Scarlet scowled. “Sorry if the people around here don’t exactly seem like the trustworthy types.”
“They’re not,” he said. “But they do know me. Watch. You’ll see.”
He tried to slip around her but Scarlet turned with him, her hood slipping back. She dug her nails into his skin. “You’re not leaving until you—” She paused, looking past Wolf at the crowd by the platform.
Everyone was watching them, appreciative looks darting up and down Scarlet’s body.
A man on the platform was leaning against the ropes, smirking. He raised his eyebrows when he saw he’d caught Wolf’s and Scarlet’s attention. “Looks like the wolf has found himself a tender morsel tonight,” he said, his voice magnified by speakers somewhere overhead.
A second man stood on the stage behind him, leering at Scarlet. He was twice the size and a foot taller than the one who had spoken and entirely bald. His hair had been replaced with two rows of bear’s teeth implanted like gaping jaws into his scalp.
“Think I’ll be taking that one home after I’ve destroyed dog-boy’s pretty face!”
The audience laughed at the taunts, making cat calls and whistling to one another. Someone nearby asked Wolf if he was afraid to test his luck.
Unruffled, Wolf turned back to Scarlet. “He’s undefeated,” he said in an explanatory tone. “But so am I.”
Annoyed that he could think for a second she cared, Scarlet sucked in a furious breath. “I already commed the police and they’ll be here any minute. If you just tell me where my grandmother is, you can leave, you can even warn your friends if you want. I won’t shoot you and I won’t tell the police about you. Just—just tell me where she is. Please.”
He peered down at her, calm despite the growing rowdiness of the crowd. They’d started chanting something, the words muffled by the blood flowing through Scarlet’s ears. She thought for a second he was crumbling. He was going to tell her, and she would keep her word long enough to find her grandma and get her away from these monsters who had taken her.
Then she would have his head. Once her grandma was safe at home, she would track him down, and whoever else had helped him, and make them pay for what they’d done.
Perhaps he noticed the darkening bitterness on her face, because he reached for her hand and gently pried up her fingers. On gut instinct she dug the gun into his ribs, though she knew she wasn’t going to shoot. Not without answers.
He didn’t seem worried. Maybe he knew it too.
“I believe your father did see a tattoo like mine.” His head dipped toward her. “But it wasn’t me.”
He pulled away. Scarlet dropped her arm, letting the gun hang limp at her side, and watched the chanting crowd part for him. The onlookers were intimidated, but also amused. Most were smiling and jostling one another. Some were moving through the crowds, scanning wrists, collecting bids.
He may have been undefeated, but it seemed clear that most bets had been placed on his opponent.
She squeezed the gun until the textured metal of the handle left an imprint on her palm.
A tattoo like mine …
What had he meant by that?
He’d only been trying to confuse her, she determined as Wolf launched himself over the stage’s ropes, agile as an acrobat. The coincidence was too much.
No matter. She’d given him a chance, but the police would be here soon and take him into custody. She would get her answers, one way or the other.
Shaking with frustration, she tucked the gun back into her waistband. The thrumming in her temples was beginning to mellow and she could make out the crowd’s chanting now.
Hunter. Hunter. Hunter.
Dizzy from the heat and rush of adrenaline, she glanced toward the building’s enormous opening, where she could see overgrown weeds and wheat stalks lit by the moon. She noticed a woman with close-cropped hair glaring at her like a jealous girlfriend. Scarlet returned the look before shifting her attention to the stage. Lingering at the back of the crowd, she pulled up her hood again, drawing her face beneath its shadows.
The crowd surged forward, carrying Scarlet closer to the fight.
Hunter had ripped off his shirt, displaying a mass of raw muscle as he rattled the crowd. The row of teeth embedded on his head glinted as he bowled from one side of the stage to the other.
Wolf was tall, but he looked like a child next to Hunter. Nevertheless, he was all composure in his corner of the platform, radiating arrogance with one foot up on the ropes, practically lounging.
Hunter ignored him, pacing back and forth like a caged animal. Growling. Cursing. Working the crowd into a frenzy.
The one who handed me the poker …
Scarlet’s gut twisted. She needed Wolf. She needed answers. But in that moment, she wouldn’t have minded seeing him ripped to shreds on that stage.
As if sensing her onslaught of rage, Wolf’s gaze flickered toward her. The smug amusement dropped away.
Scarlet hoped it showed on her face just who she was rooting for.
A holograph flickered to life, hanging over the announcer’s head. The words slowly rotated and flickered.
HUNTER [34] VS. WOLF [11]
“Tonight, our reigning, undefeated champion—Hunter!” cried the announcer. The crowd bellowed. “—takes on undefeated newcomer, Wolf!” Mixed boos and cheers. Evidently not everyone had bet against him.
Scarlet was hardly listening, straining hard at the holograph. Wolf [11]. Eleven wins, she suspected. Eleven fights.
Eleven nights?
Her grandmother had been missing for seventeen days and counting. But her father—hadn’t he said they’d only kept him for a week? She frowned, frustrated from the calculations.
Hunter yelled, “We’re having wolf for dinner tonight!”
Hundreds of hands slapped against the edge of the platform like a roll of thunder.
Wolf’s concentration darkened into something thirsty but patient.
The holograph flashed bright red, then evaporated with the sound of a bellowing horn.
The mediator dropped down into the crowd, and the fight began.
Hunter threw the first punch. Scarlet gasped, the movement almost too quick to follow, but Wolf ducked easily and skirted out from Hunter’s shadow.
Hunter was impressively fast for his bulk, but Wolf was faster. A series of blows were deflected, until Hunter’s fist finally connected with a sickening crunch. Scarlet recoiled.
The crowd erupted, pushing and screaming against her. The frenzy was palpable, the crowd salivating for blood.
Moving as if it were all choreographed, Wolf aimed a solid kick to Hunter’s chest. A loud thud shook the ground as Hunter was knocked onto his back. He was only down for a moment, before jumping to his feet. Wolf inched away, waiting. Blood was dribbling from his lips, but he didn’t seem bothered by it. His eyes glowed.
Hunter attacked with renewed vigor. Wolf took a punch in the stomach and crumpled over with a grunt. It was followed by a blow that sent him careening to the edge of the stage. He stumbled to one knee, but was up on his feet before Hunter could come closer.
He shook his head in an oddly doglike manner, wild hair flying, and then crouched with his big hands poised at his sides, staring at Hunter with that peculiar grin.
Scarlet wrapped her fingers around her sweatshirt’s zipper, wondering if that tick was how Wolf had gotten his nickname.
When Hunter came barreling across the stage again, Wolf lunged to his side and aimed a kick square in Hunter’s back. Hunter collapsed to both knees. The crowd booed. A roundhouse kick, this one at Hunter’s ear, sent him sprawling on his side.
Hunter made to get up, but Wolf aimed for his ribs, sending him back onto the stage. The crowd was in a fervor, screeching and calling foul.
Wolf stepped back, allowing Hunter time to pull himself up by the ropes and settle back into his fighting stance. There was a new glint in Wolf’s eye, like he was enjoying this, and when his tongue darted out to lick the blood from his mouth, Scarlet grimaced.
A raging bull, Hunter charged again. Wolf blocked one punch with his forearm but took another in his side. Then his elbow shot out, catching Hunter in the jaw, and Scarlet knew he’d taken the hit intentionally. Hunter stumbled backward. A heel in the chest nearly knocked him off his feet again. Wolf landed a punch to his nose, and a spurt of blood oozed down Hunter’s chin. A knee in Hunter’s side had him crouching over, groaning.
Scarlet flinched with each blow, her stomach roiling. How people could stand to watch this, to enjoy this, baffled her.
Hunter fell to his knees and Wolf was behind him in a breath, his face violently contorted, his hands on each side of Hunter’s head.
… handed me the poker …
And this man—this monster—had her grandmother.
Scarlet clamped both hands over her mouth, smothering the cry, as her ears waited for the snap of Hunter’s neck.
Wolf froze and blinked at her. His eyes flickered, empty and mad one moment, then almost dazed. Surprised to see her there. His pupils widened.
Revulsion burned through Scarlet’s nerves. She wanted to look away, wanted to run, but she was anchored to the ground.
Then Wolf leaped back, letting Hunter slump to the stage under his own weight.
The horn blared again. The crowd was a mixture of cheers and boos, delight and anger. Outright glee at seeing the great Hunter defeated. None of them minded the blind cruelty, or the fact that they’d almost witnessed a murder.
As the mediator climbed up onto the ropes to announce Wolf as the winner, Wolf peeled his focus away from Scarlet, shoved past the man, and hauled himself over the ropes. The crowd surged away from him, shoving Scarlet backward. She barely kept her balance as she was nearly crushed from the shuffling crowd.
Wolf sprang up, using his hands and feet to propel him forward. Sprinting full speed, he disappeared through the yawning exit and dashed off into the silvery weeds.
Red and blue flashed in the distance.
The crowd swarmed, buzzing with confusion and curiosity. The muttered consensus seemed to be that Wolf was a new hero, but a savage one.
It wasn’t long before someone else noticed the lights and panic swept through them, people at first spouting defiant words against the police, before rushing for the door and scattering across the abandoned farm.
Scarlet was shaking as she pulled her hood up and fled with them. Not everyone was running—someone behind her was trying to call order. There was a gunshot and mad laughter. Up ahead, the girl with the zebra hair was standing on a storage crate, pointing and laughing at the cowards who would flee from the police.
Scarlet escaped into the midnight air and the noise faded without the warehouse’s echo around her. She could hear the sirens now, mixing with the thrum of crickets. On the dirt road outside the building, she spun in a full circle as the crowd jostled around her.