Page 43 of Possession

“Nice and easy, big guy,” O’Neil says as he steps behind me. He works the shock collar’s buckle, tugging the prongs against my throat, then he pulls it away. He steps back in a hurry.

“Win this fight, and you can have your boy after.”

I wasn’t going to look at him again, but that lie makes me do it. He swallows visibly. He knows that I know why that tranq gun is at his belt. I won’t get to see Lucas after. I’ll wake up back in my cell, maybe alone.

“Go on,” he tells me. “You’ve got no choice.”

I know that too.

I step out onto the ice. The cleats punch and grip the slick surface as I walk out to the center. I don’t let my head swivel in an obvious way, but I run my eyes over everything I can. Exits. Guards. Lucas.

He’s sitting rigidly upright. His sedation has long since worn off. Good. I’ll need him alert.

My heartrate is picking up more. I’m getting shaky, sweaty, agitated. Because of that, I have to look away from Briggs hovering behind Lucas. I can’t let my anger hijack my brain. I have to think like a man even while I act like a beast. I have to be both at once tonight.

Movement in the other team box catches my eye. Three men—no, four—tromp through. My fists clench as they file out onto the ice in their cleats. Adrenaline, natural and chemical, surges through my body. I’ll need it, every bit of it.

So I don’t waste any time.

With a roar, I go charging at the first of the men. He’s not ready for me. He thought there would be posturing, that he’d get to strut and glower while I, outnumbered, tried to figure out what to do.

I dive to the ground and kick his legs out from under him. He crashes to the ice with a scream as I slide several yards before I can get purchase with my now bloody cleats.

I surge to my feet as the men shout. One charges. I stay low then barrel upward into him. I flip him over my shoulder. He slams to the ice behind me.

Another takes advantage of the fact that I’m busy and rushes at me. I duck his punch. The man I shoulder tossed is getting up, so I spin and kick him before he can make it to his feet. The cleats rip his face open. He falls back with a scream.

The man whose punch I ducked tackles me from behind. I can’t afford to get dogpiled, so I add to the momentum as we hit the ice and let us slide away from the others. It’s a nasty fucking scramble, but I manage to get free of him after landing a knee to his groin.

I make it to my feet just as another of my opponents charges. I spin out of his path, grabbing his arm in the process. I continue my spin and sling him back into another of the men.

If I intended to finish this fight, it would be far from over. I’ve done some damage, but no one is fully out of the fight. Even the guy whose face I shredded is on his feet.

My instincts scream for me to unleash myself. With adrenaline roaring through me, with my anger so strongly triggered, I want to rip these fuckers apart.

The drive is really goddamn strong. It’s been honed foryears. But it only took a few weeks with Lucas to overwrite it.

I turn from the fight. I run.

The audience doesn’t react at first. Through the plexiglass, I see their confusion and stillness. But when I leap, they scream.

My cleats grab the boards enough for me to launch myself up the plexiglass shield. I catch the top of it and haul myself over. The audience, mostly men, a few women, starts to scramble.

Shots fire, but nothing hits me as I drop to the bleachers. I want to check on Lucas, but I can’t. I have to move. I race up the flight of bleachers as more shots fire. Pain flashes across my left forearm, but there’s so much movement, so much panic that nothing hits me full on in the seconds it takes me to reach the top.

Crowley realizes too late that his men can’t save him from me. By the time he draws his gun, I’m there. I grab his face and smash his head into the wall as hard as I can. Targeting him is a practical decision, nothing more. There’s no particular satisfaction in killing him because he’s not someone I think about. He’s been part of the structure of my confinement, but that’s all. He’s not the one I really hate. As he crumples, I pivot to deal with Briggs.

I expect to have to rip him away from Lucas, but what I find shocks the shit out of me. Briggs has indeed grabbed Lucas likehe plans to use him as a shield against me, but Lucas has the neck of a broken beer bottle in his hand. He stabs upward over his shoulder blindly. Briggs screams as the broken glass stabs into his collarbone and chest.

I grab Lucas and shove him out of the way so hard that he goes tumbling into the aisle. I want to deal with Briggs, but other guards have guns on me. I have to take them out first, and I have to do it fast. My cleats destroy a knee then a groin. I seize a gun from a downed guard and put a bullet in Briggs as he draws on me, but I have to turn and scan the rest of the area. Crowley’s buddy is well on his way to the exit, hustled out by his guards.

I shoot another of Crowley’s men as he comes at me. One is fleeing. I shoot him in the back.

I note that Briggs is getting up, but I look for Lucas. He’s more important. I find him creeping toward Briggs with that broken bottle. There’s a wild look in his eyes, a feral look. I’ve seen it before on men pushed too hard. I’ve worn it myself, and the only reason I’m not wearing it now is that I can’t afford to. I have to think.

But what I think right now is that Lucas needs this—so I let him have it.

He lunges for Briggs and stabs him in the back. As Briggs arches and screams, Lucas grabs him in a wrestler’s hold and takes him to the ground.

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