Chapter 7
JAGGER
WRAITH UNLEASHED
Ismell chlorine before I smell blood.
That’s new.
Usually, by the time I get to the warehouse, the stink of old sweat, beer, and rust wipes everything else clean. It crawls into your lungs and stays there, thick enough to taste.
Tonight, it’s all still here. The crowd. The cage. The wet concrete. The money changing hands in tight fists.
But under it, stuck somewhere behind my teeth, is chlorine.
Swim practice was at five this morning as usual.
And as usual, Coach mumbled while half of us looked like corpses with goggles.
The pool was cold enough to piss me off before I even hit the fucking water, and I spent an hour cutting through lanes while my body tried to figure out why the fuck I hadn’t slept.
Kick. Pull. Breathe.
Turn.
Kick. Pull. Breathe.
Turn.
Again and again until my shoulders burned and my lungs felt scraped out.
Usually, the water helps. It shuts everything up. Keeps my head clean. Makes the world simple for a while. There’s no crowd underwater. No brother. No pretty little obsession with a camera and too much curiosity for her own survival.
This morning, it didn’t work.
Every time I turned my head to breathe, I heard her.
Alice.
That soft fucking gasp against rain-wet stone. My name slipping out of her soft swollen lips like she hated giving it to me and still couldn’t fucking keep it in. Her breath hitching when she ran. The little sound she made when the knife kissed her perfect skin.
I should feel bad about that.
But I don’t.
That’s the thing nobody tells you about wanting something you shouldn’t have. Guilt shows up late, if it ever shows up at all.
Mostly, there’s just the need.
The replay.
The ugly little loop your brain keeps feeding itself because once wasn’t enough and pretending otherwise is a waste of fucking time.
My knuckles flex inside the tape.
The skin across them is already raw from warm-ups. Just the way I like it. I like feeling the pull when I make a fist. I like pain that makes sense.
I let the tape snap against my wrist and roll my shoulders, trying to shake it out.
Across the warehouse, the bookie is shouting numbers, and some guy with a busted nose is arguing about odds like arguing is going to make him look less stupid to everyone else. Cigarette smoke hangs low near the rafters.
The metal cage sits under the lights, waiting.
My fight is third.
Should be easy.
The guy across from me is built like he eats drywall for protein. He keeps pacing, neck thick, shoulders wider than they need to be, and his chest is puffed like he’s trying to impress anyone who fucking looks.
Fucking idiot.
People like him make noise before they fight because silence scares them. They bounce. Spit. Roll their necks. Slap their own faces and bark at the crowd like violence needs a fucking announcement.
I can’t be bothered to do that bullshit.
They call me Wraith because I don’t need to be loud to end up in the room with you.
Quiet is what really gets people nervous, and I like them nervous.
I step into the cage when my name gets called, and the crowd shifts around me, bodies pressing closer to the chain-link like they’re all hungry for the same thing.
Blood. Bone. Their money doubled.
Somebody’s teeth on the floor.
“Wraith!”
The chant starts near the back, rough and drunk.
“Wraith! Wraith! Wraith!”
I tune it out.
My feet move across the mat. One circle. Then another. I roll my neck once and bounce my hands, feeling the tape pull over my knuckles. My body knows what to do even when my head is somewhere else.
That’s the part people never understand.
People think fighting is chaos because they’re watching from outside the cage.
Inside, it’s simple.
Rage makes you stupid. Makes you swing too wide, breathe too hard, show every thought on your face before your body catches up.
I don’t need to be angry to win.
I need him angry.
I need him loud, sloppy, and sure he has me figured out.
Then I wait for the opening.
That’s Wraith.
Not the guy who makes the most noise.
The one you don’t see clearly until you’re already on the floor.
I stretch my fingers, make a fist, then release it. The lights beat down hot against my shoulders. My opponent steps in across from me and slams one fist into his palm, staring like that’s supposed to do something.
I stare back until he looks away first.
Smart.
My eyes move past him before I can stop them, cutting over the cage to the far wall where Alice stood the first night with her camera raised.
She isn’t there, which I already know because I checked the second I walked in like some pathetic asshole with a problem he refuses to name.
Every girl in black boots got a second look. Every flash of dark hair. Every small body tucked near the edges of the crowd.
None of them were her.
Alice should stay the fuck away from this place.
From Johnny.
From me.
I know that, but the thought still sits wrong in my chest, too serious, too close to care, and I don’t do care in a normal, healthy way.
I turn it into rules and fucking warnings.
The whistle blasts for the end of the fight before mine, and the crowd goes off as some guy hits the mat hard enough to make the cage shake.
Money changes hands and men shout. Someone laughs like broken ribs are fucking entertainment.
To a lot of us, they are.
I roll my shoulders and keep warming up, forcing my body through the motions until muscle memory takes over.
Left. Right. Slip. Roll.
Breathe.
Get your head straight.
Alice isn’t here.
So why the fuck am I still checking?
My arms feel heavy from the pool this morning, but heavy doesn’t mean tired. Heavy means grounded. The swim burned out the weak parts and left the useful ones.
The part that can wait and watch.
The part that can hurt somebody exactly how I fucking mean to.
A movement near the cage pulls my attention.
Johnny steps out of the crowd like he was never part of it.
Black jacket. His hair is still damp.
A cigarette sits between his fingers. He looks too clean for the warehouse, which is how I know he’s already done something fucking filthy today.
My shoulders go still and Johnny smiles.
Fuck sakes.
My brother lives for reactions. Any reaction. Anger is his favorite, but he’ll take irritation, disgust, hate, a punch to the mouth if he can make it mean he pushed you to do it.
I give him nothing.
He strolls up to the cage and hooks his fingers through the chain-link like he’s visiting me at a petting zoo.
“Little brother,” he says.
I keep rolling my shoulders. “Johnny.”
“Wow. Such a warm and loving greeting.” His eyes drift over me, then to the guy across the cage. “Big night for emotional constipation and amateur dentistry.”
I say nothing.
That’s the rule with Johnny.
You don’t feed him unless you’re ready for him to chew through the bone and act like you offered dinner.
Johnny taps ash onto the concrete and studies me through the chain-link, smiling like he’s already halfway inside my head and just waiting for me to notice. “Someones quiet tonight.”
I roll my shoulders and keep moving.
Left. Right. Slip.
“Don’t tell me you’re learning self-control. That would be so very tragic.” His fingers curl through the fence. “I like you better when you’re one bad sentence away from committing a fucking felony.”
“Leave.”
“Oh, there he is.” Johnny’s grin widens. “I was starting to think you forgot how to talk.”
The referee shouts something behind me. My opponent bounces on his toes, impatient and stupid enough to think this fight is about him. The crowd keeps chanting my name in broken pieces, some drunk, some eager, some just betting with their lungs.
Johnny’s voice slides through all of it.
“You look tense, little brother.”
“I’m warming up.”
“No.” Johnny leans closer to the cage, fingers hooked through the chain-link, eyes bright with that bored, mean amusement he gets when he knows he’s close to something soft. “You’re wound the fuck up.”
I roll my shoulders and keep moving. “Find someone else to bother.”
“But you’re my favorite.” His smile stretches. “You get so quiet when you’re trying not to care. Like if you stand still enough, nobody will notice the leash.”
My jaw tightens.
“Ouu now we’re getting somewhere,” he murmurs. “I was starting to worry your new little toy wasn’t serving her purpose.”
I stop moving.
Only for a second.
Too fucking long.
Johnny’s grin gets lazy. “Calm down. I just meant you’re all tense.” His eyes stay on mine through the chain-link, bright with amusement. “What’s wrong? Your new little toy not doing her job? Pretty thing like that should’ve taken the edge off by now.”
“Say one more fucking word.”
“Oh, I will.” He flicks ash onto the concrete and smiles through the fence. “That’s why I came.”
The referee shouts behind me, telling us to get ready. My opponent bounces in place across the cage, all shoulders and stupid fucking confidence, acting like this has anything to do with him.
It doesn’t.
Johnny’s voice drops low enough that the crowd can’t catch it.
“I mean, she served me just fine.”
Everything in me goes cold.
Still.
The kind of still that comes right before I do something I can’t take back.
Johnny laughs softly, delighted by whatever the fuck shows on my face before I can bury it.
“Relax,” he says. “She’s just so generous that one.”
My hands flex once at my sides and I turn to face him.
Johnny’s eyes glitter through the chain-link.
“Or maybe,” he says, smiling through the fence, “she just liked walking away with something from me more.”
The whistle blows.
I hear it, but I’m already gone.
My opponent moves first, and this time, I let him.
His fist cracks across my jaw hard enough to snap my head sideways, and the crowd fucking erupts like they’ve been waiting all night to see Wraith bleed.
He drives into me shoulder-first, shoving me back into the chain-link.
Metal bites into my spine and my hands come up on instinct, but my head isn’t in the cage anymore.
It’s on Alice.
It’s on Johnny’s mouth saying she served me just fine.
Fuck him.
Fuck his voice.
Fuck every second I wasn’t there.