The man looked down at the hand clamped over his mouth. Luke grimaced.
“If you scream, I swear to God I will rip out your vocal chords with my teeth,” he said. The man’s hands began shaking violently, but when Luke moved his hand, he was silent.
I stood still in my place, unable to move. I was transfixed by this new, hideous side of Luke. The one that had been trained into him since he was a child.
“Where is he?” Luke asked. The man shook, but after a second of silence, Luke shoved his head once more into the wall. The man gasped. He grabbed the chokehold that Luke had over his neck and pulled it to give himself some air. Luke released his neck just the slightest bit, just enough to give the man the chance to speak.
“Here,” the man panted. “Vera is here.”
LIFE OR DEATH
☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼
“Shit,” Luke said, his eyes wide and wild. He pushed the man against the wall again, this time his force even more brutal. The man choked as Luke’s grip on his throat tightened. “Tell me where he is—is he coming here? Have you told him where we were?”
“Ye-ess,” the moan rasped under his grip.
“And he knows what we look like? He knows I have a woman with me?”
The man tried to speak, but he couldn’t get the words out through Luke’s tight grip. He began choking, gasping for air and reaching out as if he could grab it and bring it to him
“Luke,” I said in a low voice. My hands had begun shaking as I watched him interrogate the man. My knees felt weak and wobbly.
“Tell me!” Luke roared, choking him further. “Tell me what he knows!”
“Luke.”
“I said tell me!”
There was a disgusting scratching sound as Luke forced him up against the wall again. The man choked and scratched at his throat, but Luke’s grip was too strong, and there was no way to pry him off of him. Luke was too strong, too used to fighting and brutality. Things like this were as natural as breathing to him.
“Luke!”
His head snapped around. His eyes were on fire with fury and his face was twisted into a violent, terrifying grimace. “What, Anna?”
“Stop,” I whispered.
“Stop? Stop hurting him? He wanted to kill you! He wanted to kill both of us!” He shoved him against the wall again. “And now he wants to murder us by refusing to tell us where Vera is!”
The man clawed at his neck, desperate for oxygen. His face color had begun changing, and a vein in his forehead popped out.
“No,” I said in a small voice.
“Why?” Luke cried.
“Because you’re scaring me.”
He turned his head again, the words not registering. But then they came down on him, and he understood. His face immediately changed, his expression pained. “Anna…”
“Please, Luke,” I said, wrapping my arms around myself. “You’re not this person. Don’t let them change you into the monster they want you to be.”
His face turned hard as he looked back to the man. “I am a monster.”
“No,” I said firmly. “You’re not. They want you to think you are so you won’t believe anyone will ever accept you. But God damn it, Luke, I accept you. And I love you. Please don’t give into them like this.”
Luke’s hand shook on the man’s neck. The man had begun to go limp, the light fading out of his eyes. Only a moment before it was too late, Luke released him, letting him slump to the floor. He began gasping and moaning, curling himself into a ball on the floor. Luke turned to me, his expression still firm, but also regretful.
“I’m sorry you had to see that, darlin’.”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is that we have to get out of here. And right now, if Vera knows we’re here.”
That seemed to awaken him to what he had just heard. The gears in his head began moving again as he looked around. The man on the floor was totally out of commission, so there was no need to worry anymore, leaving us alone with the problem at hand.
“We can’t take the bike,” he said in a low voice.
“What? You think we can outrun them when they’ll have cars?”
“No. I’m thinking they’ll know we’ll be on my bike, and they’ll be able to hunt us down. That, and if we’re on the bike, we’ll be limited to the roads.” He shook his head. “We’ll have to go on foot. It’s easier to escape that way, especially in urban places like this. Lots of hiding spots.”
“Where do we go, then?” I asked as he began to lead us down the sidewalk. He grabbed my hand and began to squeeze it worriedly. After a few moments of walking, he stopped abruptly. He looked me in the eyes.
“Anna, you have to leave.”
“What?”
“Don’t make me say it twice!” he said in a pained voice. “You need to leave. This isn’t a game anymore—they’re coming, and they’re going to kill me. They’ll kill you, too, if you don’t get out of here. You need to run.”
I gaped at him.
Then I clenched my jaw. I grabbed his hand and held on tightly.
“No,” I said in a hard voice. “If you’re going to leave me behind, you’re going to have to knock me out too.”
He opened his mouth to argue, but at that moment, a bullet whirred past his head.
His eyes grew large. “Run!”
In an instant, we were running as fast as our legs could take us down an alley. Luke’s hand held onto mine hard as we ran, towing me behind him and making sure that I didn’t fall behind. We leapt over trash and refuse as we crossed through the alleys, pursued by someone in the dark behind us on the road.
“Fuck,” Luke growled as yet another whizzed past our head. “Do you hear that? It’s a car engine. We have to find a place away from the road. It’s the only way we’ll survive.”
Bullets whirred past us, threatening to stop us dead at any moment. My heart pounded as we ran down the road, looking for any chance of escape. It didn’t seem like there was any, but we had to get out of here. The men following us were going to be bring us in dead or alive, and at the moment, it seemed like dead was a hell of a lot more likely than alive.
“Luke,” I shouted at him. He glanced back at me for a moment, and I pulled against him. “Look to your right, there’s another alley. It’s in the dark, they won’t be able to see us!”
He saw what I pointed at immediately, and he changed course, towing me fast behind him. We jumped into the second alley just in time as the car’s wheels caught up with us. I scrambled deeper in to the shadows, worried that they could still see us. My heart pounded in my ears and my blood rushed in my veins.
Yet another bullet flew past our faces, and I ducked, burying my face against the crumbling brick wall of the building next to us. I shook violently, and my knees trembled. I was sure I was about to collapse.
Luke must think I’m pathetic, I thought.
One last one whirred past my ear and crashed into the wall next to us. After a few moments of silence and peace, we realized they had stopped coming. I peeked out from between my fingers. They must have moved on to the next alley.
“They’re gone,” Luke said grimly. “But not for long. Now are you going to leave?”
I looked him in the eye.
“No.”
He stared at me. Then he threw his hands up with a growl.
“What do you think this is, Anna?” he roared under his breath. “A game? These men are trying to kill us. They’re going to kill you.”
“I know what I’m getting into. I know this isn’t a game.”
He marched to where one of the bullets had hit the wall and pointed at it. “Do you think that’s a game, then?”
“No. Luke, please, we have to get out of here.”
“You have to get out of here. I’m staying here. If they catch me, they’ll stop chasing you. Now get out of here, Anna!”
“Luke!” I shouted, grabbing his arm. I pulled hard against him, trying to coax him back out of
the alley now that we had a moment of silence to escape into. “We have to go!”
“No,” he said, his voice hard. “You have to go, Anna.”
“Anna!” he shouted. “Look at this—look at what they’re shooting at us. They’re going to kill you if you don’t get the fuck out of here!” He marched to the wall to pluck a bullet out and show me. But instead, he stopped abruptly and stared at it.
“What is it?” I asked softly.
“What the fuck?” Luke cried as he picked one out of where it had hit the wall.
“Luke, move, they’re going to shoot us for God’s sake!”
“No,” he whispered slowly, pulling me further into the alley. He showed me what he held in his hand, and I furrowed my brow, confused. It wasn’t a bullet at all. Rather, it was what looked like a small glass (or plastic?) dart that gleamed as Luke turned it over in his hands.
“A dart?” I asked.
“It looks like it. And look at this.” Luke turned it over, holding it by its tail. From the tip of it, a small drop of green liquid pooled and then fell to the ground.
“Do you know what it is?”
Luke grimaced. “I think I do. This was what they used to get some of their fighters—if a man was too strong to take down directly, they would use this to put him to sleep. Then they’d chain him up and cart him off, and he’d wake up in one of Mitch’s fighting rings.” Luke shook his head in disgust.
“They’re trying to take you in again, then? By force?”
“Looks like it.” Luke dropped the dart to the ground, and he smashed it under his foot, grinding it into the dirt for good measure. “It’s very, very potent. This is more dangerous than bullets, especially considering what they do to runaways and the people that help them.”
“So we don’t get caught,” I said simply, crossing my arms.
He gave me an exasperated look. “This is more complicated than you realize. If Mitch is trying to take me in alive, that means he must really want me. Otherwise he would just have killed the both of us. We’re in much more danger than I thought we were. If there’s one thing I know about Mitch, it’s that he’s absolutely brutal when it comes to getting what he wants.”
I leaned down and picked another up. Now that my eyes had adjusted to the dark, it was strange to see them littering the floor everywhere. I frowned as it rolled it over in my hand.
“We should go,” I said softly. “They’ll be back soon.”
He was about to nod in agreement, but the sound of yet another gun going off shook us. Another dart flew past our faces. I watched his contort into terror.
“Goddammit, Anna! I told you that you should have run. They’ve found us again!”
“Then let’s run together,” I yelled, grabbing him by the arm. We took off down the alley, darts following us and flying past our faces. We couldn’t stop to hide behind a building—they would get out and capture us. But we couldn’t keep running—eventually we would pass out or run out of alley to run in. My eyes darted around wildly.
“Anna!” he yelled. “Here!”
He grabbed my hand and led me through a hole in a fence to our left. We rolled through it, falling to the dark alley on the other side. Our hearts beat hard in our chests, but we heard the car on the other side roll on as it searched for us. He held out his hand and helped me up.
I looked around. We were in a dark open area surrounded by old buildings with broken windows. A parking lot, maybe? I took a sigh of relief.
“We’re safe,” I breathed.
“Not quite,” a voice from the other end of the yard called.
The streetlights turned on abruptly. The opening flooded with light and we were suddenly exposed. My breath caught in my throat, and I backed up into the shadows. I wanted to call out to Luke to come hide with me, but he was stuck where he stood, staring at a figure that walked out of the door in front of us from what looked like a garage.
But he wasn’t a mechanic. He was an old, grizzled, muscled man in a black silk suit.
He smirked at the figure of Luke frozen in the middle of the alley.
“Hello, Lucas,” Mitch Vera said as he walked out of the shadows.
CONFRONTATION
☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼
“Mitch,” Luke spat, turning to him. I watched the muscles of his body work under the skin, glossed in sweat, as he balled his fists and took a defensive stance. “Why are you here?”
“You know why I’m here, Stone,” said Mitch as he strolled forward. He seemed so out of place here, dressed in a black silk suit as he walked down a rundown old alleyway in the middle of a southern town. “I’m here to fetch what was stolen from me.”
“I wasn’t stolen,” Luke growled. “I ran. This was my choice.”
“I know,” Mitch said coolly, stopping a few feet from him. “And you are my property. You have stolen yourself from me. And you will return yourself to me, or you will face dire, dire consequences.”
Normally Luke would have snorted or rolled his eyes. But not now. There was something about Mitch’s tone that let me know he was deadly serious. I remembered what Luke had said about not expected to live for thirty years, and my blood ran cold.
“I’ll never give myself up to you,” he said fiercely.
There was something in his voice that scared me, reminding me of how vicious he had been in that alley. I backed up into the shadows, holding my arms over myself again.
“Then I see I’ll have to take you,” Mitch said with a frown. “Pity. I didn’t want to you have to destroy you, you know. You were a very good fighter. Could have won me several more matches and bets before you needed to be put down.”
He turned to me, locking eyes with me.
“What do you think, little girl?” he drawled. “How many more fights do you think he could take before he was torn to shreds, hm? Five? Maybe six, if you’re generous?”
“Shut the fuck up,” I sputtered, unable to think of anything clever.
“Don’t talk to her!” Luke roared, taking a step to him. “Don’t you dare speak to her!”
Mitch paused. His eyes flicked from Luke to me and back again.
His wicked grin grew larger.
“Oh,” he said, a disgusting, smug tone in his voice. “Well isn’t this just delicious? My little pitbull has gone and found himself a bitch.” Luke shouted something, but Mitch just laughed over him. “I thought you had just brought a girl to pass the time with on this little rebellion of yours. But this? Love? Christ, Stone. I knew you were weak, but I didn’t think you were that weak.”
He strode to Luke, unafraid of the threat of an attack.
“And what are you going to do if I do talk to her, Stone?” he seethed.
“Don’t come any closer,” Luke growled.
Mitch took one, long, exaggerated step.
Immediately, Luke struck out with a kick that would have knocked anyone else to their knees. But Mitch Vera wasn’t anyone else. He blocked it easily and returned it with a punch of his own that hit Luke’s jaw with a sickening crunch.
I muffled my scream by slapping my hands over my mouth.
Luke pulled back, grabbing at his jaw. He pushed it back into place with a wince.
“Do you really think you can beat me, Stone?” Mitch laughed. “Me? I’ve been fighting since before you were born. Before you were the greatest fighter in America, I was … and I still am. I just let you do my dirty work for me.”
He stalked forward, gaining on Luke.
“Do you really want to try to take me on Stone? Knowing all that?”
Luke threw out another punch, one that Mitch easily ducked. Mitch threw his own at Luke, and I was sure that it was going to bash his head in … but Luke ducked too. Mitch’s eyes grew wide as he recoiled and Luke stood up straight.
“Yes,” Luke growled.
Immediately, before Mitch could react, he threw out a kick that landed squarely in his master’s stomach. Mitch stumbled back, clutching at it, his eyes still wide. He stared a
t his fighter for a few moments.
Then he threw back his head and laughed.
“Well God damn it, Stone,” he chuckled. “Look at you, still fighting. Hm. And you’re good too. Maybe I might let you live and keep fighting for me.”
“I’ll never fight for you again.”
Mitch snorted.
“That’s what they all say. And yet they still do.”
He threw another punch, which Luke dodged and answered with his own kick. Mitch dodged that easily, and they continued to fight. Their movements were fierce and powerful, but also perfect and practiced.
It was like watching two dancers in a choreographed dance, but I knew it was far more serious than that. After all, dances usually didn’t end with one partner dead.
After a few minutes of endless blocks, kicks, and punches, Luke pulled back. His chest heaved as he desperately tried to catch his breath, and his face was splattered in blood. His tight muscles were glossed in sweat, and I saw the determination (and fear) in his eyes.
“Are you ready to give in?” asked Mitch lazily. He was just as battered, but he seemed to have an arrogant tint to his expression, as if he thought Luke would never seriously fight him.
“Never,” Luke whispered as he dove back in to fight him.
I watched them fight with wide eyes, feeling helpless. What could I do? There was no way in hell I could ever fight a monster like Mitch—even Luke, with his lifetime of experience, was struggling to keep up with him. My hands shook as I clasped them against my chest, trying to quell my thundering heart. I felt as if my world was falling to pieces around me.
After what seemed like ages, they parted again. Luke and Mitch began circling each other, their footsteps heavy but uneven. Luke seemed to have a limp, and Mitch was equally bruised and beaten. I watched a drop of blood run down Luke’s feet and choked. Mitch either didn’t see me or ignored me, keeping his eyes fixed on Luke as he stalked around him.
“Give up, Mitch,” Luke growled, his knuckles bleeding and his leg limping.
His eyes were still burning and fierce, as if he could fight for a million more years despite his obvious wounds and weaknesses.
Savage: a Fighter Erotic Romance Novella Page 5