Candy wormed through the crowd behind Rocky, coming up to the guy’s side with a mercenary gleam in her eye. “I knew you’d be worth a few bucks.”

Rocky’s hand slid around the young girl, cupping her ass with a bruising squeeze. It was the way a man touches his car. With no thought to its feelings or wants, like something bought and paid for.

“The Governor wants to talk to him. You can keep me company outside while I give you the winnings,” Rocky said, leering down at the girl he groped. She met the man’s leer with a lascivious smile of her own, but those wasteland eyes never changed.

Rocky lead the way through the crowd with Candy tucked into his body, one hand holding tight to her ass. The crowd parted for the big man, but they scattered at the sight of the black wolf stalking at Cesare’s side. It didn’t matter if they wanted to clap him on the back or spit in his face; the wolf was enough to push them back.

Beyond the crowd and cancerous fluorescent suns, dirty deals were done. Rutting men and woman taking the time for a suck or a bend over. Baggies changing hands in darkened alcoves along with sweat soaked green. In this space of need and sacrifice, tucked behind mirrored windows, a small office stood. Opening the door, Rocky motioned for Cesare to go inside.

Whatever the room had been, they’d birthed it into a command center. Dozens of monitors lit the room in a dizzying landscape of carnage. Along a control desk, technicians worked to catch the best shots of the fights, whispers filling the room with a quiet susurration. The Asian man stood behind them, directing the pageant with a sure hand.

“Keep that camera tight. I don’t want a wide screen view; we want them to feel the blood against their faces.” The man’s quiet words were taken as gospel even as he turned to face Cesare. “I was surprised Candy showed up with a fighter. She’s not the kind of fluffer to work that angle.”

Cesare shrugged at the man’s words. “Not sure what you mean.”

Nodding in understanding, the man motioned to the camera feeds. “This is more than a flesh circus selling tickets to watch freaks and geeks.” His smile was gleaming teeth and naked greed. “Although we make a killing off the hyper reality of the fights. We broadcast live, capitalizing on a network of bookies across the globe. Fights like yours, are uploaded onto video sites as bait to draw viewers into the paid fights. But it’s nothing without new meat.”

Making his way to the mirrored windows, the man looked out over the howling crowd. “We hire fluffers to get us new meat. Candy is a puppy mill, it’s all about quantity with her.” Dark eyes bored into Cesare, his soft words filling the room. “And yet, here you stand.”

Cesare let the silence setttle; in no hurry to rush the man who hadn’t paid him yet. “We have three leagues. They aren’t based on weight, they’re set on where a performer fits in the program. You fought in Slap and Tickle. Shit stinking homeless guys fighting it out for nothing but scraps. Never fails to get the crowd hard. Usually the fights are a lot like the men, dirty, disgusting, and pointless. Then you came in.”

Taking out a billfold, the man counted off the money into Cesare’s hand. “One, two, three, four, and finally, five hundred. For five fights won in spectacular fashion. Now that we got that out of the way, let’s talk about you entering the ranks of the Young Blood.”

Holding the five hundred, Cesare thought it over. He needed money, and he’d be stupid not to weigh that into any choice he made. But what was pulling at his skin with barbed hooks was the barbarous joy he'd felt. He’d liked fighting, enjoyed the spray of blood and screams of pain. It wasn’t pretty or nice, it just was, and Cesare lived in the world of is, not wish.

“What are they?” Cesare’s quiet question sparked a victorious gleam in the man’s eyes. Turning away, the man hid the smile that tugged at his lips.

“They’re actual fighters, not rotting meat off the streets. It’s our underage weight class, no one older than twenty-one. Some come from boxing or MMA gyms, looking to make easy money. The rest are a mixed bag, brawlers, troublemakers, bullies, desperate kids trying to feed a fix. You never know what you’ll get in the Cock Fight. We pay out two hundred for every win.” The man fixed Cesare with a weighing stare. “You interested?”

A lifetime on the streets taught Cesare how to get a read on a man quick. This Governor wanted him fighting in the worst way. His reasons for wanting him in the Cock Fight didn’t matter. Greed, bloodlust, or something darker, it meant as much as a wet shit when it came down to it. Cesare had paid his way through life with his own flesh. He'd torn bleeding hunks of wet meat off his body, offering it up to pay the monsters their due. Maybe it was time he started tearing that flesh from others.

Overriding the easy answer was the serpent that sank venomous fangs into his heart. He hungered for the screams of his prey, to glory in their agony, and lap up their submission. The best part was the fool thought the money was the hook dug deep into the soft places of his soul.

“Yeah, I’m interested.”

“Talk to Rocky or Candy, they’ll fill you in on your way out.” The Governor’s interest snapped off as he turned back to the monitors. A deal done and flesh bought for cheap.

Candy waited outside, fresh lipstick a laceration of scarlet across her face. Cesare didn’t ask why she’d freshened up her lipstick, and she didn’t offer. Following the walls, they skirted the edge of the crowd. Cesare kept his eyes off the grunting couples and the slumped over figures. Shadows cloaked hard edges, gentle lies hiding raw truths no one wanted to face. Slipping from darkness to darkness were the poisoned ones, cruel things with diamond eyes and quick fingers, snakes in human skin. Coming across an exit, Cesare pushed out into the cold night. The howling of the crowd cut off with a click as the door closed behind them.

“My trucks this way,” Candy said, leading the way around the warehouse. Traceries of steam rose from their bodies, the greedy chill devouring their heat.

He thought on the night as they followed the concrete wall, midnights grace holding the black places he walked. So much of his life had changed in the last few hours, not only with Elizabeth, but deep in the bedrock of his soul. Maybe they’d always existed in the nebulous, mercurial shadows of his soul, waiting for anger, blood, pain, and pressure, to summon them.

He’d always been weak. livinig a life as meat for the strong. Years were lost in fighting to hold on to some kind of self in a world bidding to buy the only priceless thing he had. No matter how hard he'd tried, they'd torn and ripped him down in storms of torturous pain and humiliation. Every year had marked him as less than he'd been, less right, less sane, less clean, his light sold to creatures wearing the flesh of men. The weak don’t get to decide what they get to keep.

Only the strong get to keep what they love. Only the powerful decide the course of their lives. The school had taught him that, had carved it into his body with brutal efficiency. A guerilla force used the same weapons as the government they fought. They stripped the dead of weapons and food, feeding off them like the parasites they were. Cesare had taken the lessons of pain and degradation into his soul and made them his own.

He’d liked hurting the men, their blood bringing an almost sexual high. What did it mean that he’d enjoyed bleeding them out? It meant he was a monster, a sadistic devotee of agony, even if he wasn’t Umbrae Lunae. It wasn’t the first time he’d felt the black rush of cruel pleasure. The fight with Dan, the training he’d gone through with the harem, and the apocalyptic war with Blaez, were saturated in malicious joy. But this was the first time hunted for it. The first time the sadistic rush of excitement was the reason for the fight.

Having a place to come where he could hurt people was easier than hunting for it. It was a way to prove he wasn’t that small boy in the dark praying for someone to save him. The dead light of his dark thoughts proved the twistedness of his soul, the damage that could never be made right.

The truck was where she’d left it, in the middle of the yard. She seemed to take pride in leaving the eyesore out where everyone who walked by would have to see it. “You can sit in the passenger seat, but I don’t think … well, the wolf won’t fit,” she said as she opened the driver’s door.

The wolf gave a snort before leaping over the lip of the truck, hitting the bed with soundless precision. The truck stood still and silent, without even a creak to mark the monstrous beast’s sudden weight. Cesare opened the door and set his duffel bag in his lap. One good thing about being followed by a wolf, when you set your bag down outside a fight cage, you didn’t have to worry about someone taking off with it.

Rattling and jerking, the old truck rumbled to life, a veritable Rasputin refusing to die out of sheer spite. They exited the warehouse yard and hit the roads at speed. Looking out the window, Cesare took in the deserted warehouses.

“You want to talk business now or tomorrow?” Candy asked, white knuckles making a lie of her casual tone.

“Been a long day. I’d rather take it up tomorrow. You still got a place?” Cesare asked, looking out at the night with unseeing eyes. Promises were smoke on the wind, worth less than the air that breathed them. It wouldn’t surprise him if she went back on the deal, but it would still be a shit thing to happen.

“Yeah,” Candy said.

She didn’t live far from the warehouse, but it was light years away in money. You could look up from Swan Island and see the million-dollar homes sneering down at the world from on high. Like the gods of Mount Olympus eyeing the ants scurrying below them. Skirting the hill, she wound her way into the low-income housing to the side of the promised land of wealth. Out of sight of the rich, the cockroaches made homes in the rotting shit of generations.

She pulled into a driveway more weeds than concrete. The truck settled into place with the high-pitched pings of cooling metal. Moss grew across the roof in a green blanket, roots eating away at the shingles. Pock marked with brown, peeling paint, the wood siding had a slickness born of rot. An old house needing more money than anyone thought it was worth. Like an old woman too sick to die, she held herself together out of stubbornness and habit.

“It doesn’t look it, but it's clean and a damn sight better than the street.” There was a thread of defensiveness in her voice. A poor woman’s shame, the maggots every barely making it, forgotten, and struggling person owns.

The stairs were old over a decade ago. Slick with mold and moss, they creaked under Cesare’s foot. Enfolded in his shadow, the wolf was a silent mass of midnight, wood quiet as death under its step.

Candy held the door open for them as they walked in. The house was a single story, most of it taken up with a living room and a solitary hallway leading back into the bedrooms. Tattered and stained, green carpet ran through the house, any cushion it might have long since beaten out of it. Vacuumed within an inch of its faded life, throw rugs covered it hiding sins that wouldn’t wash out. Yellow smoke stains spread diseased tendrils across the walls and up to the ceiling, a cancer older than the carpet or stairs. Scrapped from feverish cleaning, the paint was worn thin from a holy war against filth.

A few simple chairs dotted the living room, each marked by the flat, worn look of something that had cushioned as much ass as they were every going to. Board straight and low to the ground, the sofa was wrapped in a homemade cover of forest green. Fabric hiding the abuses of the dozens of families it had seen as it was passed down from Goodwill to Goodwill.

Candy walked past him, heading down the hallway and into a bedroom. It wasn’t long before she came back with an old army blanket, scratchy and worn, that smelled of wildflowers. “Down the hall, first door on your right is the bathroom. Other than that, the rooms are off limits. We’ll talk in the morning.”

Standing in the middle of the living room, arms full of blanket, Cesare watched as Candy turned on her heel and retreated into the hallway. The sound of water running came to him faintly as she started her shower.

Cesare shared a long look with the wolf before shrugging and making his way to the sofa. The monstrosity was pushed up against the wall and into a corner, with only one way for anyone to get to him. It said something that he was more concerned about people getting to him than he was on how comfortable the sofa was.

Lying under the scratchy blanket, thoughts of past nights plagued the edges of his mind. Warm bodies and smooth skin, soft blankets and softer pajamas, the weight of cuddling close through the night, the sweet feeling of being wanted. He pushed the sweet memories into a box and sealed it up. A man lost in the past was an open target, out in the world he had to be sharp, cunning, and cruel. There was only one rule on the streets ‘better them than you’.

Prowling around the room, the wolf ran despairing eyes over the home. As out of place as a princess in a sewer, the wolf never even looked at the door. Stretching out along the side of the sofa, it formed a fortress of night and certain death, a low rumble of fathomless contentment thrumming through the air.