1. The Pit #2
The ring sat at the center of it. A raised plywood platform, maybe twenty feet square, ringed with thick hemp rope strung between steel posts.
No padding. No turnbuckles. That rope left welts that wept for a week.
I'd found that out during my fifteenth fight, when I was shoved back into it hard enough to burn a stripe across my shoulder blade.
I'd had to sleep on my stomach to keep the pain away.
The sodium lamps hanging off the rafters on industrial clamps went on, throwing the whole place a hard yellow-white.
The crowd turned into a field of lit faces and black gaps, features blown out one second and gone the next as heads twisted away from the sudden light.
The crowd knew what the lights meant. Their roar came up to meet the lights and rattled through my skull.
Money moved rapidly through the front rows. Bills folding into palms, bets settled on a nod and a look.
Harlan shouldered a path through the crowd and I followed in, bodies closing at my back, the heat of other men's breath on my neck.
"Hey—Monk! Monk!" A hand snagged my arm. A drunk in the second row, glassy-eyed and grinning, breath sour enough to sting from a foot away. "Put the Jackal on his ass, yeah? Got three hundred on you, man."
Harlan's arm swept back and knocked the hand loose without turning his head.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" The announcer buzzed through blown speakers, splitting on every hard consonant. "Your next bout! Standing six foot five, two hundred and five pounds, with a record of eleven wins and six losses, the Jackal!"
The crowd erupted, their roars sharp and hungry. I went up the three plywood steps. The mat was damp under my bare feet, sweat from the last fight or water from a lazy mop, and I could see a dark stain near the center, a spot the bleach hadn't reached.
The Jackal was already up there. Taller than me by a couple inches, wiry, all reach and long lean muscle, buzz cut catching the light, ink running up both arms and climbing his neck into the hollows behind his ears.
He bounced on the balls of his feet, drinking the noise, grinning out at the seats like he'd thrown the party himself. His eyes found me and the grin spread.
"This the one they call Monk?" He pitched it to the crowd. "Sunday school's in session, boys! You gonna pray for me, sweetheart? Get down on your knees and?—"
"Undefeated! Sixteen wins and zero losses! Six foot three, one hundred and ninety-five pounds, Monk!"
It landed quieter. Nobody knew what to do with a fighter who kept his mouth shut and just ended things. No chant for me. No show to chant along with. I went to my corner and set my feet.
The ref rattled off the rules. No eyes, no biting, nothing below the belt, flat, the way you'd read a menu for the hundredth time that month.
The Jackal bounced opposite me. Guard high, weight riding heavy on his right side, which told me the power lived in his right hand and left his left side open.
I stood still. Hands loose. Eyes on the center of his chest, where movement starts a beat before the arms catch up.
"Fight!"
The room detonated. Two hundred voices slammed into the steel walls and came back doubled.
The Jackal danced. Side to side, bouncing. "Come on, Monk." A jab that died six inches short of my face, a check meant to make me flinch. The pushed air brushed my cheek. "Give me something, man. You're making me look bad up here."
I didn't move. Let the seconds stretch. Let his need to perform press against the quiet until it cracked him.
The Jackal's grin faded to nothing. "Fuck it."
His right cross came hard, hip turning over to double the weight behind it.
I dropped, knees folding, and his fist scraped the top of my skull. I caught myself on my left hand and threw a roundhouse with my right leg. My right shin drove up into his open left side, right on the ribs.
Clean shot. He folded around the shin, the air kicked out of him, guard faltering, head dropping to waist height. It all happened in a split second.
I switched hands, dropped my right palm to the mat, and spun left. My left heel came around in a spinning hook kick and met his lowered head.
The hit connected hard with his jaw and his head whipped sideways. Blood spat across the mat. He staggered into the ropes and hung there on his chest, arms folded over the hemp rope.
Two hundred people went feral. The screaming swallowed the scattered boos from the pockets who'd bet the other way. They had no love for the quiet monk, but they came alive when I beat a man bloody in front of them. Animals, all of them.
I straightened and waited.
The Jackal came back slow. Swimming eyes finding their focus, weight settling, guard tucking in tighter and closer.
Blood dripped down from his lip. The left side of his jaw was already darkening.
There was no more bounce in him, just a shuffle.
My kicks had taken the show out of him and left him with survival.
The Jackal broke his stance and charged. Head down, arms wide. A tackle. He couldn't beat me standing and he knew it, so he was putting everything on getting me to the floor.
I stepped backward. One step, timed to his rush, letting the movement eat some of the force before his shoulder slammed into my gut. The impact folded me and my back hit the mat, his weight driving down on top of me.
But my legs were already under him. Both of my feet planted on his stomach and chest before we'd finished falling, my legs bent and loaded. His momentum carried him forward, rolling him over me, and I shoved with everything I had.
He went flying over the edge of the platform. The scream that tore out of him was raw and involuntary. Spectators scrambled back, beer bursting across the concrete, bottles clattering as people shoved to clear the spot where he'd land.
The Jackal hit the floor with a dense, final slam that turned my stomach.
The roll had brought me from my back to my feet. I turned toward the crash.
One of the Jackal's arms was flung wide, palm up. His chest dragged in a slow breath. The landing had clearly knocked the air out of him. He was alive, but he wasn't getting up off that floor tonight by himself.
The room came apart. Two hundred people up on their feet at once, a wall of sound that shoved in from every side and set the work lights swinging on their chains, making the shadows tilt and slide.
Down front, bills snapped from fist to fist, men squaring up their bets before the ref had even finished.
A bottle tipped off somebody's seat and spun across the concrete, ringing thin and bright under all that noise.
The ref crouched over the Jackal, counting, his hand chopping the air.
I stood in my corner and let my breath in and out, hauling the smoke-thick air down into lungs that had gone raw somewhere in the last ninety seconds.
Sweat slid into the old scar above my eyebrow.
The muscles in my thighs were still jumping from shoving a grown man.
The rope burn across my shoulder blade had woken back up the moment I hit the mat during the roll, a hot stripe I'd be feeling every time I raised that arm for a week.
My fists shook when I unclenched them. From the after, not the impact, the adrenaline draining off and leaving everything loose and too bright at the edges.
I hadn't wanted to end the fight like that. A man hauled off a platform onto bare concrete breaks in ways that don't knit back together, and I'd thrown him knowing it. But a loss paid seven hundred. A win paid four grand. And four grand was another week of the machines breathing for Liam.
Two guys in stained shirts climbed up and hauled the Jackal off toward the back by his arms, his heels carving twin smears through the spilled beer. The crowd was already bored of him, the roar sliding back down toward its baseline hum, hungry for the next thing.
I rolled my shoulders loose, felt the tape pull tight over my knuckles, and turned for the ring's exit steps. The mat had gone tacky and sticky under my bare feet.
The speakers crackled to life.
"Hold up, hold up!" The announcer shouted, his voice riding over the settling noise. "Don't put your money away! We're holding a bonus bout for our undefeated champion!"
The cold went through me all at once.
Harlan was waiting at the foot of the steps, mouth tight, something moved into his eyes that hadn't been there when he'd told me not to bore the crowd.
"New fight." He spoke low, just for me. "Boss wants you in."
My pulse knocked against the tape on my wrists. "One fight, Harlan. That was the deal."
"I know what the deal was." A muscle ticked at the side of his neck. Whatever was coming, it cost him. "Just… be smart. Please."
The please dropped through me and kept on going. Harlan didn't say please. Harlan gave orders, blocked doorways, made sure fighters got to the ring, kept his face nailed shut. The word came out wrong in his mouth, and the wrongness of it told me everything about what was coming next.
Two huge and muscular enforcers came up from the opposite steps hauling a man between them.
Mid-twenties. Already wrecked. The left side of his face was so swollen it shut over one eye.
Blood dried above his ear, his wraps days old and coming apart.
They dumped him at the center of the ring and he stayed on his knees, swaying, his one good eye fixed on nothing.
The crowd dropped off. The roar, the shouting, the slap of palms on wood, all of it drained out and left something lower and uglier behind. People shifting in their seats. I noticed a few of them finding somewhere else to look.
"Monk. Your opponent's waiting." The announcement blared out.