Right on target.

The world just stops.

My life freezes. It’s like someone hit the pause button on my existence. I step back and take it in. My face is a malicious grin with reddened eyes. Every muscle in my body looks taut beneath my clothing, pulled tight in both rage and anguish. Casey is actually lifted off the ground by my punch, his cheeks puffing out, his feet hanging about a foot or so above the floor. His body is hunched over my fist, crumpled, like a badly raised circus tent.

I feel powerful. I feel immortal and dark and stark raving mad. I feel like every fantasy character I’d concocted for myself at bedtime, every grand villain or hideous monster I’d used to make my poisonous core into a weapon or a shield against everything else. This is how Vlad the Impaler must have felt, Alexander the Great, Charles Manson-invincible, powered by something beyond their control and feeling deliciously wonderful about it. This is how Blacklight feels. It’s fantastic. It’s better than every fantasy I’ve ever dreamed of, every fight I’ve ever walked away from. Better than sex, than love. Paradise in ebony.

This is nice, I think.

Isn’t it, though?

BAM, I’m in the fight again, and after a second of floating, Casey hits the ground. He tries to push away from me, coughing, sobbing, but I grab the collar of his shirt and pull. One of his bloody, drooly hands reaches out and does the same to me. For a second I see his face, my friend’s face, pained, hurt-

– and then he smiles, and I know that no matter how powerful or dark I just felt, he understands.

He yanks, and uses the force of me pulling up to head-butt me right in the face. The world shatters, and all is silent for a second, but consciousness spins back into view.

We’re both on our feet, but just barely. My head is still swimming from the head butt, and Casey’s still choking from the uppercut, and the people circling us are looking more worried than excited now. We’re heaving, stumbling, trying to gather our wits, ready for the next move, the next punch. Our eyes meet, and although bloody and bruised, I can tell he’s still ready to fight.

“Stop.”

Somehow, through the car alarms and the whispering audience and all the city’s noise, we both hear Randall and look up at him. He stands at the front of the crowd, arms folded, Tollevin flanks him, aghast. Randall’s expression is one of mixed contempt and grief-he’s disgusted by us, but it’s obvious he didn’t expect anything less. There’s a smudge of blood on his shirt. I then take the time to look at our battlegrounds and see lots of it, spattering the sidewalk, my clothes, my fists…JESUS. Now that I look at it, there’s blood everywhere, even smeared on the walls and the car we hit. This place looks like a food fight at Hannibal Lecter’s place. I had no idea there was this much blood in a person. Or that I could shed it.

After this pause, there’s no more momentum. I feel numb, obliterated. I can’t even cry. There’s nothing left in me, like the venom has passed out from exhaustion and left a big empty room behind. I open my mouth and feel my lips sting as the blood and mucus coating them stretches and then cracks.

I turn to face Randall. “Brent call you?” I manage to hiss out. He nods, slowly. “How do I look?”

“You’ll be okay.”

Greeeeat. “You okay?”

He opens his mouth to say something, and then his eyes widen. “Locke-”

A hand grabs my hair and yanks, accompanied by the most gut-wrenching scream I’ve ever heard. Casey sweeps me off my feet and slams my head into the car’s hood. Everything swirls purple before going straight to black.

“Locke? LOCKE?”

A hand slaps my face awake, and I sit up on the pavement. Tollevin crouches in front of me with a glass of water, which he shoves into my mouth, and I gulp greedily. The side of my forehead cries agony.

“Oh fuck,” I mumble. “How long was I out for?”

“Only about twenty seconds,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief. “Long enough to make us worried, though. Jesus, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s possible to kill you. Man, you need to see a mirror.”

The details of the situation rush back into my head. “Where’re Randall ’n’ Casey?”

“Over there.”

I follow his finger to a couple of yards away, where Casey sits with his back up against a wall, head between his knees. Randall crouches in front of him, face pained and exhausted. A small trail of blood runs from Casey, dribbling down the pavement and into the street.

Okay, friends accounted for. Next problem. “Where’s Renée?”

Tollevin hisses, “She’s inside the bar, man. Now might not be the best time.”

“Help me up.”

“Locke…fuck.”

Tollevin yanks me to my feet and hands me my glasses, surprisingly intact. I hobble into the bar, dark and ratty, and find Renée on the stool, picking her nails to pieces. Great black gobs of makeup drip down from her animal eyes, darting every which way in case of predators. One knee moves pistonlike; her foot beats out a double-bass rhythm. The bartender, a cute girl in her midtwenties, has a hand on Renée’s shoulder. As I enter, she takes just enough time to return my glance and turn away in horror. The more I walk, the more I feel the blood move down my face.

“Renée?”

She shrieks and goes a foot in the air. Instead of going to my face to help me, like they should, her hands go straight to and into her mouth, her fingers shoved between her teeth. Her eyes well up with tears, and her shoulders go up in a defensive posture. Jesus, how bad did Casey beat me? We didn’t get that out of hand, did we?

“Renée.”

“Look at you,” she gurgles. “Look at yourself.”

She stands up and marches out of the bar, crying quietly. I follow her into the street, as fast as I can.

“Renée.”

She turns the corner, trying to outwalk me. What the fuck? I grab her shoulder and spin her, make her look at me.

“Renée!”

Before I can say anything else, she’s screaming and hitting me, pounding her fists at my shoulders and neck and making these horrible leathery noises in the back of her throat again. My wounds scream out in soreness, so I just put my arms up and back off. I take the hint and don’t touch her again, just follow her.

“Renée.”

Past the remaining members of the audience, disgusted, whispering. I start switching sides to make sure both ears can hear me.

“Renée.”

She walks to the curb and throws one hand up, the other one clutching at the back of her neck. I pray that our appearances will make every cab driver in a three-mile radius turn their OFF DUTY lights on.

“Renée.”

A cab pulls up in seconds, and she’s inside it, barking her address. I grab hold on the door handle and try to keep her from closing the door.

“Renée.”

She screams and yanks with all her might before crawling into the far corner of the taxi and hiding her face. The cab, whose driver probably thinks I’m a budding Ike Turner, disappears with a screech and a cloud. I memorize the plate: EVH5604. Soon, though, it blends in with the New York City mob of yellow cabs, and it’s lost, taking my repulsed girlfriend with it.

“Renée.”

The wounds on my face and the bruises on my arms sting as my sweat and blood roll into them, as if someone had dripped poison into my open gashes and aching muscles. Somewhere in the distance, there’s a high-pitched wail, growing louder and louder.

Tollevin runs up to my side. “Dude, that’s the cops. You need to get the fuck out of here, pronto.”

And even though it makes no sense, a word forms in my mouth, the only word I think I can say other than her name.

My lips curl, teeth press, tongue wavers, and:

“Venom.”

A RE YOU alive?”

He sputtered out another gurgling response. The monster that had nearly killed me was no more, leaving this charred little…man. A man, an engine of blood and ligament, nothing more. Weak, easy, shallow, murderous.