Chapter 27 #2
“You don’t deserve any influence in this city, Max,” Damien baited him while he circled the rim of the ring. “As soon as the Governor went missing and the Cursed were blamed, you ran from us all like a coward!”
“Says the man who paid off thieves to take my relics, just to get me out of his way. All so you could ascend without facing me yourself.” A tremble shuddered over Max’s shoulders. Beside me, Elli cursed.
“He’s about to slip into a rage,” she whispered.
“Is that intentional?” I asked her. “Could Damien do it as well?”
She shook her head. “Damien drinks lots to keep himself fueled. I’m sure he had plenty of Archetypes to combat the dice. Even so, Max can’t discern between friend and foe in a rage. It could become a bloodbath in here if he doesn’t calm down.”
“And yet you sent me into a shipping box with him.”
She smirked. “That was before we were friends.”
Damien seemed to understand this as well, taking his chance to charge. He was a blur to my sight, and Max became a vague shape in the ring as the pair clashed. A terrifying noise came from the chaos, a combination of tearing and snarling.
“Break!” Damien’s team called out.
The host of the fight rolled his eyes but made the call. “Architect’s arse. Separate, the both of you!”
The pair came into clarity. Damien threw Max off him. Max flew back for a moment but landed on his feet. His shirt was torn, baring glimpses of his mangled back to the crowd. If he noticed or cared, he didn’t show it.
“No!” Damien barked. “I don’t need no break. I’m ready to finish this!”
“Damien…” someone shouted from his corner.
“Fuck off—”
The host signaled with his hands for the fight to begin again.
Max used something from the Forge die, stopping Damien short. His face went purple, and he fell to his knees, gasping.
But Damien challenged him, using his own power over the air to shove Max’s compulsion away.
“How is he doing this?” Elli murmured. “How many people did he drink from to have control over this many bloodlines?”
“Cheat,” Damien spat. “You’re nothing more than an abomination.”
Max rolled his head around his shoulders and looked at me for a brief second. “How easily you forget that we were made in the same lab. By the same hands and the same codes. Beneath our skin, we are the same, Damien. One abomination facing another.”
“You’re nothing without them,” Damien said, his oily stare sliding to me. “Even she knows it.”
“That did it,” Elli whispered, recognizing the kind of words that would send Max into a rage.
“Is that right, Damien?” His voice went to a treacherous low, scraping the edge of his limits.
He took one, two steps before lunging across the pit toward Damien.
The man tried to pivot away, but Max caught him, teeth bared.
Damien let out a guttural cry as Max ripped a chunk from his flesh, spitting on the ground.
“He made us. He designed us. If I can’t use what he gave me, neither can you. ”
Damien tried to kick him off, but Max had already moved to another chunk of muscle. The wounds would soon bleed Damien out. Max only stood after taking three more bites from him, letting Damien’s blood drip from the corners of his mouth and paint his throat red.
“Get up!” Max shouted, spitting blood as he did.
Damien sat up slowly, groaning, but eventually made it to his feet. Entire pieces of him were missing. The crowd murmured their repulsion. Some even left their seats.
“I should take your eyes,” Max spat into the dirt. “For compelling Nina and forcing yourself on her. The engineer gave you those, too. He gave everything that made you the piece of shit you are today.”
“He gave us gifts,” Damien said. “He was brilliant, and you nearly killed him—”
“I wish I had,” Max shouted. “And if I ever find him, I’ll tear him apart.”
Damien’s face broke into a slow and troubling smile.
“He’s waiting for you,” Damien said.
“What are you talking about?”
The bleeding brother laughed. “You’re still his favorite, after all this time. Did you really think he would let you go so easily? You’re better off dead, and so is Nina.”
I caught Max’s gaze from the ring. Bright blood painted his chin, his neck, soaked his shirt until it clung to his heaving chest. Then his jaw clenched, his fists whitened, and every muscle in his posture went tense.
Beside me, Elli cursed.
Damien took a foolish step closer, not realizing the bloodrage he was triggering in his opponent.
“I know you want your territories back, Max. You love this hellscape just as much as I do. It’s corrupt and vile and cruel, but it’s our home.
We don’t have to be rivals any longer. Drop this and surrender, and we can work together. ”
A low growl slipped from Max, unlike any sound I’d heard from him before. “I’d never work with you, Damien. Just tell me where Nina’s mother is, where you’ve been sending these fucking bodies, and I might walk away without tearing your throat out.”
He scoffed. “You’d let the world burn for one fucking woman?”
Max glanced at me for a shattered heartbeat before staring at Damien again. “For my woman.”
Silence stretched between them. Damien was shaking beside Max.
“You forget we both have tasted her, brother. We both know what she is.” He took a deep breath, smiling, as if he could scent right now whatever he had tasted in my blood.
“He’ll find her sooner or later, and you won’t be able to do a thing about it because you’ll have burned every bridge that could help you. Including me.”
Max shoved backward, and Damien was tossed into the half wall, hitting his head on a metal bar bordering the barrier. He’d slipped fully into his bloodrage now, consumed with a vengeance that went beyond political agendas or old rivalries. It wasn’t about the engineer or their past or the buyer.
It was about me.
The host’s whistle shrieked, ending the fight. Damien was unconscious, and Max was officially declared the winner. But Max was locked in a rage now, and he neither heard nor cared about his victory. He had his gaze set on Damien, striding forward.
Max snarled and lunged forward. Andre was already out of his seat, calling for others to help him restrain him.
“Nina, wait!” Elli shouted as I followed them onto the sparring floor. Max had shifted into a bloodrage twice since I’d known him. Both times, I had been able to free him.
Damien was limp against the edge of the ring, but he jerked when Max’s shadow crossed his prone form.
Andre bravely stood between them, shoving a hand against Max’s chest and ordering him to get a grip, to stop his bloody psychosis before he did something he regretted.
Max swatted him away, but the other Cursed were arriving now, peeling Max away from Damien and dragging him to the other side of the pit.