eight
The Merciful
“I’m proud of you too, my good girl,” says the voice behind the bird mask. “You’ve done beautifully.”
For the first time, I hear it, clear and unmistakable.
In that moment, a wave of pure anguish crashes over me.
It’s not just the familiar tone when he says those words.
It’s the faintest whiff that makes it through my delirium and makes me dizzy with fear and lust. That’s the knowledge that’s been nagging at me, the familiar masculine scent of sandalwood and leather, the familiar, soothing way he spoke, even with his voice disguised.
“Father?” I ask through shaking lips, my voice high with fear and the hurt of betrayal.
“I’m here, lamb,” he says gently, his thumb stroking over the swollen bud of shame that still throbs even though Saint is done using me for his pleasure; Angel is done forcing mine.
It’s torture enough for them to see, to know what I’ve done, but knowing that Father Salvatore is here, seeing me like this, doing this to me…
Even with his mask blocking my view, I have already seen, have learned more than I want to know. I should know a father can never be trusted.
My birth father abandoned me when I was so young he’s nothing more than a shadow in my mind, a paper cutout of a man with a splotch of cayenne on top, the only thing I know came from him besides my life.
My adoptive father abandoned me because I wasn’t as real to him as my brother since he didn’t give me life. I was the porcelain doll of a daughter he thought he wanted until she turned out to be real, a daughter of flesh and blood, carved by the beckoning hand of sin.
When my brother told me to keep quiet about Heath that first time, when Dad said boys would be boys, when the church told me they’d talk to him and then nothing ever came of it, I kept my mouth shut.
I trusted them. And I knew that, as confusing as it was, that hunger was waiting inside me, a wild animal crouched to spring. But no one else ever knew.
This man knows. Though I’ve only known Father Salvatore for a short time, this betrayal is the one that rends my soul.
He’s not just a man, he’s a holy man. It is not only an abandonment by a man, but by the church itself, by everything I’ve ever been taught was sacred and holy and profound.
He has seen me be anything but. He has known all along I’m not.
But not only did he see it, he used it. All the times I thought he was guiding me to help me with my sin, he was sacrificing me to the hungers of these boys, these animals.
When I went to him for help, he steered me towards them, led me further down this path. From the very first day I stepped into the confessional and told him about the cravenness of my wanton flesh, he saw the opportunity in a na?ve, trusting, lost lamb and led her to this slaughter.
Now that they’re done, Father wraps me like a sacred vessel, as if I am something to treasure instead of degrade and demean. Someone lifts me into his arms, but I close my eyes, refusing to see who it is. I am done with them all, even the one man I thought was on my side.
I should have known.
He says words about sacred bonds and becoming one flesh, but I don’t hear. He says words about forgiveness and cleansing, but I feel dirty and used, punished but unforgiven. How could I ever be forgiven for the sins we committed here tonight? Or all the ones before?
He absolves us, but I feel spiritually bereft, forsaken by the God he says is with us now, when we leave this darkened den of sin and shame.
He didn’t protect me. He watched, encouraged, instructed.
When Saint turned me over and ravished my untouched places, he allowed it.
When Angel dragged me back to the edge, then forced me over, I gave in, helpless to resist as he coaxed another climax from my bruised body, and the Father only looked on in approval.
I’m numb as he carries me out with the others. Not until he lays me down in my bed and unwraps me from the black robes do I see his face—Father Salvatore standing over me, unmasked and unashamed. Pain rends my heart again, but my words stick in my aching throat.
How could you?
“Do you want me to stay?” he asks, concern etched into the lines in his face.
I shake my head no.
“Are you certain, my lamb?” he asks, stroking back my hair, his gaze lingering on my lips.
I nod, and after a moment, he tucks me in, presses his lips to my forehead, and then slips out of the room. For a while, I only lie there. But at last, I slide from my bed and reach for my shoes, a familiar craving tickling my mind.
My fingers close around something else under the edge of my bed, though—paper. Heart hammering, I pull out the envelope. Flecks of dust cling to it, and I realize it’s been there for a while. I try to remember when I last reached under there. Did I ever open the letter Heath found at Christmas?
With shaking fingers, I break the seal.
“So also, when you see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.”
I crumple the note into a ball and hurl it into the trashcan, the tears coming at last. What good is it to have friends, to have a boyfriend, to have protectors, when I still get the letters?
When I can’t even trust that it’s not one of them sending them?
I don’t think they killed Eternity anymore, but I still can’t trust them.
Saint hurts me every chance he gets, Angel will always choose the others over me, and Heath…
Heath is a wildcard, unpredictable and unknowable.
I yank off the bottom of my shoe and call Dynamo.
On Friday night, I get ready, relishing the knowledge that I’m doing something bad, and this time, there are no cameras.
Nate made sure of it, and he left me a device to detect them, so if anyone tries to install one in my room again, I’ll know.
I feel strong and confident when I leave my room, as if it’s my right to leave campus in the dead of night, as if nothing can defeat me.
When they lower me into the pit at the Slaughterpen an hour later, the same sure sense of strength remains. I’m clear and focused, ready to fight.
“And for our last match of the night, we have a rookie, the Delicious Stacylicious,” Dynamo yells to the small, frenzied crowd already cheering and jeering. “She’ll be making her pit debut against everyone’s favorite, Merciless!”
I do my thing, riling the crowd for a minute before Dynamo hops out and leaves us on the packed, blood-stained dirt floor.
I eye my opponent from behind my mask, sizing her up.
No one but Dynamo would be so generous as to call her delicious anything.
She’s short but stocky, built like a barrel of bricks, with a pockmarked face, small, piggy eyes, and a twitchy energy that indicates something beyond natural bravery got her here.
That’s nothing new—probably half the girls who fight are hopped up and hoping for a miracle, for money to support their habit without turning tricks.
It’s not like an underground fighting ring is going to drug test participants who volunteer to come down here and beat the blood out of each other.
If they did, they’d lose most of their fighters.
The type who will stay off steroids and harder stuff, who make a career of this, go for a licensed MMA venue, not a bare-knuckle fight club in an abandoned warehouse.
The fighters who end up here are rough and desperate, but we’re all accepted with no judgment and no questions asked.
And though there aren’t many rules here, you’re supposed to wait until after a fight to get your fix.
It’s dangerous to fight high, when you can’t feel pain, have no self-preservation instinct, and are apt to beat someone to death without realizing your own strength.
The crowd loves those fights, but I don’t.
There’s no fun, no triumph, no art in fighting someone who’s not clearheaded.
The few fighters I’ve put in the hospital were ones who slipped in their hits between entering the warehouse and their time in the pit.
Stacy steps towards me, fists raised.
“Come on, you stupid cow, hit me,” she taunts, grinning at me with stained, crooked teeth while she dances back and forth with the frantic energy of a meth head. “See what happens, bitch.”
I could call off the fight, but denying the crowd their last match of the evening after they already paid would not go over well.
Judging by the ravenous roars from the bloodthirsty mob, they’re here for violence, and if they can’t witness it, they might perpetrate it.
I swallow my uneasiness and go in slow. I’m not going to be able to wear her out, judging by her pinprick pupils.
A quick knockout would be the most merciful act.
Before I get an opening, she swings. She’s fast enough, but with no skill whatsoever, and I easily duck and come back around from the other side, landing a left hook in her side.
She swears savagely, whipping her stringy ponytail as she rounds on me and throws another sloppy, overpowered punch. I send her reeling into the wall with her own momentum. She bounces off, staggering toward me with her broken teeth bared like a rabid animal.
I bop her nose with a jab, and blood explodes from it. I recoil, even though I’m fully covered by my nylon costume. She lets out a feral scream, diving toward me in a rage. I don’t see the glint of silver clenched in her fist until the last second.
“You fucking cunt,” she shrieks, jabbing it into my side. I twist away, but not before I feel a blinding slash of pain.
Fuck.
She cut me.
I duck her next swing, a wide arc with the knife meant to slice straight across my stomach.
This psycho is out for real blood, and death along with it.
When she slashes the air again, an uppercut meant to drive the knife behind my sternum, I crash a fist down on her arm.
The knife flies from her grip, and the crowd noise rises to a deafening roar of indignation.
They want to see fists draw blood, not weapons.
Stacy scuttles across the floor for her knife, a howl of fury tearing from her as she grabs it and twists, swiping for my legs this time.
I jump back, then bring my heel down on her wrist. I can feel the crunch of her bones snapping before she throws herself at me, her teeth sinking into my ankle.
Before I can detach her, three guys are in the pit with us, dragging her off.
I cringe at the sensation of her teeth tearing at my flesh through my tights as two of the guys wrench her away from me.
The last guy catches me as I stumble backwards, trying to get my feet.
Plastic cups, cans, and bottles rain down on us from the crowd, some still filled with beer.
I think they’re pissed at the guys for breaking up the fight before someone was knocked out, until I see the other two guys trying to lift Stacy from the pit without the crowd getting their hands on her.
She’s still flailing and shrieking, spitting and clawing at the guys trying to subdue her and get her to safety.
She clearly doesn’t understand what’s going on, because as soon as they drag her up, she tears herself free from their grasp.
In a single second, the surging crowd absorbs her like a hungry maw, and the last thing I see is her being dragged under a mass of bodies, fists and feet flying.
“Is—is she going to be okay?” I ask, stumbling along next to the guy who has his arm around me.
It takes me a second to register that I know him, even if he doesn’t know me behind the mask.
He’s one of Angel’s cousins, the one who was in my grade when I went to school here, though he’s so big and tough looking now, it’s hard to imagine we’re the same age.
“I’m more worried about you,” Maverick says. “How bad did she get you?”
When he lifts me toward the crowd, I reach up without fear.
The crowd knows me here, even if they don’t know my face.
They know I live for this like they do, that I want to give them what they want.
They know I don’t fight dirty, especially don’t bring weapons into our shared space.
This place is as sacred to me as it is to them, and I would never disrespect it that way.
Dynamo and Maverick’s brother Mad Dog reach down to pull me up, and that’s when I hesitate, grabbing my side when I feel a fresh wave of hot blood gush from the cut as Maverick lifts me. My vision swims, but the next second, I’m wobbling on my feet on the concrete floor of the warehouse.
“Stay with me, Red,” Dynamo says. “Can’t lose my best fighter here, can we?”
“I’m fine,” I insist, pressing a hand to my side and trying to get my breath. “It’s just a scratch.”
Mad Dog barks orders, and even those hopped up on adrenaline step back or offer a word of sympathy or encouragement when we pass, slapping my back and shoulders until Mad Dog turns his murderous scowl on them.
“Don’t fucking touch her,” he thunders, and they all step back out of deference to him.
Maverick puts a protective arm around me, and between him and Dynamo, I’m sheltered from the crowd and ushered out a side door into the cold.
“Where are we going?” I ask, realizing a second too late that the door closed behind us, and I’m alone with a group of guys I barely know and that I definitely couldn’t fight right now if the need arose.
Considering what they do, it’s not unreasonable to think I’m in danger, but I’m calm instead of scared.
Maybe it’s the blood loss, or maybe it’s the fact that I’ve known Dynamo for years, even if it’s in a surface way.
These guys may work outside the law, but so do I.
“We’re going to get you patched up,” Maverick says. “Don’t worry, we won’t take you to the hospital unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“You’re in good hands,” Dynamo assures me as he helps me into a gleaming black El Camino. “I’ll catch up.”
I realize a second too late that he’s not getting in with us.
Mad Dog slides into the passenger seat, and Maverick is already in the driver’s seat, firing up the engine and revving it a few times.
That’s when I start to get nervous. They may not know who I am with the mask on, but they could easily pull it off.
What would they do when they saw the girl who sent their cousin away, the one whose windows they shattered with bricks?