I roll my neck again, bounce on the balls of my feet, shake out my arms—the motions my body knows even when my mind is somewhere else.
Across the cage, my opponent is doing the same.
He’s maybe two forty, with hands the size of sledgehammers. His eyes are flat and cold, and I wonder again if he knows what’s coming or if he thinks this is just another fight.
The ref, if you can even call him that, steps between us, although his position is really just for show. Everyone knows there are no regulations here.
“Gentlemen. You know why you’re here. Touch knuckles if you want. Fight’s over when someone stays down.”
“Or dies.” The fucker across from me murmurs, a sick grin spreading across his face.
So he knows.Or he thinks he does. Wouldn’t be the first time someone walked into this cage cocky and got carried out.
Brando doesn’t extend his fists.
The ref steps back.
The bell rings.
And everything else falls away.
The first strike I throw is a range finder: a low calf kick to test his reaction. He checks it, shin to shin, which tells me he’s trained.
Good.Makes this easier.
The first round is feeling each other out. Jab, feint, circle. He throws a leg kick of his own and I absorb it on my thigh, the impact radiating up to my hip. He keeps me at a distance with a piston jab, then fires off a head kick. I barely slip, the wind of it brushing my ear.
He’s measuring me like he’s already figured out how this ends.
He hasn’t.
I let him land one. A right cross that catches my jaw and sends dots of black bursting across my vision. The crowd roars, and I taste copper in my mouth.
One for the show.
Round two, I give him more. Let him take me down, my back hitting the mat with a thud that echoes through my bones. His weight crushes my ribs, and he rains elbows while I cover up. One catches me above the eye, and my skin splits.
The cage presses cold against my shoulder as I shrimp toward it, using the fence to wall walk back up to my feet. Hemeets me in the clinch, driving knees into my body, one catching a weak rib and making my side scream.
He’s grinning now. Probably thinking he’s got me figured out and that this is his night.
Unfortunately for him, tonight I’m not the one who’s supposed to go down.
The crowd chants “Excalibur” in the background, the nickname Myrddin branded me with as if I’m his sword and not a person.
The third round is when I use his weak spots against him. I found it thirty seconds in and have been biding my time since. Half a second after a jab, he leaves his chin exposed, so I let him paint himself into the corner, his bravado making him sloppy.
There.
I step inside his reach and put everything I have into an uppercut that starts in my legs, travels through my hips and explodes from my fist.
His head snaps back and his legs buckle. He stumbles and drops, and I follow him to the ground. His arms come up to protect his face, but they’re sluggish now, and I trap one with my knee and start working.
The first elbow splits his brow and with the second his cheekbone gives. By the third, his arms have dropped entirely, but I don’t stop. Not until his body goes slack beneath me. His eyes go vacant, and my arms are slick with red.
The crowd erupts, banging on the fence and hollering from behind the glass booths.
I push off him and stand, my chest heaving, blood dripping from my hands, and I feel…nothing.
