Lazarus (The Henchmen MC 7)

The inside was what you might expect- small, dated, hideous. Directly inside to the left was a small kitchen with an apartment sized fridge, stove, and microwave that might have actually been the original fucking prototype for a goddamn microwave. The floor was a peeling fake-wood printed linoleum. The cabinets were straight out of the seventies style-wise, but whitish. The countertops were an absolutely eye-aching pink. The kitchen area stopped where the brown shaggy carpet met it and led to a small area that was, I imagined, meant to be the living room but it wasn't big enough to be called a room at all. The bedroom had a simple platform bed and was cut off from the rest of the space with only a bookshelf wall. Off the bedroom was a bathroom with more of the fake-wood floor and pink counters. And, I kid you fucking not, a pink fucking tub.

I had no idea what I was going to be doing work-wise, but every last fucking cent that didn't go to living expenses was going to go to de-pink'ing my apartment.--I spent three days staring at the walls of my apartment, fighting the nausea, the bugs-under-skin sensation, and the aches by taking long walks around my new town.

It took all of, say, five seconds to realize that my apartment building was on gang territory. And it took all of five minutes after that to find that the gang in question, known locally as Third Street, the most uninventive name ever since it was simply the street where their headquarters was, didn't just run women who I had seen on corners.

Oh, no.

They fucking sold heroin.

They sold heroin and I could literally call to them from the front of my building.

Fantastic.

So when I walked, I turned out of the back of my building and walked past the junkyard instead and headed into an area that was more industrial looking. Businesses lined both sides of the street. Well, the ones that were in business that is. Many of the storefronts were boarded up. But I saw two tattoo parlors, a gym, Chaz's, a fenced place with bikes lining the yard to one side.

An MC, I guessed.

Just as I thought that, I could see a small group of them in leather cuts move out of the building.

I wasn't sure if the decision had been made subliminally or if it was truly happenstance, but I found myself down a side street on my third night staring at a building that looked abandoned - long and low and flat-roofed like maybe it had been some sort of school at some point in time. The bricks were filthy. The windows were boarded. The asphalt was all chewed up.

But it couldn't have been abandoned.

Because it was 98 Roosevelt.

It was the address that was on Ross Ward's business card.

I wasn't sure how long I stood there, but however long it was, it was long enough for a car to purr up beside me. I didn't have to look to know.

So I wasn't the least bit startled to hear Ross Ward's voice address me. "Finally desperate enough?" he asked, the engine cutting and the door slamming. I didn't answer, not sure how I would even go about doing that. He sidled in beside me. "Come on," he said, jerking his head toward the building and then moving around toward the back.

Quite frankly, I had nothing to lose.

I followed.

We went in a back door, finding nothing interesting- dirt, grime, darkness. But there was an oddly clean, well-worn path across the floor to the side which we followed until we hit a huge, wide staircase, confirming my ideas about the place having been a school at some point.

When we hit the bottom landing and Ross slammed open the metal bar on the door, I realized two things:

Ross Ward ran an underground fighting ring.

And Ross Ward was doing very, very fucking well for himself.

No wonder he liked desperation.

You'd have to be desperate to be a human fighting dog.

And he was right too; I was just about desperate enough.

The room itself wasn't exactly a room- it was the entire basement of the building. It was massive. And unlike the top floors, it was clean and decorated.

The floor was a deep, almost black hardwood.

The ring itself was in the center. But 'ring' wasn't the right phrase. It was a cage. It was raised off the ground by a good three feet and then was a hexagonal fenced shape with padded floor. There were no chairs around it, people expected to stand to get a good view. But off to the right side of the room was a long, sprawling bar with a back bar packed with every bottle imaginable.

Another fucking temptation.

There were tables around the bar and even intimate sections with couches and coffee tables. Like the place was some kind of social club instead of an underground fighting ring.