Page 40 of Steel Rain

So, I got up and put my fists in front of my face. I stared at Kieran, and he stared back at me.

He glanced at Eoghan, then back at me. His eyebrows were furrowed. He looked absolutely miserable.

How hard would I have to let him beat me? How badly did I need to hurt him? What would Eoghan, the maniac, accept? A tap out? Did I have to draw his blood? I really didn’t want to.

“If you don’t fight her, O’Malley, she’ll fail and she’ll have to do this again,” Eoghan said with a threatening step forward.

Kieran let out a long breath through his nose, then he went for it. He tried a jab-cross combo that I easily dodged. He did it again, and threw in a kick, but the same thing happened. A block, a twist, and they landed harmlessly on my side.

He wasn’t the only one that was hesitating. I was too.

Once you start killing and bludgeoning, it becomes very,verydifficult to stop. Violence builds in the body like the momentum of a wave as it crashes onto the shore, growing stronger and stronger. And Kieran was the last person I ever wanted to be hit with my tsunami.

“Look out!” Kieran suddenly shouted, and I looked over my shoulder, just in time to glimpse Keith’s familiar, roughened knuckles come towards my neck. It landed at the base of my spine, and I almost fell to my knees as the pain overtook my eyes.

But I didn’t need another opening. I went after him. I lunged like a fucking football player. No technique. Just feral anger as I lay my shoulder into his hips and he fell backwards. We didn’t even hit the ground before I stuck a knee into the sensitive, inner thigh near his groin. Then punched at the inner part of his triceps. As he fell to the ground and bounced on the mat, I dropped an elbow right into his eye socket.

I landed a hit to his delicate joints, the blade of my shins cracking into his kneecap, my fist landing on his throat. I backhanded his face, not because it’s effective, but because I really, really,reallywanted to.

Rage. I was filled with it. And for once, I could throw it, physically, on the man who had earned my hatred. The man who had taken everything away from me. My family. My life. My childhood. My dreams. I screamed and punched, and I didn’t want to stop until I had pounded his flesh raw. I wanted to see bone, and brain, and blood. I wanted to paint the fucking ground with it. I wanted him dead.

“Christ!” LeBlanc’s voice barely registered in my head. Not past the shouts and the manic screams.

The screams might have been mine. I think. Or maybe the audience was looking on in complete horror at the carnage I was capable of. Carnage I didn’t know I could inflict.

I froze when arms wrapped around me. Familiar ones. Strong ones.

I looked down and watched as his dark hands clasped below my ribs, pulling me upward to a standing position. Then past that. My feet came off the ground as he dragged me away from the bloodied face of an angry Keith who propped up on his arm with a menacing scowl, and a hand coming to his bruised eye.

“Flanagan,” LeBlanc said into my ear. Soothing. Like he was calling the name of a kitten that was stuck up a tree and refusing to come down. In contrast, he screamed at the class, “Clear out!”

Bodies moved towards the exit. Feet on the mat. Then on the floor. Then bags zipping and unzipping as they walked out of the room, the door opening.

I struggled and flailed like a kid throwing a tantrum. I wanted to kill Keith. I wanted to taste his fucking blood! I needed him to suffer. I needed him to break the way he had broken me.

When the metal door clanked shut on the cinderblock wall, I was still in his arms.

He lowered me to the ground, taking a seat and pulling me onto his lap. The whole time, the circle of his arms never let up. They didn’t tighten either. They were warm, and steady. And in that consistency, there was a purposeful consideration that kept me from fighting him. Not until his arms moved. They adjusted so that his arm was around my shoulders, and he was turning me on his lap.

“Flanagan,” he said my name with that strange, breathy whisper again. I wasn’t a skittish horse that he needed to walk past a flapping tent. I wasn’t some kitten in a tree. So why was he talking to me that way? “Sinead.”

His use of my first name made me pause. Not Shiny, not Sin, not Flanagan …

“Sinead,” he said again.

But I refused to be silenced. I refused to becalmed down.He was one of them. They wereallthe same! They were all going to hurt me in the end.

I reared my head back, and in one quick motion, brought it down onto his nose. He yelled out in pain, as I felt the crack of his nose against my forehead. He dropped me, and I fell to the ground, assumed a fighting stance, and was ready to go again.

“You’re trying to fightmenow, Snow White?” he said with a laugh. “Fine, sweetheart, if that’s what you need.”

“I’m not your sweetheart!” I yelled, lunging for his middle, my head ducked low, shoulders up.

I ran into his abdomen, and he clinched down, his arms tucking under my armpits to bring me back to his level. He wouldn’t let me get leverage on him. I didn’t care. I wasn’t in this to win a fight. I was in this to fight, period. I needed to hit something.

I had to break something. I needed to fight. To kick. To kill.

Chapter 19

---