Usher managed to prop his convulsing body up onto his elbows as a figure slowly emerged from the tunnel at the other end of the arena. Its movements were jerky and uncoordinated, and it seemed to drag one leg.
Usher tried to stand then felt strong hands either side of him, as two of Sarkhov’s bodyguards lifted him and dragged him to the edge of the arena, where Sarkhov waited, smoking a cigar.
Usher wiped the bile from his lips.
“Sarkhov, whatever you gave me, whatever that battle drug is, it’s not fucking working, all I feel is ill.”
Sarkhov blew out a smoke ring. “Give it time Tom Fool, it will take another minute or two to assimilate I have been assured. By the time this fight is over, you will be ready. But pay attention. Once this man is beaten, you will be fighting Sibelius next, so observe.”
Usher looked at the grizzled old fighter. “You that certain this old bear isn’t gonna win? He looks like he’s survived a few fights.”
Sarkhov gave Usher a dismissive laugh then resumed smoking his cigar.
The seasoned fighter, Cronin, stood centre ring, limbering up his shoulders, sweat soaking into the dirty vest he wore. He threw a few hooks and shadow boxed around the sand. Usher thought he was very nimble on his feet for a big man.
Then he looked at the thing emerging from the tunnel. He felt the bile rise again.
“If that’s an Unseelie trying to pass itself off as a human, I don’t think we have any cause for concern.”
A man limped into the ring. He was naked in one sense and in another not. Usher blinked as he took in the picture. Owen Sibelius was partially flayed, his trailing right leg totally devoid of skin and glistening with blood, and the striated muscles rippled as he walked. With each step he left a single bloody footprint on the ground. His left arm was the same, and as he waved to the crowd Usher watched in fascination as the veins that wrapped around the arm like vines pulsed and throbbed with blood. Of the suit of flesh that covered the remains of his body it was impossible to tell which was his own and which was borrowed. One eye was green the other blue, half his pink scalp was covered in a fuzz of thinning grey hair, the other half was shaved smooth and blackest African.
His torso was a jigsaw of borrowed skin, roughly and primitively stitched together with steel wire. His skin-clothed arm was thick and strong, covered in thick black hair and gold rings, a faded tattoo on the thick forearm. Turkish looking, thought Usher.
Most disturbingly, the left side of his body seemed to be stripped from a female, one empty, sagging breast serving as a grotesque distraction technique.
As Cronin stood shadow boxing in the centre of the Arena, Sibelius walked over to a large chest near the tunnel entrance, then plunged his arm in and rummaged around inside, with a noise like he was mixing a barrel of eels.
An offensive stench of rot hit Usher’s nose, then the patchwork man pulled something long and rubbery out of the chest, like a bloody pinkish sock.
He turned his grotesque twisted face out to the fighter in the middle of the ring, and then started to slide the pinkish tube up over his flayed arm like an opera glove. Four wiggling empty fingers danced around the end as he tugged it upwards.
He did the same with his crimson leg, pulling a stocking of (Asian?) skin over it like a nightmare seduction, fastening it at the top with industrial staples. Clack. Clack.
Then he stretched and cracked his joints, feeling his way into his new clothes, before advancing to the centre opposite Cronin.
Mr Styx bowed graciously to both fighters, spread his pipe cleaner arms wide to the crowd, and then announced, “Now I expect a good clean fight…I…no sorry I can’t even say it, welcome to the Secret Arena, where there are no rules at all. Show us blood. ”
Mr Styx let the microphone be dragged back up into the darkness and then backed off into the shadows next to Usher.
Usher looked up at the tall elegant ringmaster. “What is he? I’ve never seen anything like him.”
Mr Styx tipped his head down towards Usher. Although basically featureless Usher could still see the disdain as it spoke to him.
“He may seem a crude craftsman now, rummaging around in his dressing up box of borrowed souls, but a few hundred years ago Owen Sibelius was a capable infiltrator into human society. He put quite a few spanners in your historical works, but admittedly he’s a bit of relic of the cold war now. He’ll still give you a good show.”
Usher wiped the sweat from his face. “Infiltrator? You’re kidding. That thing would give most people a heart attack.”
Mr Styx turned haughtily back to the spectacle. In the politest, gentlest possible voice he answered.
“Of course I’m not kidding you disgusting skin bag. You modern folk don’t realize what your own past was like. You have no idea how poor light used to be when all you had was firesides and candles, it distorts people in unusual ways, and blurs the details. Secondly, although I still find you repulsive, you don’t realize quite how ugly humans used to be. Only a few hundred years ago, your rotten teeth, your pockmarked lead poisoned skin, your syphilitic faces. Some of you had missing noses due to syphilis you know, just rotted away. Centuries of poor nutrition rendered most of you ulcerated, hunched, malnourished, bubbling with pustules, and smelling for the most part like week old shit. Your kings were crawling with lice, your princesses looked like dried old crones by twenty one. Why do you think people married so young then, you only had about a five year window to get a decent fuck.”
Usher smiled grimly. “Well every day is a school day Mr Styx.”
“He’s certainly going to improve his looks when he’s wearing your face.”
He watched the two fighters squaring up to each other circling slowly, testing distance, sizing each other up.
The quite suddenly Cronin lunged at Sibelius, digging his powerful shoulder into the sewn together man’s solar plexus and knocking him backwards. Without waiting to let him regain his balance, Cronin thrust a solid right hook up into his opponent’s jaw, then a left, followed by a knee to the temple, dragging his head down three or four times with a wrenching motion, one gnarled hand behind the assembled man’s scalp.
The Unseelie fighter fell onto the sand, twitching frantically like he was having a seizure.
Cronin turned to the crowd, arms raised in victory, his teeth shown in triumphant grin.
He strutted around the arena to the mixed boos and cheers of the bloodthirsty assembled, clapping to himself.
Usher turned to Sarkhov. “Well that didn’t go as expected..”
Mr Styx peered down at him, the snakes making disgruntled hisses around his head.
On the floor of the sandy arena, a jerky figure propped itself upright behind the triumphant Cronin, like a collapsed puppet suddenly pulled up by the strings.
Owen Sibelius stood there, half his face flapping off like a sheet of damp parchment.
Underneath a shocking half grin as his bare jaw was exposed, wet red muscle fibres pulling and grimacing in all directions. He rolled out his shoulders and advanced on Cronin, the torn mask of his face lolling as he walked.
Usher sighed. “He doesn’t feel any pain does he?”
Mr Styx grinned. “None whatsoever. The same can’t be said of the other fellow.”
Cronin was still enjoying his victory dance when Sibelius came up behind him and clamped his brown teeth down onto the larger man’s meaty trapezius muscle.
The skin broke and bright blood burst forth, coating the rotting teeth pink, and Cronin roared in pain. He spun around and grabbed Sibelius’s arm, attempting a lock, but with a laugh the patchwork man jerked his arm away, shedding the opera glove of skin in an instant.
A shocked Cronin stood there for a moment, clutching the empty sleeve of skin with one hand, and pressing on his gushing neck wound with the other.
Then Sibelius was on him like a python, bringing the big man to the ground and wrapping his legs around his head and shoulder, trapping his arm, then thrusting up and breaking the ar
m at the elbow. Usher winced as he watched the arm bend back against the joint then give with an audible pop. A pinpoint of white bone broke the puckered skin.
Cronin was tapping out on his own chest, slapping his hairy pectoral in a panic, but there were no rules of submission here. Whilst holding him in an inescapable grip, Owen Sibelius held up one finger and a long thin claw emerged from it.
Then the real work began.
As Cronin struggled and bucked, Sibelius carefully and calmly drew an outline around the forehead and jawline of the trapped man with his claw, like a careful tailor. Then with practised precision, he began to peel off one half of the big man’s face.
The screaming was horrendous, and Usher watched in horror, but it didn’t seem to bother any of the assembled, who cheered and whooped as they finally got the blood sacrifice they craved. Slowly the face peeled off with a wet sound until finally the last shreds of skin tore and it came off virtually intact.
A similar incision was made around the locked and broken arm, just below the shoulder, then with an impossibly smooth movement, Sibelius stripped the skin of the arm intact, like a magician’s flourish, which elicited a high pitched howl from the stricken opponent like no sound Usher had ever heard.
Sibelius then released him and stood up, holding his flapping sloppy prizes in his hands and grinning inanely, before fetching the stapler from the ringside and getting busy applying his new trophies. When he was finished he looked up suddenly at Usher, grinning. It was a bizarre image, seeing the still shocked half- face of Cronin peering over at him, stapled crudely to Sibelius’s skull. He raised his new arm at Usher and wiggled his fingers in a friendly wave.
Usher felt a strong hand on his shoulder and then Sarkhov was whispering at his ear.
“Now remember, Tom Fool, you represent us here, you are an advertisement for the quality of our fights and our fighters. And you are here to show how entertaining a man with the Feral in his blood can be. Give them a show.”
Usher felt a final rush of chemicals in his bloodstream, and as he wiped the sweat from his forehead and nodded at Dmitri, both of his irises suddenly turned red as if flooded with blood. Dmitri grinned, knowing that this was the sign that the Feral had finally taken effect.
Usher was breathing hard, his teeth grinding together, his veins popping all over his skin. He felt his conscious mind subsiding, being replaced by only the most primal instincts of aggression and violence.
Then Usher’s human brain went to sleep and the berserker took over.
Mr Styx had walked to the centre of the ring, and the microphone dropped to meet him.
“Ladies and gentleman, I think you will agree, we have some wonderful entertainment lined up for you this evening. How about that first fight? Eh? Am I right? Well if you enjoyed that then we have a treat lined up for you, as we pitch our reigning champion, the Patchwork Man, against a frothing and savage berserker, a relic of your own savage past, when fearful Britons looked to the coasts in dread of seeing the dragon prow of a Viking long ship.”
Mr Styx then looked to his feet.
The crippled and flayed Cronin was now dragging himself across the sand, his childish instinct telling him to get away from these nightmare people, these purveyors of torture. His broken and skinned arm dragged across the rough sand making him scream and cry, the salt from his tears washing a streak through the bloody mess of his skinned face.
Mr Styx placed an elegant foot on the man’s back, forcing him down to the ground. He looked like an enormous spider from a nursery rhyme, towering above a stricken fly.
Mr Styx then cocked his head to one side, enjoying the man’s futile attempts to get up.
“Where are you going little human? You lost the fight.”
Mr Styx then dropped down over the man on his long thin limbs, his little leech mouth opening, revealing the rows of tiny teeth all around.
The myriad snakes around his head drew back in unison, then shot forward and sunk their fangs into the stricken fighter’s neck, face, and chest. The one feeble skinned arm weakly tried to bat them away, but it was no use, hundreds of little fangs were pumping paralyzing venom into his body. The man started to fit and foam at the mouth, a horrible gargle rising from his mouth.
Then Mr Styx very slowly leaned down and kissed the man on the lips with his horrible little mouth, the prehensile snakes drawing him close with terrible strength. Cronin panicked and gained a second wind, instinctively fighting and punching, but there was no strength left.
Then, like someone sucking the air out of a crisp packet, the huge muscular body of the fallen boxer stared to crumple in and collapse, as if all his innards and even his bones were being sucked out of him via some supernatural hoover. His eyes were suddenly sucked into his skull, his cheeks hollowed, his limbs seemed to deflate, as Mr Styx, the Vampire, sucked the man’s marrow, blood, memories, and soul out through his mouth.
Usher looked on, still spoiling to fight but some distant part of his soldier’s brain registering what he was seeing.
After a minute or so, Mr Styx stood up, produced a handkerchief and delicately wiped the blood away from his pale lips, before picking the empty skinbag up and draping it over his arm like a waiter’s serving cloth. He nodded to Sarkhov, then to the audience, and elegantly walked off to the side lines.
Usher watched as the patchwork man walked in his bizarre disjointed gait back into the arena.
He looked out on everything he hated.
Usher could hold back no longer, and sprang at the patchwork man like an Olympic sprinter off the blocks.
Usher could see, even in the borrowed parchment of Owen Sibelius’s face, that surprise had registered at a human moving this fast.
Sibelius raised his hands in defence but Usher was like a freight train and smashed right through them, sending them both tumbling to the ground. They rolled apart and to his credit Sibelius quickly found his feet and came up fighting.
He delivered a savage kick to Usher’s face, breaking his nose and bursting his lip. Like a slapped hound Usher darted back, spitting blood and shaking his head. Blood tears streamed from his eyes and from the broken nose.
Sibelius smiled and beckoned Usher forward. In thick moist voice he spoke. “I don’t want to break it too much, I plan to wear it to your funeral Mr Fool.”
Then the patchwork man peered at Usher with a quizzical expression. Usher felt a sharp crack in the bones of his face as his nose reset itself, and his split lip sealed up, drawing the blood back in before closing up completely.
Within moments Usher felt as good as new, as if his injury had never happened. He smiled, absolutely loving the overwhelming feeling of power and strength inside him.
He bounded at Sibelius again, rugby tackling him to the ground, landing on top of him and digging his knee into his solar plexus. The patchwork man let out a sharp exhalation, and Usher smelt the grave on his breath.
He spread his weight and pounded his fists into the other man’s stolen face. Then he dug his fingers into the seam where the staples and stiches were and tore the skin away with a sickening rip, throwing it across the arena.
Sibelius’s heterochromatic eyes started up at Usher in a mixture of shock and admiration. Usher could tell his opponent could not feel pain in the conventional sense, but he could clearly register damage, and it was becoming clear in his expression that he wanted to get away. He writhed and struggled under Usher’s weight, his loose jigsaw of skin shifting and slipping as he turned like a loose leather jacket. In desperation he extended his index finger tailor’s claw to swipe at Usher’s eyes, but Usher caught it and in a moment of savagery snapped the finger left and right, pulling at it like a tooth he was desperate to extract, until finally it prized free, eliciting a scream from the patchwork man.
Usher paused and stared down at his foe.
Usher smiled. “So, losing your skin doesn’t hurt, but dismemberment does. Interesting.”
Sibelius gasped and managed to twist around, facing th
e ground and attempted to crawl away, but Usher closed in and wrapped his arms around his neck in a chokehold.
Sibelius wheezed and struggled and tried to rise but Usher wrapped his thighs around the man’s torso, dragging him back onto the sand and closing his grip.
Usher was experiencing auditory exclusion, but was dimly aware of the crowd above him, baying for blood.
Hate rose in him, the hate the professional soldier had always tried to suppress or channel. He despised this disgusting abomination that he held, this robber of human parts, this soulless corpse.
Usher squeezed and squeezed, felt the windpipe buckle and fold beneath his grip, heard the vertebrae crunch and spinal cord ping. Blood started pouring from Sibelius’s mouth. His bulging blue eye stared desperately to the side lines, searching for Mr Styx, someone, anyone to call a halt to this fight.
No one did. The Secret Arena demanded payment in blood.
Usher twisted and wrenched with a strength far beyond his own, the furious beast of the Feral flooding his muscles with fire.
Suddenly the head of Owen Sibelius tore free, and Usher fell back with it in his grip.
He lay there, panting through gritted teeth, then the crowd roared, disapproval and surprise from the Unseelie, jubilation from the human.
Sarkhov smiled smugly and puffed on his cigar, while beside him Mr Styx merely nodded, as if this was all part of a bigger plan.
Which Usher had no doubt it was.
He stood up, a rush of nausea filling his stomach, as he was simultaneously exhilarated and disgusted at his own actions.
So this was the Feral. The most savage part of man’s soul enhanced and brought out to play.
Usher stood with the skinless head in his hand, holding it by its lank hair, and then held it up to the crowd like Perseus challenging the Kraken.
He let out a final scream of triumph and rage, then fell to his knees in disgust.
He felt no different to one of the Berserk commandos that had attacked London. Without his military training he would be little more than a beast.
The Last Line Series One Page 15