Bad Blood

by David Bussell

  I flexed my arm and my new runes glowed red. ‘Fresh as a baby’s first breath,’ I told him.

  9

  So long as Sharez Jek got a kick out of seeing folks messed up, chances were he’d get rock hard for The Shark Tank. The Tank was an underground fight club out on the docks of Shoreham Port, just west of Brighton. The action went down in a defunct fish cannery tucked behind a bulk-handling terminal, far removed from any residential areas. Far enough that the screams from inside wouldn’t trouble the locals.

  The club was owned by a woman called Neroni, a name that also appeared on the Galoffi list, which made the place doubly interesting to me. Pay The Tank a visit, shake the tree, see what falls out. That was the plan.

  A doorman who looked like a gargoyle made flesh (and quite possibly was one) met me at the Tank’s back door. I gave him a fifty-pound note and he made it disappear. The meat gargoyle checked the coast was clear then pushed open a heavy wooden door, allowing me inside. The sound that hit me from within was deafening. It was the sound of a roaring crowd, a cacophony of cheering, whooping, stomping of feet. The sheer volume of it almost knocked me off my feet. I’m telling you, the place was louder than a kids’ soft-play area.

  The factory smelled of wet rot and fish guts, and despite the icy chill outdoors, the temperature inside was sweaty and close. I threaded my way through the crowd, parting a line between the hollering throng. After plenty of hustling and elbowing I arrived at the front of the scrum, which was pressed up against the outside wall of a chain link fence, an eight-sided cage, the centrepiece of the hall. The octagon.

  Circling one another within the cage were two large men engaged in mortal combat, only they weren’t really men. One had thick, rubbery tentacles for arms and the other had a single eye positioned in the middle of his face. They slugged at each other, throwing their body weight around the ring, knuckles raw, busting splits in skin, turning the canvas beneath their feet into a bloody slip-n-slide. The cyclops pummelled Mr Tickle into the wall, and he recoiled from it in pain, trailing threads of gore. I saw then that instead of padding, the fence surrounding them had been laced with loops of barbed wire. Yeesh. From what I’d learned about Sharez Jek, this was definitely his kind of place.

  I stood on tiptoe and scanned the multi-headed beast of the crowd, looking for any sign of the tattooed man, the man who might, perhaps, if I was very lucky, be connected to the creature that kidnapped my brother all those years ago.

  ‘And who might you be?’ asked a sultry female voice.

  I turned around to find a pale woman stood behind me with eyes like inkwells. She was impressively tall and so thin that I wanted to stick her with an IV. The exposed flesh of her arms and chest was scarred in every direction, forming complex roadmaps of pain. Her hair was long and white, and just above her head hovered a crackling black halo. From between the woman’s shoulder blades sprouted a pair of skeletal wings, clinging on to which were impoverished scraps of black feathers, ragged and torn. This was Neroni, the owner of The Shark Tank, an angel turned Icarus. A heavenly being made shabby by her fall from grace.

  Word around town was that Neroni had rebelled against The Almighty and had been made mortal for her sins. As an extra punishment, God had arranged it so the only way Neroni could survive on Earth was through suffering. Pain was her oxygen; without it she would suffocate and die. Yeah, God could be a bit of a psycho when you pissed Him off.

  For years, Neroni was forced to inflict terrible wounds upon herself just to survive, until one day she found a loophole in Good’s punishment. Neroni discovered that the mere presence of pain was enough to sustain her. Just being near it was all she needed, and so she built The Shark Tank, a house of pain, a place where she could always be in the vicinity of suffering. A place where she could thrive. Smart girl, eh?

  I tipped back my chin to meet Neroni’s imperious gaze. ‘I’m looking for a man named Sharez Jek,’ I told her.

  She offered a haunting smirk. ‘Are you now?’

  ‘You heard of him? Seems like he’d be right up your street.’

  ‘The tattooed man. Yes. Charming fellow. Bit of a short temper. Oh, the things he’s done in here for my pleasure. Enough to make you throb.’

  ‘Well, that’s creepy. So you and this Pinhead wannabe are best mates then?’

  My eyes drifted to a window over Neroni’s shoulder, a window to an office overlooking the ring. I imagined a little boy in that back room, tied up and gagged. I imagined Jek in there too, doing unthinkable things to the kid—slow, painful, excruciating, but not fatal—all so the sadistic angel towering before me could get her fill of the bad stuff.

  ‘Perhaps you should leave,’ she replied.

  ‘Do yourself a favour, love,’ I said, ‘tell me where Jek is right now or I will beat you down with a smile on my face.’

  The room fell deathly quiet. The crowd ceased its cheering, turned as one, and pulled away from us like a bucket of slime touched by a dose of bleach. Even the gladiators in the cage stopped what they were doing and turned in our direction. I saw the angel’s wings go up like a fighting fish flaring its gills, and readied myself for a smack. Instead, Neroni just laughed.

  ‘Ooh, how badly would you hurt me? Would you pierce my flesh? Break my bones?’ As she spoke, her wings shuddered and her hands ran over her body. ‘Would you wrap your hands around my tender throat and squeeze and squeeze?’

  ‘Are you going to tell me where he is or not?’ I asked, feeling my blood sizzle, my fists turn into wrecking balls.

  ‘A souped-up normal coming into my house and throwing your weight about? You realise I could melt you down to a grease spot with a mere touch?’

  She placed a finger on my chest and I felt her nail scrape against my breastbone.

  ‘Get off me.’

  I slapped her hand away. Again, I waited for her to strike out, but rather than make good on her threat, she remained calm and measured. Behind the cool facade though, I detected dark circuitry at work.

  ‘I believe I am going to make you a deal,’ said the angel.

  ‘If it’s a two-for-one drinks voucher, I’m not interested,’ I said. ‘Okay, I’m a little bit interested.’

  ‘I will answer any question of your choosing, but only at a price.’

  ‘What price?’

  ‘Three rounds in there, anything goes.’ She pointed at the cage. ‘Three rounds against my champion and I’ll tell you everything you want to know.’

  I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that. The Shark Tank was known to host some tough customers. Anyone who survived in there long enough to claim a title had to be made of pretty strong stuff.

  ‘Seems like this is your home ground,’ I said. ‘Puts you at an advantage.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Neroni. ‘Afraid of a fight? Is that not your whole existence? Pain is life.’ Her eyes went to my arm, then to the other. ‘I see the ink you’re wearing underneath that jacket, nice and fresh. You came all dressed up. Won’t you give us a twirl?’

  I knew I was being goaded but I didn’t care. I hadn’t backed away from a dust up since I fell down the rabbit hole and found this world, and I sure as shit wasn’t about to take any grief from this walking Rolls Royce hood ornament. ‘Fuck it, let’s do this, skinny.’

  The angel gave me a cool, clinical look. ‘Are you quite sure you’re up to this? The cage doesn’t lie.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me, toots,’ I said with a wink as I slipped off my jacket and hung it on the side of the octagon, ‘they call me King Fuck You Up down my way. I mean, they don’t, but they totally should.’

  The crowd began to cheer. I saw bets being taken, money changing hands. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a little bit exciting.

  Neroni simmered them down then turned back to me. ‘I’m starting to like you, girl. Such a shame that this will be our last conversation.’

  ‘Last? If I die in there I’m gonna haunt you something rotten, chattering into your ear every night. Reall
y dull stuff. I’ll be such a fucking nuisance.’ I loosened up my arms with a couple of quick shoulder rotations. ‘Quick question before we do this thing… you said anything goes, right? Does that mean anything?’

  The fallen angel smiled. ‘Oh yes, I do like you.’

  The cage door was flung open and I felt shoves from behind. Soon enough I was inside the ring with the door bolted shut behind me. The braying mob surrounded me completely, their ugly faces pressed up against the chain link fence, hollering for blood. The fighters whose match I’d crashed were ushered out of the arena and bullied through an exit on the opposite side of the cage. While a man with a mop and bucket swabbed the canvas of blood I stared at the still-open door, ready to face my opponent, my heart a hypersonic flutter.

  ‘Come on then,’ I cried, ‘what have you got for me? I’m ready to bring the pain!’

  The audience cheered as I strutted around, milking it. I’d totally missed my calling as the new Hulk Hogan. Only, you know, minus the racism.

  A shape appeared in the doorway, a hulking, gelatinous-skinned humanoid. The monster had bulbous eyes the size of teacups and no nose, just slits for nostrils. Its gangly limbs terminated in webbed hands and feet that bore thick, black claws. Imagine a jellyfish chucked into a blender with a super-hench Creature from the Black Lagoon and you’re pretty much there.

  I fanned a hand in front of my face, swatting away the overpowering stench of fish emanating from the thing. ‘Bloody hell, you smell like an overworked prostitute’s knickers.’

  Instead of hitting me with a witty comeback, the creature began to convulse. At first I thought it was getting ready to laugh, but the sensation it was experiencing was a lot more dramatic. As its body spasmed it began to tear, coming apart in the middle, bisecting like a cell dividing in two. After a final, sickening squelch, I found myself looking at two opponents, each slightly smaller than the original, but no less fearsome for it.

  ‘Well, that doesn’t seem fair,’ I said.

  The angel standing by the ring shrugged and mouthed a sarcastic, Sorry.

  ‘Gonna make fish food out of you,’ the jelly-monsters growled in unison, their words thick and wet.

  I was in a hairy situation. I’m talking Robin Williams’ back hairy.

  I shook nervous tingles from my muscles and put up my dukes, my freshly etched tattoos sucking in the surrounding magic ‘Come on then, let’s see what you’ve got.’

  The monsters began to circle the cage, working to position themselves front and rear of me. I wasn’t having that. Before they could outmanoeuvre me I launched myself at the closest, my tattoos glowing red as they laced my veins with fire. The idea was to knock the head off him, but my fist barely made a dent. The monster’s skin was tough as chewed leather.

  He lobbed one of his distressingly muscular arms my way but he wasn’t quick enough to land the blow. He threw a left, but I dodged that clean too. Okay, so these bruisers were built like walls, but I had them on speed. I could work with that.

  I spurted forward and threw myself at the other one. I gave the guy a flurry punches and finished up with an elbow to the chin that slapped the taste of seawater right out of his stupid mouth.

  The crowd went wild. I saw Neroni on the other side of the cage, hands gripping the fence, her face a picture of ecstasy. The angel was getting what she wanted no matter which way the match went. Part of me was happy about it. Like that’s what I wanted. Pleasure the angel, pleasure the angel. I shook the thought out of my head, obviously some trick she was able to pull, to push the fighters past where they wanted to go.

  While the wounded jelly-monster staggered about like a drunk in a crosswind, I went to work on his twin. Keeping out of his range to avoid the reach of his overlong arms, I circled, ducked, and darted forward to deliver a primo spot of GBH. I’m telling you, I was made of fists. The sluggish monster was no match for my velocity, and I dodged him again and again, laying on punches, jabbing at his soft parts and pulling away, slippery as a raindrop. This was me. This made me feel alive. My body and the magic the tattoos fed me, working together in perfect harmony. A violent, beautiful dance. Knuckles meeting flesh meeting cries of pain. As I ducked and swung and connected, a smile as big as a boomerang grew upon my face.

  I paused, barely out of breath, and looked down at my knuckles, soaked in the creature’s thick, blue blood. I realised I was laughing.

  Then I saw him.

  Outside the cage, prowling through the crowd wearing cargo trousers and a black vest.

  Sharez Jek.

  There was no mistaking the man. There wasn’t a square inch of him on show that wasn’t inked in some way. The whole of his bald head had been tattooed with a skull, open at the top to show a maggot-eaten brain. Wrapped around one arm was a snake design, and along the forearm of the other, a fierce-looking sword. As I turned to him, he met my eye with an awful, crooked grin. A grin that made me shudder. Shudder and quite forget where I was.

  I took a slug to the face that made my teeth jar in their sockets. I staggered backwards, my head full of bats, ears ringing with the gurgling laughter of the jelly-monsters. I felt a blow from the opposite direction that connected with my left kidney and almost made me double over backwards. I was trying to right myself when a third attack landed, exploding in my ribs and knocking me to my knees. I smelled wet pennies, the smell of my own blood soaking the canvas.

  ‘Finish her!’ I heard Neroni screech. ‘Break her, gouge her, rip her apart!’

  I succeeded in making it to my feet again, but I was battered and breathing like a sick rottweiler. I glanced out of the octagon, but Sharez Jek was gone. The monsters in the ring were still very much present, though, and ready to finish the job they’d started. I had to get it together, otherwise the two bruisers headed my way were going to leave my guts hanging from the ceiling like a butcher’s bunting.

  I concentrated on my tattoos, drawing in the surrounding magic, filling myself up until I was full as a tick. A cluster bomb exploded in my brain and my heart started beating triple-time.

  ‘Round two,’ I hissed.

  The decibels in the room went up as the crowd outside the cage erupted.

  No more pussyfooting around.

  Instead of testing my opponents with jabs and dancing out of their way, I chose one and went all in. I moved at him with long, fluid strides, leapt into the air, and sunk my fist in his face. The monster’s skull snapped back so hard that he almost ended up wearing his head for a hump.

  While he was busy recovering I turned on the other one, delivering a gut punch that sent him reeling, then another one to his brains that sent him bouncing off the cage’s barbed wire perimeter. The jelly-monster yowled and staggered away from the wall, its body leaking like a rusted bucket.

  I turned to Neroni and laughed. ‘These champions of yours are so useless you might as well have called them Thoughts and Prayers.’ A situation is never so dire that there isn’t time to deliver a choice zinger, kids.

  ‘Enough!’ she cried.

  ‘We’re done here,’ I said, wanting to get out of the octagon and try and find Jek before he melted into the night. He had to still be close by.

  The back door of the cage opened and two tridents were flung into the arena, one for each of my adversaries. They had the weapons in their hands before the door had even closed.

  Oh, dear.

  The tridents gleamed under the arena spotlight, their points twinkling like distant stars.

  ‘So which one of you is supposed to be Maximus Decimus Meridius?’ I asked.

  The monster to my left tried to stick me with his fork, but I just about managed to dodge the thrust. Next to arrive was his brother’s attack, which came so close to sticking me that it pierced a loose part of my t-shirt and came out the other side. A hair to the left and it would have vented a lung. Not good.

  Together, the jelly-monsters forced my retreat, backing me into the surrounding barbed wire, which raked at my skin like the talons of panicked birds
. Another fork came thrusting in my direction, but instead of just trying to evade it this time, I twisted my body out of the way, grabbed the weapon’s shaft in both hands, and levered it from the monster’s grip. Having disarmed the beast, I started snapping prongs from my new fork, turning it from a trident to a bident to a... well, a spear I suppose.

  I saw Neroni, leering at me through the gaps in the chain link fence. ‘Don’t blink,’ I told her.

  The monster that had managed to hang on to his trident charged at me, but I charged faster. Using my newly-acquired spear, I drove the tip of the thing into the canvas, met my attacker halfway across the mat, and vaulted over his head. Quick as a flash, I whirled about, summoned all my strength, and pushed the spear through his back, right between the shoulder blades.

  The crowd went berserk.

  As the monster’s arms reflexively shot up and went scrabbling for the weapon impaling his back, I turned him about, drove him forward, and steamrolled him into his comrade, spearing him too. Another great cheer went up. Now I had the both of them skewered. Stick some bell pepper on there and a tomato or two and I’d have had myself a tasty seafood kebab.

  As the jelly-monsters went slack, I forced them into the wall of the cage, pushing the tip of the spear through the chain link fence and up against Neroni’s breastbone, the same place she’d jabbed me with her fingernail before I’d climbed into her ring.

  ‘Harpooned you a couple of whoppers,’ I said. ‘Only the best for the Captain’s table.’

  The cheers turned to a trickle before petering out completely. Neroni reached out, grabbed the spear, and snapped off its tip. The angel nodded to a lackey, who opened the door of the cage to let me out.

  I stepped through the exit, grabbed my jacket, and thrust my arms into its sleeves. ‘A deal’s a deal, Neroni. Now, I’m going to ask a question, and you’re going to answer it.’

  She arched a brow. ‘You do realise you’ve given me exactly what I wanted?’ She peeled a glance to the bodies of her two dead champions, which were already being dragged off the mat, leaving behind thick slug trails of blue ooze. ‘Their dying breaths will sustain me for weeks. Whatever the outcome of the fight was, I still won.’