I turned sideways—I had changed back into my street clothes after my fight—and I slowly slid my cell phone from my pocket. Head slanted down, I punched in one number, then another.
9-1—
One of the guards saw me before I could hit that last digit. He knocked the phone from my hands, while the other guard grabbed me and jammed a gag in my mouth. They dragged me out to a van that rumbled outside. There, someone tied my hands and feet. A few moments later, one of them tossed Nicole in beside me, her body landing with a dull thud. It took a full minute before I realized she was still breathing. I dared to hope we might find a way to escape.
Up until a few minutes ago, I’d thought we were at a normal Platinum Level fight. But when she lay beside me—her eyes fluttering open, her lungs gasping for air—I knew what was really happening.
We were being kidnapped.
I tried to scream, I tried to talk to Nicole, I tried to comfort her, to tell her everything was going to be okay, she just needed to wake up, please, wake up. But everything I said came out muffled and unintelligible. The guys driving the van looked back and laughed at me.
That was when I realized there were other girls and boys in the van with us, all of us bound and gagged. Most of them were like me, with just a few cuts and bruises. Nicole was the only one who looked like she’d been crammed through a meat grinder, her flesh cut and dark with purple bruises, bones poking out of the skin on her left forearm and her right shin. I winced when I looked at her, my eyes never leaving hers as if I could magically transfer my strength to her. Tears slid down my cheeks, but she didn’t cry. She stared straight ahead, a glazed expression in her eyes, the light fading with every slow-motion thud of her eyelids.
“She’s not gonna make it,” one of the guys in the front said. “And nobody made any bids on her.”
“Take ’em up to the cabin, that’s what you said we should do,” the driver said.
“Changed my mind. We should get rid of her. But we don’t want any bodies laying around in the woods, drawin’ attention to our tradin’ spot.”
“True.”
“If we dump her in the city, it’ll look like a normal kidnapping.”
“Except she’s not dead yet. She could still talk if somebody finds her,” the driver argued.
“I can fix that.”
The van slowed and the whole time I was screaming, but it was a sound no one heard but me. Don’t hurt her, don’t leave her here, let us go, we won’t talk, we promise—
They were dragging her out into a thicket by the side of the road. She lifted her head one last time and glanced back at me, terror in her eyes. I wept and screamed until my throat was raw and I could only whisper, still I cried out.
One of our captors—the burly one with the slate-gray eyes and the pale skin—kicked her again and again. In the face and in the gut and in the chest. Until her frail body slumped back and forth like a duffel bag. Then, when she didn’t move anymore—when I still hoped that maybe there was still a flicker of life hiding inside somewhere—then they rolled her into a ditch. They wiped their hands on their shirts and they scraped their boots in the grass.
They were trying to wipe away her blood, but as far as I was concerned, it would never come out.
I saw their faces clearly then, in the headlights when they came back toward the van.
One, tall and slender, with pock-marked, bronze skin and thinning black hair.
The other, broad-shouldered, with pale skin and eyes like a tornado.
They were demons who needed to be sent back to Hell.
They kept me, helpless and bound, as they drove all of us up into the mountains, to a small hunting lodge where it took me two days to escape. Then it took me almost two weeks to climb down the mountain, careful to stay off the main trails and roads, knowing that they would be looking for me and that they had made a good deal for me—they were planning to sell me for more than any of their previous victims. I heard them bragging about it after the deal was made and my buyer was on his way up the mountain.
But my memories began to fade away as I blazed new trails across the San Gabriel valleys and crests, on my way home. No matter what happened, I knew I had to get home. But, as hard as I tried, by the time I made it to that ditch, that gully where I collapsed, too weary to climb onto the highway, even the thought of getting home was temporarily erased.
I collapsed in a ravine, just like Nicole, my body bruised and worn out, my clothes torn and bloody, the soles of my shoes worn out, and when that rain fell it washed away everything. At that point, the memory of Nicole’s death and our kidnapping and my escape were too horrific for my mind to hold on to. It all slipped away, like a shadow in the mist, waiting in the dark, until just the right moment to loom back into my line of sight.
.
Tonight was that moment.
Here and now.
When I remembered everything.
A long, deep breath pulled through my lungs, all of me feeling raw and bleeding and mangled, my soul black. But my mind was clearer than it had been in a long, long time because of that Pink Lightning.
I turned around slowly, away from that two-way glass and the visage of a stage that would be mine soon. Madison sat on a chair, her face bruised, her nose possibly broken. She lifted her chin, staring at me as if she wanted to know what was different about me now.
I ran my gaze over those two guards in the room with us, from one to the other, taking everything in. One of them I didn’t recognize. The other one had been in that van—he was slender, with dark, pock-marked skin, his hair black and his eyes darting away from the knowledge he saw inside me. And the man who had walked into the room last, the broad-shouldered brute with steely eyes—he kept his gaze steady and even, a grin widening on his face, as if he’d been waiting for this moment all along.
This was the moment we had all been waiting for—my therapist, my parents, my friends—when I would remember what had happened when I went missing. But none of us had expected it to happen when I was standing in the same room as the man who had murdered one of my closest friends.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The world was beautiful and horrible, every inch of my body ready for battle and every synapse in my brain firing like it never had before. Step by step, I was being led toward the arena stage, Madison at my side. Lauren and the Man Who Had Murdered Nicole were somewhere behind me, their footsteps in tandem. The crowd cheered my name, my Swan Girl name, and clouds of white smoke billowed from the edges of the room.
Stars fell and worlds collided and civilizations were destroyed.
My body felt like it belonged to someone else, like it was being manipulated by remote control, like I was some kind of hero action figure being sent into a skirmish.
The worst part of it all was that I couldn’t wait to get up on that stage. I wanted to fight, I wanted to tear holes in the fabric of existence, I wanted to do surgery on Lauren’s face with my knuckles, I wanted to clutch her throat in my fist and watch as all her dreams slipped away, beat by rugged beat.
I wanted to leave her in a pool of her own blood, no one to help her.
Just like she had done to me.
A growl surged from my chest. I was a beast. I was exactly what they wanted me to be. I soared with swan wings, head lifted high, past adoring subjects. I was the Queen, I was Odette.
I was horrible and I was beautiful and there was a good chance I was about to kill a girl who had pretended to be my friend.
A cool hand touched my arm and I snarled, ready to break the fingers off the hand.
“I am expendable,” Madison confessed, her voice low, her head turned toward me. “That is why I was given the task to walk you to the stage. If you hit me, even if you kill me, it will only make the crowd more excited. No one will care.”
The fire in my chest quelled, just a bit.
“I couldn’t do anything before,” she continued. “Not until you got your Pink Lightning. But now, you can do whatever you
want. There are many ways you can still escape.” She paused, maybe weighing the danger of what she was about to say next. “I’ll do whatever I can to help. And I will be assisting you during your fight. If you need anything, an ice pack or a towel or another shot of Pink Lightning, all you have to do is nod. I’ll even sneak you a shot of Black Skies, if you want to put Lauren down. The only rule here is there are no rules.”
She bowed gracefully as we neared the stage, sweeping her arm toward the stairs.
“I am here to make sure you win,” she whispered as I passed her. “And if that means you escape, then so be it.”
I soared past her, not sure if I believed her words. But I found unexpected solace in knowing that I wasn’t as alone as I felt. Someone had my back.
...
The stage became my kingdom, my feet barely touching the floor. I felt like I could walk on water, like I could sail across the room, granting wishes to the swarthy crowds, a beatific smile on my face. They were chanting. I couldn’t hear it—I had entered into that magical silence that exists when you’re in the ring—but I could feel it, a steady push of sound that thrummed against my feet and chest.
The steady vibration gave me energy; it gave me life, it gave me a reason for being.
I was adored and worshipped, and I would do everything in my power to give pleasure to my subjects.
I faced Lauren, my opponent, fire in my eyes, and she must have been able to see it. Maybe she could even feel the heat radiating from my skin, see the steam billowing out of my mouth when I spoke. “You bitch,” I said and I took a threatening step closer. Lauren must not have expected anger to factor into this fight.
If she had, she wouldn’t have confessed her deepest secrets to me. Not tonight. Not right before someone pumped me full of drugs that could turn almost anyone into a killer.
She blinked, probably calculating what was going on inside my head, and how much survival time that gave her. Fists raised, she stumbled backward, on the defensive, knowing I wasn’t going to pull any punches. Not now. Not ever.
My game was different from most of the other fighters. It was more elegant, more precise and much faster. I usually ended a match within five to ten minutes, a fact that constantly irritated my patron. He always complained that I should drag it out, make it look like I might lose—then he’d be able to get better odds.
Today might have been that day.
I didn’t want this fight to end quickly.
My mind was able to think five steps ahead of what happened around me. It was almost like Lauren and I were playing chess, rather than fighting for survival. The moment she clenched her fingers into a fist I knew exactly what she planned to do next and I was not only able to block her punch, I was able to follow it up with a one-two fist slam to her sternum, knocking the breath out of her chest, and making her slump forward, ready for another duo of punches, this time to her pretty face.
Black eye number one, black eye number two.
In between making the crowd roar and Lauren whimper, I figured out how to escape, just like Madison had promised. To the right of the stage stood a door, left unlocked, and it led to a long corridor, which in turn led to a parking lot behind the building. I knew all this because I’d been dragged down that corridor the last time I was here. Once outside, I’d been stuffed into a windowless van with all the other fighters.
All I had to do was let Lauren win the fight.
That was going to be the hardest part, since I really wanted to flatten her, to pound her until her bones turned to powder. The only thing I could feel was my anger and my fists connecting with her flesh. But if I could push aside my anger and let her win, then I’d be the one on the mat and all attention would be focused on her. I could slip away, through that door, down that corridor, across the parking lot, and into the night.
There was only one problem with that plan and it didn’t bother me—not at first, anyway—not when my heart thudded to a slow, precise rhythm, a boom-ba-boom-ba-boom that reminded me of a funeral procession. Not when all her movements were in slow motion and her eyes were filled with so much fear. It didn’t bother me at all.
Not until I saw something familiar in her eyes.
Clouds of white smoke curled from the corners of the room and the men in the front row laughed and catcalled. Shouts rose up from the cheering crowd and, in the midst of it all, there came the whumpf of bare knuckles against flesh, the wet sound as knees and feet hit ribs. A sticky spray of blood caught me on the side of the neck and, all the while, the shouts of the crowd made the floor vibrate beneath the soles of my feet.
Pink Lightning sparked through my veins, every muscle in my arms and legs was alive like never before, and her eyes—Lauren’s eyes—they didn’t look like her anymore. That fear, that sense of helplessness, I’d seen it before.
It was how Nicole had looked, right before those two men had carried her away into the night, right before they beat her to death.
I froze, my fist in midair, and the moment seemed to last forever. To everyone else it was probably just a millisecond, but in that amount of time I saw everything—
I could escape, but that would mean Lauren would be left behind. And not just her, but Komodo and Agent Bennet and Madison, too—all of them would be left here while I ran away. I knew how this group of kidnappers worked. As soon as they realized I was gone, they’d pack up and scatter. They’d be dust in the wind by the time I got back here with help.
Lauren would be sold, she’d be gone, she’d be another Lost Girl.
As much as I hated her right now, I didn’t want that.
I finally followed through with my punch, but it wasn’t as clean as it should have been. I’d paused too long and she had time to block me. It took a few more moves before I had enough momentum to do what I needed, before I could pin her in a headlock, my arm wrapped around her throat, her right ear positioned beside my lips. That was the first move where I was able to whisper my new plan to her, the one where I began to explain how she could escape. It took five holds, all of them different so we wouldn’t arouse suspicion, before I was able to convince her it would work. Maybe she was just glad to hear that I didn’t plan on killing her, since there were no rules, none at all tonight, but in the end she agreed to do exactly what I told her.
And that was good, because we both knew her only other option was to win the fight and go home with the highest bidder.
...
One final body slam and Lauren fell on the mat, a grimace on her face, her eyes closed. The fight was over. For a long, shuddering moment, I worried that I had actually knocked her out and that all our scheming would amount to nothing. Then she gave me a brief, almost unnoticeable wink.
Game on, you dirty, effing mothers.
I flashed a grin at Madison, then nodded at the spotlights. She punched the power switch and all the lights in the universe poured down on me. No more beams sweeping the crowd or the stage, nothing to illuminate Lauren when she rolled off the platform or when she crawled toward that door.
All eyes were on me, as they should be. It was time for my second act.
I spun, a sweet pirouette, left leg bent at the knee, all my weight on the toes of my right foot, arms over my head. I spun around and around while the audience chanted my name and then when I stopped, they realized the show was only beginning.
“Who’s put up a bid for me? Anyone?” I called out. Cheers followed. I grinned, as if I couldn’t wait to go home with my new owners. “Well, don’t stop the bidding yet.” I leaped across the stage, then pointed toward one of the meatheads in the audience. “Are you a brave man?” I asked. He nodded. “Do you think you can beat a seventeen-year-old girl?”
“Hell, yeah!” he shouted back.
“Come on,” I taunted. “Let’s see if you can go a full round up here.”
While he was scrambling toward the stage and my handlers back in the dressing room were freaking out, I cast a quick look toward that door.
It was slamming
shut.
Lauren was getting away.
My muscles relaxed for an instant, a bad move on my part for that goon from the audience was already looming toward me, beer on his breath, sweat pooling in the pits of his T-shirt. He swiped at me, fingers open, and I danced away, two short hops that made the audience laugh. Shadows were moving closer, two beefy guards and the Man Who Had Murdered Nicole all racing down the aisle. They had been watching the crowd, hadn’t even realized I might be the threat.
I knew I could take this meathead opponent down with a snap of the neck. Problem was, if I did that he’d be dead.
So, instead, I spun around, kicking him in the crotch, in the gut, and in the chin. He fell with the first kick, and my foot was red with his blood by the time he hit the mat. I was pretty sure I broke his nose, there was so much blood.
Now other members of the audience began clamoring for a go at me. They all wanted their moment in the spotlight, they wanted a chance to take me down.
Come and get me, boys.
Guards were slamming fists in faces, Nicole’s Murderer was grabbing the microphone, two new audience members had made it onto the stage, and I was fighting both of them at the same time. Meanwhile, I gave a quick nod to Madison and she ran toward the door that led to freedom, following Lauren.
Joy radiated from my chest. Pure joy like I hadn’t felt in ages.
We were beating the brutes who had wanted to take us captive.
Kick to the face of Audience Member Number One, kidney punch to Audience Member Number Two, knee to the groin, elbow to the nose, and they were both down, one of them almost in tears with his right hand trying to stop the flow of blood that gushed from his nose.
I grinned and laughed and taunted. I could fight like this all night long, defeating one overweight, out-of-shape, wannabe wrestler at a time. I could have, but I didn’t. Because Nicole’s Murderer clambered his way onto the stage, then grabbed me and tossed me over his shoulder, an act that proved four shots of Blue Thunder trumped three shots of Pink Lightning. I’d known all along that this was how my escape scenario would end—someone would lasso me like a runaway colt, then either drag me back to the dressing room or drag me out to a car that rumbled in the parking lot.
Lost Girls Page 22
