"Our challenger tonight, the Raven!"
That was my cue. I gave a curt nod to the crowd.
"She may look like a lightweight, but she can hold her own against men twice her size! Who will step up to take her down?"
When I first started on the cage-fighting circuit, they had only wanted to pit me against other women. It had been a slow way to make money because there weren't women in every city looking for a fight, and often I was told to just take a seat and let the men do what they did best.
They stopped telling me that once I'd started picking fights with barflies just to prove that I could. It had taken a while for me to get really good, though. I had all of Logan's practical knowledge, but none of the muscle memory to actually pull off any of the moves. In theory, I'd been the best damn fighter in North America. In practice, I'd been mediocre. After two years, however, I'd honed my craft.
"—Rob Danger!"
I paused while tugging on my left glove and eyed up my opponent.
Seriously?
Of course, I was one to talk. With my black clothes, black hair, and dark eye make-up, I had turned myself into a character as well. Anna Raven. I had picked the raven, because it was a death omen. It worked on a couple of levels—one, as a reminder that I was being hunted by death, and two, as a warning to my opponents. No one else got the joke, but I thought it was clever.
Re-inventing myself had been a necessity, although I had gone through a few, less macabre, iterations before settling on my current alias. At first, I had thought that in order to be invisible, I needed to be bland and unmemorable, but all that had done was make me seem like someone that was trying not to draw attention to herself. I didn't even question how much it made me stick out until I saw Logan in the front office of my motel in Des Moines, speaking with the night manager.
I never imagined that Logan had forgotten about me, but I had hoped that he would be too busy at the school to worry about seeking immediate revenge. Des Moines had been the first real scare I'd had. Up until that point, I'd thought I'd been careful. That almost-encounter had rattled me so much, that I'd fled to the woods and spent a couple of weeks living off the land before deciding that it was probably safe to return to civilization as the Raven.
I became invisible by hiding in plain sight.
Over a year had passed since Des Moines, and Logan hadn't resurfaced yet. It made me nervous. The threat of his reappearance cast a constant shadow over everything I did.
I took a deep breath to clear my head and immediately wished I hadn't. The stink of sweat and stale beer saturated every molecule of air in the bar, and Mr. Danger's clothes smelled like they hadn't seen the inside of a washing machine in weeks.
Lovely.
My opponent leered at me. Fighting meant that he could touch me in socially unacceptable ways. If I had to count the number of times that I had been felt up in the cage…well, I wasn't sure that numbers went that high to be honest. I kinda wanted him to try it, though—it'd be the last time those fingers would work for a while. Fighting meant that I could hurt him in legally frowned-upon ways, and a little part of me craved that violence.
Danger-man was easily twice my weight, which meant more power behind his blows, but I was faster. He also telegraphed his moves. He definitely thought he was hot shit, but for me he wasn't even a challenge.Hopefully, someone that night would be. Easy fights never took enough of the edge off.
He came at me, and I waited until the last second, stuck my arm out, and struck the hollow of his throat. His eyes filled with unshed tears, and he went down.
"No need to cry over losing to a girl, Sugar."
The crowd laughed. They liked me better when I entertained them.
My opponent was unceremoniously dragged out of the cage, and he was replaced by a blur of men who had all been waiting to take their turn at me. One by one, they went down. By the time I finished, I'd broken a sweat, and my bloodlust was finally sated.
Some idiot approached me while I was waiting for my beer after I'd been declared that night's victor.
"You must be one of those mutant freaks," the man-with-a-death-wish said.
I didn't even look at him. I'd been down that road before. And so had Logan, I remembered. So, I knew how not to deal with the situation. "Walk away," I warned.
"How else do you explain it?"
I rolled my eyes and then swiveled on my stool to face him. "You saw what I did back there? And how little effort it took? I could do the same to you, except we're not in a cage, so none of the rules apply." I leaned in and lowered my voice. "I could kill you and not lose any sleep over it. No jury in the world would convict lil' ol' me for defending myself against the big scary man." I laid it on thick with the Southern accent at the end.
Thankfully, he had enough sense to back off. I found his deer-in-the-headlights look mildly amusing, so I blew him a kiss. I didn't think I'd be seeing him again.
When I finished the beer, I left the bar, and the bouncer followed me out to my truck. It was a standard courtesy at most of the joints I fought at, and I didn't mind because they did it for the men too. It was supposed to be a deterrent to anyone thinking about waiting in the parking lot to ambush the winner and take the prize money. The way I saw it though, any fool that attacked me deserved to get his face smashed into the pavement. Still, it was nice to know that I would have back up in case Logan picked that moment to attack. I figured I could let the two men fight and then slip out quietly during the distraction.
The parking lot was empty, however, and after checking under the truck, in the bed, and in the cab, I was satisfied that I was going to live long enough to make it back to my room.
I drove past the motel, one of my new habits, and scoped out that parking lot for anything suspicious. Normally, Logan preferred a motorcycle, but if he was planning to take me somewhere that no one could hear me scream, I thought he'd prefer a truck, or an SUV. I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary, however, and when I finally approached my room, I could see that the small pebble I'd placed in front of the door hadn't moved.
Yes, Logan could've moved it, entered, and then replaced it after exiting. But he couldn't have replaced it while he was still inside. The window didn't open and there were no other ways in or out. That meant that no surprise attacks were waiting for me when I opened the door. I let out the breath that I hadn't realized I was holding.
Once inside my room, I went through my nightly ritual of locking and blocking the door. I laid a complicated and precariously balanced trap that would wake me up if anyone tried to enter. I also kept a gun on the nightstand and an adamantium knife under my pillow, just for good measure.
In bed that night, surrounded by my weapons and makeshift burglar alarm, I didn't feel as reassured as I normally did. Instead, I felt exhausted, and I began to question how much longer I could keep it up. All the waiting and watching and wondering. Not staying anywhere more than a few nights, or making any friends. Not getting complacent. Locking myself up.
I was pretty sure that it was going to break me one day.
If I'd thought I could take Logan, I would've been tempted to make the first move. To put him on the defensive. But I knew that I couldn't. So, I was stuck in a vicious cycle of running and hiding with seemingly no way out.
I yawned and reached under the pillow to check once again for the cold metal blade. I wasn't going to find any answers that night, but I was safe for a few more hours at least.
