by Reinke, Sara
Thus, as he faced off against Dwayne ‘Goliath’ Garin, knowing that he had no choice but to fight if he meant to keep Mason safe from harm, it wasn’t with alarm or apprehension, but with a sudden, overwhelming sense of focus. He breathed in and out, slow and deep, the deafening roar of the crowd fading in his mind, yielding to the sound of air in motion through his lungs. He let his feet settle instinctively into a ready stance as the emcee prattled on into his microphone; as the man stepped back, ducking through the ring’s gated point of entry to signal the match was about to begin, Julien folded his hands into light, ready fists, his brows narrowed slightly, his gaze already locked on what he intended to be his primary target.
From overhead, the blare of an air horn sounded the match’s start.
Game on, Julien thought as the big man began to bounce, dancing from side to side as if inviting Julien to make the opening move.
Fair enough. Julien shifted his weight, drawing his right leg up and away from his body, his knee flexed. In the same split-second motion, he pivoted on his foot, cocking his leg as if aiming his knee, gun-like, up at the bigger man’s head. With that, he kicked him, his foot flying, piston-like, his weight behind both the swing and the blow. Before Garin could even raise his hands to try and block him, Julien’s calf smashed into the side of his head, catching him just behind the ear and sending him reeling sideways, stunned. There was a tangle of nerves there; more importantly, the inner ear was nestled beneath the skull plates there—where the body’s sense of balance and orientation was controlled. Julien’s kick put it pretty much out of commission for the moment, and Garin came crashing down like his Biblical namesake. When he struck the mat, he hit hard enough to send a shockwave of vibrations shuddering through Julien’s feet clear up to his shoulders.
Game over, Julien thought, because the son of a bitch wasn’t getting up again anytime soon. He’d have a headache when he came to—and probably a nasty concussion worth an ambulance ride to the nearest emergency room to check out—but no lasting damage.
For a long moment, the crowd remained silent. The match was over almost as soon as it had started, lasting no more than five seconds, tops. Then, as realization seemed to settle over them, they began to applaud. The sound grew, intensifying, and within moments, they were deafening again, uproarious with approval.
As the emcee returned to the center of the ring to grasp Julien’s wrist, raising his arm to proclaim him officially the winner, another air horn blatted, announcing the end of the fight. Julien swept the tiered arena with his gaze, squinting against the glare of spotlights. He found Nikolić easily enough, his box seats just above the perimeter of razor wiring atop the ring cage, almost directly in front of him. Nikolić was grinning, a smug, satisfied look on the son of a bitch’s face like Julien had just done him a huge goddamn favor or something. But more importantly, Mason was there, standing beside Nikolić, staring down at Julien with a mixture of shock and abject relief on his face.
It was a moment—a relief—Julien shared.
You’re alright, he thought, and goddamn the collar that stripped him of the ability to speak to Mason with his mind and reassure him. Don’t worry about me—I got this. You’re safe and that’s all that matters.
That’s all that’s ever mattered to me.
* * *
“Come with me, Dr. Morin,” Nikolić said after Julien had been led from the ring. The crowd had settled down, and the emcee began introducing the next contenders. “Let’s go see our victor.”
He clapped Mason heavily on the shoulder, drawing his gaze. Nikolić still wore a shit-eating grin, his cheeks flushed with excited, eager color. He looked like a little kid enjoying an afternoon at the circus—and for once, Mason felt inclined to agree with his sentiments.
He never even got in a shot, he thought, awed, as the crowd began to cheer. Holy God, Julien took that guy out—as big as a fucking tree—without him even swinging a single punch!
As he followed Nikolić past Sofiya, he couldn’t help but spare a remorseful glance in her direction. If she was disappointed that he hadn’t won her freedom, however, it didn’t show in her face. She’d come to stand at the rail, pressed between Nikolić and Miloš, her eyes wide, her attention riveted on Julien. He supposed he should’ve known better, should have suspected Nikolić knew something he didn’t, considering how much the larger man stood to lose if he’d set Sofiya free. To have wagered something—or in this case, someone—of such significant value to him should have been a clue to Mason as to Nikolić’s confidence, and he couldn’t help but feel ashamed that he hadn’t shared this same certainty in Julien’s fighting ability.
But how the hell could I have known? he thought. The only time I ever saw Julien fight was in the Midnight Rounds. Well, unless you count that night in the woods outside of the spring house, when Jean Luc came upon us…
He paused as memories of that night came rushing back to him. For a few moments at least, a floodgate of violent fury had seemed to open inside of Julien, and he’d been a stranger to Mason as he’d pinned his brother to the ground and beaten the shit out of him.
There’s nothing of your father in you, Julien, I promise you, Mason had told him years later—although there had been times like that night when he’d bloodied Jean Luc’s face that even Mason hadn’t been fully convinced.
Still, neither incident could have begun to prepare Mason for what he’d just witnessed in the Draka ring. Julien had seemed neither cocky, like he’d been at the Midnight Rounds, nor out of control, as he’d been with Jean Luc. Rather, his focus had been unwavering from the moment he’d stepped into the ring; it hadn’t been until the fight was over that he’d even seemed to take notice of the crowd.
Leaving Sofiya in the care of the guards, Nikolić led Mason from the booth. As they made their way down to the ground floor, they stopped repeatedly so that Nikolić could exchange greetings, hand clasps, and affable embraces with spectators along the way. Though they spoke almost entirely in Russian, their meaning remained clear: all offered their congratulations on Julien’s victory as if it had been Nikolić’s own. Nikolić kept his cell phone in one hand the entire time, shooting glances at it frequently as text messages buzzed in and out in rapid-fire succession.
“You know how much our boy won for me?” he asked Mason with a grin. “Twenty-five thousand dollars. One kick—twenty-five grand! And that’s only off my bet alone. I get a cut from the bookie off the total take.”
Holy shit, Mason thought.
“By the end of tonight, I’ll have a quarter million dollars—tax-free, U.S. cash,” Nikolić continued happily. “At least that much. Maybe even more!”
“He’s going to fight again?” Mason asked with a sudden, sinking feeling.
Nikolić laughed. “Again? I’m going to wear his ass out. I’ve waited a long time for this—twenty years. I mean to enjoy it.”
Mason felt a cold chill steal down the length of his spine, sending an uneasy shudder through him. He remembered Andrei telling him that Nikolić hated Julien for something that had happened in their past:
Vladan had met him several years before the war. He told me the strigoi—your Julien—was the reason he’d enlisted in the Army. He’d caused trouble for Vladan somehow with his uncle, and Draško sent Vladan away.
Nikolić brought him to a restricted area constructed behind the arena. Here, the combatants readied for the Draka, or had their wounds tended to after each match. They found Julien sitting on a bench in a common dressing area with lockers, showers, and toilet stalls. Flanked on either side by men bearing locked and loaded assault rifles, Julien sat by himself, his elbows resting on his knees, his head lowered. Other fighters seemed to give him a wide and deliberate berth, though whether unnerved by the sight of the guards or simply having caught wind of his one-kick victory, Mason didn’t know.
When the guards saw Nikolić approaching, they stiffened to attention. One of them rammed the butt of his rifle into Julien’s back between his shoulder blades to draw his
gaze from the floor. His expression remained impassive when he looked up at Nikolić, but when his gaze settled on Mason, it stayed there, even as Nikolić uttered a happy exclamation.
“My boy!” Leaning over, he clasped Julien’s face between his hands and gave him a loud kiss on each cheek in cosmopolitan fashion. Mason expected Julien to flinch or draw away, to snap something back in sharp retort, but to his surprise, instead, he said nothing, keeping his blue eyes fixed on Mason.
“You did well,” Nikolić praised, tousling Julien’s sweat-dampened hair as he straightened again. “Very, very well.” In an instant, however, his smile was gone and when he reached again for Julien, this time it was to clamp his hand firmly against Julien’s chin and jaw. “You stupid fuck.”
Julien winced as Nikolić forced his head back. Brows furrowed, Mason stepped forward, drawing in a sharp breath to speak, but he stopped when Julien cut him a quick, alarmed gaze. Don’t! that look seemed to convey, and without lifting his arm from his side, he tilted his hand up, his fingers spread out in a Stop! sort of gesture.
“What are you talking about?” he gasped, his face twisting with pain as Nikolić tightened his brutal grasp. “I fought the guy! I did what you said…!”
The desperation in his voice took Mason back two hundred years—back to a cold day in November when Julien had followed him, barefooted and barely dressed, down the front stairs of his boarding house. Why didn’t Julien fire off some smart-assed quip or tell Nikolić to go fuck himself? He’d just taken down a guy who was bigger than Nikolić—why didn’t he fight back?
“You make it too easy, your odds get too low,” Nikolić seethed in a low voice; only Mason’s heightened sense of hearing allowed him to discern his words. Leaning down, nearly nose to nose with Julien, he said, “I won big on you this time, mišiću, because you were twenty-four to one. Next match, you’ll be only two to one at best. Everyone will expect another knock-out from you. Next time, you trade some jabs. Let him hit you. But not in the face.” He released his grip on Julien’s face, then clapped his cheek roughly. “I want to keep you pretty.”
“Okay.” Julien’s breath and voice shuddered from him simultaneously as he hung his head, his shoulders hunched. “Alright.”
“Lock him up again,” Nikolić growled to his guards as he turned to walk away. “I don’t want him getting any funny ideas in his head about trying to escape.”
Mason looked back over his shoulder as he followed Nikolić begrudgingly out the door. Julien looked up to watch them go, and again, for a moment at least, he met Mason’s gaze, fleeting and sad.
I’m going to get us out of this, Julien, Mason thought as the door closed between them. You, me, Edi, and Sofiya—all of us, somehow, some way. I promise.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Three hours, four bottles of Dom Perignon, and countless matches later, and Mason’s initial astonishment at Julien’s prowess in the ring had turned into out-and-out awe. Julien had fought four more times since his initial bout, and although he’d won each time, true to his word, he’d prolonged each fight, exchanging rapid-fire volleys of punches, kicks, elbow- and knee-strikes with his opponents to the uproarious delight of the crowd. Mason had never seen anything like it in his life, never seen anyone move with such deliberate speed and brutal precision before. With every bout and every victory, Nikolić’s claim that Julien was some sort of “living weapon” sounded less and less far-fetched.
By his fourth fight, however, the strain of physical fatigue began to show. Julien looked up into the stands as the ringmaster clasped him by the wrist and lifted his arm, declaring him the winner. His body was glossed with sweat; the stage lights from overhead bathed him in golden glow under which his skin seemed luminous, his eyes radiant and sharp. No longer small or vulnerable to Mason, he looked proud and strong, like a lion that had just turned back a larger rival; his back arched, his shoulders thrust back, his face lifted, his muscles cast in finely etched relief.
The crowd roared in approval as Julien scanned the tiers with his gaze. When his blue eyes lit across Mason—when their gazes locked—Mason’s breath caught in his throat.
My God, he thought with a soft smile. You’re amazing, Julien.
He was also injured. Julien’s mouth and nose had been battered, and he turned his head to spit blood onto the mat. His breathing had taken on a ragged, labored quality Mason could see even from a distance, and as the guards led him from the ring, he visibly limped.
“I need to see him,” Mason said to Nikolić. “He’s hurt. Take me down there.” When Nikolić arched his brow as if surprised and amused by his insistence, Mason frowned. “He took some hits to his side. I told you that could cause his lung to collapse again. He’s breathing funny now—I need to check on him.”
Nikolić and Miloš had made their peace since Julien’s initial win, and Nikolić turned to his friend now, laughing. “You hear this?” he asked. “Ordering me around, worse than a goddamn wife.”
He’d put away more than his fair share of champagne, and his cheeks were ruddy and bright, his eyes glassy with drunken good humor.
Miloš chuckled. He had his arm wrapped around Sofiya, who had slumped against his shoulder some time earlier, drifting off to sleep. “Go ahead, take him,” he said. He gave Sofiya a squeeze and she murmured softly, restlessly. “I’ll take care of things up here.”
Even though Mason hated the idea of leaving the girl alone with him—especially out cold and vulnerable—he couldn’t let Nikolić force Julien into the ring again if he’d suffered another chest injury. If he was bleeding internally again, the strain could kill him. He had to believe that Sofiya would be safe as long as she stayed in the booth; that between the guards and the other spectators around them on all side, Miloš would exercise some discretion and restraint.
Instead of returning to the locker room, this time Nikolić brought Mason to a dingy bathroom at the end of a narrow hallway. One of Nikolić’s goons stood outside the door, his arms folded across his broad chest. His posture straightened when he caught sight of Nikolić, and his hand darted for his pocket. He’d pulled something out before Nikolić had gotten within ten feet of him; as they drew closer, Mason saw it was a screwdriver. The guard used it to jimmy the lock on the door handle, which proved to be nothing more than the average, run-of-the-mill, turn-clasp kind. Between it and the guard, though, it was enough to keep other people out—and most importantly, Julien in.
Mason found Julien sitting on the floor by the toilet with his legs outstretched. He held one arm across his midriff as if to crutch his ribs, splinting against pain. He’d tipped his head back to lean against the wall, his eyes closed, but lowered it at the sound of the door opening.
“Hey, Doc,” he said, cracking a feeble smile.
Nikolić still stood in the hallway just beyond the threshold. His phone had started to vibrate just as they’d arrived; whoever was on the other end of the line must have been important, because he’d turned his back to the bathroom, giving Mason and Julien a modicum of privacy, while he stuck his finger in one ear and held the phone against the other.
“You look like hell,” Mason said.
Julien managed a laugh. “Thanks. Nice to see you again, too.”
“Where the hell’d you learn to fight so well?” Mason asked, kneeling beside him.
“Lots of different places,” Julien replied as Mason leaned toward him, cupping his hand over his right eye. “What are you doing?”
“Checking your pupils,” Mason replied, turning Julien’s head gently toward the light, then using his hand to block it. “You took some pretty good hits to the head.” He repeated these same steps on Julien’s other eye. “I want to make sure you didn’t wind up with a concussion.”
“I’m fine,” Julien said. “You always said I was hard-headed.”
Mason placed his hand against Julien’s chest, feeling for crepitus, the tell-tale sensation of soft nodules beneath the skin, almost like Rice Krispies, where air that was
leaking out if Julien’s lung had collapsed again would become trapped beneath the skin. He didn’t feel any, but Julien winced at the pressure of his touch. “That hurts?”
Julien nodded. “A little. That last guy…he cracked a couple ribs, I think.”
“Yeah. I figured.” Mason didn’t have a stethoscope with him, so he settled for leaning over, pressing his ear to Julien’s chest. “I’m worried about that lung. Breathe for me.”
“I’m fine.” Julien sounded tired but amused, like he humored a ridiculous and somewhat exasperating request simply by inhaling.
“Again,” Mason said. “Deep as you can.”
Julien draped his hand lightly against Mason’s head, his fingers threading through his hair. “This is nice,” he murmured, closing his eyes. “You could move your head a little lower, you know…”
Mason sat up with a scowl. “I’m trying to help you.”
“That would help,” Julien assured him.
“Yeah. Help get us both killed when Nikolić walks in and sees,” Mason said drily.
Julien shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. It’s too late for that.” He opened his eyes and smiled again weakly. “He knows. The son of a bitch had cameras in my room.”
Mason’s eyes widened. “Fuck,” he hissed.
“That’s my idea, yeah,” Julien said with a laugh.
“Will you stop?” Mason’s frown deepened. “You’re hurt, Julien. You can’t fight anymore. You shouldn’t have been fighting to begin with.”
“Hey, I’m just following orders.”
Julien said this with a faint chuckle, but something flashed through his eyes as he spoke; something bitter, nearly rueful that Mason would’ve had to be blind to have missed.
“Yeah. And that’s what I don’t get.” His expression softened and he touched Julien’s face, brushing the cuff of his knuckles along the arch of his cheek, drawing Julien’s gaze. “Why are you doing this?”
Julien cut his eyes away, shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter.”