2. Beast
TWO
Beast
I grunt in annoyance as the door closes and blocks my view of my prey.
I think that’s what he is to me anyway. I don’t know how else to understand my instincts anymore. And what else should he be but prey with that pretty face and those big, lost eyes?
There’s certainly no doubt about what I am, and he recognized it instantly. Of course, most people do. Everyone knows a predator when they feel its gaze.
Not that I get out much to stare at people. Since Oscar Crowley bought me from the prison however many months ago, I’ve seen no one but my handlers except on fight nights.
“He catch your eye, Beast?”
I don’t answer. I never do. I don’t even remember the last time I spoke. I just keep staring at the door where my prey vanished.
“He sure was pretty.”
Growling, I turn my gaze on Briggs and rise from the bench. I’m barely on my feet before my body jolts, my muscles freezing as pain rips through me, shaking me inside until I can’t think. I can’t even see the locker room around me or Briggs in front of me.
This is a thing you learn in dark places: reality can be reshaped in a second. Right now, I have no reality but the electric current tearing me apart while simultaneously holding me rigidly upright.
I gasp when it vanishes. With the shock no longer locking my muscles, I crash to the floor. I’m on my hands and knees. I hate being on my hands and knees. I also hate the sound I’m making. It means weakness. Vulnerability.
And that means danger.
Sure enough, something pricks my neck while I’m down. Briggs injects me as fast as he can, sending whatever drug he’s hit me with searing into my veins so he can step back quickly.
“Get up, Beast. It’s time.” A boot thunks into my ribs. It’s not a hard kick, but I’m not ready for it, not after the shock collar. I fall to my elbows.
That’s unacceptable. I don’t bow. I won’t. I don’t get to have many boundaries, but that’s one of them.
I get to my feet. I could kill Briggs right now. He’s handling me alone, which he’s not supposed to do on a fight night. In order to drug me, I guess. I don’t feel anything yet, but I’m sure I will. This sort of shit happens all the time in fights. It happened to me several times in the prison before being taken to the arena.
So I know better than to waste time fucking with him. I head to the door. I want my fight. It’s the only outlet I have.
It’s the only time I’m free.
I pause at the door and wait for Briggs to take the collar off. I hear him draw his gun, but it’s part of the routine, so I don’t react. The collar tugs at my throat as he works the strap at the back of my neck. When it lifts away from me, I shove the door open.
I’m still shaky from the shock as I walk out into the crowd, which parts for me in comical haste. People shove into each other to get out of my way as the multicolored lights slash through the air overhead.
The usual stupid commentary is coming through the speakers, working up the already agitated crowd with a story about me that’s about a quarter true. I did indeed spend years fighting in a secret gladiatorial-style arena, but I wasn’t born there like they’re claiming, nor did I earn the name Beast at the age of seven for killing a man who stole my breakfast. But I have killed men for less, and I have been known as the Beast for a long time.
No one here knows who I really am. Half the time, I don’t remember either. Like I said, reality changes in dark places.
The environment overloads my senses with too many sights and sounds. I fucking hate that because I can’t track every potential threat, but it’s so much that it almost becomes nothing. Usually, I just tune it out and focus on my opponent strutting around in the cage as I approach.
Tonight, however, I look around, hunting. It’s a sea of faces, all meaningless, no one standing out to me—until I spot him.
He’s definitely pretty, but I don’t think that’s what’s drawing me. I don’t even remember the last time I had a sexual response, and I don’t feel anything in my cock. It’s in my gut. It’s in my whole body.
I think I want to kill him, but I’m not sure.
He’s looking around like he wants to escape, but the doors always lock before I’m brought out.
An image flashes through my mind: him fleeing through the crowd, me chasing him.
I imagine him darting around people, ducking, hiding, scrambling as I pursue him. Adrenaline spikes at the fantasy. Feeling tingles unexpectedly into my balls.
What the fuck?
When I notice the man hovering at his side, the man who talked to Briggs in the locker room, I growl. I don’t like him.
There’s a war in my body as I reach the steps leading up to the cage, where my opponent is shaking the heavy chain link fence and roaring at the crowd.
There’s the usual buzz of anticipation. My fists are clenching because I’ll finally get to use them. My body is hot instead of the usual cold stiffness of my cell.
There’s the frustration of my hunting fantasy and the fact that my prey is unavailable to me. The heavy, tingly feeling in my balls is getting worse, and I don’t like it. It’s making me angry.
Then there’s the heaviness creeping through my blood. The shock collar’s zap along my nerves is mostly gone, drowned out by all the rest, but the effect of whatever drug Briggs hit me with is starting to kick in.
The gate is open at the top of the steps. As I step into the cage, my opponent smacks his fist into his other hand. Tendons strain in his neck as he shouts wordlessly in my direction. His face is red above his dark beard.
He’s big, matching my 6’4” height and outweighing me by a good thirty pounds. Fat-lined muscle is heavy in his abdomen above the waistband of his camo cargo pants.
I’ve killed men bigger than him, however, and there’s a good reason for it. It’s not because I’m more skilled. It’s not because I’m smarter. It’s certainly because I’m calm.
It’s because his rage is for show. Mine is real.
His is temporary. Mine is ever present.
Mine doesn’t always show because it’s not on the surface. It lives inside me. It goes all the way down to my soul—or the place where a soul is supposed to be. Because when I unleash it? There’s nothing human in me at all.
I stalk straight across the white octagonal floor, picking up speed. By the time my opponent realizes that I’m not going to parade around the ring, it’s too late. He takes a belated swing, but the blow glances off my shoulder as I slam into him.
I drive his huge body across the ring until he crashes into the fence. The fence is strong but has some spring. I’m ready for the bounce back and use it to throw my opponent. I kick his knee as I do it. He hits the ground.
I go for a head stomp, but he rolls out of the way and scrambles to his feet. Now he actually is mad. He comes at me swinging a meaty fist. It connects, but so does mine.
Shit gets brutal fast.
We work back and forth across the ring. Our fists thunk into each other’s ribs and bellies, backs and faces. I almost take a knee to the groin but twist so it strikes my quad. My elbow cracks into his nose. He staggers back, blood gushing from his nostrils.
I stagger too as the world spins around me. The drug has been eating at me slowly, putting a lag in my reactions that has meant taking more hits than usual, but it really catches up with me now, sloshing through my blood—and right at the moment when two hunting knives get hurled down from the balcony. They embed themselves in the white floor.
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.