Thicker than Blood (39 page)

I turned back to the ring, still sensing E’s
intense gaze on me as the crowd fell silent. It was a deathly sort
of silence, like a dark shadow that swallowed up the light,
shrouding everything in blackness.

“Ding, ding!” Jeffers bellowed, his deep
voice thick with amusement.

The crowd erupted with another ferocious
roar, still chanting Misty’s name as Misty herself leaped into
action and raced across the ring, headed straight for me.

I stepped to the side, just a hairbreadth out
of reach from her bony fist, only to come face-to-face with another
punch. Her fist caught my left ear and my world went instantly
quiet, quickly giving way to a loud ringing that made me cringe and
stumble backward. She swung again, this time connecting with my
stomach, causing me to fly backward, my body sprawling across the
ropes. She joined me there, her fist connecting with my face, then
my stomach, her punches relentless, one after the other after the
other…

In an attempt to block her, I lifted my arms,
managing to thwart merely a few of her punches. I had misread this
woman entirely; she was quick and powerful, and brutally
efficient.

The pummeling stopped rather abruptly. As I
chanced a peek between my raised forearms, I found Misty heading
back to her corner to where Liv was waiting for her. Still smiling,
Liv winked in my direction, letting me know that she’d won and that
I’d lost, making sure I saw the sick satisfaction she gleaned from
all this.

As my arms dropped from my face, I watched
Liv turn to the crowd, seeking out E, who was now standing directly
next to the rope. A silky smile graced Liv’s face as she watched
him, even though he didn’t look her way. She followed his gaze back
across the ring to me, her smile gone now, her nostrils flaring
angrily, and I realized then that she knew. She knew about E and
me; she knew, and she was goddamn jealous.

Staggering back to my corner, I found Leisel
and Alex waiting for me. I shook my head slightly, annoyed that my
hearing was still spotty; I was only catching a dull hum of the
commotion around me.

Gripping my arm, Alex dragged me down onto
the stool and began wiping my face with his sleeve. His mouth was
moving but I couldn’t hear his words, and my vision blurred in and
out of focus. Between that and the several dozen punches I’d taken
to the gut, I was positive I was going to throw up all over myself
at any moment.

But then Leisel was there, pushing Alex out
of her way and kneeling down beside me. Taking my face in her
hands, she blocked the world out, leaving only her and me. Her
mouth, both hard and soft, found mine, pressing a kiss to my
lips.

“You promised me, Eve!” she yelled, her voice
nearly lost among the shouting. “You promised me we’d always be
okay! Don’t break your promise!”

Blinking through the blood that trickled down
my forehead and into my eyes, I nodded. She was right; I had
promised her. I’d promised her that we would always be okay, and I
wasn’t going to break that promise.

Leisel helped me back to my feet and then she
was gone, tugged away by Alex.

I turned to see Jeffers once again standing
in the center of the ring. “Ding-ding!” he shouted again with a
wicked grin, and my stomach plummeted.

Like a wild animal sprung free from its
confines, Misty attacked. No dancing around, no dodging, just
another hard-core assault that I wasn’t quick enough to dodge. Her
fists slammed into me yet again, splitting open my lip, and my
mouth filled instantly with blood. Yelping, I dropped to my knees
and spun around, missing her second swing.

Grabbing my arms, Misty wrenched me upright
and threw me against the ropes. As I hit them, I bounced back,
falling into her arms where she promptly kicked my legs out from
under me, causing my entire body to slam painfully to the ground.
As I lay there, trying to catch my breath, her foot shot out,
connecting with my ribs, and what little breath I had all left me
in one painful whoosh.

She kicked me again and again, until I could
no longer breathe. I was wishing she would end it once and for all,
just send that boot of hers straight into my head and end this, but
then suddenly she stopped. As I pried open my swollen lids, I found
that she was walking away from me.

With a grunt, I rolled onto my stomach,
attempting to drag myself across the ground and back to my stool.
I’d only managed a few inches when Alex was suddenly there, lifting
me off the ground and setting me back down on my stool.

“Eve!” he shouted as he grabbed my chin,
forcing me to look at him. I stared at him, though everything was
fuzzy and it hurt just to keep my eyes open.

“She’s going to kill you! You need to fight
back!” he yelled, his features contorting in anger.

“I don’t even care,” I mumbled, letting my
head hang to one side, where I was greeted with Leisel’s face. Her
beautiful, heartbroken, tear-stained face.

“You promised!” she yelled.

“I can’t do this!” I cried out, pushing her
hand away as she reached for me. I looked away from her, not
wanting to see her pain, her frustration, or her damn pity.

My gaze snagged on E to find him still
watching me. His entire face was creased with a frustrated frown,
his body taut and rippling with anger. His anger probably stemmed
from the fact that I was losing—that he’d bet on me and was going
to lose.

“
FINAL ROUND!” Jeffers roared. “Ding, ding,
motherfucking-
DING
!”

I didn’t know how I did it, how I managed to
drag my broken body up off that stool and back into the ring. But
somehow I did, found some remaining shred of will left inside me,
forcing me onward, pushing me to see this thing to the end, even if
it meant the end of me.

Gritting my teeth, my guard raised, I waited
as Misty came for me, waiting for her fists to once again begin
their relentless assault. And as I was waiting, somewhere beneath
the roar of the crowd and the humming in my ears, I heard a scream,
a loud and shrill ear-piercing scream that splintered my heart. It
was Leisel screaming, and my stomach heaved with fear and worry—not
for me, but for her.

You promised!

Spitting out a mouthful of blood, I wiped a
hand across my eyes and readied my fists. Expressionless,
beautiful, her slender body built to inflict pain, Misty ran past
me, her small fists curled like solid rocks, waiting to strike. As
she circled me, I turned with her, my eyes following her movements
when I noticed a flash of light, a glint of something shiny in her
fist as the sun touched down on it. I swallowed hard, tasting the
metallic tang of my own blood, and realized that Alex was right.
She was going to kill me; not beat me to a pulp, but actually end
my life.

You promised!

Leisel’s words took on a life of their own,
imbuing me with the knowledge that she did in fact still need me,
despite her having Alex. More than anything, she still wanted me,
and I was still worth something. That despite it all, everything
that had been done to me, everything I’d allowed to be done to me,
I was still worth something to someone. And I refused to let her
down again.

My only advantage at this point was knowing
how battered I already was and probably looked. As Misty stepped
closer, I purposefully made a big show of struggling to catch my
breath, staggering as I tried to remain standing upright. And then,
as she stepped even closer, readying to swing, I attacked, catching
her completely unaware as my fist connected with her face. My
knuckles hurt from the impact, but God, it felt good to lash out
like this. Despite my blurry eyes and ringing ears, the pain in my
stomach and ribs, and the taste of blood in my mouth, it felt good
to defend myself.

Surprised, her eyes wide, she stumbled
backward, but before she could right herself, I sent my right foot
straight into her knee and shoved as hard as I could, sending her
sprawling backward.

She crashed to the ground, the back of her
head slamming against the dirt. The crowd was suddenly silent as I
leaped on top of her, going immediately for the small knife still
held tight in her grip. Whereas her hands were battered from our
fight, mine were not, and only because of this was I able to
wrestle it away from her.

As she continued to struggle beneath me, I
kept her pinned tightly between my thighs. I raised the blade high
in the air and slammed it down straight into her chest. The crowd
was silent now, so quiet that I could hear the tearing of her
flesh, the crunching of her bones as the small but deadly knife
broke through her chest cavity and slid easily into her heart.
Blood gushed around the wound as her eyes rolled back in her head,
showing white.

Leaving the knife in her chest, I pushed
myself off her, panting hard, and stood to my full height, my
entire body trembling with fear and fatigue. The crowd was still
silent, their expressions ranging from shock to anger as the
onlookers began to realize they’d just lost their golden girl, and
with her, whatever bets they’d placed.

Liv was furious. Marching out of the ring,
she headed straight for Jeffers, her pink hair whipping around her
face like a ball of cotton candy caught in the wind. Immediately,
she began yelling at him, though I had no idea what she was saying
since my ears were still ringing. But he only shrugged in response,
looking helpless in the face of her rage, which led me to think
that it wasn’t really Jeffers who ran this place, but Liv, the rage
behind the muscle.

Their fight ended nearly as soon as it had
begun, with Liv slapping Jeffers hard across the face and whirling
around to face me. She was glowering, fury and hate pouring from
her in thick heavy waves that I could practically feel emanating
from across the ring.

Lifting my hand in a halfhearted attempt at a
wave, I tried to smile back, but I was far too tired, my features’
response as sluggish as my body’s. My right knee gave out, and just
as my left one was following suit, strong arms hooked around my
waist and scooped me off the ground entirely, cradling me against a
hard chest. Through blurry eyes, I found Alex’s face only inches
from my own, his features wrinkled with concern.

“You’re all messed up, Eve,” he said,
frowning down at me. “But you did good out there.”

“Lei?” I whispered, my voice hoarse and
cracking.

“Right here, Eve,” I heard her say, and felt
her hand slip into mine. “Right here. Always.”

Leisel

“Please don’t do this,” I pleaded, refusing to
release Alex’s arm. “Please, you saw what almost happened to Eve,
and you’ll be fighting two men. Two men, Alex! Two!”

Poor Evelyn had half a dozen stitches in her
face, courtesy of a man I hoped had been an actual doctor at one
point. Although, when I asked him for his credentials, he’d given
me a sardonic smile and a loud snort.

Thankfully, legitimate doctor or not, he had
an abundance of medication kept under lock and key, along with a
dozen armed guards. Two mystery pills and five minutes later,
Evelyn was unconscious. Alex had carried her to our room where I’d
tried to clean her as best I could using a small bucket of water
and a rag, at least managing to get most of the blood off her.
After that, I’d simply crawled into bed beside her, and hummed to
her while she slept.

Now the sun was setting, the bonfires had
been lit, and an even larger crowd had gathered for Alex’s fight
than had for Evelyn’s. Murmurs rippled among the bystanders about
the wildcat who had taken down the most fearsome female fighter in
Purgatory. If Alex’s pending fight wasn’t worrisome enough, the
thought of Evelyn becoming this place’s new source of entertainment
was even more so.

If Jeffers and Liv wanted her here to take
Misty’s place as the reigning champion, then how would we ever
leave? And we most definitely wanted to leave. After seeing what
had been done to Evelyn, something she still refused to talk about,
and after her fight today, no electrical fence, no amount of armed
guards could ever convince me to stay here. It was no better than
Fredericksville, and these brands on our wrists meant nothing. No
one was safe anymore, anywhere. The best we could hope for was to
continue heading south, and pray we found someplace safe enough,
someplace isolated where we could finally live in peace.

Was I holding out hope that such a place
existed? Not really. It seemed too fantastical, a ridiculous fairy
tale, but at the very least I had to believe that something better
than Purgatory, better than Covey, better than Fredericksville
existed. There had to be others like us, people who just wished to
live out the rest of their lives in some semblance of normalcy.

Or had everything and everyone actually died
alongside the world? If that was the case, maybe this was actually
Purgatory, where we were all just waiting to be judged. And if we
were killed in the meantime, well then…no skin off God’s back if
there was one less sinner in a long line of awaited judgments to be
doled out.

I almost wished we’d never left the tree
stand.

“I’ll be fine, Lei,” Alex said, sounding
exasperated. “Look at them, one’s short and fat and the other one
just barely hit puberty. He’s nothing but skin and bones.”

He was right, Mike was tall and skinny and
Bryce was carrying around quite the paunch. But it wasn’t their
sizes I was worried about, it was what weapons they might have
concealed on them.

“He’ll be right as rain, my dear!” Grannie
said, giving Alex a firm slap on his bicep. “And I’ll be here to
see you through it.” She glanced at me, her round, wrinkled face
lit up with excitement. “You look stunning, by the way. I knew that
color would look wonderful with your fair skin.”