Page 85 of Hot Irish Halloween

They went to their corners. Jack smiled with satisfaction to see La Roque had broken a sweat. Good. Jack was going to make the arsehole work for it, unlike all the others who’d fallen after the first minute.

“How’m I doing?” he asked Charlie once his mouthguard was out. His breath was already fast and heavy. Five minutes anywhere else in the world was five years in the cage.

“You’re doing good, lad. This is a walk in the park, Jackie. A walk in the park. But you need to end this before you get tired like we talked about, yeah?” Charlie squirted water in his mouth while one of the corner team swabbed his cuts. “You’re not twenty anymore.”

“Thanks for the reminder,” Jack said, panting.

Charlie shoved the mouthguard back in with a scowl as if to shut him up. The next round began. Jack got up and walked to the middle of the octagon.

He got his second wind. He felt good. In fact, he felt like a fucking Titan.

La Roque’s eyes narrowed into a cruel line, and he grinned. Jack wiped that smile off his face with a sidekick that went right at La Roque’s body. Maybe hurt his liver. He stumbled back, face dazed with pain.

He didn’t go down. Instead, he came back at Jack, seemingly in slow motion. His shoulder twitched, but Jack couldn’t move out the way fast enough. La Roque’s left glove sailed and crashed into his jaw, followed up by a sledgehammer of a hook into Jack’s right side.

Down. Jack came to on the mat as the crowd roared, a sound of mixed shock, wild glee, and outrage. Stars were twirling in a loop around his head, like that goddamned cat in the old cartoons when the mouse takes a mallet to his skull.

What brought him out of it were the series of heavy thudding kicks to his already-bruised ribs. He spit the sudden flow of liquid from his mouth. It was crimson.

Internal bleeding. Fucking grand.

So this was it. His first loss. Damaged again, maybe beyond repair.

Should’ve trained harder. Or maybe not come here at all.

Rest was calling him while the screams around him echoed in his head. But his glance happened to fall on the right side of the cage when La Roque dropped on top of him. Trapped him with his thighs and began pounding on his head and his face.

Penny. Staring at him with frozen eyes, her hand on her heaving chest.

James was pulling on her arm, speaking sternly, but she wasn’t listening. She wouldn’t fuckinggo.

“Get her out of here!” Jack tried to say, but he couldn’t.

The lights above La Roque’s head were so bright — that damned chandelier.

He thought suddenly of the same chandelier casting a prism of rainbows on Penny as she ran away. Stirring him. Getting his blood up for the chase. Predator hunting prey.

She couldn’t get away from him then.

And he wasn’t leaving her now.

Not now.

Not ever.

He remembered the plan. Summoned all his strength and pulled his arm out to snake it around La Roque’s neck, pulling him all the way in. The surprise move stopped the punching long enough for Jack to tighten his grip and roll them over. He suffocated the other man with his full body weight and fed him a few heavy elbows to the face, leaving La Roque just stunned enough.

Jack’s head was already spacey and fucked up. Might as well top things off with a full head butt. He smashed his forehead into his opponent’s nose. Reveled in the wet, crunching noise and the geyser of blood.

Vaguely, he heard the wild uproar surrounding the cage.

La Roque could still recover. No chance, motherfucker.

The tough guy, the big mouth who’d talked so much shit, tried to roll over and crawl away, but Jack caught him and slipped his arm around his neck. Created a lock with his other arm. Pulled La Roque’s back against his chest, securing his body with locked legs. And then he pulled that arm against La Roque’s throat and squeezed.

Bleedin’ bastard wouldn’t tap out. So Jack squeezed.

And squeezed.

---