6. Earthquake Weather Is Psychological, Not Meteorological #3
Julian’s gaze slid from mine, and in the question mark of what was yet to come, my heart rate quickened. A shiver of something raised the hair from my arms, my body suddenly flooded with a heavy bass of apprehension.
Then everything changed, like a shift in the wind.
At first Julian didn’t move, leaving his torso wide open like an invitation, a mocking threat.
Then, the moment his opponent thrust himself forward, leading with his shoulder for what looked like a piledrive, Julian suddenly straightened and slammed an elbow down, into the back of the other man’s neck.
My gaze, harrowed as it was, snagged on something—the razorblade of Julian’s shoulder, the crisp delineation of his triceps.
The motion of rippling flanks met my thoughts, something animalistic, predatorial.
There was a sharp cry of pain, a shift in the energy of the crowd.
Something in the air seemed drier, more dangerous now, like fire was starting to catch.
Julian threw his opponent hard into the barrier.
I couldn’t understand how he’d managed it—he was so much slighter, gaunt with what looked like malnourishment, already visibly battered from the fight.
But there was an otherworldliness to him, to his fluidity of motion, inexplicable and undeniable all the same.
The competency of his blows; the motion of his shoulders under his T-shirt.
The effect of him was brutal, bestial, dangerous.
Whatever he had, it definitely wasn’t what I’d been told.
For a moment, I couldn’t look away.
The other man came up with a wild, blind punch angled downward, at Julian’s face, but Julian slid deftly out of reach and the other man stumbled, falling forward, unable to catch himself in time.
Julian took hold of him with ease, slamming a knee into the other man’s face until we heard another crunch of bone.
Then he aimed a body shot somewhere tender.
The crowd fell almost silent, just a tinkle of glasses and a few tiny gasps. I felt a strange, inexplicable tightness in my breath, a shock of molten heat between my legs.
Julian’s opponent spat blood, then struggled to come up slowly, unsteadily.
But Julian was lightning fast. He threw up a hand, jabbing the base of his palm into the other man’s cheek, then swung to punch the other man in the jaw, probably breaking his mandible.
I flinched, a sharp lurch in my escalated pulse, shock that almost read like morbid thrill.
He hit the man’s ribs, then swung from the other aside, breaking something else.
My stomach contorted with something, a hard and urgent twist. My eyes never left the agile plane of Julian’s back, the deep groove of the channel along his spine, the raw violence that seemed to come from somewhere inside him, cleverly encased by that battered, illusory shell.
Blood was splashed artlessly, everywhere. Julian lifted one leg and kicked hard, directly in his opponent’s chest, sending him crashing into the wooden barrier. Cracking the wood in half.
I couldn’t say for certain what he’d done to his opponent by that point. The scope of harm seemed unimaginable, impossible. I couldn’t think, or speak, or breathe. A word came to me unsolicited, caught by the tip of my tongue: bloodlust.
I swallowed the trace of metal flooding my mouth, like I’d burst a vessel in my cheek.
The other man had landed on his back and didn’t get up. Julian walked over, crouching down to look at him. There was nothing on his face, no expression. No emotion. Around me was hateful silence, bitter shock. If there was one thing I understood, it was that an audience could be won or lost.
Then, amid the inconclusive static, Julian stood up.
Straightened.
He lifted one foot like he planned to stomp down.
To step on a roach. Extermination.
Whatever had put me in a daze left me just as quickly, receding like a veil that fell away.
“NO!” I screamed.
He looked at me. Something twitched at the corner of his mouth. I thought for a second he might do it—do it just to prove something to me, to show me something I needed to understand.
This wasn’t epilepsy. It wasn’t even him anymore, I knew that with certainty. I couldn’t explain how that could be true, but I knew it like I knew myself, like I knew the difference between reality and dreaming.
Whoever I’d followed earlier that evening, the man who’d been losing this fight—whoever that was who’d walked in front of the bus to his death—that was a different person. This was something else.
Something worse.
I still can’t explain what happened to me in that moment.
The awareness I had of my body, like a sudden drop in cabin pressure.
The precision of my understanding of what stood between him and me.
There was a charge in the air, the threat of whatever might live in that silence.
The implications of what could happen if he decided to close those few feet.
But just as quickly as it appeared, the hard look in his eyes faded to nothing. There was a sudden fogginess to the gray, a sense of confusion. Exhaustion.
Then Julian de Witt looked at his hands, took in the blood, and passed out cold.