!" Adam—short, pudgy, balding, wearing coke-bottle glasses—waddled over to me with his beloved tablet in one hand and his ever-present lidless paper cup of coffee in the other. "Marek comes around, swings, you block, and then you duck under his backswing. If we do this at full speed, you're gonna get fuckin' decapitated, and I do not have the insurance for that, so for the love of god, speed the fuck up! You should know the blocking by now, Lore.”

He stomped back to his chair, pointed at me with his tablet. "From the top. Quiet on set! Sound, you good? Cameras rolling? I want to get this scene done today." When he was sure things were good to go, he pointed at me. "And…action."

Marek, the stunt double doing the scene for Dawson Kellor, my opposite number on this project, lifted his shield and sword and began circling me warily in the sand of the mock-Colosseum set built in the hills north of LA. As the blocking called for, I circled him crabwise as well, counting the beats in my head.

Three…

Two…

One…

Marek, only a couple inches taller than me but much more powerfully built, had longer arms and thus a longer reach. He was a professional, so it was unlikely he'd actually hurt me, but accidents did happen, and if I was too slow to block or duck, the fault would be mine.

The leather-wrapped hilt of my real but not sharp spatha was slippery in my hand because the heat was real, too, and we’d been at this for hours already. I had a small buckler in my offhand, greaves on my thighs, and vambraces covering my forearms from wrist to elbow; a shallow, scalloped helmet on my head with a deep visor shading my eyes from the killer sun; and, ironically enough, gladiator sandals on my feet. Or not ironically, since I was playing a gladiator.

I wasn't an action actor; I was a Juilliard-trained dramatist. I'd been on West End, Broadway, and stages all over the world playing Shakespeare and Marlow and Tennessee Williams. I could still recite every single one of Henry's lines from Henry V.

How had I gotten talked into doing a swords-and-sandals spectacle? It was hazy. There was a lot of zeros involved, for one thing. There was the whole scandal, too, that had completely crushed my prospects and stopped the higher-quality drama scripts from flowing to me. The scandal wasn't my fault, but no one gave a shit. Once the stink of something like that gets on you? You're done, son.

Marek lunged on cue, twisting his whole body around to put a whole hell of a lot of very real force into the swing. I got my sword up just in time, as it was supposed to look. Marek twisted in place, away from his forehand side, and swung the sword in a sharp, whistling, flat arc—not as we've practiced. He was supposed to stagger backward from the block, pause, and then come at me with a backhand swing.

I can't even call it instinct, what happened, then. Just… an automatic reaction, I guess. I desperately swung my sword point-down to parry, stepped back, spun, and swung.

I wasn't supposed to win this fight.

That's the whole point. My character is supposed to lose. I'm supposed to lie bleeding in the sand, waiting for the Roman emperor to give me the thumbs up or down. My love interest, Aurelia, a niece of the emperor whom I, a mere slave, could never hope to even gaze upon, steps forward and claims my life at the last second, risking her standing and status and wealth as a Roman citizen.

Instead, Marek took the full force of my swing to his ribs, and I heard them crack. He went down in a heap, blood gushing from a nasty open gash that showed white bone.

I puked into the sand, sword dangling from my fingers.

Everything was a haze after that. Voices swirled around me, Lights flashed, and bodies blurred like everything was on fast-forward. Someone took the sword. There was a stretcher, and Marek's wan face, eyes wide.

"Mare—" I gasped, throat hot and dry and gritty from stomach acid. "Marek. I'm sorry!"

He reached out a hand, a half-smile on his face. "All good, bro. You got me, fair and square."

"It was an accident."

"It was my fault. I deviated from the blocking." He winced, shifted. "I'll be fine. Looks worse than it is."

The medic looked at me. "No, it doesn’t.”

"Don't listen to him, Lore!” Marek said. "I'm fine!" He yelled the last part as they wheeled him away.

Somehow, I ended up back at my trailer, still in costume—which is when I realized I was covered in blood. How did I get blood on me?

I grabbed the half-full—half-empty?—bottle of Blanton’s from the table and took a swig, knowing this would be the end of my career in Hollywood if Marek wasn't fine.

Most people don't know the names of stunt doubles. You might see a pic online now and then of an actor with their doubles, but rare indeed is the stunt double famous in his or her own right.

And that was Marek James. Formerly a rockstar who toured the world with an alt-rock band that opened for some of the biggest names in rock, he transitioned to the WWE when the band broke up over creative differences. After a short but successful run as a heel in the wrestling world, he'd ended up as the primary and eventually exclusive stunt double for none other than Dawson Kellor, who…well, I don't need to tell you about him. One of the last truly great movie stars, he’s had a career spanning more than twenty years, with blockbuster after blockbuster to his name. And Dawson being Dawson, he shared the spotlight with his stunt double, posting videos of Marek doing all sorts of wild stunts. He’d been featured in magazines and on dozens of tracks for some of the biggest names in rap, pop, rock, and hip-hop…

And I'd just killed him, maybe.

Fuck my life.