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The two shook hands, sealing their bets.
I raised my eyes so I could see Atticus, but the woman in front of me snagged my attention midway.
“It’s amazing to think I used to be where you are,” she said, her plum-colored lips pulling into a smirk.
“And how did you get out of it?” I asked.
The woman shrugged and said, matter-of-factly, “I fought my way out. I proved I was worth more than what they wanted me to believe I was worth.” She turned her back and left me feeling more useless than I already felt.
I shook it off and turned back to Kade. “What is a gauntlet?” I tried to ask again, but when the sound of gunfire bounced off the walls of the arena, signaling the start of the fight, hundreds of people in the bleachers shot into a stand at once, drowning my voice in their excitement.
The man with the knife practically flew toward Atticus, swinging it wildly at him, swiping it left to right, right to left, and Atticus just barely kept a safe distance from the blade. Confident that he had a weapon and Atticus did not, the man continued to follow him, forcing Atticus to walk backward and in a circular motion. The man swiped the blade at him again—(the crowd shouted)—and again—(the crowd whistled and screamed obscenities)—a third time, and Atticus whirled around the man, narrowly missing the slice of the blade, and grabbed the man’s arm, pulling it behind his back.
The crowd went wilder, pumping their fists, spit spewing from vulgar mouths.
“Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!” they chanted.
The knife dropped from the man’s hand, and his head pulled back and his mouth opened wide, emitting such a cry of agony as his arm was dislocated from his shoulder.
Atticus shoved the man to the floor on his chest, pressed his knee into the center of his back.
“Kill him!” the crowd roared, demanded.
And in one swift motion, before I could get a grasp on what was happening, the knife was in Atticus’ hand and the blade was slicing across the front of the man’s throat.
“Holy shit!” Kade shouted, dollar signs dancing in his wide-set eyes. “Under a minute!”
“Twenty-two seconds!” the man to my left specified.
“That’s a record!” Kade added. He took his eyes off the arena floor long enough to glance smugly at the man. “You’re gonna lose—those boots will look so much better on me anyway, asshole!”
“Bah!” the man said, and waved him off.
“He won!” I screamed, turning on the seat to face Kade fully. “He won!” My heart beat like a hummingbird’s wings inside my chest.
“Yeah, the first fight,” Kade said, and my hummingbird heart stopped before he even finished. “But this is gauntlet night, sweet cakes!”
The first fight? Gauntlet? Finally, I understood what I’d already known deep down to be true. And as another man, much larger than the first, stepped out from the crowd and went toward Atticus with an axe, the miniscule fraction of hope I’d found earlier left my body in one sharp gasp.
“No…” I breathed the word, my hand pressed to my chest. “No, this isn’t right…”—I turned swiftly to Kade—“this isn’t right!”
The axe went above the man’s head, gripped with both hands, and lingered there in slow-motion—Atticus veered right, almost too late, and the heavy blade struck the gymnasium floor with tremendous force. In faster succession, the man raised the axe and brought it down, two, three, four times, but always narrowly missing its target. Atticus dodged left and right, backward and sideward until his opponent became frustrated and enraged and his face twisted with ferocity and he growled and roared like a grizzly bear, the axe raised high above his head.
Atticus used the man’s angry moment against him, jumped into the air in a sideward motion, and one long, powerful leg sprang outward like a whip, his bare foot planting in the center of the man’s chest, forcing his feet from the floor and his body soaring backward. The axe fell from his grasp as his backside hit the floor.
The crowd cheered and cursed; Kade to my right and the man to my left nearly crushed me between them as they shot to their feet again with bloodthirsty excitement. I stood like a fawn between them with my brittle, skinny legs, and my skittish movements, trying to stay out of their way.
I drew a little hope again from the fact Atticus was still winning. But it was too soon, I realized, when a second man stepped from the crowd, shoeless and shirtless, and joined the other man as he picked himself up from the floor.
The severity of what was happening became overwhelmingly evident when I noticed another shirtless man standing in wait at the front of the floor crowd. And another. And another. The people surrounding the fighters—men and women—were to be part of this fight, this gauntlet against Atticus.
My head dizzied; a glaze fell over my eyes; my breathing labored and I felt the desperate need to sit down but I fought to stay upright. I need to do something. I have to help him—I need to do something! But nothing had changed from before, and I could do nothing.
The two men working together to fight Atticus went toward him, their faces twisted with brutal intent; the second man swiped up the axe from the floor on his way. All Atticus had was the knife he’d taken from the first fighter—he shot toward them instead of away from them, and midway he drew back his hand and threw the knife; it soared through the air out ahead of him. The man with the axe crumpled to the floor on his knees, dropping the axe; blood poured down his chest, and his hands went up instinctively to feel for the knife buried there, but he fell face forward, dead before he hit the floor.
Atticus snagged the axe, leapt over the dead man toward the second fighter, and swung the weapon in a wide circle, screaming like a madman. A sharp gasp shared by the crowd went around the room, followed by one second of nerve-wracking silence as they watched the blade glide closer to the fighter’s beefy arm, followed by a collective awe and then the room erupted in cheer when it struck flesh.
The fighter dropped to the floor holding his wounded arm; an excruciating wail resonated around the room.
