Thicker than Blood Page 29

  “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 easil
y 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.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  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.”

  Glancing down at my latest Grannie ensemble, stunning wasn’t a word I would have used to describe myself. I was wearing a handmade pale pink, short-sleeved shift that barely reached mid-thigh, the material light and flimsy like a bed sheet, which was probably exactly what it had been made from. I’d paired it with a pair of black leggings with holes in the knees, so worn they appeared a faded charcoal gray. Also new were a pair of men’s military-issued army boots, a size and a half too big for me. Alex’s weapons belt was slung low on my hips, my blade seated firmly at my side.

  I looked mismatched at best, like a young girl trying to rebel against societal norms while still attempting to appear cute and feminine. Worse were the looks I’d been getting from the men. Though they said nothing, their expressions suggested I looked like a pretty pink Popsicle they wanted a nice long lick from.

  It was an awful feeling, a hundred pairs of eyes on you as if you were nothing more than prize to be won. Back in Fredericksville, no one had so much as glanced my way without purpose, and never to ogle me. But back in Fredericksville, women weren’t whores, at least not for the masses. We were simply the whores of the men who’d forced us into marriage.

  I didn’t know which was worse.

  “Stay with her,” Alex muttered in Grannie’s direction while prying my fingers from his arm. One of Grannie’s thick arms wrapped around my waist, a surprisingly strong grip for an older woman.

  “I’ll be fine!” Alex shouted over the noisy din of the crowd.

  Grabbing my face, he pulled me up on my tiptoes and pressed his mouth to mine. His tongue slid between my lips and mine between his, tangling together in a messy, desperate kiss that I didn’t want to end. I’d never been a proponent for public displays of affection, yet I couldn’t help but worry that Alex was going to fare even worse than Evelyn had. And if that were the case, I wanted him to know how much he meant to me. I wanted to show him.

  Too soon, he broke away from me, Grannie still holding tight to my waist as I reached for him. He gave me one last look before shoving through the people in front of us and disappearing into the crowd.

  “Let me go!” I shouted, twisting in earnest, trying to free myself. Eventually she did, but it was already too late. As I pushed and shoved through the crush of people who were shoving me right back, by the time I managed to reach the ring, Alex was already inside it, along with Mike and Bryce.

  Misty’s body had been taken away but her blood still remained, wet and thick as it pooled on the smooth dirt, glinting an ominous red in the flickering firelight. The infected, trapped in their metal cages, were still going wild for the blood and flesh so close to them, yet so far out of their reach.

  “Alex!” I shouted, gripping the rope as I was continuously shoved against it. “Alex!”

  Either he didn’t hear me over the growing noise, or he was refusing to look at me in fear of distraction from the coming fight. Pulling his T-shirt off over his head, he gripped the collar and tore it down the center, continuing to rip the material until he had several strips of cloth
that he began wrapping around his hands and knuckles. Neither Mike nor Bryce had done this; they were fully clothed and without protection for their hands, and both were glaring at Alex.

  Their angry stares confused me. The last time I’d seen them, they’d been friendly and smiling. We’d saved them from infected, and this was how they repaid us? Had it all been an act? Or was this the act for the fight? For the viewing pleasure of the masses?

  I glared around the ring, then focused on Jeffers, deciding that he was to blame. He was the one who had said we owed him—that he’d wanted the score settled.

  Stepping inside the ring, Jeffers took his place in the center, his hands raised. All at once, the shouting dropped to a murmur, and then the murmuring to a whisper.

  “For your viewing pleasure!” Jeffers’s deep, gravelly voice boomed through the silence. “In this corner, two of my best scavengers, Bryce and Mike!”

  Grabbing hold of Mike’s hand, Bryce thrust their joined fists up into the air, and the audience went wild. Although, unlike the thunderous applause that Misty had received, the crowd seemed less impressed with these two. Amid the cheering there were shouts of ridicule and mockery.

  “And in this corner!” Jeffers gestured toward Alex. “Straight from outside the motherfucking gates…a man with not only a claim on one, but TWO women…WILD MAN!”

  As the crowd continued to shout and scream, Alex remained still, his gaze solely focused on his opponents. He didn’t raise his fist in the air, didn’t even turn to acknowledge the crowds. Standing there, his shoulders slightly hunched, his wrapped hands curled into rock-hard fists, he bounced lightly from one foot to the other, and waited.

  “Last chance to place your bets!” Jeffers continued. “The payout for this one is gonna be huge!”

  “Three cases of my finest!” an older man shouted. “On the wild man!”

  “An AK-47 and three boxes of ammo!” another man yelled. “For the wild man!”