Lost Girls(68)

“You wouldn’t leave me here, would you? We have to stick together. We have to get away—”

One of her hands touched my shoulder and I brushed it off. I wasn’t sure how I felt about her anymore. She was the reason I’d gone missing. “No, I wouldn’t leave you here,” I said, although as soon as those words left my lips, I wondered if they were true.

Someone was escorting Cyclone off the stage, two large men in business suits. They weren’t like the rest of the crowd. These guys had an Eastern European look with their high cheekbones, shaved heads and expensive tailored suits. Cyclone swiveled toward them, blue hair spinning around her, a confused expression on her face. She was shouting and struggling to get away, but since her microphone was shut off, we couldn’t hear what she was saying. A twinge of pain centered in my chest, something I couldn’t shake and I knew would never go away. She was disappearing into the night, just like Nicole. Cyclone, aka Janie Deluca, had been one of my competitors but I had never wished her this. I fought the moan that slid out of my lips when the two men lifted her off her feet and carried her down the stairs.

“She put on a good show and she got a good price,” Madison said matter-of-factly. “She’ll get good handlers. The best ones always do.”

I knew what she was saying wasn’t true. “What about Komodo?” I asked. She still lay, crumpled and broken on the stage floor, not moving.

Madison’s reflection continued to watch me. She shrugged. “No one has made an offer for her yet. We will wait and see.”

It was as if I was on the stage then, staring down at Komodo, at the blood and the broken bones. She faded away and the sounds of the crowd continued to thunder in the background, a song of violence that would never end. And, just like the other night when I had beaten her, I didn’t see Komodo, the Dragon Girl, anymore.

I saw Nicole, the Pink Candi girl, my friend.

Something had happened here, but I couldn’t piece it together yet. The back of my skull started to ache, fissures of pain radiating downward, like my head didn’t connect with my body. I rubbed my fingers over the base of my neck, all the while staring out at that stage where a girl’s body lay, discarded and broken.

“Pink Lightning could fix that headache,” Madison said behind me. “One hit and you’ll be feeling great again.”

But that was just one more stone in the wall of lies that I kept hearing. The pain in my head wasn’t because I was craving some drug. It was caused by the battle I’d been fighting with myself since I’d been kidnapped, part of me wanting to know what had happened, the other part refusing to let myself remember.

If only I could push through—

The announcer’s voice came over the intercom then, his deep voice echoing throughout the arena and being piped into the dressing room where we waited. “Just like I promised,” he exclaimed, one hand waving over his head with theatrical flair. “We have something special for you tonight—a girl who’s never been defeated in a fight, not once—”

The crowd roared and my eyes flared wide in response. They were talking about me.

“And she’s going to be fighting someone from her own team, a girl who until a few minutes ago was supposedly her friend—”

This had never happened before. No one in Phase Two ever challenged anyone from their own team. It was wrong. We were supposed to have each other’s back.

“Listen to what we recorded from their dressing room a few minutes ago—”

Another voice came over the loudspeakers, a hushed whisper amplified so we could hear everything she said. You know what I did, don’t you? I didn’t sleep with him—it just looked that way. It was Lauren. And a full second later, my voice followed. Go to Hell.

I wanted to say, you frigging bastards, to everyone in the room with me, Lauren included. But at that point, it became hard for me to focus. Two things took place almost simultaneously, and in my mind they merged as one event—

The first thing—and this was probably why everything got so jumbled in my mind—was when I felt a prick in the crook of my left arm. The notch of pain forced me to glance down and, when I did, I realized both of the guards had pinned me in place and Madison was giving me a shot of Pink Lightning. But she didn’t stop with one. She gave me another and another, until my knees wavered beneath me and those guards were holding me up.

The room turned as bright as the sun, one of my hands tried to block out the light, my head slipping backward, but even when I closed my eyes the light remained. I groaned, a soft thud of pleasure surging through my limbs and my heart pumping out something that felt like pure lightning, like I wasn’t made of flesh and blood. It felt like I was a god, standing on Mount Olympus, ready to fly, wings spread wide, all the humans around me tiny and insignificant. I shrugged off the guards who held me, kicking one of them until he fell against the mirrored wall, the force cracking the glass. I glanced at the mirror, my reflection splintering and fracturing until it looked like there were countless versions of myself staring back, all of them stronger and fiercer than I’d ever been before.

“Step away from her,” Madison warned. “She’s ready to fight now.”

I was, too. I was ready to rip sinew from flesh, to crack bone and shatter skulls. I snarled at her and she raised her hand, palm up.

Then the second thing happened and it was even worse. The door opened, freedom calling from the other side, a waft of air that tempted me to run but before I could respond, a body was shoved toward me.