“Hi there,” she said, bending over and scooping the skinny creature into her arms. It purred noisily and licked her finger.
A bony hand wrapped around Amanda’s shoulder, causing her to jump. The cat’s claws dug deeply into her arm, immediately drawing blood. The animal jumped down onto the dirty ground and disappeared into the shadowy stacks of books and newspapers.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” the old woman said, smiling a toothless smile up at Amanda. She must have taken her dentures out and forgotten to put them back in, or simply chose not to. Regardless, the result was unsettling to say the least.
“It’s… it’s okay,” Amanda replied. “Quite a maze you have down here.”
“Yes… I keep meaning to get it organized, but there’s never enough hours in the day. Speaking of which, I’m sorry to say it’s closing time. You’ve been down here for hours, sweetie.”
“Oh. Sorry about that,” Amanda said, following the woman back toward the staircase. “I got lost in my research.”
“That’s quite all right. I like knowing there’s someone else in the store with me,” the old woman said, pulling herself up the steps. “Life is so short and often so heartbreaking. Other people are what make it bearable, wouldn’t you say?”
You don’t know the half of it, Amanda thought, her mind turning to Morbius, how he had saved her from the Demon-Fire cult on more than one occasion. She hoped he was okay.
“Yes,” Amanda said, following her back up out of the shadows. “I would absolutely say that.”
* * *
MORBIUS’ ENTIRE body ached.
He blinked awake, realizing that even his eyelids hurt. He laughed at the thought, and then doubled over in a fresh wave of pain. Several of his ribs had to be broken. He looked down at his leg, ready to see it still bleeding, but was pleasantly surprised to find it professionally wrapped in gauze, with just a small spot of blood having leaked through. Ditto his arm, which pulsated with pain to the rhythm of his heartbeat.
Slowly, he sat up and tried to ignore his pounding headache. He was exhausted. And starving. And in so very much pain. But he was alive.
Looking around, he half expected to still be in the arena, but discovered instead that he was in a small room with walls made up of large rocks, and a nearby door composed of metal bars. There was a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, providing the only light.
He was a prisoner.
Morbius shook his head, infuriated with himself for being so stupid. He’d played right into Demon-Fire’s hands, and now he was at their mercy. Destined to be dumped into that damn arena for God knows how long. He’d barely survived that last encounter. His luck wouldn’t hold forever.
And then there was Amanda.
He’d been so cruel to her, and now she was completely vulnerable. Perhaps she was down here, too. She might even be dead, or sacrificed to some demonic creature like Arachne. Michael audibly cursed himself yet again.
“Take it easy over there, pal.”
The voice came from nearby.
Still on the ground, Michael looked around, attempting to ready himself for an attack, knowing full well that he would be easy prey for anyone who wanted to kill him. But the cell was empty except for him. He peered intently, trying to pierce the shadows. Other than a small metal slab in the corner that must have been intended for sleep, and a hole in the floor that was intended for obvious purposes, the room was bare.
“Over here,” the voice continued. Morbius realized it was coming from near the “bed.”
He dragged himself up onto his feet and made his way over to the slab, collapsing onto it. Despite the pain in his body and the hardness of the platform, it felt incredibly good to lay down on it. He took several deep breaths and listened as his heartbeat returned to its normal tempo for what seemed like the first time in days.
“First bout?” the voice asked.
“Go to Hell,” Morbius answered.
The voice laughed, then sighed. “I suppose we’re already there, friend.”
Despite himself, Morbius smiled at the remark. He turned himself over slightly and realized he could see through a wide crack in the stones, opening into the other cell. A man sat on the floor against the far wall, dressed in nothing but a ripped pair of jeans. Fresh wounds and cuts ran across almost every visible part of his flesh. His hair was brown, long and unkempt. He sported several days’ worth of a beard, and a deeply sad look in his eyes.
“I suppose we are,” Morbius said, through the hole. He leaned against the wall.
The man looked up, and an expression of mild surprise appeared on his face.
“I know, my appearance…” Morbius said.
“Oh, ha,” the man said, laughing. “It’s not that. My last neighbor was a gelatinous blob, so I haven’t spoken to anyone in weeks. It’s nice to meet you. My name is Jacob, but everyone calls me Jake.”
Morbius stared at the man. He looked so skinny, so weak. How had he survived for so long down here?
“I’m Michael.”
“Hey Michael,” Jake said, waving his hand and smiling sadly. “Welcome to monster fight club.”
CHAPTER NINE
NIGHT HAD fallen hard on Manhattan.
Amanda was surprised how dark it was when she left the bookstore. It had been bright when she’d entered, with shocking sunlight streaming down through a cloudless sky. Now it was covered by steel-gray clouds, and tiny pieces of the moon could be glimpsed every few minutes. There was a smell of the inevitable rain in the wind.
She had trouble getting a car, so she decided to take the subway, which left her feeling unsettled after reading about Demon-Fire’s alleged use of the underground system for who knew what kinds of evil purposes.
As she sat by the grimy window inside the subway car, she stared out into the darkness, intermittent subterranean lights flashing by and then vanishing as if they had never existed at all.
The train suddenly lurched to a stop and the lights went out, then back on, then off again. She tried to keep her breathing calm. The things she had just read about in the basement of that dark little bookstore, they lingered in her mind like a nightmare she couldn’t shake. Some of the pictures she’d uncovered, blurry crime scene photos that only hinted at the real horror and gore, were burned into her memory.
The lights snapped back on but the train remained motionless between stops. She hated this feeling. Trapped in a tin can under the earth. A coffin. She was basically sitting in a coffin. Amanda wondered if other people thought of it this way.
Noise from the other end of her car caught her attention. A man was standing over a couple of teen girls, whispering something Amanda couldn’t hear. Based on the terrified looks on their faces, she knew the gist of what he was saying.
Without hesitation, Amanda stood up and strode down the unmoving subway car, directly toward the man. The girls noticed her first, their frenzied eyes locking on hers, silently begging for help. Amanda nodded. The man glanced over and at first looked nervous, but then a nasty smile split his face open when he realized who his potential adversary was. He licked his lips and stepped toward her.
“You got something you wanna say, baby?” he asked, his foul breath washing over her. “Or even better, something you wanna do?” His face was pock-marked with acne scars and his thinning red hair clung to his head with a fervor that was almost impressive. Dried saliva caked his mouth and his pupils were huge, full of the excitement of intended violence.
In response, Amanda kneed the man directly in his nuts, and his face immediately drained of all color.
“Oh,” he said quietly.
As he instinctively leaned forward in pain, Amanda brought her leg down and then raised the same knee again, as fast as possible, striking him once again, but this time in the nose, breaking it on impact. The sound was like an egg dropped on the concrete from a third-floor window. Blood exploded out from his nostrils as he collapsed onto his back, sputtering.
Morbius had bee
n teaching her some moves over the last few weeks while they traveled. She had wondered how effective they’d actually be in a real-life situation.
She didn’t wonder anymore.
The girls gaped up at her and she winked at them, then walked back to her seat and made herself comfortable. They hurriedly got up and avoided the pooling blood as they followed her to her end of the car, continuing through the door and into the next. As she stared out the window, the darkness didn’t seem so bad anymore.
She had enjoyed that. Way more than she expected she would, perhaps more than she should have…? Her eyes refocused and she found herself staring at her own reflection in the window. She didn’t realize until this moment that she was smiling. Sweat from the encounter dotted her forehead, her cheeks flush with blood. There was a crazy look in her eyes. Amanda didn’t recognize herself in this moment.
It energized her.
It terrified her.
Her mother had joined a cult, had probably done unspeakable things. Her sister had tried to sacrifice Amanda to a demon. Evil ran in Amanda’s blood—or so she feared. What if she was like them? What if their father had been turned, as well? Why else hadn’t he been in touch?
Amanda turned away from the window. Her momentary burst of confidence had been shattered, and she felt herself falling back down into the pit of fear and uncertainty that had defined her for most of her life. She allowed people to walk all over her, which explained how both her sister and her first real boyfriend had betrayed her so easily.
She wanted to change, to be stronger, but not if it meant selling her soul to the dark forces that had claimed her family.
At last, the subway car shuddered, and started moving again.
The man with the shattered nose still lay on his back, muttering incoherently and occasionally spitting blood out onto the floor. The rest of the passengers had fled to the adjacent car. Only Amanda remained. She should have been afraid of him, of the possibility that he would get up and want to exact some kind of violent revenge on her.
She should have been afraid, but she wasn’t.
* * *
MORBIUS DRIFTED off again, then slowly awoke, still in an upright seated position with his face pressed against the wall. He groaned as he pulled his sweaty cheek away from the cool stone.
“Good nap?” Jake asked from the other cell.
Morbius’ stomach rumbled. He felt a little better after finally catching some sleep, the kind that wasn’t forced on him from blows to the face or attacks from an electrical prod, but he was still incredibly hungry. All the sleep in the world wouldn’t matter if he starved to death.
“Fine,” he growled.
Jake seemed nice enough, but Morbius didn’t trust him. Didn’t trust anyone, for that matter. Except Amanda. He grimaced at the thought of her, then put her out of his mind. Guilt wouldn’t help save her if she was in danger. He had to keep his wits about him, figure out a way to escape. First things first.
“You must be hungry,” Jake said, as if reading his mind. Morbius thought about ignoring him, but then decided that it would at least pass the time. He would simply be careful with how much he revealed.
“Yes… I am,” he said simply, peering through the hole in the wall. Jake sat in the exact same spot, staring off into the distance, that strange bemused smile still on his face. He was an odd character, this Jacob who most people called Jake. Morbius didn’t want to like him, but on some level he already did. They seemed to be kindred spirits. At least on some level.
“Well, these guys are pretty good about feeding their prisoners, but everyone gets their own special meal.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, for instance, the blob that was in that cell before you? They would shove these huge rats through the door… and I mean huge, and it would just, I guess, suck them up into its body. You could see them being digested in there, through his… what, skin, I guess you’d call it? Pretty awful. I kept telling myself not to look but there I was, staring through that hole at a bunch of rats being digested by a big pile of goo.” Jake laughed at the thought.
Morbius shook his head and smiled.
What the hell kind of place is this?
“And you?” he asked.
“Me?” Jake answered, finally looking over at Morbius, his smile still there but sadness in his eyes. “Well, they feed me when I… when I don’t look like this. Last time it was some stray dog they must have found on the street. I didn’t want to eat it. I fricking love dogs, you know? But I wasn’t exactly in control of myself. It—it’s hard to explain.”
“I… understand,” Morbius said, locking his eyes onto Jake’s. The two men stared at each other for a long moment, and then Jake nodded.
“Yeah, I’ll bet you do.”
“You said, ‘when I don’t look like this’?”
“Believe it or not, Michael, I didn’t always live in a stone prison beneath New York City.” Jake laughed but it was a humorless sound. “I was jogging in Central Park one night. I guess it wasn’t that long ago, but it feels like a million years. Anyway, I was running. It was probably too late at night to be in there… I should have known better. But I got jumped. I offered them my credit cards but they weren’t interested.
“They actually didn’t say anything at all. They just beat me up a little bit and shoved a needle in my arm. When I woke up, I was in a lab. And they… did something to me. Changed me. So every now and then—I’m not really in control of it—I change, Michael. Into something really, really horrible, and when I’m like that, I don’t have full control of myself. I wish I did. I’m working on it. I hate it. At least, that’s what I tell myself. But it’s part of me now. Part of my blood.”
It was Morbius’ turn to nod.
“And they only feed you when you’re… transformed?”
“A few scraps here and there, to keep me alive,” Jake answered, looking away. His smile had faded. “But they want to keep me hungry for when my next fight comes along. Which must be pretty soon. I don’t know. I’ve been down here a long time. Sometimes they even put a regular human in the arena with us. To get us all frenzied, I guess. It’s evil… but it’s also damn effective.”
Michael looked around his cell, wondered how long they would leave him down here before he would be forced to fight again.
“I’m sorry,” he said without looking back at Jake.
“Me too, buddy,” his new friend said, his voice sounding more distant. “Me too.”
CHAPTER TEN
A COOL, light rain began to fall as Amanda emerged from underground.
When the subway had reached the next station she’d decided to get off, even though it wasn’t her stop. She passed a couple of police officers who were hurrying to the subway car, to find out what had happened, and she thought about telling them, then decided against it. For all she knew, she’d be the one to get interrogated and arrested, and she had learned from Morbius that it was sometimes prudent to walk away from a situation before it became a situation.
She saw the two girls as she exited the platform through the turnstile, and one of them mouthed “thank you” to her. Amanda smiled and kept on walking.
She had to walk almost a mile to reach Liz’s apartment, but the crisp air and cold rain were bracing in the best way possible. She knew it was ridiculous, but after she had wiped the proverbial floor with that thug in the subway, her senses felt more attuned to the world. The sounds of tires on the wet pavement, the smell of the rain hitting the sidewalk, the taste and feel of the water on her tongue—it was all so crisp and clear, like she was the only one in the city who was aware of everything that was happening in those moments.
She wondered if this was how Michael experienced the world.
Michael.
At the thought of him, she hurried her pace to the apartment, hoping Liz had connected with Fabian and had answers.
The walk up the four flights of stairs was less exhausting than usual, which she chalked up to the adrenaline still runn
ing through her body. It almost made her laugh. Her skin felt like it was on fire. She wasn’t sure if she had ever felt so alive.
She arrived in front of the apartment door and went to unlock it, but discovered that it was already open. Must be home, Amanda thought. Maybe she got out early. She couldn’t wait to tell her friend about the encounter on the subway.
The apartment was dark except for Liz’s room, which was lit by a small lamp. That’s weird, Amanda noted. Liz usually turned on every light in the place. She was about to call out to her friend and turn on the lights when Liz’s silhouette suddenly appeared in her room’s doorway.
“Hey!” Amanda called out and she walked across the room, turning on the light over the small kitchen table. She plopped down into one of the chairs, smiling up at her friend. “You won’t believe what just happened to me.”
Liz walked into the kitchen and stood there, forcing a smile but not saying a word. Amanda’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. Her friend looked pale—or even paler than usual—and it looked as if her mascara had run a bit. Added to the fact that the lights in the apartment were still off, Amanda was concerned. Maybe something was wrong, despite the smile. Maybe something to do with her auditions or…
God, her dad.
Despite everything, Amanda wished Michael was there. The day had just been so… weird. Liz was her oldest friend, but something about being with Michael just made her feel better, despite his sometimes bad attitude. She stared at Liz, waiting, didn’t want to push. She knew Liz. She’d talk when she was ready.
The rain came down harder outside the window.
Amanda shucked off her wet jacket and let it fall back, inside out, on the back of her chair. The overhead light was old, and didn’t throw out much luminescence. Liz moved again, grabbing two glasses from the cabinet and a bottle of bourbon. The good stuff that she saved for special occasions. She sat down across from Amanda and poured them each a drink, then pushed one of the glasses forward.
The dim light reflected against a mirror above the kitchen sink. The reflection gave the glow a distilled effect, hazy, like a memory that has only just resurfaced.
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