CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Circle Of Beasts

 

CASON BLEEDS. HE had to duck a swipe from the lion-head in the Cannibal Corpse t-shirt, and as he did, a lobster claw snipped the skin at his elbow, and now blood runs down to his wrist, his hand, his fingers.

Supergirl shrieks—the raucous caw of a crow whose meal was interrupted—and he hears a flutter of feathers and then she’s in front of him. Mouth open—toothless, gums hard like a beak, and she snaps at the air in front of him—

And then it’s on. Cason reacts. His head whips forward, connects with her nose, feels a crunch that isn’t altogether human, like the feel of a beach shell under a bare foot—she squawks, blood squirting in twin streams, arms pinwheeling as she backs away. It’s a dirty move, the headbutt. Would never fly in the octagon.

But this isn’t that.

Nobody sanctioned this fight; and it’s seven on one, a fight Cason can’t win. His only goal here is to break a hole in the seven and to run.

If that means fighting dirty, then so be it.

Shorn Scalp rakes the air with his raptor claws, but Cason sidesteps it, brings a knee up into baldie’s gut, then fishhooks his mouth with a hard finger and drags him along like a whipped puppy. Just as Blaze-Orange comes at Cason with the clacking lobster hands, he whips Shorn Scalp at him—the two bowl into one another and hit the ground.

A snort in his ear—

Op Ivy is there. A kick to Cason’s knee. He takes it—it’s a shitty kick, kid doesn’t know how to fight. Cason jams the sole of his boot into Op Ivy’s own leg, and the kid howls in guttural rage—but before the tusked freak can drop, Cason has a fistful of the kid’s hair (another no-no in the ring) and brings his head up just in time to catch a swing of Cannibal Corpse’s rebar.

Op Ivy’s tusks shatter. His mouth is blood. Cason throws him away like an empty food wrapper—

Cannibal Corpse cares little for his pal; he steps over Op Ivy’s writhing frame and swings the rebar again. And again. Each time, Cason steps just out of range.

He smells the lion’s breath. Rank. Like hot, raw meat.

Then—

Hands from behind.

The sound of an insect’s mouth chittering.

The scent of raw meat, not from the front now, but from behind.

Shirtless and Hello Kitty.

They grab under his arms, hold him tight as lion-head raises the rebar like it’s fucking Excalibur—

Cason stomps a foot. Not sure who’s, but fuck it, doesn’t matter—then he twists, gets under someone, lifts someone across his shoulders just as the rebar cracks down across that someone’s back. Turns out, it’s Shirtless—his mandibles part and sing a wretched insect song, the screams of cicadas in a forest fire, the hum of a thousand locust wings descending on this dark earth—

The sound gets into his head. Drilling deep. He flips Shirtless, drops him—

He stands, staggers back—

The tiger’s maw snaps the air behind him. He jerks—

Lurches forward—

Catches the rebar across the shoulder—

Then the back—

Cason falls, chin hitting the earth. Teeth biting his tongue. Greasy copper on his mouth, lips wet with his own blood. Hands find him, flip him over like he’s nothing. Shirtless the Bug-Man pins him. Mouth-parts twitching with excitement—

Lobster claws get under Bug-Man’s skinny arms, throw him aside—

Here comes Blaze-Orange—kid cackling, eyes bright with a flash nothing short of total psychosis. Cason throws a punch, but the kid tilts left, lets it miss him, uses his claw to capture the wrist—

Cason feels the serrated edge bite flesh. Feels it start to close. The pain is white hot, an electric bolt running to the tips of his fingers and down to his elbows—

He screams—

But then Lobster Boy is gone. Thrown aside.

A roar parts the air.

Cannibal Corpse replaces him. Standing, not pinning.

He pokes Cason hard in the breastbone with the rebar.

“You’re not gonna see the Storm Lord,” he growls. “Like Gandalf said in that movie: You Shall Not Pass.”

All the freaks chuckle. Start quoting lines from the movie.

Hello Kitty, her tiger’s growl: “Fat hobbit.”

Shorn Scalp: “One does not simply walk into Mordor.”

Op Ivy, through broken teeth and shattered mouth: “Preshussss.”

Then they start kicking him. And beating him with fists. A fist knocks the air out of him, a boot connects with his head, the rebar against his leg—

 

 

THE PANIC OF a beat-down, revealed:

The body on full-alert. The pain of the assault. The senses light up like a paparazzi parade watching the celebrity du jour doing the walk of shame—the anguished darkness cut by constant flashbulbs, pop, pop, pop. Everything is fear and trauma, mind and body a squirrel with its back broken. Wants to stand, run, flee, fly, but the only option is to lay there and take it, because the body doesn’t move fast enough, the body isn’t strong enough, the attackers are too many.

Soon the pain becomes dull—the edge of the blade chipped and rounded as it hacks away, as dull as the roar of rain hammering on the factory roof, and it isn’t long before the body starts to shut down. Disconnect from it all. The mind retreating deeper inside the shell as the shell is destroyed, conscious thoughts fleeing like rats pouring off a sinking ship.

Eventually the trauma is complete. The mind hides. The body is just meat.

But that’s not what happens to Cason Cole.

Just as the mind starts to pull away—as the fists rain down, as the kicks get harder and faster—the darkness inside him blooms with a curtain of red fire. He hears the crackle of brush, the thunder of earth beneath crushing hooves. He feels a pair of searing charcoal briquettes at his brow and his heart comes alive, screaming like the primate house at the Philadelphia Zoo—the smell of the forest fills him, his mind a maze, his body a weapon.

On his hands and knees—

Head forward, legs beneath him—

He lurches forward, bowling someone over, not sure who, doesn’t matter.

Tucked shoulder. Body rolling, feet beneath him, suddenly standing—

It’s like they’re traveling in slow motion.

He, far faster, far more aware, every second sliced into its composite moments—

He howls, louder than they—

A lobster claw snapping at his face. Cason takes it, twists it, cracks the shell, pink and bloody meat sliding to the floor and plopping wet against the concrete—

Hands around bug parts, yanking down, uprooting the mandibles the way you’d rip a fist of weedy taproots from the earth, wet rip, sound of celery broken, hornet wings and panicked crickets—

The rebar comes—foot out, hand up, catches the rusted metal bar, pulls it, crashes it against a tiger’s head, feels the bone give way—

Breaks the bird fingers at the end of Shorn Scalp’s leathery hand—

Collapses Op Ivy’s pale throat, the monster choking on his own tusk bits—

Rebar forward, thrusting through a crow-eye, into the brain, won’t come back out—throws her and it to the ground—

Cannibal Corpse sees what Cason has wrought.

The lion turns tail and runs.

Everything slow, languid, time trapped in cold honey as the final monster flees, each foot falling slow against the concrete, the sluggish pivot of his leonine features as he turns to see if Cason is following—

All is slow until the lightning.

A scorching white lance of electricity comes from above.

The lion is just shadow and X-ray and then a cooling pile of charred skin. The smell of burnt hair fills the air.

A man stands over the body of Cannibal Corpse.

The tall shadow says: “Bow before the Lord of Cutha.”

Cason bows. Because he can do nothing else.