Pure Blood_ A Nocturne City Novel - Caitlin Kittredge [39]
Halfway across the Siren Bay Bridge I realized I was beyond the point where I could sleep. My hands were shaking and the lights strung across the steel span seemed overly bright, my were night vision haloed in gold.
I changed lanes and took the exit for the port of Nocturne City, driving between stacked crates and cranes that threw crazy shadows across the pavement, like a giant’s hand had marked the earth.
Light spilled out of a converted warehouse ahead, the only structure still bearing any signs of life at this late hour. Plain black letters advertising KICKBOXING—SHOTOKAN KARATE—SELF DEFENSE paraded across the cinderblock front. The dojo was open twenty-four hours and catered to cops, bodyguards, and insomniacs.
I parked in the gravel lot and got my gym bag out of the Fairlane’s trunk. My muscles were stiff from just the short car ride and I winced, anticipating the punishment that too many delayed workouts would bring.
Mort, the owner of the dojo, looked up from his desk as I jingled the bell over the door. “Wilder. Thought you might be dead.”
“No such luck,” I told him. “Although that might change after I practice.”
He grunted. Mort looked like he should be working the corner in a Rocky movie. He was bald, squat, and very white, and you’d never guess he held a fifth-degree black belt in Shotokan, or that he’d been a bare-knuckle boxer in Thailand after he blew out his knee fighting competitively. He was one of the toughest people—human or were—that I’d ever known.
“You owe me for last month,” he said, picking up his paperback romance novel, something called Unbridled Desires. The cover featured a big-bosomed woman riding a horse, caught in the embrace of a muscular and mostly shirtless alpha male. True love knows no boundaries, said the teaser line.
“What a crock,” I muttered.
“Pardon?” said Mort.
“Nothing,” I assured him quickly, digging seventy-five dollars in bills out of my wallet to bring my membership current. He whistled.
“Lotta cash. You on the take, Wilder?”
“Mort, if I was, I wouldn’t be working out in this craphole.”
“Very true,” he said.
I went into the women’s locker room and changed into loose black running shorts and a sports bra, taping my hands but eschewing the twelve-ounce practice gloves I usually wore. I needed to hurt, to beat the anger and humiliation out of my system.
Start forgetting Dmitri all over again.
Thai boxing is good for one thing, and that’s inflicting damage. It’s an unholy cross between martial arts and western boxing, blows hammered in with fists and feet with the sole purpose of hurting your opponent so badly he never gets up again.
At least, that was the theory I operated under when I used the techniques I’d learned from Mort on the job.
I started with a series of straight jabs, barely touching the bag, getting a feel for my feet and hands again after a long week away from the gym. My balance was off because I was so tired, but I managed a few combinations and a series of straight kicks before my breathing turned harsh.
Dmitri was welcome to Irina. What man wouldn’t want a slutty pack groupie to do his every bidding? He was slime and I was well rid of him.
Even my inner voice sounded unconvincing. I sped up my combinations, the bag swinging to mimic a real opponent.
Fine. He cheated, he lied, and I still wanted him. That made me the sick one, but he was still the bastard. The best thing to do would be to move on.
Right. Forget his eyes and his smile and his scent and his hands, which caressed Irina instead of me. Wipe that rightness I felt when we had been together out of my mind.
I became aware I was kicking the bag sloppily, dropping my hands, attacking blindly. I’d already be horribly disfigured in a real fight.
A chirping sounded from the locker room. Mort didn’t look up, but my ears recognized my cell phone. I debated answering for a good second—I was off duty, totally justified in taking a sick day, and in a really bad mood.
But it could be important. It could be Sunny.