Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
Two trained security contractors stood at the steel door in dark jackets, wearing earpieces. One held a clipboard. The other held a metal-detector wand. A black plastic bin on a folding table beside them was half-full of phones and keys and a folded knife from someone who hadn’t read the rules.
The guard with the clipboard asked his name.
“Jake Russo. Plus two.”
The guard ran a finger down the list, found him, and nodded at the man with the wand. The wand passed over Blaze’s shoulders, his ribs, his waistband, his inner thighs, and his ankles. The guard checked Blaze’s waistband and the small of his back for a holster before he stepped back.
The guard with the wand swept it over Stella next, the same shoulders-ribs-hips pattern he’d run on Blaze, and then quickly patted her down.
Ryder’s duffle went on the table. The guard opened it and pawed through.
Hand wraps, athletic tape, a water bottle, a sealed roll of cotton, a small bottle of arnica gel.
The guard found nothing because there was nothing to find. Ryder zipped the bag back up.
The clipboard guard waved them through, and the steel door closed behind them. The smell of sweat, blood, concrete, alcohol, and perfume layered over each other. Voices rose over the low hum of music, and the clink of glassware came from the bar.
The pit sat at the center of the warehouse, a sunken concrete floor twenty feet across with a low cinderblock wall around its rim at chest height. Lighting rigs hung overhead, white and harsh. The pit’s concrete was stained dark in places that hadn’t fully washed clean.
The crowd was humans, mostly men, a handful of women.
They drank and talked and moved with the steady ease of people who had paid for the night.
Money showed in luxury watches, expensive leather shoes.
Tailored coats over the backs of chairs.
The women wore silk blouses and dark jeans with glittering diamond studs in their ears.
Stella’s hand tightened on his arm. She was scared, but she wasn’t showing it on her face. A man in a black polo shirt with an earpiece crossed the floor toward them. Mid-thirties, human, the same trained flatness as the guards at the door.
“Russo.”
“Yeah.”
“Fighters’ area is through the curtain at the back. Your corner man comes with you. Your girl can stay on the floor.”
He turned his head to Stella and put his mouth close to her ear, where her hair touched his cheek. The smell of her under the wig and the perfume was the maple-syrup-and-brown-sugar smell that belonged to him.
“Drink at the bar,” he said, low. “Don’t talk to anyone you don’t have to.”
“Go win your match, baby.”
The bond cranked open between them at the word baby. He looked at Stella in the wig and the makeup and the choker and the leather jacket. She turned toward the bar without looking back at him. The boots clicked on the concrete. The crowd parted and closed again behind her.
He turned and followed the floor manager toward the door at the back.
Ryder was at his shoulder. The floor manager held it for them, and they stepped through.
The light was fluorescent and bright after the dim of the floor.
Two long wooden benches sat against the walls.
A folding table held bottles of water, rolls of athletic tape, gauze, and a basket of disposable mouth guards in their wrappers.
The other fighters were already in. Two men sat close together on the left bench, talking in low voices in a language Blaze didn’t speak.
They were in their mid-twenties, both tall and rangy like welterweights, with the long-limbed build cat shifters carried from their animal sides.
A fighter who Blaze took for a brown bear stood at the table taping his own hands.
He glanced at Blaze once, sized him with a working-man’s quick read, and went back to his hands.
Two other fighters Blaze clocked as wolves were on the back wall.
The older one was maybe forty with bad scars down one side of his face.
The younger one had a shaved head and tattoos that climbed out of his collar onto his neck.
Blaze read the scarred older wolf as someone who had been doing this longer than him and who wasn’t afraid of anyone in the room.
Nobody talked. Greetings weren’t done in the holding room.
The energy was focused and tight. He got quiet the way he used to go quiet in Bangkok.
Blaze crossed to the empty bench on the right, dropped his duffel at the end of it, and sat.
Ryder followed and set his own bag down beside it. He started on his wraps.
The door at the far side opened, and a man in a charcoal suit tailored for him stepped through.
He was in his late forties and silver at the temples, tan with the face of someone with a skin care routine.
He wore no tie, and the collar of his white shirt was open at the throat.
He had a Rolex on his left wrist. The smell of money came off him in cologne and shoe leather.
He stopped in the center of the room and looked at every fighter in turn the way a man looks at livestock. He nodded at the bear. He smiled at the leopards. He nodded at the older wolf then crossed the room and stopped three feet from Blaze. He didn’t offer a hand to shake.
“Mister Russo.”
“Yeah. Who’s asking?”
“Vincent Pierce. I looked up your record Russo. Decent for the circuit you ran. Bare-knuckle. No-rules.”
“Sounds about right.”
“What brings you to me?”
“Heard you pay better than anyone else.”
“I do.” Pierce laughed, short and pleased. Blaze didn’t trust the laugh. It was the laugh of a man who had decided he liked a thing he intended to use up.
“You’re on the third bout,” Pierce said. “Leopard shifter out of Vancouver. He’s quick.”
“Got it.”
“Win cleanly. We’ll see what comes next.”
Pierce turned and crossed to the bear. The bear nodded, then Pierce moved to the leopards. Blaze read it the way he read everything. This is my ticket deeper inside.
He thought about Stella for a beat. She was at the bar, and he hoped she was okay.
Pierce finished his rounds and left through the door.
A muffled roar came from the floor side.
The first bout had started. Blaze stood in the open space between the two benches and worked through his warmup, shadow striking slow at first, footwork in tight circles, hip rotation drills he’d done a thousand times.
The first bout came through the door in the sound of fists slapping on flesh, the roar of the crowd, and a smooth unaffected voice on the PA introducing the fighters.
Blaze read the rhythm of the fight without seeing it, the strikes landing, the pace of them, the moments of clinch where the strikes went quiet.
He knew when one of them was hurt and when one of them was breaking.
A hard cheer came at the three-minute mark. Someone had been put down hard.
The clouded leopard stood up and stretched his neck. He was six feet tall and lean as wire. He cracked his knuckles and walked to the door to wait. He did not look back at Blaze.
The floor manager walked through the door.
“Russo. Up.”
Blaze rolled his shoulders. Something feral rose in his chest. He picked up his mouth guard from the table, slid it in, and walked out the door. Ryder was behind him with the towel and the water.
The corridor between the holding room and the pit was twelve feet of concrete with the lights overhead getting brighter as you walked. The pit was at the end. The corridor was cooler than the holding room, the breath of HVAC moving through it, and the crowd was louder by the step.
The crowd noise crested. Voices around the pit were calling odds. He couldn’t see faces past the edge of the lighting rig. He scanned the crowd and found Stella at the bar. She was on a high stool, a drink in her hand. She wore a bored expression, her cover holding.
He climbed the low cinderblock wall and stepped down into the pit. The lights bit at his eyes. The concrete was rough through the soles of his feet. The leopard was across the pit, barefoot and in shorts. He rolled his shoulders.
The PA voice announced them, smooth and unaffected.
Jake Russo, twenty-three and four out of Reno, fighting tonight at middleweight against Marcel Rouet, eighteen and two out of Vancouver.
The crowd noise crested again. Money moved.
The floor manager from earlier stood at the edge of the pit as referee. He raised a hand and brought it down.
Fight.
Rouet moved first. He circled to Blaze’s right, quick and light, the front foot probing.
Blaze pivoted and kept him in front of him.
He didn’t chase. He cut. Rouet threw a kick to Blaze’s lead leg, snapping it out and back to keep distance.
Blaze took it on the thigh. It stung, but he didn’t react.
The leopard threw a head kick high and fast off the same rhythm.
Blaze read the leopard’s shoulder before the leg came up, and he dodged it. The kick whistled past his ear.
He’s fast.
Blaze pressed. He cut the angle on Rouet’s circle and threw a low kick to the inside of the leopard’s lead thigh to take that mobility away. It landed clean. The leopard made a small sound. His opponent answered with a flying knee.
Blaze hadn’t expected the flying knee from a distance fighter. The knee caught him in the ribs on the right side, hard, and pain shot up through his side. The crowd reacted. He grunted, gave ground, and Rouet pursued.
His opponent threw three strikes in succession looking to finish the round on the back of the knee.
Blaze covered, took two on the forearms, dodged the third, and clinched.
Inside the clinch was Blaze’s range. Rouet tried to break away.
Blaze didn’t let him. He got one underhook, then the other, and pressed his head against the side of the leopard’s neck.
The cat scent up close was musk and blood and cologne.
Blaze worked short uppercuts into the body inside the clinch. Rouet tried to knee him. Blaze blocked with his hip and drove the leopard’s back against the cinderblock wall. His opponent fought, but Blaze kept him there.
He doesn’t know what to do here.
The buzzer ended the round. The floor manager stepped between them.
Blaze released the clinch and stepped back.
Rouet was panting. Blaze walked to his side of the pit and sat on the cinderblock wall.
Ryder leaned over from the other side with the water and the towel and gave him both without touching him.
“You good?” Ryder said.
“Sore. I’m good.”
“He’s tired.”
“I know.”
He didn’t look at Stella. Looking at her now would be a mistake in a hundred ways.
The buzzer sounded. He stood, and Ryder swung back over the wall.
Blaze came out pressing. He cut the leopard’s circle inside thirty seconds.
Rouet kicked, and Blaze took it on the thigh and kept coming.
He threw a heavy overhand right, and it caught Rouet on the side of the jaw.
The leopard’s head snapped. He went down on one knee and popped up before Blaze could follow.
He doesn’t take a punch.
Blaze took him to the ground with a clean double-leg, lifting through the hips.
Rouet hit the concrete on his back hard.
Something in Blaze rumbled, and the crowd reacted.
Blaze landed inside the leopard’s guard.
The cat tried to scramble. Blaze planted his weight, passed the guard with patience instead of speed, and got to side control.
He put an elbow to Rouet’s jaw. Then his temple.
The leopard’s arms came up to defend, and Blaze drove a third elbow through the gap between them.
Rouet’s nose broke audibly. Blood sprayed onto the concrete.
The leopard’s arms came up to cover his face.
Blaze threw hammer fists, heavy and relentless.
The floor manager stepped in and pulled him off. Rouet’s arms had gone limp at his sides. He was conscious. He was finished. Blaze stepped back. He took a breath. His ribs ached where the flying knee had landed. There was blood on his knuckles and blood on the concrete in front of him.