It’s not guilt that I feel. No, it’s a dark pit of blackness that I fall into every single time I take a life. It’s the knowledge that the person I’ve eliminated will never take a single breath again.
Sometimes it’s for the best.
Other times it’s simply reality.
Tonight, it’s not enough to know that the man I killed would’ve killed far more people than I ever will. It’s not enough to have felt his pulse under my hands and his vein under my blade.
The tension builds in my body and I’m panting by the time I get out of the hot shower. I dry off and step out into the hallway with the towel around my waist and my heart drumming in my chest.
I need to feel something…living. I need to feel my own blood dripping down my face, my own sweat pooling on my skin.
Something to remind me that I’m not nearly as invincible as I feel sometimes. It’s a twisted way to think about it, but it’s the truth. Taking a life isn’t nearly as exhilarating as nearly losing my own. It’s an ache that only grows stronger as I pull my clothing on and head back to my bedroom to sling up my wet towel somewhere around the room where it can dry.
I pull out my phone and look up my most recent message from the owner of the fight club outside of Tessari. He sent me the code to get in about a week ago, and if I’m lucky it hasn’t changed since.
I debate my choice for a fraction of a second before I head out in the middle of the night to the one place where who I am and what I do doesn’t matter.
The entrance to the club is down an alleyway with a large black metal door and a slot at eye level.
I saunter up wearing jeans and a navy sweater with my coat pulled over it. My boots crunch on gravel and likely broken glasson the ground and there’s several people behind me that I keep a close eye on. You can never be too careful out here at night.
When I get to the door the eye slot at the top opens.
“Code?” the man behind the door asks.
“Razer blade,” I reply softly. I wouldn’t want the couple behind me to be listening in and get the code from me.
The door opens a second later and I step into the cold, dimly lit hallway. The moonlight outside is almost more illuminating.
I make my way down the hallway to the stairs, where the massive underground room is. Four solid concrete walls, gritty and blood stained. In the middle of the room is a circle made up of floor-to-ceiling chain link fence.
The arena.
Bloody water flows down toward several drains at the corner of the arena and two one man is being dragged out by his shoulders while the other cheers with his fists up in the air. Like a hero who has just won his greatest fight.
The crowd around the room is loud, but not louder than the grungy music that blares from the speakers.
“Trevor, what the hell are you doing here? I thought you were on duty for the night!” A voice to the left of me calls out. I look over to see Lucas Bianchi standing there with a grin on his face.
I smile back at him even though it’s the last thing I want to do. Putting on my game face and playing the role that I’ve been stuck in for the last couple months. “Lucas, damn man, I didn’t expect to see you here. I got done early.” I clap hands with him and he pulls me in for a half hug before leaning back and looking me in the face with an amused expression.
“Only you could do something so heinous and then come out to watch some fuckers get the shit kicked out of them.”
I laugh, and it’s a real one this time. “I don’t know, you’re pretty damn vicious yourself.” It’s not a lie. The man has donemore damage to his own family than most, but it’s nothing in comparison to the deaths he’s caused in the lives of others.
“Besides, I came here to blow off some steam, didn’t you?” I ask him.
He laughs at me. “Everyone here came to blow off steam. The guys in the ring, the crowd watchin’…the big guys watching over ‘em. We’re all here to forget about what we do outside this place.”
“Then maybe let me forget yeah?” I ask him as I clasp my hand on his shoulder tightly. He shrugs away from me and shakes his head.
“Nobody can let you forget…” He points at me as he takes a few steps back. “You’re…something to be reckoned with. The Dresvanni assholes aren’t gonna know what’s coming.” He grins and then looks toward the ring where two more people are being shoved in to fight. This time it’s two women.
Two women with strong shoulders and one with at least a foot of height over the other. They’re lithe but muscular and definitely look like they can hold their own as much as any of the others who have stood in the ring.
It’s not often that there’s women fighting each other here. There’s way more men interested in beating each other to a pulp. But women? They tend to get back at each other in more covert ways. Icier ways. Knives in the back in the dead silence. They tend to kill for their own pleasure, with no audience to cheer them on.
So the fact that these two women have decided whatever prize is being offered tonight is worth their lives….well, it only tells me that it must be a pretty damn important one.
