“And how do you know they aren’t all dead?” He leaned into my personal space, his amber eyes sparking and his presence brushing against me invasively. “How do you know they haven’t been snapped up and chewed up by the Dreki?”
A chill lashed down my spine because this was exactly what I’d been thinking when Dad had dropped his bombshell, but my poker face was second to none, so I narrowed my eyes. “Firstly, what the fuck does it matter to you?” I indicated the cell we were in. “Right now, none of that shit matters because no one is going anywhere until we get the heck out, and secondly, please get out of my personal space.”
His penetrating gaze swept over my face as if looking for some flaw, and then he inclined his head and took a step back. It was only when my shoulders unknotted I realized I’d been in defense mode. My body was a fucking contradiction right now. Part of me was thrilled to be the object of such intense, heated scrutiny, and the other, more primal part was ready for fight or flight.
He cocked his head, speculative. “Are you always this on edge?”
“Are you always this fucking laid back?”
His attention fell to my mouth and something warm and forgotten unfurled in my belly. I turned away. “We need to wake the others.”
As if on cue, Helgi moaned and pulled herself to her feet. Her eyes were bloodshot as she scanned our prison.
“Bastards. I’m gonna kill ’em,” she said with conviction.
Bran and the merc were next to come to, and around us the sound of Skins regaining consciousness filled the room. Exclamations, curses, and groans merged together in a chilling symphony of desperation.
Helgi grabbed the bars and tugged. She gripped them, her biceps straining in an attempt to bend them. “Fuck!”
“It’s Obrilian steel,” Big Red told her.
Helgi stepped away from the bars. “They can’t do this. This is so fucking out of order. Who the heck do they think they are?” Her body vibrated with impotent rage.
“Save it,” Big Red said. “I have a feeling we’re going to need every ounce of energy we have to get out of here.”
Once again, there was no urgency in his tone, just an eerie calm that sent a chill through my veins, replacing the heat his gaze had coaxed into my blood.
“We should probably get acquainted. My name is Dante.”
Dante. Yeah, that suited him.
“Bran.”
The twin who’d been shoved in here with us raised his chin. “Jasper.”
Dante turned his inquiring gaze on me and there was that weird tug in my abdomen again.
“I’m Anya.”
“Helgi, and how the heck are you so calm?”
Dante shrugged. “Panicking won’t get us anywhere. Best to wait and see what happens.”
Bran had been watching Dante with interest. He folded his arms across his chest. “You’re new to our part of the Outlands, right? I’ve never seen you around before. What brought you to Ghost Town?”
Dante’s eyes narrowed. “You haven’t seen me because I didn’t want to be seen. As for what brought me to the meeting spot…” He shrugged. “Barret.”
He was lying. I could taste it, and there was something else niggling at the back of my mind, something that didn’t add up. Ah, yes. “There were only eight sentinels. And I heard their commander say they were expecting eight Skins.”
Dante turned his head, slow and deliberate, to look at me. “I have no idea what they were expecting. All I know is that I was given a set of coordinates, a time, and a place by Barret. I certainly wasn’t expecting to be kidnapped, gassed, and then shoved in a cell.” His brow furrowed. “Do you think I deliberately had myself kidnapped by Bloods?”
Put that way, it did sound ridiculous. “No, I don’t. This whole thing is just one huge mess. Doesn’t matter what our individual reasons for being in Ghost Town were, the fact is we’re all here now. We’re all prisoners. And none of us planned on that.”
Something dark and unreadable flitted across Dante’s face, and the hairs on the back of my neck prickled with unease. There was something not right about the incredibly hot male. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
“There’s no escaping, is there?” Jasper said.
“Shut it, twit,” his twin said from the cell opposite. “There is always a way out. We just need to find it.”
His reaction reminded me that there were others here with us, outside our cell but still very much part of our predicament. The cages’ occupants farther down were engaged in their own muted conversations. But the one opposite us was focused on our discussion—probably because three out of four of the occupants had been with us in Ghost Town.
Bran’s cohorts joined Jasper’s twin up against the bars.
“We have to get out of here,” the merc with the flared nostrils said.
“We’re not going anywhere until we know exactly where we are,” Dante said. “In order to escape, we need to have an understanding of our prison. How many locked doors are there between us and freedom? How many walls, weapons, and guards are there between us and the outside world?”
He was right. We needed to watch, gather information, and plan. There had to be a weakness to this fortress. A way to escape.
The doors opened and a Skin glided in pushing a huge metal cart. Her body had the long-limbed, wiry edge of youth. I’d peg her as barely seventeen or eighteen. Her green hair was pulled back from her face in a braid. She kept her head down, but the brand on her forehead was clearly visible—an angry, puckered X.
My chest heated, and my hands curled into fists.
They’d marked her.
The fucking Bloods had marked her like cattle.
She stopped at the first cell and pulled out a silver tray, lifted the hatch, and shoved it through toward the trapped Skins. Two trays went in to feed five Skins. The Bloods had done their research on our metabolic rates. We aged slowly, and we could last longer than Bloods without food, so they were giving us the minimum requirement in sustenance. The Skin server moved on to the next cell and pushed through the first tray.
If we were going to find out what the hell was going on, we needed to ask questions, and who better to quiz than a fellow Skin, one young enough to slip up and maybe unintentionally help us.
Dante’s arm brushed mine. I shot him a sidelong glance. Did he have the same idea? He nodded but didn’t make a move. He was giving me the floor.
I stepped closer to the bars. “Hey, girl? What is this place? Where are we?”
She didn’t respond but continued to prepare the trays.
Time to try another approach. “Look, we aren’t animals, we’re Skins like you. You can’t believe we deserve to be treated like this. We have loved ones who’ll be worried about us. Our families will be wondering where we are. Our mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters ...”
She didn’t pause in what she was doing, but her shoulders tensed.
“Do you have family here? How would you feel if your loved one was taken away from you and you had no idea what had happened to them? Please ... help us.”
She continued to work in silence, and my heart sank. Dammit. What had the Bloods done to her to make her so cold? I gripped the bars and hung my head in resignation just as her voice broke the silence, smooth and confident for her age.
“Turn your back to me and then speak,” she said. “There’s a camera trained on you. They can’t hear you, but they can see you addressing me.”
Cameras? They were watching us?
Heat seared my back and then an arm wrapped around my waist. Dante spun me round to face him and then pushed me up against the bars. To the unsuspecting viewer, it would look as if we were getting frisky. My brain took a moment to short-circuit, registering the heat of his body, the hard, taut pressure of his thighs against mine, and the tickle of his warm breath across my face, and then self-preservation kicked in.
I pushed him away. “I got this, big guy. You can back up a bit.”
Helgi caught my
eye over his shoulder and made a kissy face. Bitch.
Dante arched a brow and released me, putting some distance between us. He tucked in his chin, eyes trained on my face. “Talk to her,” he said softly.
My insides responded to his voice with a lurch. “Okay, I’ve turned away. Can you tell us what this place is? Where are we exactly?”
The clatter of metal followed as she continued to serve. The room had fallen into utter silence as all the Skins waited for the information.
“They renamed it the arena after considerable modifications. But it used to be called the complex until a month ago,” the branded girl said. “You’re not the first batch of Skins to be brought here, just the first to be announced to the general public.”
Dante’s brow furrowed. “What happened to the others?” he asked. His voice carried easily, even though he barely raised it.
“Most of them are dead. My mother used to work here when it was called the complex. She told me about the red sector. About the Skins who went in but never came out. Skins who’d been reaped from the Outlands, and ones that had come here willingly to sign into servitude or into the army. So many were brought here.”
“And?” Dante asked. “What happens in the red sector?”
“What do they do?” Jasper asked from his position seated on a mattress.
“I don’t know,” the girl continued. “My mother wouldn’t tell me, even when I pressed her for details. Then one night, she didn’t come home.” She paused as if gathering herself, and when she continued her tone was breathless with the memory. “My mistress woke me late at night, she told me there had been an accident and that Mother was dead. That was almost a year ago. Since then, they’ve made modifications to the complex and recruited new staff. I implored my mistress to allow me to work here.”
She was looking for answers. “You don’t believe what happened to your mother was an accident, do you?”
“No.” Her voice wobbled. “In those last days before her death, she changed. She was frightened all the time. I believe she saw something she shouldn’t have.”
“You think they killed her because of it?” Jasper asked.
“I don’t know. My mother was trying to protect me just as my mistress is now. But I have to know for sure. I have to find out what it is they’re doing in the red sector.”
“And then what?” Dante asked. His tone was demanding but not unkind. “What will you do with this information if you find it?”
A tray clattered sharply against the ground.
“She’s flustered,” Helgi muttered. “She hasn’t really thought that far ahead.”
“I ... I just have to know.”
“They’ll kill you too,” Dante said candidly. “Just like they killed your mother.”
There was no malice in his amber eyes, only empathy. He was right. She was playing with fire, but if we worked together, maybe she could get the information she needed, and we could all get out of here.
The hatch scraped open behind me, and I turned and crouched by the bars as she slid a tray through the hatch into our cell. She kept her lids lowered.
“What’s your name?” I barely moved my lips.
She slowly raised her gaze to meet mine. “Sophia. My name is Sophia.”
“Listen.” I took the first tray. “Help us get out of here, and we can help you get the information you need and get you out of Draco City. We can take you with us.”
Eyes widened in horror, she dropped the second tray as if it were scalding hot. “Leave the city? Why would I want to do that? My mistress is kind. I’m content here. I just wanted to know what happened to Mama.” She shoved the tray through the hatch and pulled away from the cell. “I can’t help you. This was a bad idea. Talking to you was a bad idea.”
“Then why the fuck did you?” Helgi snapped.
Sophia blinked at her in disconcertion. “I don’t know. I guess ... for a moment, I thought we were the same.”
I reached for her, not caring about the cameras, because we were losing her, a potential ally. “We are the same.”
Her expression hardened. “No. We’re not. You’re prisoners in a cell, and I’m free.”
Fire lit in my chest. “Yes, we’re prisoners. But so are you. You just carry your cell as a brand on your forehead.”
She flinched as if I’d slapped her, and then turned on her heel and began to stride toward the exit.
“Fuck!” Jasper’s twin slammed his fist against the bars of his cell.
“Way to go,” another Skin in the cage further down said.
“Wait.” Dante’s voice was a command that had her freezing in her tracks. “What do they intend to do with us?”
For a moment, I honestly thought she’d ignore him and walk out of that door without responding, but then her voice echoed back toward us, filled with resignation.
“You’re intended to be entertainment for the Bloods. They’ll make you fight for your lives, and if you survive, if you make it through the tests, they’ll take you to the red sector.”
“Fight? Fight against whom?” Jasper asked.
She glanced back over her shoulder. “Not who. What.”
Chapter Five
Helgi stared at me from her mattress, squished against mine. Her body was tense, ready for action. There was no way she’d be sleeping. We lay facing each other, eye to eye, breath mingling. It reminded me of the old days when she’d come running to the farm to get away from her drunk mother or one of her mother’s drunk men. We’d lain like this in my bed, covers drawn over our heads, and shut out the whole world. It was like that now, except the darkness was our blanket and this cage was our haven. A single lamp was lit on the other side of the room, turned so low that it barely provided enough light for normal night vision to kick into gear.
I reached for Helgi’s hand. “We need to get some rest.”
Her lips turned down. “And what if they come in and do something to us while we let our guard down.”
“If you hadn’t noticed, we’re in cages. You can’t get more guard-down than that. If shit is gonna happen, it’ll happen. I, for one, want to be energized enough to counter it.”
She sighed. “Yeah, point.” Her gaze slipped over my shoulder to where Dante was sleeping. Not that she’d see much in the dark aside from a shadowy lump.
I shifted closer to her. “You don’t trust him, do you?”
Helgi’s lips tightened. “I don’t know. I get this vibe off him. Like he’s lying but not lying. Ugh. I can’t explain it.”
She’d put my thoughts into words perfectly. “I get you. I feel it too.”
“Really?” She grinned. “Is that what you’ve been feeling?”
“What?”
She shuffled closer, her tone dropping to a soft whisper. “You were real up close and personal a little while ago. Up against the bars.”
She was diverting, but I’d let her have it if it soothed her nerves. “He was trying to provide cover. He backed off when I told him to.”
Helgi studied my face. “You think he’s hot.”
I exhaled through my nose. “It hardly matters what I think.”
Helgi snorted. “This is so fucked up. You finally find a specimen you might want to fuck, and we get taken prisoner.”
“Shhh, keep it down.”
Helgi pressed her lips together. “Anya. What are we going to do? Seriously?”
And here was the real issue. “I don’t know, Hel. I really don’t know.”
She blew out a sharp breath. “I do. We’re going to do whatever it takes to survive. We’re going to have each other’s backs, and we’re going to get the hell out of here. It’s just another job, except this time we’re going to save ourselves.” She squeezed my hand. “You want to tell the story?”
Optimism was our buzz word, and right now Helgi was giving us a big dose of it, because this was by far the worst situation we’d ever been in. I doubted even our little game was going to help, but I laced my fingers through hers just
as I’d done all those years ago in her barn. Her adult face melted away, and she was a child again, just turned thirteen. Her lip was busted and her eye was swollen and we were huddled behind bales of hay, our gawky, long-limbed bodies wrapped around each other as we hid from one of her mother’s many men.
I’d made up the game then. The story game where we wrote what would happen next. I’d pressed my forehead to hers, I’d taken her hand, and we’d woven a tale. A story about two formidable women: strong, powerful, able to best any man. They would travel throughout the Outlands righting wrongs and aiding the weak, and during the tale our tears had dried and a new resolve had been born.
“We did it, didn’t we?” Helgi said softly.
She was recalling it too. I smiled. “Yeah, we did.”
“And we can do it again.”
I squeezed her hand. “Yeah. We can.”
Helgi began to tell a story, and somewhere along the way sleep took me, pulling me into its arms and cradling me in memories of yesteryear.
The cave was warm and dry, and the meat on the fire smelled divine. The dark shadow, lit by the flames, ate. He didn’t lift his horned head, not once. He didn’t offer for me to partake in his bounty. He finished it all, even the bones, and then he looked up, wiping his monstrous face on his fur-cuffed arm. He was wiry but strong, all limbs and calves, and older than me by enough years to instill the desire to follow.
“I’m not your savior. I’m not your guardian. If you want to eat, you need to hunt. If you want to eat, you need to work for it.”
The thought of killing again made my stomach turn; it brought to mind my adopted father’s face, his still-dead eyes and the blood, so much blood.
He sighed and dusted his hands on his thighs. “If you want to survive, you must be prepared to kill.”
My stomach growled.
“Do you feel that ache in your belly?”
I nodded, pushing my matted hair away from my face.
“That ache will only abate once you feed it. To do that, you need to hunt and kill your prey.” He poked the fire. “To cook it like this.” He pulled another rabbit from the bag behind him and began to skin and gut it with his lethal claws.
Dragon Trial: Dragon Guard Series book 1 Page 6