Page 4 of Dravin

I’ve been coming here for ten months, secretly, watching, learning, studying, always pushing harder and harder.

Tonight is my chance.

It’smynight.

After this fight, I’ll have enough money to go someplace where evenhewon’t find me.

A foghorn blast sounds once, and then twice. The big bastard across from me starts to pace in his corner. One more blast and it’s go time. There aren’t any referees here because there aren’t any rules.

I guess the only one that matters to me is don’t die. Although, if I do, the crowd certainly wouldn’t be disappointed.

They’re a wild, seething, disgusting mass. They’re no better than the mobs of old, and this is the new colosseum.

Before that third blast rips through the place, bouncing off concrete walls as thick as any bunker’s, the behemoth I’m about to fight punches himself in his own face, breaking open the skin near where his hairline would be. His shiny bald head, glistening with sweat from the heat of all the bodies jam packed around us, breathing their need for blood and gore into the air until it’s thick enough to choke on, runs red. He swipes his taped hands through the mess, coating them and bringing them to his mouth to lick it off.

My stomach twists.

I’m going to survive. I’m going to win this. It doesn’t matter that he’s fucking huge or that he’s stronger and likes the taste of his own blood. Fuck him.

Fuck. Him.

I’m walking out of here tonight the victor. I’ll have enough money to live the life I always wanted. It just took me a little bit of extra time, determination, and creative thinking to get there after my whole world imploded. I thought that my brother’s death was the end. It was the end ofme, but only my identity. It took me months to realize that I could go on living, just not as Kael Downey.

I lift my eyes briefly to where the bright lights illuminate a caged podium. Malcolm Knight hovers high above the frenzied crowd, foghorn in hand, a suit that’s crisp perfection and a thousand dollar haircut, posed like a god. In this place, maybe he is. He rules these fights. He owns this place. For all intents and purposes, he owns every single person here right now.

I watch his hand clench around the horn, his fingers moving in slow motion. I tense, getting down into a fighter’s crouch. I might not have made myself bleed for this mob, I might look small and fragile, I might very obviously be a woman and have both my eyes and a decided lack of scars, but that doesn’t make me any less deadly.

My body is a weapon and I’mready.

Before that third blast can sound, the door at the side of the cage is wrenched open. There are three huge men who stand guard, night after night, fight after fight, but they’re no longer there.

As soon as I seehim, I know what’s happened to them. He tossed them aside like they weren’t scary, lethal soldiers themselves. He made them look like nothing, like water breaking up on his jagged rocks.

“Hey!” The brute across from me shouts, waving his fists wildly and gesturing at Dravin. He’s an imbecile and I clearly could have taken him, because only a real dumbass would be stupid enough to challenge death itself.

One Eye charges, fists up, a murderous sneer curling up his meaty lips and twisting the scars on his face into an ugly mask.

Dravin doesn’t even move. He lets One Eye smash himself apart. The giant tries to swing, but that only opens up his face. Dravin’s hand shoots out and curls around his throat. He walks One Eye back, step by step, choking him so fiercely that by the time they’ve made it across the cage, all he has to do is release his hand and the beast crumples in a pile of scars, flesh, and mess.

The crowd is silent for a single, collective breath, and then they’re roaring, screaming because half of them love seeing unscripted shit like this and the other half know that they’re not going to get the gruesome fight they were promised.

No one in this place is angrier than me.

I’ve been carefully crafting this plan for ten months, training religiously for at least six hours a day, controlling my diet with the discipline of a gold medal Olympian, and working. Working, sleeping, saving, scraping, training.

This was my out.

This is mylife.

Dravin’s hand curls around my wrist. I know better than to so much as attempt to fight him. He’d never hurt me, but I know what he’s capable of. He told me himself. Laid it bare for me a year ago when he told me that my brother was going to die before it even happened. He wouldn’t harm me, but he’s not above pressing on something vital until I black out and he can carry me out of here easily.

“This is not keeping a low goddamn profile you stupid, foolish, idioticgirl.”

Girl?No. Fuck no. Fuck him and this shit and his attitude.

He drags me out of the cage, even the pissed off members of the crowd parting for him like he’s Biblical. He stomps down the long tunnel towards the exit. We go unpursued, which is a minor miracle because he’s just caused one hell of a clusterfuck as far as betting is concerned.

My bet being one of them.

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