Caged Fire Read online

  EmVee looked at the drive, squeezing it in her palm.

  Rocky tossed something in his mouth and pushed her back. “Look away, kid.” His body started convulsing. He groaned and collapsed, eyes open and staring toward the moon teased by dark clouds.

  Sweat slid from under her drawn hoodie. Why’d he do it? They could’ve taken him to a hospital.

  She glanced around quickly then went for Rocky’s pockets. She reached in his jacket; flesh and entrails had spilled from his waist and into his coat. EmVee jerked back, shaking her head as a sigh escaped her lips. She bit down on her lip and did what she had to do. In his jacket, she found his cell phone and put it in her back pocket. His wallet she stuffed in the side pocket of her backpack. There was nothing else.

  Putting her hand over her nose, and swallowing back the tangy taste of vomit, she reached over and closed Rocky’s blue eyes. She’d never forget them.

  EmVee burst through the doors of the fight building. No one noticed her as they were cheering and pressing forward, watching one of the big-name MMA fighters and the guy he was pounding into the floor. The smell of blood, sweat, and money filled the air. A comfort she’d become used to over the last year of hiding, fighting, and moving her father had forced on them.

  It wasn’t difficult to push through the pressed bodies of bidders and betters that were out of shape, rounded, or held putrid body stink. The men and scantily clad women with them stood mesmerized by the carnage in front of them. Usually, so was she before her father moved them to The Void, enticed by a fake dream of success and safety. He never told her why they’d moved there or even what made them run from the explosion at the hospital that killed her mother, brothers, and sister. Her chest still pounded with the rawness of it all even though it was nearly a year behind them.

  Frantically, her eyes tracked the room. She didn’t see him, so she made her way to the changing rooms in the back. She’d never been allowed there. Her father didn’t want her to draw too much attention at these venues, so she didn’t assert the issue with him much. But now, she didn’t have a choice. EmVee squeezed through the hallway, pushing herself between the crush of managers and fighting groupies hanging out in the hallway.

  Fenom, her father’s friend and manager, if that what you wanted to call him, appeared to be guarding the door. Her father called him brother from another mother. He acted like it even though he was extremely evasive and had a hard edge to him, except when it came to his daughter, her best friend.

  “Hi, Nom, have you seen Max-Gold?” EmVee made sure to never call him Dad. Most people didn’t think they were related. With her fair skin, red hair, and his deep dark skin with prominent features, it made it easy for people to assume they weren’t—only if they’d never seen her mother. Her father made her promise to keep her distance from him in most crowds. For some reason, he didn’t want anyone to know they were related, and she never asked why since she was still dazed from the hell of the experience.

  Fenom’s slanted blue eyes captured hers, and he closed them. Then he pivoted away. His short blond crew cut framed the long bangs over his left eye. He had a tattoo that pointed down to his neck. He ignored her with the exception of taking his hand and sliding it down the back of his head to the end of his neck where his arrow tattoo ended.

  “He didn’t,” EmVee growled.

  It was their signal. It was the one that told her to split up and go to her safe place. She wouldn’t do that. Leaving him, her only remaining family, wasn’t going to happen. If they were fighting to get away, EmVee would finally reveal to her father the secret she kept from him. The training he’d instilled in her from the moment she could walk was there, but now, she had something else that couldn’t be named. She’d never be the same, thanks to Silas, the one guy she’d entrusted her heart to, who’d unfortunately tried to kill her.

  Allowing the crush of people to envelope her, she closed her eyes and inhaled the aromas around her. The scent of her father’s skin rose above the others, and she focused on it. Opening her eyes, she held the essence of him deep in her nose and mouth. It felt as though every hair on her body stood at a point in the direction he’d gone. He wouldn’t get away without taking her with him. Even though he thought he could save her, she would save him.

  EmVee caught up to Max-Gold as he slipped through a broken window in the back of the room, away from the fight but where the gamblers were congregating to pay and make their bets. The window frame was devoid of glass. She hopped up on the ledge, steadied herself with one hand, and grasped his with the other.

  “Why are you leaving me?” EmVee frowned, her voice hoarse and broken. Demanding answers was something she rarely did with her father.

  Max Lewis, aka Max-Gold, shook his head at her. “Baby girl, I wanted you safe. They don’t know you are with me.”

  “I’m sorry, Dad, but they do. I don’t want to lose you too. Please don’t leave me.” EmVee pouted, something she knew worked on him.

  He gave her a sanguine smile. “Okay, okay. Promise you will run if I tell you to. No matter what happens, you will leave.”

  EmVee couldn’t look him in the eyes. She skipped her gaze across the dark clear sky and the blooming leaves of the trees.

  “Whatever you say, Dad.”

  He cast a skeptical gaze on her, twisted his forearm out of her hand, and dropped several yards to the ground.

  EmVee followed, her arms wide and legs flexed, ready for the impact of her landing. Her feet barely made a sound on the pavement. Her father stood and pounded a fist on the wall.

  He handed her his leather pouch. It was black and silver with designs of a jagged symbol with a small stone encased in the middle.

  “Keep this. Stay close.” Max searched the tight alley, walking ahead of her.

  The fight house had a brick covered walkway between it and a dilapidated building on this side. They were in the back of the building and the adjacent side where EmVee met Rocky. It was overgrown with weeds and tall unmanaged trees that burst through the walls of the crumbling building across from them.

  “Dad, I’ve got something to tell you.” She grasped his leather jacket to stop him.

  “Nothing I don’t already know, I’m sure.”

  “It is. The guy, Rocky, from The Void, was watching your fight. He was outside when I got out there, but he was pretty beat up. Someone gutted him.”

  Her father’s jaw was rigid, and he rubbed his palm through his thick, tight black hair. It was fashioned into a mohawk that was tapered on the side into jagged lightning-like strikes toward his neck, like Fenom’s.

  “I told him never to contact me.” Her father covered his mouth with a dark hand.

  EmVee’s hand shook. She took out the thumb drive Rocky gave her. “He died. I think he took something to finish himself.” EmVee’s throat constricted, and her rough response came out deeper than her actual tone. “He said it was too late. Something about saving his kid from something.”

  Her father stared at the drive. A brief flare of fear flashed in his eyes. “Put that away. Don’t tell anyone you’ve got it.” He grabbed her wrist.

  “I don’t understand. Tell me everything. We’ve been running forever it seems. But Mom, Rei, Dexter, and Reece are dead. I don’t know why, and you won’t ever talk about it.” EmVee broke free of his grasp, fighting back tears.

  “I can never tell you everything. It will get you killed or recruited, and you’re all I got left. I am not signing another kid of mine up for this war.” He stepped toward her. “Now let’s go before this will be for nothing.”

  A light flashed at the mouth of the alley. A car’s wheels screeched, entering the far end.

  “Damn!” her father roared.

  “Run!” her father growled.

  EmVee didn’t bother to wait to see if he was behind her. She knew he was and was gaining. She pushed herself, but not hard enough to leave him. Her heart clenched in her chest at the thought of it. As she pumped her arms back and forth, his pounding feet ec
hoed against the walls of the abandoned buildings on each side of the rock covered alley.

  A flash of light from behind was followed by a thunderous pouring of rain which acted as a godsend of cover. She lurched from the firm push from her father.

  She stumbled and then steadied. He yanked her up by the jacket. “Hide! Don’t come out until it’s over!”

  He pushed her again, harder, so hard she flew. Her back collided with the glass on the window of the rotting building. Her arms went wide. EmVee tossed her feet over and landed in a no-handed flip, crunching broken glass beneath her feet. She knew her father was strong, but that push wasn’t like anything she’d known him to do before.

  She ran to the window the air accumulating in her chest. EmVee pushed her bulky backpack against the wall to see who was chasing her father. Fisting her hands, she saw the men that surrounded him. The hairs on her body tugged against her skin as they stood up. She sniffed the air to get their scent and found that they had a strange odor. Human, but with a teasing scent of soot.

  EmVee leaned closer. Her father kicked one in the face, grabbed the other by the neck, and butted heads with him. The guy fell back, and unlike any person she’d seen her father land that blow to before, he kicked his legs up and recovered.

  “What the…” EmVee covered her mouth.

  Her father had downed all but three. EmVee smelled their blood. They weren’t getting back up. The last three, though, they were different. Stronger than the others.

  “We don’t plan on taking you alive, Max,” one man threatened.

  “You’re not taking me!” Her father punched one of them, and his head snapped back.

  “You owe us. You were one of us! Remember the Gym? The price you were to pay for us saving your ass from the threat on your family.” One of the guys taunted him with a knife.

  “I paid it. Ask them.” Her father stepped back, missing the jab of the blade. Then broke the neck of the guy behind him.

  “We did, but you forget the interest payment. The Overlord, he wants you! You were to claim your rightful place among us. Instead, you fled.” Another guy punched her father in the back then downward on the head with a thick police stick.

  “I paid with my family. I lost them all. They’re all dead. You took them from me. My wife, my kids…” Her father did a round off kick, and one of the guys flew to thump on the ground.

  “And I enjoyed every bit of it,” the standing guy growled.

  Her father punched the guy repeatedly. His body jumped in a dance from the blows.

  EmVee growled as the fallen guy staggered to a stand. Then he pulled a gun from his hip. She didn’t think. She acted. Squeezing her palms against the windowsill, she felt her nose twitch at the blood from her cut hands. Jumping over the ledge, she ran with a speed she’d never pushed herself to before. The bullet released, she ducked and came up to grab the man’s wrist with one hand and his neck with the other. EmVee twisted his wrist, broke it, and squeezed his neck.

  “EmVee! I said hide, dammit. Now!”

  Taking several breaths to calm the drumming of blood through her veins, EmVee punched the guy, releasing him as his body went limp.

  “Why?” She pivoted around to stare at her father. A glow and crackle like electricity crackled from him. EmVee stepped toward him.

  “Hide! It’s not over!” He pointed to the window.

  She dropped her shoulders and drew her energy back within herself.

  EmVee ran over to the window and hopped back inside. She heard them then…footsteps. Light and sure through the pounding rain.

  A woman came into view. She wore a black jacket, shades, and the rain seemed to part above her golden hair. It appeared as though she held an invisible umbrella.

  EmVee backed against the wall.

  “Max, Max, Max. You survived.”

  “Why the hell wouldn’t I? Who are you?” Her father stood rigid but ready. He raised his fist at the woman’s approach.

  “Don’t play as if you don’t remember me. I am the private investor that funded your gym, your home, and haven at the expense of more than you know. I would have been your trainer. But you escaped before my succession,” the woman said.

  “Look, I told your guys I paid the loan back. The check was good. I even gave them leads to the talent at my previous gym. Kids who can be groomed for what you needed, like you asked. My family died because of this. What could you want now?”

  “Those leads led to no one. None of the ‘talent’ you gave us was of the bloodline. Not from Queen Kera.” The corner of the woman’s full lips lifted. She took her hand out of her pocket and pointed a silver gun at EmVee’s father’s head. “Besides, it’s personal now!”

  The gun fired, and her father flew backward.

  EmVee forced her fist into her mouth to hold in her cry. Unchecked tears sprang from her eyes. She stared, not blinking, and memorized every feature revealed in the killer’s face.

  Swallowing her nausea, she watched the woman crouch to pick up her father. The tall blonde tossed him over her shoulder like he weighed nothing then turned and carried him away.

  EmVee’s head leaned back on the dirt-stained wall until the rain stopped, until the tears stopped. She didn’t want to leave there. Her heart was broken, and she wanted to die. Right there. Maybe never leave this place. It was where he was. Her father. The last living relative she’d known in almost a year. She missed them. Her mom, her brothers and sister, and most of all her father.

  They had a plan. It was to get enough money from the underground fighting scene to go to Africa, to a grandfather she’d never met. Her father had a close network of friends. Like Fenom. She’d come to trust him and the handful of others in the tight-knit group of people her father worked with after they’d escaped The Void. Those men and women helped them run away and had been weaving in and out of their travels ever since.

  EmVee wondered where they were now and if, maybe, they would know what to do. A white poodle hopped through the window; it stared at her.

  “What is it?” EmVee slowly reached for it. The puppy jumped from the ledge as if beckoning her. “That’s it, I’m going to Demi’s. She will help.” EmVee hopped on the ledge. Eyeing the deserted alley, EmVee ignored the music echoing from the fight club. She slid the skateboard out of the slot on her backpack and tossed it to the ground.

  EmVee dug in her pocket for a piece of gum and took a quick glance at her phone with Demi’s last message on it. With her thumb, she flicked open the gum wrapper, letting it fall to the ground as she stuffed the long piece of minty spearmint between her lips. EmVee jumped down and placed her foot on the board. EmVee took one last look around, at where her father had fallen, and blinked to cease the flow of tears.

  The scent of his blood lingered even though the rain had cleaned the evidence of it away.

  “For you, Daddy. I will find her and end her for you.” Hastily, she wiped away a stray tear with her sleeve.

  EmVee had been to Demi’s home only once. It wasn’t somewhere a person would expect someone to live. EmVee’s dad stopped there occasionally to show EmVee the location. “Just in case you need a place to lie low,” he’d said.

  Demi lived in a graveyard.

  Who would want to do that? EmVee was hesitant to meet the girl when her father first brought her to the strange place to meet Fenom and Demi, but she got over the aversion to graveyards. Her father told her that the living were more dangerous than the dead. Those hours spent at her tiny home made the place seem not so creepy but cozy.

  To be honest, it didn’t fit Demi’s personality one bit. She was bubbly, snarky, and fun, which didn’t seem well suited to a dark, overgrown place for the dead.

  EmVee flipped up her skateboard then took a quick look around while putting it in the slit on her backpack. The gate to the graveyard was slightly open. Something she remembered from her last visit there. The sun was teasing the sky. A dark cloud continued to play a game of hide and seek with it that flashed light on the path
beyond the iron gate. Overgrown weeds and brown vines gave the Keep Out vibe to the place.

  EmVee pushed through the entrance, closing it before weaving through the closely packed gravestones and monstrous statues she supposed were some kind of bad attempt at decorating. The place was old, scattered with broken tombstones and trash, shrouded in the appearance of being abandoned.

  The path to Demi’s was littered by jagged stones embedded into the ground. The stones seemed to be dropped in jagged designs to warn off the curious grave robber. Dirt hugged them like the ground hungered to cover them up.

  Her heart beat fast. She blinked her dry eyes, irritated from crying the entire way there. EmVee came upon the mausoleum that Demi called home. It was about twelve feet high, a cement body with only two small windows that were brown and orange stained glass. The door appeared to be stone, but Demi remembered it being metal with some faux paint that made it blend into the stone outer walls. Weeds hugged the sides, giving it an unkempt appearance.

  EmVee lifted her fist and knocked on the door. And knocked some more. Then banged on the door.

  Finally, after what seemed like forever, Demi swung it open.

  Her vibrant head wrap barely held in her long, thick black hair and framed her chocolate heart-shaped face. Her brown eyes nailed EmVee, and she lifted her lips into a smirk. “What the hell? You flip off my text but show up at my door?”

  The cement walls were littered with posters of anime, super heroes, and shirtless guys doing some extreme sport or another. There was a loveseat, a small desk, and chair in the corner with a microwave on the table. The twin mattress on the back wall was littered with stuffed animals, candy wrappers, and clothes on top of the purple comforter.