Underland(20)

“I warned you.” Kira pulled back her arm to inflict punishment.

Holly looked up into Kira’s eyes, weirdly mesmerized. Well, Kira would give her something to look at then.

Her fist.

Kira had only a moment to enjoy her victory before she was thrown to the ground by a mob. Deafening roars, a freakish combination of cat’s screech, bull mooing, and high pitched screams filled her ears. Claws scratched at her, hooves kicked her in the sides as Kira tried to roll away from the attackers, but she knew what was coming and mentally prepared herself for the pain.

She dove into the past.

When she had turned twelve, a man wearing a uniform came to their door with a letter, bearing the news that her dad would not be coming back from his latest assignment. For the first time in years, Kira cried. She gave the letter to her mom, and watched as Ellie turned pale and collapsed. Something inside her mother had finally snapped.

It took weeks for Ellie to leave the house after the funeral; she was an emotional wreck, crying and roaming the house as if searching for something or someone. The doctors gave her tons of medications which helped nothing.

Ellie left one night and didn’t come home for ten days. Kira had survived just fine without her. But when she finally returned, a man was with her mom.

“This is Bernie, your new father… er stepfather,” Ellie announced, clearly drunk.

Her mother had done the unthinkable; she drove to Vegas, got wasted, and married the first jerk to propose to her, for better or for worse.

It was worse.

Bernie was large, fat, and reeked of stale beer. Kira never saw him work and assumed he and Ellie lived off her dad’s life insurance policy. Bernie was also a drunk, and lucky Kira, the little fighter, got to be the recipient of his quick temper. When she was thirteen, he pushed her down the stairs for talking back to him; she got eight stitches in her forehead. When she was fourteen, he broke her arm for not taking out the trash. Then came the beatings for talking back. Her mother couldn’t protect her. No one could.

Kira was back in that house all over again.

Reliving every punch, kick and broken bone.

One of the beasts launched through the air to land on Kira’s back and pin her to the ground. She tried desperately to buck it off, but it had a steel grip around her waist. She tried curling up in a ball.

More punches came, but they didn’t land anywhere where she could feel them. Actually, she could feel someone breathing down her neck. And she heard quiet grunts of pain, coming from above her.

The monster wrapped around her wasn’t attacking her—it was shielding her with its own body. What kind of monster would do that? Kira tried to turn her head and see, but she couldn’t. Dust, mud, and moss kept pressing into her face. And every time she moved her hands, someone tried to punch her face.

Suddenly, she heard a high-pitched whistle, and the mob quit. The monsters quickly backed away from Kira, all except for the one wrapped over her protectively. Someone began a slow clap. They shuffled, keeping their heads down. As the crowd parted, the clapper stepped forward to get a better look at the scene, no doubt.

Mr. Butt-Chin.

Kira tried to move, but there was a groan of pain above her. “Get off!” She grunted and tried to push herself off the ground. The weight rolled off of her and landed on the ground beside her.

The boy zeke. Just great! Now she would be indebted to him. Who knew? He might call in that debt the next time he got hungry. His face was swollen, and one eye was already turning purple. A pang of guilt rushed through her.

But she didn’t ask for his help, didn’t want it.

He looked to have taken a hefty punishment. His jeans were torn and his t-shirt had been shredded. A pool of red began forming under his back.

He was hurt worse than she had thought. She tried to reach over and touch his face, but his eyes opened. As she stared into the blackness, what she saw scared her. His eyes didn’t look human. They had gone stark white, and silver flecks sparkled eerily in them. His turned those god-like eyes on Kira, and she skidded away from him.

Den approached Kira and circled her slowly, taking in the scene before him: the boy, Holly a few yards away, and the metal table leg that lay by her feet. Kira knew how bad this looked, but she’d done what she had to.

She studied him while he made sense of the situation. Den’s black leather vest revealed strong, tattooed arms. Elegant script started at his hands and wrapped all the way around his arms and up to his neck. His red eyes seemed darker, more unpleasant today. Maybe because Kira had taken out one of his trainees.

Den shouted at a slave girl next to him. “Call Warrick, and get the zeke to the medical center. I need him recovered in time to compete in the next event.”

Den turned angrily on the crowd of monsters. “What did you think you were doing?”

A large two-legged beast with long tusks coming out of his mouth stepped forward—a boar. Kira glanced at her arm and could see the distinct outline of a split-hoof impression. He was the obvious culprit.

The boar tried to speak, but the tusks seemed to impair his ability to enunciate. He squealed and then shape-shifted with a blur of skin and tusks, and a whiff of garlic. Suddenly, he was completely human-looking, although shorter. And less impressive to look at. No wonder so many of the monsters preferred their monster form or their half-shifted form. They were scarier. Kira couldn’t ever imagine being scared of the short man with pimples.