by Lynn Red
And no matter what, he’d be looking out in the audience and pretending he could see Violet.
Three names were shouted over the PA – The Butcher, Craig James, and a new guy called the Juggernaut that Marlin picked up on the road, in a little town outside of Stillwater.
Crag peeked out of his curtain and was pretty impressed with the new fighter. He was big, had a shaved-bald head covered with tattoos. He wasn’t big big, not compared to Crag, but still, he was way more impressive than the other two.
“But now,” Marlin began, winding up his voice like the goddamn carny he was. “Crrrrrrraaaaag Morgan!”
Crag narrowed his vision and flared his nostrils. He was ready, and it was going to feel good... but he wasn’t just fighting for himself. He had someone else in his mind. Someone he wished was watching him.
“And yes,” Marlin shouted, as Crag pushed open the curtain and raised his hands in the air before roaring so loudly everyone in the arena went quiet at the same time. “His name really is... Crag.”
*
The first two went down fast. The Butcher was out of shape. He’d been drinking too much, eating too many pancakes instead of pounding the heavy bag. He was never a match for Crag anyway.
Within thirty seconds of the bell sounding, Butcher came in hard. Crag juked left, and planted a fist in the little guy’s side. Butcher went for a head-butt to Crag’s nose. He caught just enough of Crag to make him bleed but nowhere near enough to hurt.
“Why do you keep trying that?” Crag said under his breath as he grabbed Butcher in close and planted a knee in his stomach. “You always try that.”
“Fuck you!” the little guy yelled. He smelled like whiskey. Crag liked whiskey well enough, but he hated it when it came out of people’s pores. He shot a glance to the audience, wishing he saw Violet, but instead caught an elbow in the side for his trouble.
That was okay though. He absorbed the blow and grabbed Butcher – whose real name was Devin Bailey – and lifted him off the floor, squeezing him. With both fists in the small of Butcher’s back, it wasn’t three seconds before he crushed a submission out of him. The three quick taps were all he needed.
One down, he thought.
Craig James wasn’t much more difficult. Those two had come at him at the same time, with Juggernaut held back until they were dispatched. There wasn’t much question, of course, that they would be dispatched.
Craig was a nice enough guy, but a real prick to his wife. Crag had heard them fighting sometimes, and had seen James yelling at her more than once. It didn’t take much more than that for Crag to get a little rage going. He was careful not to let it get too far along though, because the last thing he wanted was to end up with a murder charge or running across the country.
Craig James threw two punches that caught Crag in the stomach, and they did hurt.
A little.
Crag took a deep breath through his nose and when he exhaled, a fine mist of blood went with the air. James threw a punch that Crag considered avoiding, but just took instead. Less effort, he thought.
The fist that connected with his jaw hardly felt like anything to Crag. He smiled, let out a roar, and then caught the next punch in mid-air, before driving a knee up into James’s stomach. As soon as the smaller man doubled over, Crag caught him with a short, harsh uppercut that shot his head backwards a second before he crumpled to the mat.
“It was easier this way,” Crag said as he pushed the prone man to the edge of the ring with his foot. “If this went on much longer you were going to piss me off.”
Craig James let out a pitiful whimper as he rolled off the mat, and hobbled away.
“Can you believe it?” Marlin’s voice boomed over the loudspeaker. “He took two fighters at one time! But I’m not so sure this next one is going to be so easy. Juggernaut! Your turn!”
“Juggernaut” was the right name for this guy. He was probably six foot two and about three hundred pounds of muscle. He climbed in the cage door and immediately charged.
He lowered his shoulder, and just ran straight at Crag like he was trying to hit a tackling dummy.
At the last second, Crag slid to the side, and shoved the charging lunatic into one of the posts that held up the cage. The blue steel, which normally rang out with a sickening thud when someone hit it, actually gave a little.
Crag expected that to make a mess of the guy, since his shoulder had gone straight into the metal, but the stocky, crazed bastard just turned around, a red grin across his face. “I’ve been waiting for this,” he snarled. “For you.”
“Why?” Crag asked, crouching to brace for another wild charge. “I don’t even know who you are.”
“Exactly.” Juggernaut said, and charged again, harder and faster than before.
Crag turned him aside again, but this time followed through, carrying the guy into one of the six points of the hexagonal cage. He smashed Juggernaut’s head into the post, and then threw him to the mat.
Once again, the new guy surprised him by bouncing back.
Only that time, he came harder than before. He sprang up off his feet leading with his fist. The meaty slab cracked a surprised Crag in the jaw, and a second blow caught him in the stomach.
Crag went to a knee, and had two things surge through him at the same time – first was rage. He wanted to hurt this kid. But then, the second, and far more practical feeling was opportunity.
He spat a red blob on the mat and licked his split lip, smiling as he looked up at the guy who was going to be his unwitting accomplice.
Crag felt a flash of anger course through him. This was not what he needed. He stayed on the mat, pounding it with his fist, until the blood pumping in his temples calmed just a little. His heightened senses calmed as his bear soul receded. He shook his huge head, stood up, and immediately started to stagger.
He grabbed the side of his head, making a show out of how much blood he could get all over his face from his barely-grazed nose and his busted lip. Juggernaut came at him again. Crag turned and clocked him on the side of the head with an elbow, then followed him to the ground.
Crag grabbed the younger man in a painful hold, twisting an arm behind his head and hooking his thumb inside the joint of his shoulder. All it would take for Crag to snap the kid’s arm was about a twenty-degree turn.
“You wanna make a name for yourself?” Crag whispered as he made a faked show of straining. “You want to take down a big guy? Get in Marlin’s good graces?”
The kid didn’t answer, so Crag twisted his arm.
This was his chance. This was the plain. There wasn’t a single fake thing about the fighting they did. This was blood sport, and every night ended with injuries the night before. It was also really common for fighters to convince the others they were about to throw a match only to spring up and break an ankle at the last second.
To emphasize that he was just playing with the kid, Crag twisted his shoulder about eight degrees. Enough so he could feel the tightness in the tendon, but not enough to break the joint.
“I want out,” Crag said. “I want you to do something that’s never been done before. I want you to beat me.”
“Y... you?” the kid asked, through strained teeth. “You’re fuckin’ Crag though, you’re the bear man, you’re a legend.”
Crag let out a bitter, grunted laugh, and positioned himself so that no one in the audience could see what he was doing.
“Head-butt my nose,” Crag said. “Then stick your fingers in my eye. Don’t fake it. Do. It.”
“B... but—”
“I could kill you right now if you’d rather do that,” Crag said with one of his savage, half-wild grins. “My time is over, I’ve got other...” He groaned with effort, doing his best to sell that he was in a struggle for life and death even though he outweighed Juggernaut by at least sixty pounds.
“But, what about—”
“Shut up and hit me,” Crag said. “Right. Now.”
His voice was a low, dang
erous growl.
Of course this was how it had to be. No one could ever actually beat him. That was impossible.
Still, when the kid slammed his head into Crag’s nose, it hurt like hell.
Crag let out a horrible roar and lurched backwards. He hunched over and grabbed his face in both hands. Juggernaut hit him twice, once in each side, and Crag stumbled backwards into the cage before slumping to the floor.
The announcer was screeching something about cheating over the PA, Crag didn’t care. All the pain in the world filled his face... but Crag didn’t care.
First there was just pain, and then there was blood, and then a second later, he was looking up at Juggernaut before a thumb went straight in his eye.
“What now?” the panicked kid asked. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Grab my hand and twist it around. I’ve got a bad wrist,” he said. “Do it, now!”
He concealed his words by roaring in what was apparent agony. The next second, Crag stood up, blood running down his face. The second after that, he was back on the mat, tapping for the first time in his life.
No one could believe it, least of all Marlin, who was screaming loudest of all.
But Crag? Crag didn’t care.
All Crag needed was his Violet. And this way, he’d be able to bring her a prize – the girls he knew his scum-fuck boss was kidnapping.
As his head hit the mat for the last time before the ref scrambled in and held the young Juggernaut’s hand in the air, the only thing going through Crag Morgan’s head was how he was about to have an hour or two alone to poke through Marlin’s books and figure out where he was getting all the money he was getting.
Not worried one bit about being injured, Crag made a big show of rolling around, clutching his wrist, his face, his broken nose. Underneath it all though, he was fine.
No, he was better than fine – Crag was full of energy, full of hope.
Ten minutes after he got wheeled back stage, a fake doctor made a fake examination and stuck a couple of stints in his nose. Marlin always said the cheapest doctor was a janitor wearing a stethoscope.
Five minutes after the doctor was gone, so was Crag. There were three days until they were supposed to be back around Jamesburg, and Crag wasn’t going to let his boss hurt anyone else.
Crag sniffed the air, smelling around the iron-like scent of blood and letting his bear senses carry him to the mysterious crates that had joined the caravan two days before. It was fear he smelled. Fear he wasn’t going to let continue.
Crag had smelled fear like that before. He smelled it when Marlin took his brother, and then let him die.
But more than anything else, Crag decided in that one split second between smelling the terror and chasing its trail, that he wasn’t Crag anymore. Never again.
He was Ash.
And Ash was going to catch his fox.
-16-
Violet
“You’re doing what?” Henry almost spit her soda across the table, which would have been really bad since there was a laptop sitting between us. “You’re nuts, Viola. You’re just straight up crazy.”
I shrugged. “You know what they say, Henry. Crazy like a...?”
She shook her head.
“Come on. Crazy like...” I goaded her. Maybe exhaustion was finally catching up with me? The long nights were starting to get to me, but they were worth it. Still, there was a very distinct possibility that the words I thought I was saying were coming out all garbled and nonsensical.
“Henry.”
She just kept shaking her head.
“Crazy like a fox, Henry. You can’t be that tired,” I said.
She let out a groan that was so loud it sounded like the air going out of a tractor trailer’s tire. “I’m not that tired. And by ‘that tired’ I mean as tired as that joke.” A second later, she started laughing in her infectious, half-chortling, half-snorting way that meant she thought it was really funny.
It didn’t take long for me to catch the disease and we sat there hacking and coughing until both of us were a little red-faced. It took a halting minute or two for our giggle-fit to completely run its course.
When things got quiet again, Henry’s face got taut and serious. “What are you gonna do about all this, Viola? It doesn’t take a genius to realize you’ve fallen pretty hard for this guy you’ve been around for... what – a grand total of twelve hours? Spread over a couple weeks?”
I shrugged. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about him though, so there’s that. Anyway, it’s actually about eighteen hours if you count the time we were asleep.”
That time, Henry gulped instead of spraying soda all over the place.
I just smiled at her over my absolutely ridiculous meatball sandwich.
“I know,” I said, feeling serious all of a sudden. “I know you’re just worried about me, and I appreciate that. I really, really appreciate it. But, uh,” I chewed my lip and looked at my phone.
He was going to call any minute.
He was going to call and I was going to pick it up and I was going to hear his voice. I was going to pretend like I wasn’t coming apart at the seams to see him again.
“You’re waiting on him to call, huh?” she asked. “Don’t bother asking how I know, you’re staring at the phone and chewing your lip. You’ve got it bad for this guy, huh?”
What’s the use in hiding it? If she can already tell, why bother lying?
I took a deep breath. “That night when I ran away from him, you remember that?” Breathing wasn’t a thing I did right then. I was pure condensed energy, spurting out of my own mouth. “Anyway I woke up the next day, ate an egg and went outside for a run. I ran around and it was a lot of fun but guess what? He showed up and chased me around.”
Henry’s mouth fell open but I put up my hand in a ‘hold on a second’ gesture.
“He chased me around the woods, said he followed me home. He didn’t do – I mean we, we didn’t do anything – not that time.” Saying that, I blushed. “Uh, right anyway, we didn’t do anything, except we ran around. Then we had that date, right, and—”
“Viola,” Henry said. “Slow it down. You’re going to hyperventilate and I don’t have any paper sacks.”
That wasn’t true; she had two paper sacks, one for each of the sandwiches she brought. I knew what she meant though.
I took another deep breath and flattened my hands on the tabletop. “Sorry,” I said. “I got... well, a little ahead of myself.”
“No shit, girly,” Henry said with a grin. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen you get that worked up about something. A little bit wigged out, of course, but damn, you just laid it all out.”
I looked down at my hands, suddenly kind of embarrassed about myself. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Henry,” I admitted. “I’m a little... it’s kind of scaring me. I think I’m... now, okay, don’t say anything. Please,” I dragged the word out for emphasis. “Please don’t say anything. Just let me give you my whole blob of words, okay?”
She leaned forward a little, interlaced her fingers. “I won’t say anything,” she said.
“I want him to chase me,” I said. “I kept falling for guys and doing stupid shit and all that, right? So I wanted to make this one come after me. Well, he did. Like he really came after me in a way I never expected. He literally came after me.”
My eyes went left and right, like they always do when I get nervous. “It’s just... I kinda don’t want him to chase me anymore. I kinda just want to get it over with and tell this guy that I love him.”
I could tell she wanted to say something. She really, really wanted to talk, but she was being quiet. “You can talk now,” I said. “I think I’ve covered all the stupidity I can manage for one lunch time.”
“Love?” was all she said. “Love, Viola. That’s what you said.”
I shrugged.
“No, no, no,” Henry continued, pushing her glasses back up on the bridge of her nose. Her head kind of s
hrunk in toward her body. When she’s irritated is the only time she really lets her inner turtle show. “I’m not letting you get away with just shrugging and looking at the desk. Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”
I caught myself in mid-shrug. “I, uh... well I guess I felt kinda stupid about the whole thing. I mean, it is stupid, right?”
“Bears mate for life,” she said.
At first that didn’t make much sense, but then a couple seconds later, it dawned on me that she was actually being supportive in a Henry kind of way. I guess she could tell I was a little confused.
“They’re also impulsive,” she added. “I’m not saying this all wrong. What I’m getting at is that, yeah, I think you’re nuts for falling in love with a pit fighting bear you met twice and you don’t really know. On the other hand, look at me. Here I am doling out advice like I’m Gandalf and I’ve had two boyfriends ever. So, I’m not sure I’m really the one to be doling out advice here.”
“What about Darren?” I asked her. Darren was the guy she’d been with not too long ago. Real cute guy – kind of a lanky, skinny werewolf. “I thought you two were...”
The look of absolute horror on my friend’s face got me to stop short.
“Breaking news, breaking news.” Behind her, Whit Whitman appeared on the television and started talking. “Another kidnapping has just been reported. This time, a young girl – we don’t have – we promised police not to reveal her name, or her, uh, species – was nabbed on the way to Jamesburg High.”
“Do you believe this?” I heard myself asking. “It’s like... I don’t know, this is just crazy. Since when does this place have crime?”
Henry shrugged. “Kinda funny, isn’t it? That fighting crew comes to town, and there are kidnappings. Then they leave, and they stop. Now they’re back again in Clinton or wherever they have a match, and... guess what starts again?”
We both just stared at each other for a second, neither one of us sure what to say next. Millicent solved the problem by bursting through the door.