Page 5 of Possession

Weapons rarely feature in the fights. A fighter that’s killed can’t be used again. Changeups, however, keep the crowd excited and the money flowing.

Plus, I’m very sure that Crowley, my owner, doesn’t know that I’ve been drugged. He probably thinks I’m playing with my food and wants me to bring the fight to a dramatic close.

I grab the handle of the knife closest to me and yank it from the floor. My opponent does the same.

He’s pissed about his nose and comes at me fast. We slash and dodge. Blood splatters the white floor. Some of it’s his. Some of it’s mine.

I’m so fucking slow.

He slashes my leg. I crash to one knee as the world slides. My hand hits the floor. I’ve lost the advantage. I know it. I feel it.

With the drug slowing everything down inside me, I don’t know if I care.

I’ve been indifferent to living and dying for a long time. I don’t fight hoping for either outcome. I fight because it’s all I have, because it’s the only moment when I feel like I can do something with all my anger. But that sense of control is slipping away from me in the drug haze.

Then I look up. I look out through the chain link barrier and see those big eyes in that pretty face.

All my anger comes roaring back, crashing through my body, spiking through the haze. I don’t know why exactly. Maybe because it’s such an entrenched emotional path, the only one I really have. Maybe because he’s the prey I really want and am being denied. Whatever the case, I’m furious—and there’s only one outlet for it.

I launch myself up with a roar. My vision is a blur. I don’t see anything more than a human shape. It could be anyone and I wouldn’t care. I drive my knife deep into the belly. I yank it out and punch it in again.

When the body falls back, the knife, still embedded, is pulled from my hand. I stagger. I spin and look for that face again, the first that’s managed to stir my interest in years, but the world is too blurry. The lights flash disorientingly through the air.

My knees hit the floor. I almost go down to all fours, but I won’t let my handlers approach me like that. I force myself to stay upright on my knees while I try to focus. I hear the gate creak open. I hear boots thumping across the floor.

I manage to get to my feet before they reach me, but I won’t stay there for long. Blackness is creeping in at the edges of my vision.

“Fuck,” mutters one of the handlers as I stagger past them. I’m not going to make it back to my cell on my own. The fact is obvious, but they won’t help me until I fall.

They know I’d kill them.

THREE

Lucas

“Oh god,” Frank whines as the scarred fighter staggers across the ring. Around us, the crowd chants, “Beast! Beast! Beast! Beast!”

He makes it through the gate on his feet, but then he falls on the stairs. The guards rush after him, but it’s all beyond my line of sight now.

“He won,” Frank mutters, close enough to my ear that I can hear him over the crowd. “How the fuck did he win?”

I don’t have the whole picture, but a few things are obvious. Frank paid that guard to drug the collared fighter so he’d lose. Frank must have bet on the other fighter, probably a lot. And now, because the collared fighter won, Frank must have lost a bunch of money.

But that’s his problem. It has nothing to do with me.

So why the hell did he bring me in the first place?

I have no idea, but there’s a bad feeling squirming around in my gut that says there’s a reason, even if I don’t know what it is. I edge away from him, gauging the distance to the exit.

The doors were barred and guarded by the time Frank and I emerged from the locker room. There was no chance to escape then, but I need to get out now. Walking twenty-some miles in a dark drizzle is looking more appealing every second.

But Frank shadows me like he’s been doing since before the fight. When I try to duck away into the crowd, he grabs my sweatshirt hood.

I spin and knock his hand away. “I don’t know what the fuck you want with me but—”

“I put a roof over your head for fourteen goddamn years,” he cuts in like he’s been holding onto the words all night, waiting to say them. “Do you have any idea how much a kid costs? You’re not even mine.”

“Yeah, I fucking know that. You’ve told me a million times. So why did you fucking call me if—”

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