There was kerosene running through Spot's veins and Mick's words dropped a lit match on him. It burned him and everything he knew about himself from the inside out until he was unrecognizable. He couldn't see clearly, couldn't think beyond the guttural roars ripping through his conscience. Niko was ready for him, already charging. The Greek was nearly double his weight and had two to three inches in height over him. He hit like a train at full speed, but Spot relished the impact. It jarred oxygen back into his body, fueling the fire that Mick and Darcy set. He needed it. He needed bloody knuckles and broken bones, jabbing elbows and slamming knees. Every hit he took, every stab of pain and flash of light behind his eyes made him feel more alive. He needed impact and fought for the sake of fighting, not caring that he needed to conserve energy for the other fights he was supposed to win. It wasn't about winning anymore. It was about power and anger and betrayal. It was about how he needed to hurt. He needed the pain of others to keep him going. Niko wasn't up to the challenge and when the opportunity presented itself, the beast in Spot's clothes put him out of his misery.
Niko backed up for a second charge, Spot's icy eyes watching closely as he ran. It was like a game of chicken, except that Niko wasn't going to stop until he hit something and Spot knew it. He stood still, watching the Greek advance on him, jumping back but leaving his foot out at the last possible moment. Niko went headlong onto the wall and didn't get up. His dark eyes were open but unseeing. Spot stared at him, waiting for him to get up, moan, blink, anything, but the he just laid still and stared blankly at the ceiling. Spot needed more. A beastial roar ripped out of him before he spat in that unseeing face and pounded down the stairs to the next floor, not even casting Rudy a glance as he passed. "Clear!" Rudy bellowed so that Mick would hear him.
The next guy guy sat on a wooden barrel pulled up to a discarded crate and artfully shuffled a deck of playing cards. If he weren't out of his mind with rage, Spot might have recognized Chapman as a bookie that Race dealt with from time to time, or as a kid who ran a shell game in the marketplace when he was younger, but Spot only saw a target; a target that needed to be destroyed. The bookie barely put up a fight. He stepped away from his makeshift table and tucked his cards into his pocket and stood there, letting Spot's blows rain down on him until he lost consciousness. He barely even blocked. The less he fought back the more angry Spot got. Didn't this guy understand that he needed a fight, not a punching bag? He gave an angry kick to the groaning lump of a person and barreled out of the room and back into the stairwell. "Clear!" Rudy shouted again.
He barreled onto the next floor, searching the apartments there by kicking in the doors, the hollow crashes of the locks and door frames breaking reverberating through his body. Finally, he found the occupied one. "Long time no see, Conlon," a rough voice greeted, cutting through the fog. He hadn't seen Trots in almost four years. He was bigger than Spot remembered with had a scar that ran down from his temple to his cheek that wasn't there when he was a newsie. His brown hair was slicked back and his brown eyes glared cooly at Spot. "I can't believe you chose this, Kid. Mick knew you would, but I thought you'd be smarter than that, see the benefit of coming quietly. You could be great here, the leader you were always supposed to be, the one Kiss trained you to be." He said her name and Spot snapped.
"Don't talk about her like you know her!" he yelled as he lashed out and attacked shoving Trots as hard as he could. "No one knows her!" The hits came hard and fast, punctuated by his yelling. He blocked an uppercut and dug an elbow in between Trots' ribs. Trots slammed him against the wall and Spot slammed his forehead into his nose. "They all lie!" Trots was starting to look afraid. Spot wasn't known for being soft and cuddly, but the person he was stuck in this room with was barely human. He always admired the fact that Spot never backed down from anything, that he was fearless and ferocious, but this was different. He could see in Spot's cold silvery eyes that the person in front of him would break his neck without a smidge of remorse. "You sold me out!" Trots stumbled and slide across the rotting floorboards and Spot kept coming at him. In a moment of desperation, Trots pulled a knife from his boot and held it out to keep the blue eyed animal away from him just long enough that he could breathe. But as little regard as Spot had for anyone else's life, he didn't really care about his own either. The knife didn't scare him, didn't slow him down or stall him in the slightest. "You let him do this to me!" He jumped on top of Trots and didn't relent.
"Spot! You know me! I didn't do this, Mick did! You did! You agreed to it! Get off of me!" The knife skidded across the floor and the two young men grappled on the floor, one trying to kill the other, the other just trying to get back up off of the floor. They rolled and tumbled, punched and kicked. The cold touch of the blade, flat under the skin of his arm caught Trots' attention and he grabbed it and flung it out, the tip dragging across the smooth skin of Spot's forehead, down onto his cheek, narrowly missing his eye. The cold flash of pain pulled a hiss from Spot's lips, but didn't slow him. He could barely see through the blood dripping off his brow, but he managed to wrench the knife out of his old leader's hand before bashing his head into the floor until he stopped fighting. He hastily wiped the blood from his eye as if it was nothing more than sweat, tucked the knife away in his boot and exited the apartment.
Maybe it was the shock from the cut on his head, maybe it was the fatigue from the other three fights catching up to him, but the next fight seemed to be over before it was even begun. The puny kid wasn't any older than him. The loss of blood made his head spin and he found himself thinking that Mick really did need him if these punks were all he had on hand willing to take him on. He could have those bums whipped into shape, feared and revered in no time. He'd done it before and he'd do it again. His boys were proof of that. Trout and Nips, Red, Mook, any of them could handle this easily. He put his hand to his forehead as he stomped back out into the stairway, his skin slick with blood. Rudy stopped him on one of the landings, yanking his head back to get a better look and hushed his snarl with a sharp glare. "That needs to be stitched and bandaged," he muttered.
"Fuck it." Spot growled. "I'm dead anyway." He ran his soaked sleeve over his face again and continued down to the next floor where and older guy with greasy, pomade slicked hair stood and looked at him boredly. This was just a job for him, just another day of duty to Mick. Spot closed the door as the sound of a woman screaming shattered the silence in the corridor, sending zings of electricity down his spine. The monster he could feel himself becoming relished them, hoped it was Darcy and that Mick was giving her exactly what she deserved. But Spot, the person Kisser raised, cringed. The conflict in his head and the blood burning his eye and pooling in the curve of his lip distracted him and let Lou get a hit in on him. Finally the adrenaline was running out, the rage was letting go and his body felt tired. For the first time, it was hard to get up. A shuffle outside the door caught his attention. Clarice slipped in the door. Her dress was well made but low cut and her soft brown hair was piled up in a messy pompadour on top of her head. "Back off Lou," she growled in a voice ripe with distaste and street drawl as she advanced on him. "Can't you see the kid is cut?"
The oily man sneered. "This ain't your fight, whore. Get back to your apartment."
She took the cane in both hands, separating the gilded head from the shaft to reveal a beautiful dagger. Spot, still crouching on the floor, watched the events unfold, trying to decipher them. "I rank higher than you, ya spineless, mangy old dog." With that, she jammed the knife into his neck and shoved him to the ground. Spot watched him bleed with wide eyes. He'd seen many things in his young life, things that no human should have to see, but he'd never seen blood leave another person like that, not that fast, like it was being pumped out of a faucet. He scrambled to his feet, but kept low and ready, staring at her bum leg, hoping to take it out should she come after him. She calmly wiped her blade on her petty coat and put it back in its sheath in the shaft of her cane before looking his way and smiling in a worn way. His muscled body was tightly coiled, ready to pounce the moment she made a wrong move. "Kiss sent me to help you, remember?" her voice was soft and soothing, as if she suddenly realized that she was closed in a room with a wild animal. "She's here, just downstairs, but you have to finish here first." The screaming continued, and it started to grate on him, making him feel like he had to get out of his own skin. It was horrible. "Don't listen to that Spot," she ordered, but still looked frightened when he turned his attention back to her. "If you let that get to you, he wins. He's playing games with you, just like he has been for the past few weeks, torturing that poor girl in front of you. Ya getting too close and he's trying to get you back under control. Don't let him into your head. You have to get past Rudy and Mick, and then you can go home. Your friends cleared the apartments between here and Rudy." She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and held it out to him. "But you can't bleed to death before you get there."
"Why should I listen to you, huh?" he yelled, swatting her hand away. "You's in Mick's pocket, same as Darcy! I thought she was on my side too, but she was feeding Mick dirt on me the whole time! She ain't no poor girl! She's a lying, two faced snake!"
"Darcy is on no one's side. She is a victim here and you know it. You've seen what he does to her, and he's been doing that for five years. There is nothing left of who she was. She don't know where he ends and she begins. She's served her purpose now, and she's losing her cushy place at the house in the morning. Mick had me get her a room ready this morning."
"I don't believe you!" he growled. "Darcy's not the victim and Marta's not here! She's not!" Suddenly that energy, that rage was in control again and he rushed her, tackling her to the floor and pinning her there. He pulled Trots' knife from his boot and held it to her throat while blood from Lou soaked into his pants and her hair from the floor and drops feel from his brow onto her unflinching face. She stared back up at him so knowing and serene that it gave him a moment of pause. There was nothing he could do that would scare, surprise or intimidate her. Mick had already done it all.
"This is exactly how Mick had her at her gauntlet at the Fox's Lair." She spoke despite the blade pressed to her skin, not flinching in the slightest as the contraction of her muscles dug the edge into her flesh, leaving small cuts and knicks. Her blood and his mixed with the puddle they sat in. The smell was heavy and hot, metallic. It filled his mouth and nose as he breathed, making his stomach do uneasy sommersaults. "He half choked the life out of her, and then pinned her to the floor, just like you've got me. You could step into those boots so quickly and easily kid; he's right about that. You've got what it takes to be his perfect heir. The question is: do you have what it takes to fight that? Do you have it in you to fight that part of you like she did? He wanted her from the first time he saw her bossing Ted around in the streets. They way she had all of your attention, the way she wielded that power so that most didn't even know that she had it, but would die for her just the same. He loved the way she mouthed off and never once let any of you boys get the boost on her. He couldn't help himself; he loves power too much to not go after someone who uses it as naturally as she does. She would have been great as his right hand if he didn't get so greedy. If he had offered it to her the way he did to you, she might have taken it, but he promised to break her instead and she refused to let him. Are you going to just give in so easily and let him crack and mold you into a twisted version of himself? That doesn't sound like the man Kisser thinks you are."
"I ain't like him," he snarled.
"Then who are you like? Because right now you look like him. You don't look anything like the boy who has taken such kind care of Darcy." He snarled at the very mention of her name, but Clarice kept going. "Tending to her wounds and holding her while she cried because he hurt her. Do you know why he hurt her so badly?" He snorted, the beast just wanted to rip the tiny blonde to shreds still, but that tiny sliver of humanity needed to know. "Because she stopped talking, refused to tell him what he wanted to know. She was repaying your kindness even if you never knew it. I told her to just give in and tell Mick, that he'd kill her before it did her any good, but she wouldn't listen."
His grip loosened. He didn't let her go, but he gave her jugular and extra quarter of an inch of space away from the knife and moved his knees from her wrists, shifting to more gently pin her arms with his shins. "What did you say?"
"She's loyal to you, not Mick."
Whatever Mick did to him, the spell it cast was breaking, but before he could act with his slowly clearing brain the door swung open and slammed against the wall. Mick stood, staring both down at them with clenched fists. "I thought we had an understanding after the last time, Clarice. I thought you were smart enough to learn your lesson and not double cross me again," Mick's voice said from the door. Spot scowled up at him, but Mick's eyes didn't leave Clarice's. "Show him your little souvenir from the last time you decided to question your loyalty," he ordered. She suddenly, after all the time of being nonplussed through Spot's attack and tirade, looked pale and sick. She nudged the inside of his leg with hers and he slid off of her onto the floor, finally taking the care to put pressure on his cut head. She raised her skirt slowly, revealing a wooden calf coming out of her polished boot. "If a little kick to a whiskey bottle got you that lovely trophy, I wonder what I should come up with for killing Lou and giving the challenger a pep talk."
"The difference is," she croaked, shuffling her skirt back down, "that I don't have anything left to lose. You've already taken everything Mick. You can't keep me obedient anymore."
He smirked. "Kill her, Spot."
The boy glared, he didn't know what was right and what was wrong, or who was loyal to who, but he knew himself. "No."
"You've already gotten out of two floors, you're not getting away without defeating her too," Mick snarled. "Kill her and move on. You'd have to take her out in F anyway, do it NOW."
Spot raised up to his knees, "I ain't one of your goons and I ain't killing someone who helped me."
Mick smiled eagerly, "Kill her Spot, or I kill Kisser." Rudy came in behind him holding a bound and gagged Marta. Her eyes were wild as she fought against Rudy with every ounce of strength in her.
Spot swallowed hard, his throat dry and sticky as he looked down at Clarice, pleading her with his eyes to do something, to somehow help him get out of this. "Its ok," she whispered. "The only good thing I ever did was help you two. Put me out of my misery and save her. You're saving me form living for another minute under him." He shook his head. He was many things but a killer wasn't one of them. "My only way out is right here," she murmured, wrapping her hand over his on the bone handle of Trots' knife. Her grip tightened, and plunged the blade into her own ribs, dragging his hand along for the ride. Marta shrieked and tried to bolt forward, but Rudy held her tight. Clarice smiled up at him with tears in her eyes. "Thank you," she grunted, before turning a cold glare up to Mick. "There, he's done it. Now send him on, you sick bastard. He's going to take you down. Ya through." She grabbed Spot's pant leg and gave a sputtering cough. "Burn him to the fucking ground, kid. Take Darcy and run." He stared at her, at the puddle of blood growing around them, the smell nearly suffocating now, and watched her light go out. Mick left with a bemused chuckle, while Rudy tried to keep a hold of Marta, who was shrieking into her gag and throwing her body around. He knew how she felt. His body stood still, but him, the real him, was fighting that same battle in his head. He couldn't lose. If he lost, they both would stay bound and gagged for good.