Page 16 of Reaper
You’re disgusting.
And you’re jealous.If there’s one thing men can do that women can’t do equally well, peeing outside is it.I got the mental equivalent of a poop emoji, then a middle finger emoji.Sometimes communicating with Becks was like texting a millennial.Then I realized Flynnwasa millennial, and I felt even older than normal.
Contemplating my age and making sure I kept my Doc Martens clean were the only excuses I had for not hearing the guy come up behind me, and I guess I’d pretended to be drunk for so long that my senses were a little dulled, so I didn’t know anyone was there until pain exploded over my right ear.I staggered forward, tap-dancing over the puddle of piss, and whirled around, right hand raised in a fist and left hand clutching my Johnson.
And spun right into a massive fist that caught me square on the tip of my nose, blurring my vision and making it hard to breathe for a few seconds.And a few seconds was all my giant attacker needed.He was on me like a blanket, pressing a thick forearm across my throat and hammering my ribs with short, sharp punches.I managed to shove him back a step and raised a knee to his groin, but he turned sideways and all I caught was a thigh.
I didn’t call magic because the whole point of the exercise was to get captured, but I didn’t want to make it too easy on them.I needed to look like a victim, not a willing participant.But I also was pretty pissed off.I mean, who jumps a guy while he’s taking a leak?Is there no fucking honor among criminals anymore?I tucked everything away and blocked an incoming punch, then let the next one through, which was a bit of a mistake.
This guy was big, strong, and definitely not human.I couldn’t afford to use my Sight to see exactly what he was, but he hit like a Mack truck.His punch rattled my brain, and I dropped my guard unintentionally.That left me open to a quick left, then a massive right, and as my vision shrank down to a small black dot, all I could think was “I really hope I don’t fall in the puddle I just made.”
12
Well, I didn’t wake up soaked in my own piss, so I guess that’s a win.More coherent than a lot of my first thoughts upon waking after being knocked out, which usually consist of some variation on “where the fuck am I and what the fuck hit me?”I still didn’t have any idea the answer to those questions, but since the last thought before falling unconscious had been worry about falling into my own urine, it made sense that I woke up thinking about pee.
And having to pee.Lots of piss on the brain, apparently.I opened my eyes to take stock of my surroundings and found myself in a small cell.Not the first time, and not the worst cell I’d ever been locked up in.That distinction goes to a bamboo cage in the jungles of Cambodia.Long story, and not a pretty one.But we can sum up a lot of it with the maxim “don’t lock the guy with superhuman strength up in a cell made of wood.”
I wasn’t locked in a wooden cell this time.No, it was more like a typical room in a stereotypical dungeon, which would make this a first for me.I’ve been locked in a lot of jails, and more than one have been underground, but I’ve never been trapped in an actual dungeon before, with stone walls, steel doors, and maybe a torture chamber somewhere nearby.I didn’t hear screaming, so torture chamber seemed unlikely.But we definitely checked the “stone walls” and “steel door” boxes.There was a hole in the floor from which a truly rancid stench floated up, coating the whole room with a miasma that would have made Vincent Price and his funk of a thousand years run screaming for the hills.I straddled the hole and received myself, sighing with the relief of a man who was interrupted while taking a piss, then knocked unconscious.
Yes, I know how that feels from more than one unfortunate experience.I’ve angered a lot of people in my life, and a fair number of them have taken it upon themselves to seek their retribution whilst I was taking a leak.Once I zipped up, I took a quick inventory.I still had my clothes, but my phone, knife, and both guns were gone.My wallet was likewise missing, but since I didn’t carry any real identification, I figured there was a slight chance I hadn’t been recognized by my captors.
Scratch that.I was fairly certain I hadn’t been recognized, because if anyone realized the captured one of the most violent wizards on the Eastern seaboard and they had me unconscious in their dungeon, they probably would have killed me in my sleep.So the fact that I woke up and wasn’t running around like a whiny-assed ghost trying to figure out who killed me was a strong indicator that I was still alive.That and the whole pissing thing.Pretty sure ghosts don’t need to pee.I still had my boots, but the small knife I kept hidden in the sole of my right one was gone, as was the lock pick set I had built into my belt buckle.Whoever searched me did a bang-up job at it.
Next, I reached out to Becks through our mental link, but got nothing.I could sense her, but I couldn’t contact her.We’d been through this before when we were separated by great distances, or when there was something blocking our connection but not strong enough to actually sever it.I reached out to call power from the earth around me and found myself cut off from magic, too.I only had the power I usually stored within me and the juice stored in my magical tattoos.I thanked Past Quincy for getting them redone the last time I was in Atlanta.
My tattoo artist, James, was a faerie mage who poured magic into the ultraviolet inks when he tattooed me, turning them into mystical batteries and rendering them mostly invisible under normal circumstances.It took about twice as long as regular tattooing, and hurt about three times as much, so I had gotten pretty lax about having them redone when I drained them.But after needing every ounce of magic I could lay my hands on for a big fight in D.C.last year, and then going to Hell again when I was supposed to be on vacation in the Outer Banks, Becks had insisted I keep the tank topped off.I was glad I listened to her for once.I had a sneaking suspicion that I’d need every fireball I could summon up to get out of this place.
With no phone, no books, and no furniture other than a thin pallet with an even thinner blanket, I sat on the “bed” with my back to the wall and waited for someone to come monologue at me, threaten me, or try to murder me.I’d wanted to infiltrate this fight club, and it seemed like the fight club approved my infiltration.Now I had to figure out how to exfiltrate myself without any backup.Best laid plans and all that.
I might have drifted off because when I heard a key scrape in the lock, I jerked my attention to the door.The drool on my chin was another hint that I might have been snoozing.The door opened and a guy in his late teens or early twenties came in carrying a styrofoam takeout container and a bottle of water.
He put the food on the floor by the door and looked over at me.“Are you okay?”he asked.“Any blurry vision, headaches, or ill effects from the drugs or the knock on the head?”
“Are you my doctor, or my waiter?And I specifically ordered the escargot,” I quipped.
He chuckled.“I’m Pete.The guards told me to ask you that stuff.And you got sesame chicken.Everybody got sesame chicken.With fried rice and an egg roll.”
“I don’t like egg rolls,” I said.
“I’m pretty sure the Boss doesn’t care,” Pete replied, but he chuckled again.“There’s a plastic fork in there.If you try to hurt me with it, they won’t give you utensils anymore.If you try to do anything with the food or water other than eat and drink it, they’ll just starve you.So please behave.I don’t like scrubbing brains off the floor.”The matter of fact way he said it was pretty chilling.Like he’d had to scrub brains off the floor enough times to have an opinion about it.
“I’ll behave,” I said.“Where am I?”
“The Colosseum,” Pete replied.“You’re a gladiator now.After you eat, you’ll have your first fight.You win, you get to keep fighting.You win enough fights, you get to go free.”
“And if I lose?”
Pete just looked at me, and his eyes were sad.“Try not to lose.”Then he turned and left, locking the door behind him.
Well, mission accomplished.I was in the shit now.
* * *
I don’t know if it was an hour later or a day later, but I hadn’t needed to pee in a hole in the floor again, so probably closer to an hour.The door opened and Pete came back in and held out his hand.“I’ll take your trash now.If you need to relieve yourself, please go ahead and take care of business.I’ll be back in a few minutes to take you out for the show tonight.If you need weapons, we can stop by the armory.”
“I suppose a fifty-cal is off the table?”I asked, getting to my feet and handing him the empty takeout container.I downed the rest of the water and gave him the bottle.I’d kept a couple tines off the fork, thinking I might be able to fashion some kind of lockpick out of them, but I’m neither a MacGyver nor a Houdini, so I didn’t hold out much hope for that.
“Yeah, we’re going melee for this fight, so knives, swords, or blunt weapons only.If you progress, you might get to use a pistol, but I’ve never seen the Boss actuallygiveanybody a gun.He tells all of you that it’s possible, and I wouldn’t call him a liar, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.”
