Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series) (59 page)

“I have him within my power but only to a degree. There is only so much I can do, Yasha,” Gregor said. “But I have brought him to a place where he agrees to settle this honorably.”

Jamie looked up at the big man and wondered how he thought honor could be found in this situation.

“It is not as though I was the first man she took to her bed that was not her husband,” Jamie said, feeling a deep longing for his own uncomfortable cold bed, for the privacy it afforded if nothing else.

“No, but you are the first, I think, that she loved. And so it matters to him.”

He was suddenly unspeakably weary. “What does he want, then? Whatever it is, I will do it.”

Chapter Forty-four
Ring of Fire

The ring was simply a space inside a circle of snow-heavy
pines that had been raked. A fire had been lit to one side, for the warmth of the spectators, he assumed, and it lent a falsely celebratory glow to the night. The ground was damp, for the snow had been cleared away. At least his feet would have purchase. How much that might matter when the intent of the evening was to kill him was up for debate, but he was glad of it nevertheless. The only thing he had on his side was his background as a boxer and the fact that no one in this country knew it other than Andrei.

They were out beyond the borders of the camp, deep enough into the forest that no shouts for help would be heard, no pleas for mercy granted. Guards, picked for their un-seeing eyes, kept guns trained upon all present.

When his opponent stepped into the ring of fire. Jamie knew a moment of free-falling terror. He should have known Isay would not play fair, that he, cowardly to the bitter end, would send someone else to do the dirty work for him. This man he now faced was more bear than human, big and thick, arms like great slabs of beef and solid with muscle. Jamie took a deep breath and hoped for a quick death. It was about the most optimistic thing he could think of at first glance.

Gregor, ever the master of the succinct summary, uttered the Russian equivalent of “Fuck my mother, that bastard is huge.”

“I noticed,” Jamie said dryly.

He danced at the edge of the light, assessing the man, knowing that even the largest and strongest will have a weak spot—throat, kidney, a soft patch in the belly, or a weak knee. But there was no way to know this man, so he would have to find it out the hard way. His own advantages were what they always had been: quick thinking, lightning agility and always staying one step ahead. Unfortunately, he was going to have to get in close enough to take a couple of hits in order to get a better idea of the man’s reach and speed. He took a deep breath. It was best to get it over with.

The first hit took him in the midsection and made the world go entirely black for a second. The second one glanced off the side of his head and he thought he heard angels singing. He managed to jab in a swift uppercut to the man’s jaw and then danced back from him. The big man was slow, not agile, and he was going to wind quickly—though maybe not quickly enough—and he could hit like a piledriver. Jamie could play for time but not for long, for he couldn’t risk exhausting himself, because once this man had him, he was toast.

He was careful to avoid the fire, skirting its edge, but skirting it fine, as it was a weapon he could use to his advantage. He had to take a hard-knuckled blow to his left eye to manage it, but he got his opponent to step into the hot coals, his great weight sinking him in to his ankle. He roared with pain and stumbled out, scattering bright coals in his wake, his boot smoking and sizzling on the slushy ground.

Jamie took a second to catch his wind and wiped a hand across his face, for despite the cold the sweat was dripping from his hairline. Somewhere in the night, Isay’s dark eyes watched him. He could feel them.

Though he was left-handed, Jamie could lead with either, which had always given him a distinct advantage over other fighters—they never knew which direction the hit would be coming from. His trainer had once said he had never seen a fighter with a faster strike and it was what he used now, tapping the man hard around his head, in the soft part under the ribs. They danced for a long time, Jamie light but tired, for the drugs still lingered in his blood; the other man heavy and ponderous but coming on like a slow-moving train. Spinning, dodging, weaving, the faces beyond the fire a blur, though he could feel the strange lust that bloodsport brought surging up in the male animal. The night was thick with it.

The bear-man had a longer reach even if he was slow. The power behind the blow was stunning, though it glanced off the side of Jamie’s head, for he had managed to half step out of range at the last second. But the man got in under his defenses as Jamie reeled back. He was grabbed in a hard hug, it was like being mauled by a bear, for the air left his lungs in a rush and his ribs creaked under the pressure. He was lifted off the ground, his opponent grunting, slippery with sweat and the raw stink of brutality. The world was dancing with tiny black sprites against the background of crimson flame and inky sky. He dug his thumb hard into the brute’s eye, the only leverage available to him. He was dropped like a hot coal, smacked away like a bothersome fly. Jamie fell backward into the filthy snow, allowing the fall to take him all the way over and regaining his feet in one fluid move, even though it hurt like holy hell.

His left ear was ringing and his eye was starting to swell shut. If the bastard got a hold on him again like he had a moment ago, it was over. He had to think of something quickly or accept death here and now. It would not be without honor, nor freedom—it would be a better death than he had come to expect here in the Soviet Empire. He could choose it. It could be on his terms.

The fire leaped higher, the sparks touching his hair and skin, the small sting of pain clearing his mind. Gregor came into his field of view. He could only spare him a split second but saw him look pointedly toward the northern edge of the circle where the pines, thick with snow, hid a drop-off. He understood Gregor’s message, but thought it was next door to suicidal to attempt it. Then again, there was little doubt this man had been ordered to beat him to death, so inflicting some damage on him in the process seemed fairly attractive.

Jamie angled himself around, putting his back to the drop-off. He knew it was there, but he had no idea how steep it was, nor how far the fall. He danced back to the edge, feeling it yawn behind him. He needed to bring the man to him, and bring him fast. He still had one hand clapped to his eye and blood was trickling out from beneath his palm, but the other eye was locked on Jamie with dull hatred, thick with the promise of death.

“
Yeb vas
,” he said as they closed together and Jamie made an incredibly indelicate comment on the state of the man’s mother’s morals, in the most gutteresque Russian he could manage. He heard Gregor’s shout of laughter, just as the ground began to give way. He was hit with the force of an ox, all muscle and brute blind fury. They hung there for a desperate instant, suspended over the void and then fell through the scrim of pines, tree branches whipping at them, ice cascading, snow falling with them, gathering branch by branch into a cataract that enveloped them within its cold, plunging embrace.

They hit the ground as one, a twisting, writhing mass of furious muscle and pumping blood, adrenaline rendering them impervious to the cold, stone, and ice that shrouded them. The fiend had his hands on Jamie’s throat, and a red tide began to rise behind his eyes. He brought his knee up hard, using the one advantage he had against such a large brute—his agility. The man grunted and cursed, falling to the side with a thud. Jamie gasped for air, lungs burning, throat nearly closed. He knew he had to get up, get away, but oxygen was the first priority. The world was red from horizon to horizon, and he could hear himself wheezing, desperately trying to pull air into his starved cells.

Suddenly he sensed someone else near, there was a hot sliding burn in his hip and a spreading warmth that blazed across his skin. Blood spilling from a knife wound, pouring from his own body. He could feel the hot seep of it into the snow and the numbness that spread out across his nerve endings. He felt he should sit up, but could not find leverage in the snow. This was more frightening than anything else, for he could already feel the strange drift that blood loss caused in a man.

Then the snow and stone were alive with movement and he knew Gregor had jumped down to even the odds. He heard the thunk of stone hitting a skull and knew the mauling brute next to him posed no more threat.

He noted that the moon was especially bright and large and found this pleasing, as one ought to have something lovely to look at in one’s final moments. Then the moon, with Gregor’s face in the middle of it, drew down to a tiny spot in a great sea of blackness and disappeared. It was all, he thought, a little anti-climatic.

He came to face down on a gurney
with a view of the ugly green linoleum that floored the infirmary. He did not remember the journey back to the camp, but had an uncomfortable feeling that Gregor might have carried him there. Sensation was still hazy. He was aware that he had been stripped of what little clothing remained to him and that his backside was now being viewed with varying degrees of concern by Shura, Vanya and Gregor. Despite blood loss and several blows to the head, he felt rather twitchy under such an examination.

“Another inch or two lower…” Gregor said.

Shura’s long drawn out “aieeee” did not require translation. It was universally male in its consternation. He patted Jamie’s shoulder companionably and said, “Is not too deep,” and bustled off to the counter where the sterile instruments were laid out. Gregor proceeded to pour liquid fire into the wound while Jamie suddenly wished he had a propensity to swoon.

“Christ,” he hissed between gritted teeth, “hold back on the vodka a little, would you?”

Gregor merely laughed and poured the last of the bottle into a glass. “Drink this. You’re going to need it, Shura says we’re out of anesthetic and he thinks you need at least twenty stitches. The wound is clean now.”

“You don’t need to sound quite so gleeful about it,” Jamie said, sweat breaking out on his forehead at the thought of twenty stitches without any sort of numbing.

“I will hold your hand, if you need me to, Yasha,” Gregor said and there was no mistaking the scorn in his voice.

Vanya took his hand, without saying a word and Jamie squeezed the boy’s fingers in gratitude.

The ludicrousness of the situation could not fail to impress itself upon him. That he was currently naked with a dwarf on a stool looming over him with a large needle, a male prostitute holding his hand and that Gregor had his own big hand on Jamie’s bare rear end—suffice it to say that it wasn’t likely that the joke of it was being missed by Gregor either. Suddenly the humor of it was more than he could contain and a snort of laughter slipped from him, causing Shura to pause for a second, halfway through pulling a stitch. Jamie sucked in his breath at the sensation before another laugh slipped out, and then Gregor and Vanya started to laugh. Shura said something admonitory about ruining all his careful work, then he too chuckled. By then Jamie, Vanya and Gregor were laughing so hard that they wouldn’t have noticed if Shura had done a tap dance on the gurney.

At this less-than-fortuitous moment, Violet entered the infirmary.

“Oh, God,” Jamie clutched the edges of the gurney and attempted to pull himself together, but it was hopeless because he could see the tableau laid out in front of her in his mind’s eye. Apparently so could Gregor, Vanya and Shura, for they too clutched at the shreds of their sobriety and failed miserably. Shura was still on the stool, the needle in hand but totally unable to attempt another stitch. Gregor had his head on his knees trying to catch a breath between bouts of laughter, Vanya had his on the edge of the gurney, and he himself, mother naked, head swimming with vodka and pain, was equally unable to exert any control.

“Men,” Violet said, crossing the room like a small battle ship under full sail, and taking needle and thread from Shura’s shaking hand.

The stitching was finished three-quarters of an hour later and Jamie was stone cold sober by the time it was done. Violet washed down the suturing with icy cold vodka, all the while delivering a low-voiced diatribe on the stupidity of men. The vodka he had taken internally had worn off. Both Shura and Gregor had been ordered about so that he was covered with a hot blanket and given another tot of vodka. He took it gratefully, for his body had finally formed an understanding of what had happened to it and was shaking with cold and shock.

Gregor brought the low doctor’s stool to the head of the gurney and sat on it facing Jamie. His dark eyes were sober now, his voice no longer teasing nor prodding.

“You want that I should finish this?”

“No,” Jamie said, “this is my fight.”

“Yasha,” Violet said sternly, “he will not stop until he kills you.”

“I know,” Jamie said, and succumbed to unconsciousness.

Chapter Forty-five
March 1974
Tyger, Tyger…