Cain took a right cross to the chin and a knee to her other oblique. Both blows stung. The chick was faster than Cain was, she had to admit, her muscle twitch superior; none of that was unexpected. She could tell that the lady was not maxing out, not yet. She had the fuel to dump Cain on her ass, that was without doubt.
Cain feigned a short left and then hit her opponent with a right uppercut straight to the gut. But the woman’s ab wall was stone. No damage done there, not really. Cain observed a sharp exhale of breath come out of the lady’s mouth with the impact, like air from a popped balloon. But the eyes remained clear, and her expression looking more assured of victory. She must have assumed Cain had used max power on that blow. But the arms were your weak limbs. True strength, the real knockout power, Cain well knew, was housed lower.
Two rounds passed with hundreds of punches and kicks and knees thrown and painfully landed, and blood and sweat released. And it was a lot of blood and a lot more sweat, as their bodies collided, separated, and slammed against each other again and again like grizzly bears ripping at each other.
The concrete floor quickly became littered with the droplets of both women’s blood and sweat, which their constantly moving bare feet had fashioned into blurry, ill-defined patterns that looked like an early-stage Jackson Pollock masterpiece. Welts and purplish bruises covered their arms and legs and torsos. Cuts littered their faces. You didn’t do this sort of thing if your looks really mattered to you. A forearm to the nose or a foot to the chin was going to land you on the floor, not a magazine cover.
In a brief clinch, Cain said tauntingly through her mouthguard, “Come on, kid, you’re supposed to be the next big thing. You haven’t even knocked me down once, cream puff.”
The angry woman tried to arm-bar her, but Cain roughly shoved her off and got a snarl in return. Her opponent leapt forward, and Cain took a hard shot to the head. She fell back a bit, but not in a defenseless way that would encourage the woman to immediately charge after her, hoping to land blow after frenetic blow until the ref stepped in and ended it. And this ref would do that in a heartbeat against Cain, just to deprive her of the cash.
Not tonight, jerk-off.
But then her rotator seized up and Cain couldn’t lift her arm high enough to guard her face; the pain was etched on her features. The other woman immediately noted all this and came in for the kill.
She pounded Cain with everything she had, her fists moving so fast Cain could barely see them, much less block them. A cross caught her on the side of the face, staggering her, a hook battered the other side of her head. An uppercut tore into her chin and she fell back, trying to keep it together, and attempting to unlock her rotator.
But then the other woman made one mistake, and that was all it took inside a cage match. The mistake was stepping back and dropping her hands just enough, because she thought she was out of Cain’s range. She was regaining her breath after her onslaught of blows, and taking her time in deciding how best to knock Cain out, which she now assumed was a foregone conclusion.
This was what Cain’s intentionally shortened range of motion maneuvers had laid the groundwork for all throughout the fight. After a minute or so of jousting, even competitors at this level could mentally measure every millimeter of the ring and tack onto that the exact outer limits of their opponent’s reach. But the latter calculation didn’t work if the opponent let you see only what she wanted you to see. And with every kick launched, Cain had methodically done exactly that, never letting the gal see her full range of motion, which really was the whole ball of wax. Now, with her rotator betraying her, the moment had come.
The woman’s trainer, more adept at this sort of thing than his protégé, and having seen Cain fight before, screamed out a warning through the chain link. It was a warning his fighter never heard because it came a second after Cain slammed her size-thirteen right foot—hard as a tree branch—into the woman’s jaw. Even with all the noise, everyone in the crowd heard the sound, like a watermelon smashing on pavement, as the jawbone gave way to the foot bone.
The fighter was lifted several inches into the air with the force of the blow, her head snapping back far more rapidly than heads were designed to do. When she came back down the woman toppled like a chain-sawed pine to the cement, because her consciousness had just left the building.
All the ref had to do was bend down and see that the limp body held not a shred of anything that constituted a fighter capable of continuing. He waved the contest over after two minutes and thirty-four seconds into the final round. More of the crowd groaned in disappointment than screamed in delight. Clearly, the majority of bettors here thought Cain was going to get her ass kicked tonight.
The fallen lady was briefly revived with a cracked capsule of ammonia inhalant, hauled to her feet, and stood there, almost entirely held up by her pissed-off trainer as the ref grudgingly raised Cain’s hand in victory. Then the beaten fighter immediately collapsed and was carried out of the ring on a stretcher.
Blood trickling down her face and out of her nose, Cain stalked out of the ring without saying a word to anyone. She had nothing she wanted to say, or anyone she wanted to say it to.
Cain just wanted her damn money.
CHAPTER
8
IN THE DINGY, FILTHY BATHROOM that held no shower, Cain stripped off her sweaty clothes and ran a soapy wet towel over herself to remove the stink and the blood, both hers and her opponent’s. The bruises on her face were nothing; they would heal. She then briefly eyed her long naked body in the cracked mirror under the popping, unforgiving glare of fluorescent lights that had been all the rage a half century ago.
Only the best for this gal.
Not a single tattoo was grafted onto her skin. She didn’t need them. She had scars, burn marks, lumps, painfully deep knife cuts and other disfigurements; they were all there, hand-tooled into her. She didn’t grimace in resentment or disgust as she looked at these old wounds, she smiled in triumph.
I survived it all.
That had always been her attitude. Throw everything you got at her and she’d still be standing even if you weren’t. She especially liked it if you weren’t.