Page 31 of Of Angels & Absolution

They don’t know how merciless I can be.

Just like the crowd doesn’t know that as much as they love me, I love them more. As much as they want to see me fight, I need them to. They don’t know they’re feeding me, that I live on the attention they provide. No one here would believe it if I told them who I was in real life, just like no one from Thorncrown would believe it if they could see me now.

That’s why I wear a costume when I become Merciless.

That way, I can become someone else entirely. I don’t have to hold back. I don’t have to lie and pretend, simper and beg. Here, I am powerful. Here, I am adored. I am someone with iron fists and mixed martial arts skills. Someone who can goad a girl until she’s nearly sobbing with fury, one eye swollen shut, blood pouring from her nose and mouth and down her chest, soaking her sports bra and slicking her bruised abdomen. I don’t put her out of her misery. I never KO before surrender.

A KO is a cheap win, a hollow victory. What good is beating someone if you never hear them admit defeat?

At last, she sags against the dirt wall, the cockiness gone along with another tooth, and motions she’s done. A chorus of boos erupts from the crowd, so loud the place shakes. My cheeks hurt from smiling so hard and long, but I don’t stop myself. No one can see me now, behind the mask. And I can’t walk around grinning like a clown later. I have to look normal when it’s over.

I stalk forward, and the crowd surges. I can feel their energy, their ecstasy, their sadism, lifting me on a cresting wave as they begin to chant.

“No mercy! No mercy! No mercy!”

“Yes, Mercy,” I whisper into the spandex mask.

Then I swing. I hit my opponent’s jaw, and she crumples, falling face down in the dirt, motionless.

I turn and hold up a fist, then bow dramatically in each direction, the crowd roaring their approval at deafening volumes.

Dynamo jumps down into the ring, grabs my hand, and holds it up again.

“You don’t have to knock people out after they’ve already tapped out,” he reminds me over the cheers.

“I have a reputation to uphold,” I call back. “How could I be Merciless if I spared them?”

Dynamo is the only person in the fight scene who knows my name, if only my first name. He knows if I showed mercy, I wouldn’t be upholding the title he gave me.

“I hope I never run into you on the street,” he says. “You’d probably mop the floor with me with one hand behind your back.”

“I could,” I say. “I probably wouldn’t, though.”

I think of the three men who have made my life hell since I started school. I imagine one of them on the floor in the dirt instead of that random fighter I knocked out. How sweet it would feel, a much sweeter victory than this.

But I won’t blow my cover.

So, I wait in the dressing room until everyone is gone, and then I change back into my jeans and t-shirt. I take the money Dynamo hands me, and I tell him about Dr. Jekyll, and we go over the case files until I’m satisfied. When it’s nearly dawn, I walk out. Dynamo drives me to a gas station, where I toss the mask and hat and pull on the long skirt and cardigan over my clothes. And then I go back, like a lamb to the slaughter. I crawl into bed in my dorm, lie down like a good sheep waiting to be devoured by wolves.

I am not a sheep, though. I’m not the little lamb they think I am. I’m not the prey they desire, ready to be torn limb from limb because I’m so meek and mild that I don’t even bleat to draw the attention of the shepherd who could chase away the wolves.

I am not even a wolf in sheep’s clothing, though the predators may think so if they could have seen me tonight, if they’d realized that all along, I could have ripped out their throats.

But I didn’t. I waited. Because I am neither sheep nor wolf.

I am the hunter.

ten

The Saint

My feet pound the gravel, and I clench my fist around my phone, glancing at the screen for the hundredth time since I woke up. As usual, I picked up the phone to watch Mercy, the way I always do when I can’t sleep. Seeing her lost to the world, with her lumpy, handmade crochet blanket pulled up to her chin and the raggedy teddy bear I gave her tucked into her arms, soothes me as much now as it did when we were growing up. Then, I could slip into her bed, wrap my arms around her, cuddle her into the safety of my embrace.

Now, I can only watch.

I get a sick satisfaction from the fact that she’s as helpless to bridge the divide between us as I am. Not only that, but I can see what she’s doing any time I want. She has no idea what I do when she’s not around—especially that I watch her. Lost in slumber, she’s oblivious to the cameras we have above her bed, the ones through which we can see her sleep, do homework, play with her contraband kitten. The one through which we watched her in bed with Angel, watched him force orgasm after orgasm from her reluctant body.

He knows, of course. He made sure we had the best view possible. Not of her pussy dripping with his spit and her cum when he fucked it with his tongue and his fingers, but of her chest heaving with sobs, her face twisted with helpless fury and bliss as she succumbed to the pleasure, tearstained and devastated. The thought makes my cock stiffen even as I slow and let myself back into the dorm.

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