Venomous

CHAPTER TWELVE

THERE’S THE SATISFYING tension of my knuckles hitting meat and bone, followed by the stiffening pain down my arm of the pressure from the punch, and then it’s dynamite, explosive, out of sight and into the stands.

Casey reels and falls to the sidewalk, but rolls on his back and scrambles to his feet just as I begin to shake off the pain in my arm. I feel my throat already begin to bruise at the points where his fingers gripped it, and the back of my head throbs from being slammed into a wall. My balance feels fucked-up. I’m pretty sure my face is bleeding. Wooo. Party.

“Stop it!” shrieks Renée, looking angrily between the two of us. “Stop it right now!”

Doesn’t matter what she says. The words enter my ears, but they’re indistinguishable and meaningless, like a bird or a rodent. From the moment that first swing was thrown, this was no longer about talking or having a good cry. This was about pain and anguish, violence and tears and hatred. Casey is completely absorbed by the black, and as hard as I’ve tried to contain it, the venom has taken over completely. We aren’t two friends arguing-we’re Frankenstein and the Wolf Man, two monsters ready to tear each other apart for the simple reason that the one doesn’t deserve to be alive in the presence of the other.

The point is, me and Casey are overdue to mindlessly beat the shit out of each other. It was the way we’d met, and the only thing we knew.

Casey charges me and throws me to the ground. I throw my arm around his head as we hit the concrete, and start punching him in the back and kidneys, but it’s no use, because he knocks the wind out of me with one strong fist to the stomach. The world swims. I will not pass out. As I try to regain my breath, he lets out a scream and punches me hard in the temple. I stumble headfirst into a wall and then hit the ground again, the concrete cheese-grating my face. White again. Fuzzy.

GET UP.

The venom grabs my limbs, twisting them into movements of precise violence. As he’s bent over me, savoring my pain, I lean back on my tailbone and send the toe of my boot arching right across his chin. His head snaps around as blood starts drooling down his lower lip, but that’s time enough for me to get back on my feet.

My mind is a cacophony of barked orders. Do as much damage as possible. Make him hurt. Make him bleed. Don’t do so until he stops saying “please.” Go for the eyes. The throat. Knees.

I throw a right hook at Casey’s jaw, and he takes it like a bitch, an arch of blood whipping widely out of his mouth. As he staggers backward, I throw all my weight into my shoulder and send it firing into his solar plexus. I manage to take him off his feet, give him a few seconds of air before he slams loudly into the side of a parked car. The alarm goes off, a high-pitched rhythmic wail. It’s incredibly appropriate.

I suddenly realize that, disgustingly, I’m yelling, “MOTHERFUCKER! TAKE IT, MOTHERFUCKER! TAKE IT!” which is about the least dignified thing anyone could do in a fight, but whatever, this is the venom talking, not me. I change it to just guttural throat-noises, things that sound like I’m scraping my own windpipe with a violin string. I feel my fist swing out and collide with his mouth, his lips and teeth becoming a squishy mishmash with hard edges; I actually feel blood drip off my knuckles as I pull my hand back. I make a note of it and get ready to swing again-

Pain. The worst kind of pain.

Casey’s knee hits my groin and doesn’t move, just keeps pushing harder and harder. I yelp, feeling my testes lunge up into my intestines, and curl over on my side, clutching my aching manhood.

Heh, aching manhood. It’s like a line out of a romance nov-

He’s up on his feet and kicks me in the stomach before I can reach out and grab his leg. I feel my gut cave in on two sides now, from between my legs and from its front, and something in the back of my mind prepares itself for the loss of my stomach contents. I lean my head back, grit my teeth, put out my hands, and wait for a second kick.

“STOP IT RIGHT NOW!” screams Renée, launching herself onto Casey’s back. He sways and stumbles like a lush, caught in midkick and now trying to regain his balance while a harpy bites his shoulder, screams into his ear, drags her nails across his scalp. A crowd has gathered around us, watching with something between horror and amusement on their faces. For the first time in a while, clarity explodes into my mind-Jesus, what are we doing?

Casey reaches around his shoulder, grabs Renée by her shirt, and in a single swift, brutal motion, whips her around his front and tosses her onto the ground. She lands with a thud and a small cry.

Clarity vanishes. The venom is everything. The pain in my groin and face slowly, piece by piece, flows out of the rest of my body and nestles itself in my heart.

I’m on my feet. Casey growls obscenities at me. I don’t listen. I send the back of my hand booming right into his cheek, smashing his face to the side with a small shower of blood and spit. He stumbles back a few steps, wipes off his eyes, lets out a bestial war cry, and then charges me.

And for once, everything slows down. Normally, the venom doesn’t act this way. There’s none of the car-crash-slow-motion fear that one gets when something goes horribly wrong before your eyes. But this time, things change. This time, I watch intently, knowing just what will happen.

Casey charges me. I sidestep as he pulls back his fist. His knuckles nearly graze my cheek, but just miss it. And with Casey swinging at air, I take one step forward and send my fist arching up into where his stomach and chest meet.

Right on target.

The world just stops.

My life freezes. It’s like someone hit the pause button on my existence. I step back and take it in. My face is a malicious grin with reddened eyes. Every muscle in my body looks taut beneath my clothing, pulled tight in both rage and anguish. Casey is actually lifted off the ground by my punch, his cheeks puffing out, his feet hanging about a foot or so above the floor. His body is hunched over my fist, crumpled, like a badly raised circus tent.

I feel powerful. I feel immortal and dark and stark raving mad. I feel like every fantasy character I’d concocted for myself at bedtime, every grand villain or hideous monster I’d used to make my poisonous core into a weapon or a shield against everything else. This is how Vlad the Impaler must have felt, Alexander the Great, Charles Manson-invincible, powered by something beyond their control and feeling deliciously wonderful about it. This is how Blacklight feels. It’s fantastic. It’s better than every fantasy I’ve ever dreamed of, every fight I’ve ever walked away from. Better than sex, than love. Paradise in ebony.

This is nice, I think.

Isn’t it, though?

BAM, I’m in the fight again, and after a second of floating, Casey hits the ground. He tries to push away from me, coughing, sobbing, but I grab the collar of his shirt and pull. One of his bloody, drooly hands reaches out and does the same to me. For a second I see his face, my friend’s face, pained, hurt-

– and then he smiles, and I know that no matter how powerful or dark I just felt, he understands.

He yanks, and uses the force of me pulling up to head-butt me right in the face. The world shatters, and all is silent for a second, but consciousness spins back into view.

We’re both on our feet, but just barely. My head is still swimming from the head butt, and Casey’s still choking from the uppercut, and the people circling us are looking more worried than excited now. We’re heaving, stumbling, trying to gather our wits, ready for the next move, the next punch. Our eyes meet, and although bloody and bruised, I can tell he’s still ready to fight.

“Stop.”

Somehow, through the car alarms and the whispering audience and all the city’s noise, we both hear Randall and look up at him. He stands at the front of the crowd, arms folded, Tollevin flanks him, aghast. Randall’s expression is one of mixed contempt and grief-he’s disgusted by us, but it’s obvious he didn’t expect anything less. There’s a smudge of blood on his shirt. I then take the time to look at our battlegrounds and see lots of it, spattering the sidewalk, my clothes, my fists…JESUS. Now that I look at it, there’s blood everywhere, even smeared on the walls and the car we hit. This place looks like a food fight at Hannibal Lecter’s place. I had no idea there was this much blood in a person. Or that I could shed it.

After this pause, there’s no more momentum. I feel numb, obliterated. I can’t even cry. There’s nothing left in me, like the venom has passed out from exhaustion and left a big empty room behind. I open my mouth and feel my lips sting as the blood and mucus coating them stretches and then cracks.

I turn to face Randall. “Brent call you?” I manage to hiss out. He nods, slowly. “How do I look?”

“You’ll be okay.”

Greeeeat. “You okay?”

He opens his mouth to say something, and then his eyes widen. “Locke-”

A hand grabs my hair and yanks, accompanied by the most gut-wrenching scream I’ve ever heard. Casey sweeps me off my feet and slams my head into the car’s hood. Everything swirls purple before going straight to black.

“Locke? LOCKE?”

A hand slaps my face awake, and I sit up on the pavement. Tollevin crouches in front of me with a glass of water, which he shoves into my mouth, and I gulp greedily. The side of my forehead cries agony.

“Oh fuck,” I mumble. “How long was I out for?”

“Only about twenty seconds,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief. “Long enough to make us worried, though. Jesus, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s possible to kill you. Man, you need to see a mirror.”

The details of the situation rush back into my head. “Where’re Randall ’n’ Casey?”

“Over there.”

I follow his finger to a couple of yards away, where Casey sits with his back up against a wall, head between his knees. Randall crouches in front of him, face pained and exhausted. A small trail of blood runs from Casey, dribbling down the pavement and into the street.

Okay, friends accounted for. Next problem. “Where’s Renée?”

Tollevin hisses, “She’s inside the bar, man. Now might not be the best time.”

“Help me up.”

“Locke…fuck.”

Tollevin yanks me to my feet and hands me my glasses, surprisingly intact. I hobble into the bar, dark and ratty, and find Renée on the stool, picking her nails to pieces. Great black gobs of makeup drip down from her animal eyes, darting every which way in case of predators. One knee moves pistonlike; her foot beats out a double-bass rhythm. The bartender, a cute girl in her midtwenties, has a hand on Renée’s shoulder. As I enter, she takes just enough time to return my glance and turn away in horror. The more I walk, the more I feel the blood move down my face.

“Renée?”

She shrieks and goes a foot in the air. Instead of going to my face to help me, like they should, her hands go straight to and into her mouth, her fingers shoved between her teeth. Her eyes well up with tears, and her shoulders go up in a defensive posture. Jesus, how bad did Casey beat me? We didn’t get that out of hand, did we?

“Renée.”

“Look at you,” she gurgles. “Look at yourself.”

She stands up and marches out of the bar, crying quietly. I follow her into the street, as fast as I can.

“Renée.”

She turns the corner, trying to outwalk me. What the fuck? I grab her shoulder and spin her, make her look at me.

“Renée!”

Before I can say anything else, she’s screaming and hitting me, pounding her fists at my shoulders and neck and making these horrible leathery noises in the back of her throat again. My wounds scream out in soreness, so I just put my arms up and back off. I take the hint and don’t touch her again, just follow her.

“Renée.”

Past the remaining members of the audience, disgusted, whispering. I start switching sides to make sure both ears can hear me.

“Renée.”

She walks to the curb and throws one hand up, the other one clutching at the back of her neck. I pray that our appearances will make every cab driver in a three-mile radius turn their OFF DUTY lights on.

“Renée.”

A cab pulls up in seconds, and she’s inside it, barking her address. I grab hold on the door handle and try to keep her from closing the door.

“Renée.”

She screams and yanks with all her might before crawling into the far corner of the taxi and hiding her face. The cab, whose driver probably thinks I’m a budding Ike Turner, disappears with a screech and a cloud. I memorize the plate: EVH5604. Soon, though, it blends in with the New York City mob of yellow cabs, and it’s lost, taking my repulsed girlfriend with it.

“Renée.”

The wounds on my face and the bruises on my arms sting as my sweat and blood roll into them, as if someone had dripped poison into my open gashes and aching muscles. Somewhere in the distance, there’s a high-pitched wail, growing louder and louder.

Tollevin runs up to my side. “Dude, that’s the cops. You need to get the fuck out of here, pronto.”

And even though it makes no sense, a word forms in my mouth, the only word I think I can say other than her name.

My lips curl, teeth press, tongue wavers, and:

“Venom.”

A RE YOU alive?”

He sputtered out another gurgling response. The monster that had nearly killed me was no more, leaving this charred little…man. A man, an engine of blood and ligament, nothing more. Weak, easy, shallow, murderous.

There was another spasm in the energies of my costume, and I crouched, preparing to do what I knew had to be done.

“I understand your intentions,” I whispered, “but you killed her. Terrible future or not, you killed her, my friend, and I…can’t let that be forgotten.”

“S’posed ta…kill you,” he spat. “Send me bacckkh to kkill you…”

“I can’t allow that, either. What I am, what I can do…It’s all too important, you see. Too important to let one little pissant put it in jeopardy.” I grabbed his collar and flipped him over, his face finally facing me. I raised my fist, begging for the impact of blood and bone. “I’m sorry. Understand, this is for your own good.”

He sputtered out a mouthful of blood, and then he smiled. A sly smirk up in one corner of his face. “I’m glad I got”-he managed to croak out-“got to meet you…helped me remember what…you were like…”

My hand froze, the energy still raging through it but the motivation lost. Again, the overwhelming feeling that something was not right with this man washed across me. “I don’t understand.”

“You were-” Another cough, another spray of gore. He caught his breath. “You were a better brother than you were a tyrant.”

Pow.

No.

My fist dropped. My face dropped. My entire body let out a collective heave of sorrow, and my hands clutched the broken man before me.

“Lon.”

“Hey, mmannuh…I’m schorry about Renée…

“My God, Lon. I’m…oh God, LON, WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK NO, NO, NO…”

“The venom remembered me and thought-” And then his body shook, bent in the middle, twisted up in weird, insectoid ways that no human should be able to move. “Found me, found the well inside of me when I killed herrrr-” More gurgling. Another twitch.

“LON!” I clutched his body to me, trying to shake some life back into it. I heard him cough, and then I grasped his face, staring straight into his eyes, blue and fading quick. “LON, HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW?” I screamed. “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME IT WAS YOU! YOU’RE OLDER, AND I COULDN’T RECOGNIZE…YOU CAN’T EXPECT ME…OH GOD, OHGODOHGODOHFUCKING CHRIST, I’M SORRY, I’M SORRY!”

Static hiss seemed to fill the air, and his body went rubbery, unreal in my hands. “Going back.” He moaned. “When you die, they bring you back… Don’t forget what…what you are…” His eyes, floating Cheshire cat-like in the darkness, focused on mine. “It’s not you.”

And then my hands clapped together, because he was gone, sucked into time and away from me.

I stood on the rooftop, feeling the city’s sorrows whirling around and through me.

Somewhere, off in the distance of my mind, I heard an echoing laugh.

“Admit it,” said a voice that wasn’t mine, “I’m starting to get to you.”