Three Hot Wishes (Fantasy Come to Life - Magic in the Real World Novel) (25 page)

Angel

One of these days, I told myself for the hundredth time tonight, I'm going to make the big time. I'll have a dressing room, and a manager that doesn't cozy up to the mob, and enough street cred to fight somewhere big. Vegas maybe, or Atlantic City.

I looked around at the corner of the parking garage they'd told me was 'mine' for the night. A shitty folding table held most of my gear, and my boxing gloves hung from the back of a chair so old I didn't dare sit in it. There was a bucket for piss and spit, if I needed it, and a towel.

That was it.

I could hear the grumble of the assembled crowd behind me. They were ready for a show, and that was exactly what they were going to get.

"You ready?" Jessie asked, sucking in air. The spot that were fighting was well lit, but all of the rest of this place was shadows and stripes of light. My manager was a fat, sorry sack of humanity, but he'd been picking fights well enough for the last year or so, so I kept him.

Besides, there wasn't a whole lot of choice when it came right down to it. Most people wouldn't touch the stuff going down tonight with a ten foot pole.

"I am," I told him.

"Good," he said, his shifty eyes sliding this way and that. "Because, I've got some news. Just remember though, before I tell ya, that you're good. Damn good. Hell, I think you could take a run at the title right now, if we didn't have to wade through all these shitty little contenders first."

"What is it?" I asked, ignoring his praise. Part of his job was to blow smoke up my ass, and most of my job was to ignore it.

He held up his hands, shaking his head back and forth. "Now, it don't matter, but the Carello family called a couple of minutes ago. Vinnie broke his hand or something, they said, so they're substituting another of their own for tonight's fight."

"Broke his hand, huh?" I growled. The Carellos had a reputation for dirty schemes and even dirtier tactics. This fit right in with everything I knew about them. "So who's the new guy?"

Jessie shrugged, and I could tell he was trying to underplay the fighter I was going to face in a couple of minutes, though whether that was for my benefit or that of my manager I couldn't really say. "Niko Krusev."

"Nitro?" I grabbed my gloves and put them on, holding my hands out for Jessie to lash tape around my wrists to hold them tight. "Are you telling me that they've got Niko the Nitro Krusev on their payroll now, and that he's coming here?"

"No," Jessie said. "He's already here... Been here for ten minutes or so."

There were a lot of things I wanted to do, but only one that made any sense. Raging about the change or trying to pussy out of the fight wasn't going to help matters, and it would only hurt my reputation. In my position, you shut your mouth and fought whoever they put in front of you, which left me with only one question. "What are the odds?"

It looked like the last thing Jessie wanted me to ask. He finished taping me up and mopped the sweat from his shiny forehead with the back of one hand. "Odds don't matter, Angel. We both know that."

"Tell me the odds, asshole."

Jessie shrugged. "You were two to one against Vinnie, which was fine. Was always going to be an uphill fight, but we'd watched the film. You'd have won. He'd have tired himself out and you'd have weathered the storm."

"And what are they now?"

"You gotta understand," Jessie said, his voice undercut with just a hint of whine, "that the bookies had this change dumped on them at the last second just like you and I did. They aren't exactly sure what to make of it, so they're-"

"What are the fucking odds, Jessie?"

"Six to one against you. The smart money is for a knock out in the third."

Right. Which meant that Krusev had come back from wherever he'd been the last few months looking bigger and meaner than ever. "Is Sloane here?"

"What? Angel, man, you listening to yourself? You gotta focus. Who cares if some bitch showed or not? You have to pay attention to the fight that's five minutes away, not the pussy that may or may not want your attention."

I brought my gloved hand down on his shoulder hard enough to make him sputter. "That's enough of that shit out of you. Now tell me if my girl's here."

He nodded slowly, rubbing his shoulder like a scolded child. "Yeah. Jai said she got here about ten minutes ago. She wouldn't let him show where you'd set seats up for her, though. Some shit about her being 'her on her own', whatever that means."

I opened my mouth to tell her to find him, to make sure she was okay and maybe, just maybe to get her out of her if things went bad for me. But the guy running the fight shouted my name, and the crowd went from a rumble to a roar, drowning me out.

Time to earn my money.

Sloane

I expected them to ring a bell or something to start the fight, but all the guy that seemed to be in charge of the festivities did was shout "Go!" at the top of his lungs.

Then again, I'd expected there to be a boxing ring.

And a referee...

Angel and the big blonde fighter everyone had been calling 'Nitro" charged at each other like wild animals released from their cages, crashing together in the center of the concrete and smashing at each other with their gloved fists.

If all of the rest of the evening didn't clue me in, I knew right then and there that I was in for a spectacle I'd only ever be able to think of as gruesome.

Nitro was taller than Angel, and his reach was longer too. Both men seemed happy to trade punches, but it didn't take more than thirty seconds to see that Angel's style hadn't changed much from the videos I'd watched last night. He planted his feet and took the punishment, sending screaming right hooks and devastating uppercuts in whenever there was an opening.

His punches were landing, but so were the other guys. By the time the sound of an air horn ripped through the parking garage to signal the end of the first round, Angel's face was already sporting a cut above his left eye, and his other eye was starting to swell. I doubted it would be much longer before it started to get in the way of his vision, and when that happened I didn't like his chance.

Nitro's nose, already crooked to begin with, was clearly broken again. Blood streamed freely from both of his nostril as a guy on his team crammed what looked like Vaseline up there to stop the bleeding. Angel had a guy working on his cut too, along with a fat, sweaty grease ball of a man who hovered around him, offering advice.

I pushed through the crowd to get closer to Angel. I didn't want him to see me, afraid that I'd throw him off his game. Still, I wanted to hear what this guy was telling him.

When I did, I ground my teeth in frustration.

"Another couple of rounds just like that and you've got him, Angel," the fat guy was saying. "Listen to this crowd. They love it! What a spectacle. Knock out the Russian and you're on your way to the big time for sure!"

Right. Another round or two of the same sort of fighting may well be entertaining to the bloodthirsty people in attendance, but it was definitely not the way he should be fighting.

"Did she show up?" I heard Angel mutter.

Angel was sitting down on a stool, which made it easy for the fat guy to look right over his shoulder and lock eyes with me. "Yeah, she's here somewhere. I heard her say something about how much of a man you are for taking a beating like that. You've got her wet, Angel. She's yours, after the fight."

Angel's back was to me, so I couldn't see his reaction to the man's words.

The air horn sounded again, and Angel and Nitro got back to the dirty, sweaty, bloody business of beating each other to a pulp.

Again, all Angel seemed intent on doing was panting his feet and swinging away, trading bombs with the bigger man.

Was it a pride thing? Was there some unwritten, macho rule that said getting out of the way of the punch that was going to knock your head off was unmanly? Even the comment section of the videos I'd watched the night before had made mention of his appalling footwork, though some of his fans had said that Angel's style was exactly what they liked to see.

Of course they liked it. They weren't the ones getting smashed to pieces in the ring.

The second round went a lot like the first, and when the air horn stopped them from killing each other momentarily, my heart was in my throat.

I couldn't watch this. Not anymore. Angel had wanted me to be here, and I'd come just like I'd promised. I didn't know who he was to me, but the feelings I had for him were certainly growing.

Why then did he want me to see him like this?

His fat manager brought him back to the stool. I could see in Angel's clouded eyes that he wouldn't have been able to find it on his own, and when the guy turned him around and made him sit, the same shit started coming out of his manager's mouth.

"They love you, Angel. Listen to 'em!"

The crowd was most definitely hitting a fever pitch. They may have been savvy, seasoned viewers of this sort of carnage, but even I could sense that this wouldn't last much longer. One of these men was going to go down, and the other was going to either be a murderer or just short of one.

Angel

Third round. Those words echoed at me from somewhere, and it took me way longer than it should to know where I'd heard them so recently.

Jessie. He'd told me the smart money was on Nitro putting me to bed in the third. Well, here we are. Just try it.

I tried to look around at the faces in the crowd for Sloane. She wasn't in the seat I'd gotten Jai to save for here, but that didn't mean she wasn't here.

The faces were all blurry though, and I found that trying to focus on any of them for too long gave me a jolt of pain behind my eyes.

"Don't break focus," Jessie barked, grabbing my head and yanking my attention back to Nitro on his stool across the way. "That guy thinks he ends it here. Get yourself ready to prove him wrong."

Jessie was probably right. The way I was feeling, if I didn't catch a break or really steel myself for the next few minutes, I was liable to get my head taken off.

That damn air horn screamed again, and I got to my feet.

At least, I tried to. One second I was on my feet, trying to get my head together, and the next I had Jessie's greasy hands on my hips as he steadied me.

"You okay?" he asked, peering up at me.

It was the first time in all of my time with him that I'd ever seen him show so much as a hint of compassion.

He was genuinely worried.

"I'm good," I reassured him. I didn't think I was lying to him, not really, but I have to admit it was worrying to have him care.

I could remember dozens of times when I'd been in far, far worse shape than I was now. Hell, I'd boxed with a broken hand and a jaw fractured in two places, and fat Jessie hadn't even batted an eye.

But now, he was sweating way more than usual.

"You gotta get back in there," he said, with a level of urgency I'd never seen from him. "It's important, you understand?"

I nodded. Of course I understood.

There was a big difference between understanding and making my body fight off the effects of the last couple of rounds, though...

"I got this," I told him.

Nitro was ready, and I knew if didn't get over there and start the round that I'd forfeit the match anyway, no matter how unsteady I was on my feet.

"Just stay with it," Jessie said, patting me on the back.

"Get the fuck out of my way and let me, then," I told him.

For the first time in a long time, Jessie finally did as he was told, backing away and signaling to the crowd that I was back in it.

There must have been some doubt in the minds of the spectators, because when I stepped back into range and Nitro launched a jab that made good contact with my chin, they roared their approval.

That's life in the Colosseum, I told myself. The gladiators don't have to be happy. They just have to make it through the day.

I did my best to give as good as I was getting, but there was a sick little stitch in my side that was starting to make me favor that side.

I turned a bit in my stance, trying to protect what could well have been a cracked rib, and caught a clean, sure shot across the cut over my eye I'd earned in the first round.

Damn, this was going downhill fast.

Any fighter will tell you that they don't know how to quit. They can take the punishment, they can take the pain.

And it's true.

But what they won't admit, even though it's just as true, is that when they're losing badly, they know it.

Their body tells them, and it cuts right through the bullshit their mind's been feeding them. Training gets forgotten and you start to fight on heart and on instinct.

Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.

I was starting to think that the end was near...

Nitro smashed me with a right hook and followed it up with a rocket of a left cross that left me feeling like the ocean had suddenly found its way into the parking garage and swallowed me up.

My ears rang. My eye was close to swelling shut, and punches that came from that side of my face I couldn't see enough to block.

It was now or never. I gave all I had, throwing with all the strength I had left. Nitro was starting to get his second wind, and I could see that even when I landed hits, they weren't shaking him.

Hopefully, Jessie had at least found Sloane and gotten her out of here.

The last thing I wanted her to see was me getting beat down as bad as I thought I was about to be.