The Death Match (6 page)

When Matt came to, it took him a few minutes to fight his way back to complete consciousness. He was nauseous and slicked with cold, clammy sweat. It was a battle to make his leaden eyelids peel back from his dry, gritty eyes. Once he had them open, he struggled to focus on his surroundings. It took several seconds before he could make any sense of what he was seeing, because everything was upside down.

He
was upside down, dangling from a chain around his bleeding ankles.

He had no idea what had happened to Tanya and Stacy. Or Long. Or his henchmen. Or that shadowy figure in the Tapout T-shirt who may or may not have been Mr. Dark. He was alone.

First he took a careful inventory of what was going on with his body. His hands were bound behind his back with what felt like thick, splintery rope, not chain. He couldn’t see far enough up his own upside-down body to determine exactly how his ankles had been bound, but whatever was going on with them was excruciatingly painful. His feet were numb and the bones in his ankles felt in danger of being crushed by the swinging weight of his suspended body. There was also a warm, seeping wetness soaking through his socks and the cuffs of his pants that had to be blood. When he struggled a little to test the strength of his bonds, that wetness spattered down onto his chin and face, the meaty copper flavor confirming what he already knew.

He stilled his body and concentrated on scoping his surroundings.

It was pretty dim, but he could make out a stone wall covered with a maze of rusty pipes to one side, and on the other, too far away to reach, was the curved back of the familiar red couch from which Long had watched the fights. With that detail in place, Matt put the rest of the picture together and realized that he was inside the now empty amphitheater. The pit below was still slightly damp from being hosed out after Tanya’s fight, and the smell of wet stone was weirdly ancient and cavelike, as if the modern bustle of Los Angeles had never existed. He was suddenly, irrationally convinced that even if he did somehow escape this underground hell and return to the surface, he would find nothing but primitive, empty land, untouched by the structure of civilization.

He realized then that this place had existed far longer than the midcentury modern mansion above. That this place was as old as the strange altar on the mesa. As old as the hidden stone arena behind the insane asylum. He knew that whatever was happening here, it wasn’t just about some rich guy getting his jollies. There had to be a connection to those other profane locations. Men fighting with knives. Women fighting with bare hands. But always fighting. Could it be some kind of unholy tournament? But to what end? And what dark and awful grand prize awaited the winner?

“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

Matt heard the familiar, intimate voice slightly behind his left ear, but when he turned defensively toward the sound, his suspended body swung in a helpless wobbly circle, past the dim figure behind him and back around to face the wall, where he’d started.

The urge to vomit struck, and Matt clenched his teeth till his jaw muscles ached, willing down the bile creeping up the back of his throat.

The figure behind him stepped into the dim light, a hand on Matt’s left elbow to stop his spinning. It was Long.

But there was something seriously wrong with him. He held his head at a strange, awkward angle, tilted back and to the right. His rotten, bulging eyes were rolling wildly as if searching for a way out of his own skin. His mouth was wide open as if screaming, the tendons in his neck standing out with the strain. He moved with a jerky, crooked gait and held on to Matt’s elbow way too tight. He held Matt’s ax in his other hand.

“Does this body make me look fat?”

Long’s mouth didn’t move at all. It stayed frozen wide, and the smarmy, cheerful voice that emanated from his gaping throat belonged to someone else.

Mr. Dark.

“I don’t know,” the voice continued, while Long cranked his hips back and forth. “Feels a little tight in the crotch.”

He let Matt go and gave him a gentle nudge with the ax handle.

Matt forced himself to stay calm, to breathe slowly and evenly through his nose and crush down the rising panic in his chest. If Mr. Dark was just going to flat-out murder him, he could have done it easily many times before. Chopping Matt to bits with his own ax while he was bound and helpless wasn’t Mr. Dark’s style.

“When Long was a kid,” the voice said, “his mother was murdered by his father’s vengeful lover. Choked to death right in front of him. Can you believe that? He was eleven.”

Long’s quivering body leaned in close to Matt.

“Trauma is a zipper.”

For a second, Matt didn’t have any idea what that was supposed to mean. It sounded like a weird, nonsensical riddle.
Why is a raven like a writing desk?
But Mr. Dark wasn’t waiting for Matt to catch up.

Long’s body twitched and shuddered, then collapsed to the stone floor.

“I don’t know how you stand it in there.”

Matt twisted his head and shoulders to see the shadowy figure in the oversized Tapout T-shirt and baggy jeans standing beside him. In the wavering half-light, that person’s features were finally revealed. The thin, scraggly orange hair, sticking out in wiry tufts on either side of a large, bald pate. The maggot-pale grease paint crusted in the deep wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. The round red ball on the tip of his hooked nose. It was Mr. Dark, free now from his uncomfortable skin suit.

He was wiping his hands against the legs of his pants as if he’d just touched something dirty, painted lips twisted back from his long yellow teeth in a broad parody of disgust.

“I can’t believe you people actually spend eighty years trapped inside those nasty meat bags.” He shuddered dramatically. “They’re much more fun to drive by remote control.”

Matt was only half listening, intensely focused on the rope around his wrists, testing, feeling for the knots.

“Who do you like in the next bout?” Mr. Dark asked in an abrupt conversational swerve. “I know you have a soft spot for the plucky redhead, but my money’s on the Brazilian. You know, all this beta testing has been such a headache, but this girl. She’s the one. I can smell it.”

Then he was gone.

Long was beginning to stir on the stone floor, moaning softly and pressing his hand to his eyes like a man with an awful hangover. A pair of silent thugs padded in and helped the semiconscious Long to the couch, leaving Matt’s ax where it lay. Then a third man entered and stood between Matt and his ax, arms crossed and clearly less than thrilled to have been picked for guard duty.

Matt took a second to size up his new guard. Sunburned, freckled skin. Thick, bristly blond hair mowed into a perfect flattop. Not tall, but bulky and muscular. Neck the size of Matt’s thigh. No visible gun, just a fat ring of keys clipped to his belt with a gaudy dangling chain decorated with skulls.

Matt focused on his hands again, on trying to work his wrists free, millimeter by precious millimeter. When the light above the pit suddenly illuminated, he squinted against it, sore eyes assaulted by the harsh glow.

The door opposite the couch opened, and Tanya entered, still nude, but the blood and dirt had been rinsed away and the stitches in her forehead completed. Behind her was Stacy, also nude and being ushered to the ring at the end of a pistol. She was already badly bruised and battered, her body language slumped and defeated. She didn’t make any attempt to cover herself. It was as if she’d already lost.

Once both women had entered the ring, Long began to cheer, seeming none the worse for wear after Mr. Dark’s little joyride.

“I won’t fight you!” Stacy said, turning her face away.

Tanya didn’t give her any choice.

Stacy kept on backing up, bobbing and weaving and stuffing takedown attempts, her face tense and tortured, pleading. Tanya was out for blood, but Stacy was so fast and agile, she was able to stay one step ahead. Until she spotted Matt.

Matt saw her notice him dangling behind the couch and squint against the glaring light like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Tanya took instant advantage of her opponent’s distraction and took her down to the stone floor.

It made Matt crazy to be bound and helpless like this, utterly powerless to help Stacy. He had to concentrate on getting free. If he could just get one hand loose, he could swing himself hard enough to reach the ax, but the more he twisted and strained his wrists, the tighter his bondage became.

His blond guard was utterly absorbed in the fight, his back to Matt.

Matt had to come up with something, and fast. He focused on the keys and the tacky chain dangling from the guard’s belt. There was a slim red object the size of Matt’s thumb hanging between the keys. An object that might be a small folding knife. If Matt could swing himself close enough to grab the chain in his teeth, he could pull the keys off the guard’s belt. Of course, if and when he got the chain in his mouth, he’d need to figure a way to get the keys up into his bound hands while simultaneously dealing with the pissed-off guard they’d been lifted from.

Maybe it wasn’t the worst plan of all time, but it was up there.

Matt pushed all doubt out of his mind and narrowed his vision to block out everything but those keys. He began to swing his body, slightly at first, then harder, his face moving closer and closer to the keys with each swing. The guard shifted slightly, turning his hips away from Matt and moving the keys out of reach.

Matt swore silently, frustration like barbed wire in the back of his throat. On his next swing forward, the guard reacted to something inside the pit, throwing air punches as if he could somehow control the action with his own hands. As he did this, he swiveled his hips back toward Matt. Matt realized at the last second that if he twisted his neck all the way to the left, he could reach the keys. There was no time to think.

Mat gripped the chain in his teeth. There was a terrible moment on the backswing when Matt was sure the chain would be ripped out of his mouth by his own weight, so he clenched his teeth as hard as he could. But the slick metal offered nothing to grip. It slid painfully between his teeth until one of the gaudy little skulls acted like a brake, bringing the chain to an abrupt halt.

When Matt was a kid, he’d been so eager to get a quarter from the tooth fairy that he’d tried tying a loose tooth to a doorknob and slamming the door. It hadn’t worked. It had felt almost as bad as this.

The startled thug reacted to this turn of events with utter disbelief, as if a chandelier had suddenly goosed him. He turned and looked down at his belt and then back up at Matt.

Matt let out a stifled grunt between his clenched teeth and cranked his neck, pulling harder. He could taste blood in his mouth. It seemed almost impossible, that he was going to lose a tooth before the snap on the end of the chain gave up its hold on the guard’s belt. Then the snap popped open and the chain smacked Matt in the face as his weight was suddenly released. He swung wildly backward and slammed into the pipe-covered wall behind him.

He banged the back of his head on some kind of valve but managed to keep the chain between his teeth and grip a finger-thin pipe in his bound hands to prevent himself from careening wildly back into the angry guard.

Before Matt could figure out his next move, the narrow pipe snapped with a sharp hissing sound. Matt swung away from the wall again, toward the surprised guard. The guard backed instinctively away, but not far enough. Matt’s head cracked the guard in the nuts like a medicine ball, doubling him over and then dropping him to one knee. Matt swung helplessly away and then back again, knocking heads with the kneeling guard but still clenching the swinging keys in his teeth.

He had only seconds to free himself before the guard recovered, but he was also stunned from the impact. There was no time to clear his head. He had to act quickly.

He swung the ring of keys on the end of the long chain up and to the right, twisting his bound hands around to the side of his body to try to catch the keys.

Not even close.

He made himself stay calm and try again, although he could see the guard slowly getting back to his feet and felt a trapped-animal kind of panic welling up inside his chest. He missed the keys again and a third time. The fourth time, the keys brushed his fingertips, but he still couldn’t catch them. He felt like screaming, but he forced himself to breathe slowly, ignore the wheezing guard, and try again.

That time he got them.

Gripping the keys in his tingling right hand, he felt for the little knife he thought he’d seen. Bingo. He thumbed out the blade and began sawing through the rope that bound his wrists.

He managed to nick his rope-burned skin more than once, but he got himself free and did a tight upside-down crunch to disconnect the chain around his ankles from the hook that held him.

Once unhooked, he landed hard on the stone, sending a painful jolt through his back and neck. But he recovered quickly and rolled behind the sofa. Now that the weight of his body was no longer keeping the chain around his ankles taut, it was no problem to free his legs. He wrapped the length of chain around his hand and prepared himself for the inevitable attention that the sound of his fall would bring.

Long turned to see Matt free from his bondage and waved an annoyed hand at the flanking thugs, more irritated at the interruption than worried by Matt’s escape.

Matt dove for his ax as the two men closed in on him. He was able to grab it and scuttle, crablike, half backward and half sideways until he felt the pipe-covered wall behind him.

He stood, chain in one hand and ax in the other, watching the thugs with one eye and the action in the pit with the other.

There was a tense stalemate inside the pit, both women locked up tight and neither willing to give an inch. From Matt’s angle, he could see Tanya’s lips moving, whispering something to Stacy.

Whatever she said, it galvanized Stacy like a cattle prod. She went totally ballistic, unleashing a furious offensive assault against Tanya. Up until that point, it seemed like Stacy had been all defense, not wanting to hurt Tanya. Whatever Tanya had just said to her obviously changed that.