As a group, we don’t come here. No one but me comes here, but I’ve been visiting this place since I was a teenager with too much anger that I couldn’t control. No one questions me or stops me as I punch in the code to unlock the door and slip through, the door relocking the moment it closes.
I can still hear the music but the lower I go down the stairs, the more muffled it becomes before the sound is joined by that of flesh hitting flesh. I can smell the blood from here, this metallic edge that clings to the air. It’s a scent you can’t get rid of, no matter how much you try. And with the amount that is spilled here it’s become part of the walls, the floor.
A cage sits in the center of the room and within the steel bars are two men fighting.
There are no rules here. If you die in that ring don’t expect a funeral, at most you can expect a missing person report that will remain unsolved forever. You don’t come here for a casual fight, you come here tosurvive.
And for years, this was my survival, all through the early years with Malakai and the council, when we had little power and a lot of anger. Malakai, Killian and Dean all have their own outlets, but this one is mine.
Even if I’ll wake up in the morning feeling like absolute shit.
It’s a fight to knockout or death, no in-between. If you go down, you stay down, unless you’re looking to find a permanent bed six feet below.
I head straight for the bar and order a whiskey and buy in for the next available round which happens to be in three fights time, my opponent a man named Brandon Hall.
Keeping to the back of the room, away from the crowd that pulses around the ring, watching the bloodshed as it is unleashed beyond the bars. Blood runs down one of the guy’s faces, dripping in a constant leak off the guy’s nose and chin. One eye is swollen shut, his nose broken and sitting at an angle and there’s blood covering his entire body.
The pain must be excruciating, and if I didn’t recognize that look in his eye, I would say he’s a goner, but I see it. He looks like me. Its desperation mixed with rage, survival with an edge of wishing it would all just fucking end.
And even though the other guy doesn’t look even half as bad as he does, he never stops fighting. Pound afterpound, hit after hit, he caves into the guy, knuckles on flesh, skin splitting and bones cracking.
“Ten K on the bloody guy,” I tell the clerk, handing over the wad of cash.
“You sure about that?” The guy laughs.
“Yep, put it on.”
“Ten K on River Sinclair,” He replies and then says, “Your loss.”
I grunt but I know my fighters.
He may look like shit, but this guy isn’t done.
The guy River is fighting takes the beating until he manages to block one of River’s punches and gets the lead, forcing him back against the steel bars.
River dodges the next punch and manages to get a hit into the guy’s ribs, hard enough he knocks the wind out of him and that’s all he needs. He lunges forward, all stealth and agility as he throws a punch that clocks his opponent on the underside of his jaw and rattles his brain and then he’s falling, and River is following. He straddles the fighter and just loses his shit on him.
Blow after blow, landing in precise, coordinated strikes and even when he lays there, clearly unconscious and defeated, River continues to hit, turning his face into this messy, bloody mash of flesh and bone.
It’s only when two of the staff members climb intothe ring and pull him off that he stops. A third one checks the downed guy and shakes his head, universal code to say he’s not breathing but that’s hardly surprising, the only thing missing in that mess is brain matter scattered across the mat.
The body is dragged from the ring and sent off to be disposed of while River is helped into the corner, a sectioned off area for the fighters to go to get cleaned up. When I say cleaned up, they’re patched up with rags and duct tape and then left to fend for themselves.
This isn’t a place to come if you need a little comfort.
I keep my eye on River, unable to not see parts of myself in him. I can’t tell his age since his face is a damn mess but the way his shoulders heave and his eyes dart around, leveling everyone as a threat tells me he isn’t done. Not by a long shot.
Something messed this kid up.
And it’s not my place to get involved but I tell myself if he’s still around after my fight, I’ll buy him a damn drink and then dump his ass at the hospital.
I watch the next two fights, neither of them ending in death and during the third fight I head back to the bar. I empty my pockets into one of the trays, gun, knife, cell and wallet thumping into the plastic tray before the guy takes it away to be stored, not even flinching at the weapons.
I strip out of my suit jacket and shirt, kicking off my loafers before I head round to the side of the cage, mybare feet sticking to the floor.
The third fight is coming to an end and Brandon, my opponent, is standing on the opposite side of the cage. He’s a big guy, with scars covering every inch of his body. He stares right at me, lip curled, stance ready.
Exactly what I fucking need.
