Ice and Layla position themselves in front of me—a joint force, my trainer and my mentor—and begin walking. I trail them easily. Every step I take has purpose, every heartbeat holds promise. All around me, the crowd seems to hold a collective breath as I step down off the podium, and when Layla presses a hand to my shoulder, I know it's to guide me through the cage door.
Beneath my feet, the floor changes from wood to canvas and I walk until I know I'm dead center. My head swims with uncertainty, but it's short-lived. The second the cage door shuts, my muscles tense in preparation. Body heat radiates all around me. I know these men. I know their names, their faces, their scents. Aside from one, I've studied their strengths and weaknesses. Some have approached me, opened doors for me, eyed me with caution, wished me good morning...but all of them have one singular goal today: To end me.
Good luck, boys.
I wait for it...the signal from my mother. My lungs expand as I take in a deep breath, picturing each man in my head, visualizing each takedown and how their blood will spray out against the already-stained canvas beneath our feet. Heels click against the stage, and I know my mother is moving in as close as she can. In her hands will be a weapon. I don't know what it is, only the onlookers do, and my opponents will have that advantage over me. But they're not allowed to touch it. They know this. It's meant only for me.
It doesn't matter what she's about to drop. I don't need it.
Seven years.
I don't need it.
I don't need it.
Seven years, Mercury.
I don't need it.
THUD.
Feet immediately move toward the source, expecting me to dive for it, but I don't. I stand my ground, fisting hands at my sides, breathing evenly, and I listen.
A whoosh of air.
Inhale...exhale.
Screams and cheers deafen me, coming at me from every angle, but I push it away. I push everything away and let each second tick by.
One...
Two...
Three...
Four...
Five...
Six...
I sense the fist coming at me before wind ever breaks my hair. Gracefully, and without much effort at all, I duck to the side, grabbing hold of an arm as it passes in a punch. One turn, one quick maneuver, and my heel digs into a hip, kicking him even as I cling to him. A hard chest hits my back. Sweat seeps through the thin material. Before he has a chance to pull away, I spin, twisting his arm around and into his back. A cry echoes through the night as my knee meets spine and we both fall to the ground.
Someone encircle my torso from behind. Muscles scream in agony as I extend both arms out like wings and use my knees to propel myself backward. Whoever grabbed me lands with an oomph. I rear my head forward, then back, smashing into his nose. Speckles of blood patter against my hair as Marcus curses.
One down.
You bleed, you're out. Those are the rules.
“Fifty thousand dollars!”
Outside the cage, the bid for blood begins.
For a split second, I'm stunned at the high amount, and it's a beat too long. Hands find my throat from above thanks to my negligence, but that's okay. My claws come out and I rake out a jab, right into his eye. Oliver releases a deep, guttural howl as he stumbles to the side.
Two down.
Fingers wrap around my left ankle, tripping and dragging me away from Oliver, closer to someone else reeking of body odor. Jesse. My skirt rides up to my waist as I move along the canvas. Little does he know, he's made my job much, much easier. When he stops, I curl a knee up, then extend a foot, kicking out to graze his jaw. It's enough. I hear the gritty way the bottom of my stiletto drags across his face, cutting into skin. The faint coppery scent of blood hits my nostrils, and I know he's out.
Three down.
“Seventy-five thousand dollars!”
The crowd boos as Jesse stomps away.
I'm still steady, barely out of breath, even as someone wrenches my arms behind my back. A growl sounds next to my ear, and I know exactly who's holding me.
Hello, Silas. I force a smile, just to provoke him. He's mad, rightfully so, but his brother should have known better. He should have known better.
“Fuck you, bitch.” Spittle lands on my shoulder from his rage. He's losing his head. Fast. Which only serves to work in my favor.
I kick forward, twirling in the arms holding me hostage, and don't even bother crying out in pain when my shoulder dislocates. As soon as his hands fall away and I land on the ground, I reach back and pop it back into place. Silas screams, long and loud, and I know he's coming for me, charging, ready to tackle.
“One hundred thousand dollars!”
He slams into me and we land on the canvas in a heap, all hot breath and flailing limbs and clawed hands. I rip through the air, intent on slashing at his face, but he's fast. And smarter than I gave him credit for.
“Hands!” he yells, before someone—someone I'd forgotten about—grabs hold of my wrists the same time Silas manages to catch my ankles.
Pinned in place, I brace for what's about to come.
A foot slams into my stomach, knocking the breath from me, but I don't need to breathe to fight. They're a joint force trying to weaken me, but I am not weak. My growl echoes through the room as I pivot my hips wildly, using all my strength, thrashing in anger. Only a second ticks by before I force myself back onto my belly, still in their hold but in a less prone position.
“Five hundred thousand!”
Tugging, I pull the mountain of a man holding my arms forward just enough our heads smash together. His face hits my temple, and although my ears are ringing, I'm not bleeding. But neither is he.
In turn, Silas jerks me back and runs, dragging me along the cage floor, no doubt waiting for the perfect time to turn and attack. My head bounces off the canvas, and the muscles in my shoulders feel like they're running over a cheese grater, but I clench my jaw tight and focus.
“Eight hundred thousand dollars!”
Suddenly, I'm not moving. Weight strikes my chest, making it difficult to breathe as I'm straddled, arms pinned at my sides beneath unforgiving kneecaps.
“Sorry, Mercury,” Silas says through breathless laughter.
There's a pause as Silas shifts, and something tells me he's looking to the other man in the ring, engaging in a silent debate, telling him he's going to draw blood and end this match. But his second of boasting is his undoing. Hot breath touches my neck, and I can almost see Silas opening his mouth, ready to bite me and draw blood.
That's not fucking happening.
Not today. Not ever.
I will not—I can not—lose to this man.
I forbid it.
With a strength even I didn't know I possessed, I wrestle one arm free from beneath a knee, feeling something pop, jagged and hard, but ignore the surge of pain as I slap my palm to his face, shoving him away.
“One million dollars!”
On hands and knees, I scurry away, fighting to reorient myself with the cage parameters.
“Get back here!” Silas roars behind me.
My skirt rips when he grabs hold and pulls. Tepid breath burns against the skin of my thigh. He's advancing, doing everything in his power to stay in this, but I've had my fill. I'm sore, tiring, shaking with adrenaline. As soon as I know he's close enough, I roll, bringing a knee up, snapping it against the underside of his jaw.
The crowd gasps, and suddenly Silas isn't clawing his way up my body anymore. There's a tap-tap-tap against the inside of my knee, and I scoot away from where I know his body is, just in time to hear him wheeze.
“You...bitch.”
He spits, and I hear something small and solid land on the canvas next to me—a tooth, I'm guessing—followed by the crowd losing their ever-loving minds.
Four down...
One to go.
“Two million!”
Silas moves to join the other men near the cage bars, and I stand
to catch my breath. Music is playing again, and I can hear my fellow Violets cheering, urging me on. Even the Keepers are drunkenly chanting my name, but none of that matters. I can feel my mother's eyes on me, anticipating how I'm going to play this. Her words reverberate through my skull, reminding me of what she expects—complete obedience.
Make sure he doesn't leave the cage.
I can do that.
Kessler seems to be holding his breath, and even though he doesn't smell like the others—like liquor and sin—he also doesn't smell of fear.
“Five million dollars!”
If Kessler knew what was good for him, he'd be rejoicing right now. As the last man standing, he'll be recruited tonight right along with me, no matter if he leaves the cage bleeding or not. Right now, the only person's future in question is mine. If he gets a hit, if he draws blood, I'm out. If I bleed, he wins and I lose everything. Absolutely everything. And if it's an outsider who takes down the daughter of the Madam—he will be a saint among men. Revered forever.
Too bad he's not leaving this cage with a pulse.
Kessler steps to the side, and I mirror him. Slowly, we circle each other, our feet making little noise as we move. He doesn't speak, and neither do I. Our steps sync and just when I'm about to advance and end this right here and now, the toe of my stiletto touches something.
Metal tings softly. I tap it again, listening. It's not a gun. Not a knife. Metal on metal like...
Links.
That's the weapon.
A chain.
Make sure he doesn't leave the cage.
As you wish, Mother.
“Mercury...”
The careful way he says my name has goosebumps erupting down my arms, making the tiny hairs at the base of my skull stand on end. I don't like it. I don't like the way my entire body lights up at the sound.
It has to stop.
The toe of my shoe kicks the chain straight up in the air and I grab it with both hands before charging full-force. He makes to move around my side, but I feel, hear, and smell his intention. Spinning, I lift my arms and throw the chain out like a frisbee, hearing the squishy way it meets with his skin, and then the telling clang as it hits itself, wrapping around Kessler's thick throat.
“Ten million dollars!”
More voices cheer, but this isn't over. He's not bleeding.
He is, however, choking.
I can hear him gagging, sputtering and clawing at the chain now cinched and tangled tightly around his windpipe, cutting off his air supply.
It's almost over.
The floor rumbles, and I know he's fallen to his knees. I go to him, standing over his prone form like the reaper I am. He's losing air, fighting for breath. My shoe taps his thigh and I lift a foot, placing the sharp heel of my stiletto against his jean-clad leg.
He gurgles out more pained noises as I apply pressure, more and more and more...until I feel it. The rip of denim. I keep going, waiting for the give of skin breaking. Most men would reach out. Fight me off. Shuffle away. But to my surprise, Kessler doesn't do any of those things.
“Mercury?” Eric's worried voice reaches out to me from just beyond the bars. “You're killing him. He can't breathe.”
I know he can't breathe. That's the point. Logically, I know if he can't breathe, then he'll eventually die. That's the end game here.
“Twenty million!”
Finally, skin breaks.
I feel it, I hear it on his growl, but I don't let up.
I've won.
“Thirty million!”
I'm a fucking Blacklighter.
“Forty million!”
No man here holds power over me anymore.
“Fifty million!”
I perk up, listening for my mother, for any hint as to what she's doing, but all I hear is the screaming of Violets and the raw, pained sound coming from Kessler's throat.
“Sixty million!”
I have to kill him. It's necessary.
“Seventy million!”
Necessary...
I'm already guaranteed a title no matter what.
“Eighty million!”
But I have something to prove: that I belong in this life, that I'm the woman my mother raised me to be.
A force no man can stand against.
A monster born of sin and chaos.
I am a Blacklighter.
Make sure he doesn't leave the cage.
I've never disobeyed my mother. Not once. But as I hear Kessler Lawson gasp for what could very well be his last breath, something sparks, hot and frantic in my chest, sending crackling waves of pressure through my limbs...and I falter.
I know this feeling. I remember it from my childhood, back before this place molded me into something sharp and ugly.
It's fear.
I fear killing this man.
I fear having his blood on my hands.
“Ninety million dollars!”
Every breath I pull in burns. The ground tilts beneath my feet. I can't bear to hear the noises he's making...knowing he's inching closer and closer to death.
Reaching up, I rip the blindfold from my head, and the crowd gasps.
I pay them no mind as I look into the dark eyes of the man knocking at Death's door. The whites of his eyes should be discolored. They should be bulging, filled to the brim with hatred for me, but they're not. His hands are clinging to the chain as his skin turns blue, but other than that, he's perfectly calm. He's no longer fighting back. He's just...staring...at me.
Waiting.
I drop the blindfold to the ground, signaling the end of the fight, and everything changes.
Within seconds, Eric and the other Keepers are there, unwinding the chain from Kessler's neck and ushering him toward the stage as he drags in shallow, rasping breaths. Layla comes to my side as well, winding her arm through mine, and I can't hear a thing—not a damn thing—as she pulls me toward my mother.
The ringing in my ears intensifies when I see Blair isn't smiling. She doesn't hug me. Doesn't congratulate me. She just watches carefully, eyes revealing hints of caution but not much else.
I brace for anger. Disappointment, even...but it's not there. She's guarded, more than she's ever been before, and I curse my inability to decipher the look she's wearing as Ice stops at her side, wielding the branding iron.
I've heard stories of women trying to fight their way out of getting branded—of crying and begging for mercy—but that will not be me. For seven long years, I've waited for this moment, and there will be no tears.
Madam grabs hold of my shoulders, turning and pushing, urging me down onto all fours in front of the roaring, riotous crowd. Beside me, Eric pushes Kessler into the same position, and he glances over, worry tightening his eyes. Only then does the ringing in my ears subside enough I can hear each word my mother spits through down-turned lips.
“Ninety million dollars, Mercury. Now we know your worth.”
Ice comes to a stop behind me and I close my eyes, committing everything I'm feeling right now to memory. The hard wood beneath my knees, the stale smell of Ice's breath, the strobe lights flickering back to life, the taste of sweat on my lips, the low rumbled growl coming from Kessler's throat, the sizzling of the brand inching toward my skin...
Ice comes to a stop. “Congratulations, Blacklighter.”
“No. Hang on. Don't—” Kessler's voice is the last thing I hear before the brand touches my neck.
As promised, I don't shed a single tear.
But I do scream.
Fucking hell do I scream.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Kessler
There were many times throughout my incarceration when I thought I was going to die. Some nights, I'd lie awake, staring at the chipped ceiling, wondering if I'd be beaten to death on the toilet, strangled in my sleep with a tube sock, or waterboarded in solitary confinement by a guard with a Napoleon complex. I never let my guard down, not once, because I knew I was surrounded by blood-thirsty psychopaths. B
ut that right there? What just happened in the cage? That was a whole different brand of crazy.
As I was down on my knees, struggling for breath, looking up at the blindfolded woman holding my life in her hands, I thought...this is it. I'll never see my family again. I'll never venture back to New Liberty. My mother will have to bury another member of our family. I'm dying.
And then, suddenly, I wasn't.
I'm very much alive. The hole in my leg has stopped bleeding, and even though the brand hurt like a motherfucker, the jackass barely touched it to my skin. I could tell Ice was reluctant to mark me, but he did, and the crowd fucking loved it. But this ugly thing is just a shadow of a burn compared to what tore Mercury's flesh apart. They held the screaming woman down for so long, it seemed they were branding her down to the bone. Yet when she stood, there were no tears.
That was an hour ago.
The party is still raging as we push out the front door as a group and head toward the main house. Ice, Layla, Blair, Eric, Mercury, and myself. Blood slicks down Mercury's back, discoloring her white dress, but you wouldn't know she was in pain. She still carries herself stoically, head held high as she floats in a bubble of silence. A beautiful, dangerous mystery. Eric was right to worry about me instead of Mercury. She's unlike anything I've ever seen, and I've seen a fucking lot.
Together, we enter the house and take off down a corridor Mercury didn't show me before. It's a single hallway, with a solitary door at the end. Amid the white walls, the black door looks foreboding, and I want nothing to do with it. Beside the door stands a man in a suit, grinning ear to ear, never once taking his eyes off Mercury. He can't be taller than five seven, maybe a buck fifty, receding hairline, subtle paunch; in other words, completely non-threatening. At least, I think so, until I get close enough to see the hunger in his eyes. Instinct tells me to stop, to turn and pull the girls back with me, away from this sicko, but I don't. I keep going. After all, I have no power here.
When we reach the man, Ice holds out his hand. A slip of paper is exchanged, and after inspecting it, Ice nods, turning to Blair. “Funds were transferred. Good to go.”
Blair gestures for Mercury to come forward.
I don't know what the hell is happening, but I don't like it. Blair kisses her daughter's forehead, making the motions but never actually touching her, and then Mercury opens the door, flanked by the suit. It clicks shut behind them. I glance at Eric out of the corner of my eye and he shakes his head, telling me to keep my questions to myself. But I have a fuck ton of them. Too many to count.
The Monster of Farewell (Blacklighters Book 1) Page 9