Lost Girls(71)

Just like she had done to me.

A growl surged from my chest. I was a beast. I was exactly what they wanted me to be. I soared with swan wings, head lifted high, past adoring subjects. I was the Queen, I was Odette.

I was horrible and I was beautiful and there was a good chance I was about to kill a girl who had pretended to be my friend.

A cool hand touched my arm and I snarled, ready to break the fingers off the hand.

“I am expendable,” Madison confessed, her voice low, her head turned toward me. “That is why I was given the task to walk you to the stage. If you hit me, even if you kill me, it will only make the crowd more excited. No one will care.”

The fire in my chest quelled, just a bit.

“I couldn’t do anything before,” she continued. “Not until you got your Pink Lightning. But now, you can do whatever you want. There are many ways you can still escape.” She paused, maybe weighing the danger of what she was about to say next. “I’ll do whatever I can to help. And I will be assisting you during your fight. If you need anything, an ice pack or a towel or another shot of Pink Lightning, all you have to do is nod. I’ll even sneak you a shot of Black Skies, if you want to put Lauren down. The only rule here is there are no rules.”

She bowed gracefully as we neared the stage, sweeping her arm toward the stairs.

“I am here to make sure you win,” she whispered as I passed her. “And if that means you escape, then so be it.”

I soared past her, not sure if I believed her words. But I found unexpected solace in knowing that I wasn’t as alone as I felt. Someone had my back.

...

The stage became my kingdom, my feet barely touching the floor. I felt like I could walk on water, like I could sail across the room, granting wishes to the swarthy crowds, a beatific smile on my face. They were chanting. I couldn’t hear it—I had entered into that magical silence that exists when you’re in the ring—but I could feel it, a steady push of sound that thrummed against my feet and chest.

The steady vibration gave me energy; it gave me life, it gave me a reason for being.

I was adored and worshipped, and I would do everything in my power to give pleasure to my subjects.

I faced Lauren, my opponent, fire in my eyes, and she must have been able to see it. Maybe she could even feel the heat radiating from my skin, see the steam billowing out of my mouth when I spoke. “You bitch,” I said and I took a threatening step closer. Lauren must not have expected anger to factor into this fight.

If she had, she wouldn’t have confessed her deepest secrets to me. Not tonight. Not right before someone pumped me full of drugs that could turn almost anyone into a killer.

She blinked, probably calculating what was going on inside my head, and how much survival time that gave her. Fists raised, she stumbled backward, on the defensive, knowing I wasn’t going to pull any punches. Not now. Not ever.

My game was different from most of the other fighters. It was more elegant, more precise and much faster. I usually ended a match within five to ten minutes, a fact that constantly irritated my patron. He always complained that I should drag it out, make it look like I might lose—then he’d be able to get better odds.

Today might have been that day.

I didn’t want this fight to end quickly.

My mind was able to think five steps ahead of what happened around me. It was almost like Lauren and I were playing chess, rather than fighting for survival. The moment she clenched her fingers into a fist I knew exactly what she planned to do next and I was not only able to block her punch, I was able to follow it up with a one-two fist slam to her sternum, knocking the breath out of her chest, and making her slump forward, ready for another duo of punches, this time to her pretty face.

Black eye number one, black eye number two.

In between making the crowd roar and Lauren whimper, I figured out how to escape, just like Madison had promised. To the right of the stage stood a door, left unlocked, and it led to a long corridor, which in turn led to a parking lot behind the building. I knew all this because I’d been dragged down that corridor the last time I was here. Once outside, I’d been stuffed into a windowless van with all the other fighters.

All I had to do was let Lauren win the fight.

That was going to be the hardest part, since I really wanted to flatten her, to pound her until her bones turned to powder. The only thing I could feel was my anger and my fists connecting with her flesh. But if I could push aside my anger and let her win, then I’d be the one on the mat and all attention would be focused on her. I could slip away, through that door, down that corridor, across the parking lot, and into the night.

There was only one problem with that plan and it didn’t bother me—not at first, anyway—not when my heart thudded to a slow, precise rhythm, a boom-ba-boom-ba-boom that reminded me of a funeral procession. Not when all her movements were in slow motion and her eyes were filled with so much fear. It didn’t bother me at all.

Not until I saw something familiar in her eyes.

Clouds of white smoke curled from the corners of the room and the men in the front row laughed and catcalled. Shouts rose up from the cheering crowd and, in the midst of it all, there came the whumpf of bare knuckles against flesh, the wet sound as knees and feet hit ribs. A sticky spray of blood caught me on the side of the neck and, all the while, the shouts of the crowd made the floor vibrate beneath the soles of my feet.