by Shannon West
“I hope you’re right.” Logan got to his feet, deciding to ignore the cold chill that was suddenly sliding over his spine with icy fingers. He wondered why Perry and Wilson, who before had just been brimming over with their fucking premonitions and feelings, didn’t seem to feel anything was wrong at all now. Was he overreacting? Then why had Jackson told them at first that he was in trouble here, and he didn’t think anyone could help him? Determined to find out, he fell in behind the others as they made their way through the crowd now streaming into the basement.
Chapter Five
After all the buildup in his mind, Logan’s first impression of the fight club was that the venue was amazingly ordinary. That’s why the atmosphere of evil that enveloped him as soon as he got downstairs took him by surprise. The basement wasn’t a damp, dark dungeon like he’d imagined, but a large, fairly well-lit area with a higher ceiling than any basement he’d ever been in. It was like a small gymnasium in there, and smelled about as good.
An octagonal “ring” made of crowd control barricades and gym mats was in the middle of the floor. There wasn’t much choice of seats. A few rickety bleachers stood on four sides of the room, but most people seemed to want to crowd around the barricades, close enough to touch if the fighters strayed too close to the edges. Not to mention they’d be splashed with blood and bodily fluids. Logan couldn’t see how that was a good idea for anybody, but to each his own. He took Luke’s arm and steered him toward the bleachers set up around the room. He made sure they were as close as he could get to the exit.
Roughly a hundred to a hundred and fifty people had apparently purchased tickets and were all trying to claim a spot with an unobstructed view, which was impossible, considering the crush around the barricades. Logan and the others found a spot at the top of the bleachers by the door and sat close together, leaning against the wall. After a few minutes, Logan pulled Luke over to sit in front of him so he could lean back against his knees. He felt uneasy about this place and he wanted Luke close, where he could get his hands on him.
There was no accounting for the feeling of corruption the basement evoked. Despite its drabness, the place was still managing to seem oppressive, and Logan couldn’t quite figure out why. It wasn’t dark or dingy; there wasn’t any smell of damp; there weren’t even many shadows around the walls. Even the people on the floor and filling the stands looked all right and were friendly enough, now that they had figured out Logan and his friends probably weren’t cops. Almost everyone was drinking. Most of them held bottles of beer and even fifths of liquor in their hands. Logan wondered if those bottles might become projectiles at some point in the proceedings. He could easily see a brawl breaking out in here at any minute. The energy was frenetic and edgy.
There was a feeling of foreboding, of being totally out of control of what was going to happen next, not to mention a distinct feeling of being vulnerable. There was a maliciousness in the air that was almost palpable, and Logan swiveled his head around to see where it might be coming from, because it felt like there was a presence in that room that it was emanating from, something old and malevolent crouching in the corner. But there was nothing there, of course. Nobody. He pulled Luke a little closer as that chill shot down his spine again, and he waited for whatever was about to happen.
Even more people filed in and soon there had to be two hundred people in the room, the smoke from their cigarettes, their combined body heat and the lack of proper ventilation making it a little hard to breathe. A busty girl wearing impossibly short shorts and a halter sashayed into the ring and walked around holding up a large card with the first combatants’ names on it.
Some other fighters, including Jackson, were being prepped by their corner men, who rubbed Vaseline on their faces, like Logan had seen MMA fighters did to minimize tearing. An announcer came out and called the first fight, which Logan was glad to see wasn’t Jackson’s. Another man, covered in tattoos, stood up from his corner and more half-naked ring girls came out. The crowd was raucous and noisy and a DJ started up some loud music from a far corner of the room, making it even more surreal and chaotic. The song was “The Way of the Fist” by a heavy metal band Logan recognized. They called themselves Five Finger Death Punch. It seemed appropriate.
“Unbelievable,” Logan muttered. “A soundtrack for getting the shit beaten out of you.” Luke glanced back at him and smirked.
The rules were simple, according to the announcer, his voice over the hand held microphone raised above the raucous music. “No kicking, biting or shots below the belt. Sixteen-ounce gloves are provided by the house, but if you want your own, that’s fine. Or you might decide to fight with bare knuckles, and that’s okay too.”
Many of the young men being prepped on the sidelines, including Jackson, seemed to have chosen that option, as their hands were being carefully taped.
To Logan’s surprise, Dread climbed up in the stands to sit beside Luke. He nodded over his shoulder at Logan. “There are three rounds, five-minutes each, and the winners are determined by cheers from the crowd. Unless there’s a knockout, of course. In the event of a draw, a fourth round is fought.” He pointed to some men standing talking beside the barriers. “We have two cut men, off-duty emergency medical techs who monitor the fighters and tend to wounds.” He gave Logan an oily smile with very white teeth. “See? Nothing to worry about. Everyone’s just here to have a good time—maybe make a little side money.”
The smile should have made him seem friendlier, but instead it only increased his sharp edges and made him look like a shark about to enjoy a tasty meal. He was practically salivating, and the whole thing was making Logan uneasy and anxious.
The first fighter was a young guy, maybe in his mid-twenties. He was tall and slender and didn’t have the look of a fighter to him. He was wearing a pair of shorts and a black T-shirt and had opted to use the house gloves. He looked out of place and Logan wondered what the hell he was doing there. He made his way over to the barricades while his opponent, one of the men who had been with Dread upstairs and threatened them with violence, also climbed inside. This guy was at least six foot two and weighed probably two forty. He wore only shorts and his chest rippled with muscles. The young guy looked badly outclassed and again Logan wondered again why the hell he’d wanted to do this. Nobody needed money that bad, did they? Yet he didn’t look frightened or cowed by the big man in the ring with him. He looked almost serene, in fact, and Logan wondered what kind of drugs he was on.
The ring girl held the card up facing the stands where they sat. It had the names Fox/Cavalli. She left the ring, bending way over as she stepped through to make sure everyone got a good look at her plump ass, and almost immediately, the big guy rushed the other one, putting his opponent in a headlock, holding him there with his head under his arm while he punched him mercilessly into unconsciousness. There was simply no contest at all. Blood splattered the crowd, but they screamed and jeered and roared with each punch. Finally, the bigger man stepped back and let the thinner one fall to the floor, where he lay still, not even twitching. A small pool of blood began to gather under his head.
“Finish him! Finish him!” the crowd cried.
The bigger guy stood over him screaming and punching the air, so excited and pumped up he couldn’t contain himself. People were out of their seats on the bleachers, rushing to huddle around the already crowded ring, drinks in their hands and screaming. The whole fight had taken less than three minutes.
Logan sat tensely, wondering if he needed to intervene or pull the guy out of there, until some of his corner men finally came out. Logan thought they meant to drag him away, but to his surprise, they began yelling and kicking him, ordering him to get up and continue the fight. The man had gotten up to his knees by this time but kept his head down, blood dripping from his face. He was shaking his head. Logan couldn’t hear exactly what he was saying over the roar of the crowd, but he thought it was, “I can't. I can’t.” He was clearly done and could no longer go on. Finally, mercifully, th
e men helped him up and practically had to carry him over to the cut men, their faces registering disgust.
Dread leaned back and angled a look at Logan with a shrug. “They must have bet on him.”
“Unbelievable,” Logan muttered.
Next up was another one of Dread’s guys that they’d seen upstairs, this one maybe even bigger than the last guy. He walked around with an arm slung over the ring girl’s shoulder, mauling her, pinching her ass and putting on a show. He pointed to his name on the sign she held and then back at himself. Logan watched his antics in the ring with a frown and Dread leaned back toward him, his eyes bright.
“You’re not enjoying this?”
“It’s a little one-sided so far. I don’t see the sport in that.”
“Ah, well watch this next one. Jones there is one of my employees. He had a beef with another guy a few weeks ago. His ex-wife and this guy, her new boyfriend, have been causing him problems. Those problems have escalated to the point of a fight in the club last week and death threats toward each other on social media. Even a drive-by attempt. Jones says it ends tonight, one way or the other.”
Logan looked at him hard. “And you think this is the place to settle that kind of thing?”
“Why not? They’re going to fight. It’s inevitable. They may as well do it here where the rest of us can enjoy it, right?” He turned back around and Logan was left shaking his head.
Another guy around the same age as Jones was climbing in the ring beside him, and this time he was at least a physical match for the other man, if a little paunchy around the middle. Logan figured Jones was in much better condition, though they probably weighed about the same. The two of them wasted no time in clashing together like two bulls. The fighting wasn’t anything like boxing and neither of them were wearing gloves. This was a low-down dirty street fight, the only difference being both men had been frisked for weapons.
It was explosive and violent with Dread’s guy putting out a stiff left, which he no doubt planned to follow with a right cross. The other guy slipped left, which threw the first one off enough so that he could step inside the right cross and get a handful of his hair. The second guy pulled his head forward and broke the man’s nose with his forehead. Blood spurted between them, but still holding his hair in one hand, the second guy got his other hand into the man’s crotch, put his shoulder into him and slammed him down on the floor. Dread’s guy Jones grunted, and went limp for a few seconds, but he was far from done. As the crowd jeered at him, he surged to his feet, his face bloody and wild, and grabbed the second guy’s arm, whirling him around as he took his first few steps of a victory strut around the ring, kicking his knee from the side with a vicious swing of his foot that made the guy crumple to the floor writhing in agony. He jumped on top of him, slamming his fist into his face until he stopped moving altogether. Then he jumped up and started kicking him in the head.
It was brutal to watch, and Logan thought surely someone would stop it, since kicking was against their own rules. But nobody stepped in. Logan was on his feet, sure he was about to see someone die right in front of him, when Dread finally raised his hand to signal the cut men to stop the fight. The crowd booed and hooted at them the whole time they were carrying the unconscious man out of the ring. He was so limp, Logan wondered if he was even still alive. Clearly, the crowd had wanted more blood.
“I’ve seen enough. Let’s get out of here,” he said, leaning down to Luke’s ear, but Luke shook him off.
“No, I’m watching this. You leave if you want to, damn it. Jackson hasn’t even had his fight yet.”
“I said we’re going,” Logan growled and grabbed his arm. Luke shrugged him off violently, wrenching his arm away. He gave Logan a dirty look and jumped to his feet, stalking off down the bleacher steps and melting into the crowd by the ring before Logan could stop him. Dread looked back up at him and grinned as he slid off his seat to follow Luke into the crowd.
His mouth falling open, Logan glanced over at Perry and Jake, who stared blandly back at him. Perry shrugged. “He said he wanted to stay. So do I.”
“Yeah, me too,” Jake said, glancing at Logan and then back at the crowd. “I want to see the next fight.”
Furious, Logan whirled back around, on his feet and ready to find Luke and haul him out of there bodily, if he had to, when Jake spoke up beside him. “Jackson’s up.”
Jackson had just come out in the ring, as the corner men finished mopping up some of the blood on the floor with towels. The inevitable ring girl came out and Logan saw money changing hands everywhere around him as people excitedly began to make bets as soon as they saw who it was. From the shouts and cheering he heard from the crowd, Logan figured Jackson was a favorite, but there was something markedly different about him from just a short while before when they’d seen him upstairs.
He was looking neither to the right or left, but when a spectator tried to lunge at him over the barrier, he glanced up and snarled at the man, his eyes wild. The glance upward was quick and gone in a flash, but Logan could have sworn his eyes had been glowing red. His posture was wrong too, more slump-shouldered than before, his head down after that one brief, fierce glare as he came out to the middle of the ring.
A movement from below, like a ripple in the crowd took Logan’s attention away. From his vantage point, Logan could see Dread and Luke had made it close to the edges of the barricades, with Dread right beside him. The crowd moved apart as they came closer, giving them a path through the crush. As Logan watched, Dread put his hand low on Luke’s side, just above his hip, and Luke made no attempt to move it away. Dread leaned over closer, speaking directly in Luke’s ear and Logan saw Luke nodding. A wave of possessive fury swept over him.
There was a sudden cry from the crowd as a young man came into the ring to face Jackson. He was Hispanic and looked like a young MMA fighter to Logan, not big, but muscular and well built, with a bouncy, cocky step as he came up to Jackson, who was just standing there waiting, head still down toward the floor in the middle of the ring. He was making no aggressive moves, despite the catcalls of the crowd.
Much like the fighters before him, the guy tried to rush Jackson, who simply stepped to the side at the last moment, like he was dodging an angry bull. The young guy turned and roared at him when the crowd laughed at him and put down his head to charge again, obviously intent on taking Jackson to the mat this time around. Jackson put out his hand with almost causal strength and caught him around the neck as he came at him, pulling him up off his feet in mid-charge to dangle in the air. He was holding him effortlessly with one hand, and even Logan gasped at the casual display of power and strength. His fingers slowly tightened until the man was gasping and red in the face, then Jackson dropped him back to his feet. The man was swaying and looked ready to fall when Jackson swung at him with a roundhouse punch that spun the man around before slamming him back against the barriers. The young guy fell like a stone this time and didn’t move. Again, the fight was over almost as soon as it began.
Jackson didn’t parade around like the others had when they won their match. He just walked slowly back over to his corner. Logan saw his corner men with their wet towels, washing the splattered blood off Jackson’s face.
“I’ve seen enough of this shit,” Logan growled at Jake and Perry. “You two can stay if you want to, but I’m going back to the hotel. You can get your own way back if you want to stay.” Without waiting for an answer, Logan took off down the steps of the bleachers and made his way toward Luke, muscling people out of the way until he reached him. Beside him, he saw Dread frown and shift his arm, and it was all he could do not to rip it off at the shoulder.
Grabbing Luke’s shoulder and leaning in close, Logan put his lips to his ear. “You can walk out of here with me or I can carry you out. Either way you’re going. Your choice.”
Luke turned and scowled at him furiously. “You don’t tell me what to do, damn it.”
“Oh yeah? Since when?”
; “Fuck you, Logan.”
“Oh, that’s gonna happen, all right. But for now, you’re coming with me.”
Luke pressed his lips together and his eyes flashed with anger, but he nodded stiffly. He stopped trying to pull away from Logan and turned to follow him out. As Logan passed Dread, the man took hold of his sleeve. “Come back soon, Sgt. Logan,” he said, giving Logan an oily smile. “I could use someone like you and your…friends. Jackson told me all about you.”
For a brief moment, something else peeked out of Dread’s eyes at Logan. Something old and infinitely evil. And vaguely familiar. Startled, Logan took an involuntary step backward, and then the moment was gone. Dread gave him another smile with his shark teeth and turned back toward the barricades.
“What’s the matter with you? Why do we have to leave?” Luke said, resisting his pull.
Logan shook his head. “I don’t know. I just know we do. Let’s just get the hell out of here.” He started pulling Luke toward the exit again, when the crowd suddenly began to shift and surge forward, carrying Logan and Luke with them like they were caught in a wave, back toward the barricades. A new group of combatants was coming toward the ring, and Logan turned to see what was going on.
A group of young men had come out to climb in the ring. All of them were young, some maybe still in their teens. Some were slightly built, and looked scared half to death. Others looked like they’d been taken right off the street. Each of them had their shirts off and had been issued a pair of boxing gloves. They entered the barricades looking cautiously around. By now the room was foggy with smoke. Already the whiskey and beer were taking effect. Men and women leaned drunkenly against each other and on the barricades until it seemed as if they might break from the combined weight.
The DJ in the corner had started up some jarringly raucous heavy metal and the crowd surged eagerly forward again, taking Logan and Luke with them. The boys were a small tight group, clustered together, their bare upper bodies shiny with sweat. Then Logan heard Dread shouting. “Bring her out!”
