But it was better than poorly organized matches in empty parking lots, with jeering, bloodthirsty spectators crowding the traffic barricades that served as the boundary of a ring. Dragomir had started like that and found his present situation to be preferable at least because there was an actual doctor on the premises to patch people up after the bouts. It was a luxury.
The owner of the establishment, scrawny, dark, and fast-eyed, always in a suit, but with a loose tie, was said to be a gypsy. He spoke such a mess of Latin, Czech, and German that it was hard to trace his true origins. Fighters were a motley crew, too. Dragomir’s current adversary was a power puncher from Regensburg, a burly guy tattooed all over, all bulging muscles and self-confidence.
In a dingy locker room, Dragomir did a bit of shadowboxing to warm up, listening to the murmurs of the crowd through the thin wall. He still felt sore, but anticipation started to build up, heat rising. He was going to nail the bastard.
He didn’t have anything against his opponent, personally, but psyching himself up was easy. Aggression came effortlessly and predictably like a tide. The problem was not to drown in it completely. Dragomir had a suspicion the host wouldn’t mind if some night a fight would end with an enhanced punch—there were no rules after all, except for not hitting those who went down, so no one said using magic was forbidden. The public would be excited. But Dragomir would rather refrain from it. Even with no regulations to obey, there had to be some fairness. Besides, he had a small unpleasant fear deep down in his gut that he might not be able to control what he would let loose. Magic was a burst of energy, and he could accidentally drain himself, incapable to stop, and it would kill him as well as people who’d happen to be around.
Back in Scholomance, he’d been an enforcer, of a sort. Other magicians—more talented, more capable—commanded him and used his power, directed it. He’d been fine with it. He’d been a good soldier. But when something dark had been implanted into him, a sigil of constant anger, he’d become an uncontrollable liability. It had turned out to be easier to cast him out than to fix him.
His powers had stayed with him and he could probably get a license to work as a mage on his own, but what exactly would he do? All the energy he had at his disposal was highly aggressive now, aimed at destruction. He could easily master making deadly curses, illegally or maybe even quite lawfully, for the military. But it felt unjust, harming people when they couldn’t respond. Fighting in a boxing ring was better. And it kept the fury in him sated.
Fights usually left him feeling emptied, but it was good. He spent a few days in a numbed if not completely peaceful state, and when an urge to tear at somebody or something started to grow inside of him again, there was always another match. His life was spinning dumbly in a circle, round and round and round. Fuck.
Dragomir’s fist stopped too close to hitting a wall once more. Yeah, just great. It would be so wise to ruin his knuckles right before he was called to the ring. He wished they would begin already. He couldn’t hold himself back much longer.
When he finally entered the gym transformed into a posh garage style venue, he was practically bursting with the need to land a punch at something less unyielding than bricks. No boxing gloves for him or his adversary, just hand-wraps. They both were encouraged to draw blood. Guests liked it—tuxedoed men, women in designer dresses.
He saw two visitors in classy black suits approaching his rival, formally to wish him good luck, but in truth, just to take a closer look at him and his fascinating tattoos. When they walked away and thought he wouldn’t hear, Dragomir caught them laughing quietly, “What a Neanderthal.”
He might have wished to beat the guy, but these two he would have pummeled more eagerly. Unfortunately, no one would pay for that.
A brass bell clanged, and the fight began. Dragomir’s adversary roared, working the crowd, and launched at him viciously, skipping the usual courtesy of exchanging cautious blows and testing each other at first. A damn show-off. Dragomir knew he had to move a lot to avoid heavy punches that might knock him out, so he tried to dance around, waiting for an opportunity to strike fast and hard. The goal was to tire the man out and then attack. But this strategy didn’t seem to work. The guy was too much of an aggressive swarmer. Dragomir had no time to think, to probe at his defenses. All he could do was to duck and dive out of reach and fire back now and then, hoping he wouldn’t be the first one to get tired. The only good thing was that it made him more and more wound up.
His array of dirty combat tricks was becoming impressively varied, but to be honest, it was just an inelegant mash-up of fighting styles. It got him by, but he knew he wasn’t a pro. Yet he had something to counterbalance his more skilled and experienced opponents. Searing hot, blinding rage.
They called him a berserk. The difference was, berserks went into a raging mode of their own volition during battles while he used what was inside him all the time. He just needed to open up and let it show.
He took a glancing blow to his ribs, a painful reminder of the last night’s brawl, and plunged forward with a growl to take away his rival’s punching space. A few short-arm jabs … and the round was over.
In the course of the next one, Dragomir started reckless counterattacks, even though they meant he was to turn himself into a punching bag. He could take it; he just needed to watch for a slightest mistake on the enemy’s part while being hit at. Dragomir managed to land two satisfying shots to his opponent’s jaw, but carelessly opened up for a nasty uppercut. He nearly fell and had to draw back, trying not to show it took the wind out of him.
“Hit him in the pussy!” someone yelled, though it was hard to tell whom the drunk enthusiast addressed. Asshole.
Dragomir’s next combo was better. A jab to the head, then a right cross as a diversion, then a left hook to the body—just a teensy bit miscalculated, but certainly painful nevertheless.
The public roared, and he was misfortunate to catch a glimpse of it: contorted features, clenched fists, all finesse gone. And there was a familiar face among it all, with a calm and only slightly interested expression.
It was her. The witch.
A moment’s lapse in concentration brought him a well-deserved punishment—the mean bastard went for his already split eyebrow. Dragomir stumbled backwards, snarled like a dog, and answered with a series of fast, hard punches. He could feel blood dripping down the side of his face from the reopened cut.
The advantage he had earned himself was lost and his vision blurred, but he wasn’t going to give in. Keep fighting, damn, keep fighting, you still can…
A well-placed body shot, a mean hook to the liver, sent him to the ground. He stubbornly tried to clamber up to his feet, writhing most unattractively on the canvas. But paralyzing pain kept him down, though he was still conscious and willing to fight. Bugger. Someone in the crowd inquired loudly if he was faking.
For a moment, it was an agonizingly vivid déjà vu, him unable to move, to break through the restraints of pain, and another man looming over him…
Then the fight referee stepped in. And the show was over, at least for Dragomir Vucović.
****
Losing was always unpleasant, but for some reason, losing in front of her was even worse. Was it a coincidence she had come here? If so, had she recognized him? He hoped not. It was humiliating, to go down in the second round.
After having had his eyebrow stitched, Dragomir showered in a tiny cubicle, still slightly dizzy and very glad he was alone in the locker room. His opponent was probably taking congratulations this very moment. There would be people gathering around him. As for the loser, he could only expect a few jeers when he’d walk out. Maybe a drunk or two would try to goad him into a fight at the parking lot. Dragomir would try to avoid it, not much for the sake of his sore ribs, but because the owner of the venue would be extremely displeased if one of the guests got hurt, no matter what an idiot he was. Dragomir didn’t want to be banned from the next fights.
Water came bloody wh
en he splashed it into his face, and his red and abraded knuckles hurt. He tried not to move much, just stood under the spray. Every wrong turn reminded him of his mistakes.
When he toweled off, carefully patted dry his sore hands, and went out, the locker room was still empty … except for one visitor.
Ida.
She was wearing a dark green dress with a fitted waist and a flared A-line skirt this time, and high heels. Her dark hair was coiled and pinned into an elaborate coiffure.
“It’s actually a men’s locker room,” he said dumbly.
He felt very self-conscious, standing there with only a towel around his hips, and very annoyed with himself for that.
“I know,” she said with a smile, like she was amused at his discomfort. “I tipped a bouncer so he wouldn’t let anyone else in for a while. I thought you’d win. You’ve dealt with three men so easily. Just one should have been a child’s play to defeat.”
“How did you find me?” Dragomir asked, ignoring her attempt at teasing. She clearly enjoyed rubbing salt into his wounded pride.
And the thought of her rubbing something had been most certainly an unfortunate one.
“I put a tracking spell on a sleeve of your jacket,” she admitted smugly, and her cheeky confession distracted him from inappropriate images before his mind’s eye.
So yes, not a coincidence. She had been looking for him. But a tracking spell, for God’s sake?
“Do you know it’s kind of illegal, like using spying software?”
“No more than the fights you take part in,” she retorted nonchalantly. “Or using magic in a street brawl to concuss your opponent, even in self-defense.”
“Why did you find me?”
“I didn’t get a chance to thank you properly. Besides, maybe I have a weakness for bad boys.”
“Hasn’t your mother told you bad boys might be dangerous?”
She tilted her head. “What if I don’t mind danger from time to time?”
“I’m always dangerous,” he said heavily. “I can’t turn it on and off, you know.”
“Maybe I could,” she said, her voice ingratiatingly soft.
That was what she had told him that first night. Maybe I could be of some help.
A clearly false promise made him wince like a poke into a bruise would. “Nah, it won’t work.”
She didn’t seem to be spooked off by his dismissive tone. “Why don’t you get dressed and tell me more about your curse? And then we’ll see.”
He didn’t move.
She lifted an eyebrow. “Are you shy of me?”
Fuck no. Or at least he wasn’t going to admit it. Irritated, he tossed the towel away and went for his clothes. He knew she watched him, and his cock gave a treacherous lurch as he put on his briefs.
“Were you cursed during a fight?” she asked.
He nodded, not turning to her.
“How did you feel right before it happened?”
Hurt. Broken. Betrayed.
Frightened.
He was honest enough to admit that yeah, he’d been fucking frightened, but he hated himself for this all the same.
“Helpless,” he said. It very much summed everything up. The memory of lying there, unable to move, to fight back, still made him nauseous.
She hummed pensively.
“Look,” he said. “I’d like to be realistic. Nothing is going to work. They tried to remove it in Scholomance. It was…”
…painful. He told them about the invisible sigil on his shoulder, and they poked and probed at it, struggling to dig it out of him. It felt like they were stubbing up obstinate roots that had spurted deep down into his flesh, cutting them out one after another, but these tentacles grew back into him almost immediately.
They made several attempts. He cried a lot.
“…unsuccessful,” he finished, hoping she hadn’t noticed a slight shift in his voice. He didn’t want her to know how weak he had been, despite all his initial resolve to tough it out like a man. He wanted to still have some dignity, or pretend he had it.
The funny thing was he’d let them torture him for as long as they needed, willingly, but they had given up on him pretty soon.
And what was even funnier if you had a taste for black humor: his fellow magicians must have had other reasons for toying with the sigil rather than simply trying to help him, as he had come to understand much later. Every spell left a trace of the one who had created it, so studying the curse could potentially lead to its author—the young man Dragomir’s team had been sent to capture. And Dragomir’s superiors most certainly had been interested in tracking him down. What was his fault? Dragomir had no idea. No one had cared to share this information with mere enforcers. But clearly, the guy had been pissed at Scholomance, and the feeling had seemed to be very much mutual.
Anyway, Dragomir must have been considered useful for the search, hence all the poking and probing. But all these manipulations with him had proven to be ineffective, and Dragomir had become of no value to Scholomance.
“The only thing they could do in the end was to cast me out. You know how magic schools work. All the magicians share their energy, but mine was poisoned, in a way. I was planted among them like a ticking bomb, sort of, ready to explode any moment, and even I myself couldn’t predict the timing and the consequences. And they cut me off from the congregation, so I would use only my own power when making spells. Fortunately, I don’t have much of it, or I could be a real trouble for everyone.”
“But you avoid casting spells at all.”
Dragomir shrugged. “It’s a risk. They are ugly. They always hurt someone, on purpose or not.”
He wrestled himself into his leather jacket, carelessly fast, and every bruise and sprain he had sustained immediately protested against it.
Ida tapped her manicured nails against her thigh, looking at him contemplatively.
“It’s a tough case, I must admit. But not entirely hopeless. You’re not the first person with PTSD I’ve seen.”
He huffed. “Posttraumatic stress disorder is a different thing from a curse.”
“Not much. Besides, everyone needs an individual treatment anyway.”
“I don’t believe in psychological stuff,” he warned her.
He’d tried reading about anger management. All those breathing exercises, trying to ease tension with humor, sticking with I statements when describing a problem to avoid placing blame or criticizing … blah blah blah. It never helped, and it made him even more frustrated.
The smile she gave him was somewhat sinister. “Oh no. What we’re going to do is very much physical.”
****
And that was how they ended up in a taxi heading for her place, instead of him waiting for a bus under a dim streetlight and returning to his sorry excuse for an apartment all alone.
He was confused about what Ida wanted of him and why she was so determined to help him, so he ventured to ask directly if physical meant sex or what.
“Among other things, if you don’t mind,” she said without any hint of blushing. “Or maybe you don’t want it?”
He couldn’t help a laugh. “Oh, I do. But … accidents happen when I get overwhelmed. I might be rough. Too rough. Or even hit you. Really hurt you. I’d rather not.”
He cringed at the memory. His last attempts to have sex had been a disaster. Fortunately, not of a criminal kind, but who knew what might happen next. Being celibate wasn’t his preference, but a quick wank in the shower seemed to be the safest option at the moment.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of that,” Ida promised vaguely.
He was also a bit apprehensive his performance might be not one of his brightest after he’d taken a beating. But it was an even more embarrassing thing to talk about with a girl, so he skipped mentioning about it.
The question why exactly she had decided to find him remained open. Why had she offered to help him in the first place, before he’d defended her against the witchbashers? Was it because
she was … um … interested in fucking him, as it had turned out? Or did she want money for her services? He didn’t have much, and his finances were unlikely to improve since he’d lost today, so she might be disappointed. Dragomir pondered if he should warn her. Would it cancel her offer to have sex or not?
He decided to wait and see how it went.
They arrived on a small cobbled street in the so-called Little Quarter, Malá Strana. During the day, it was probably a very picturesque place, with souvenir shops, stucco reliefs along every eave, and brass door handles. But now, with all the stores closed and showcases dark, it looked uncanny.
The front door to the house where Ida lived was framed with plaques advertising practical alchemy courses for beginners, fortunetelling, and other things of the kind. Ida’s neighbors seemed to be peculiar folks. Also, over the entrance, there was a sign of a black cat licking its paw. So that was where the silhouette on Ida’s business card came from.
They went up the steep stairs in silence. As Ida rattled her keys, opening the door, high-pitched barking came from an apartment across the landing where a fortuneteller lived, according to one of the advertisements.
“I don’t like small dogs,” Dragomir muttered, just to say something. “Or big ones, come to think of it.”
“It’s not actually a dog,” Ida said. “It’s a chimera, but the poor stray had spent too much time in an animal shelter before she was adopted, and picked up a few wrong habits. I think she considers herself to be a terrier. At least she’s very loyal.”
Dragomir wasn’t sure he liked chimeras either.
He’d expected Ida’s apartment to be more … witch-like. Maybe not over-spun with cobwebs, but there could be herbs hanging from the ceiling or something. As far as he knew, witches liked showing off, so you would know you came to the right place the moment you entered their abode. Maybe it was a psychological trick, setting the mood for clients.
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