Page 351 of Hunters and Prey

He blinked. “I don’t know. But I wager it’s something to keep us in check.”

The vehicle jolted, sending us sliding about for a moment before leveling out. We needed to get the heck out of here. There were no windows. The walls were padded and smeared with brown stuff, which on first glance looked like shit, but on closer inspection was more likely dried blood. My scalp pricked. What the fuck was going on? A crackle cut through the silence and then a masculine voice laced with a superior air filled our prison.

“We are approaching our destination. When the vehicle stops, remain seated with your backs to the wall. Do not try anything. The collar around your neck is laced with remote explosives. You won’t get far.”

They’d blow off our heads? Well, that confirmed Big Red’s assessment. But they couldn’t do this. The Outlands were free territory.

Helgi grabbed my hand and squeezed. “Shut it down, Anya.”

Dammit, my panic must have shown on my face. Breathe and rein it in. “I’m fine, just thinking.”

She nodded. “Yeah, me too.”

Fucked-up situations called for fucked-up measures. Time to assess and formulate a plan, that’s what Dad always said. Shit, Dad. I needed to get back to him. What would he think if he got back to find me gone? Dammit, we should never have taken the job with Barret. When we got out of this mess, he was gonna have to answer to Jezebel.

Okay, focus. What advantage did I have? Jezebel was gone and so were the twins that usually hugged my hips. But the pressure in my boot told me they’d failed to find my secret mini daggers. So, I had two weapons. But the collar at my neck meant that if I attempted to use them, then they could kill me with the flick of a switch.

Dammit.

There was nothing else to do but wait till they opened the doors. Once we knew where we were, then we could figure out an escape plan. There had to be a way out of this.

The vehicle came to a halt. Doors slammed and then boot falls ran along the side of the van. The door was flung open and sunlight blinded me and the buzz of a multitude of voices assaulted my ears. It had been nighttime when they’d grabbed us, so where were we and how long had we been unconscious?

The shock on the merc’s face told me he was wondering the same thing.

“File out. Don’t try anything,” a brisk male voice commanded.

We did as instructed, and with the black barrels of their guns, they ushered us toward a huge pen. At least fifty grimy faces stared back at us from the crisscrossed cage—more Skins like us. Some looked as if they’d been here for days, and beyond it all, surrounding us, was the splendor of monolith buildings built by Dreki and taken over by Dragon Bloods. Black granite and white marble etched with pretty designs. Glass and chrome and people, so many bloody people.

“It’s a parade,” Helgi whispered.

She was right. We were smack bang in the middle of some kind of parade.

The pen began to move, and a quick survey showed that it was perched on a wheeled platform. I laced my fingers through the thick mesh to stop myself from falling. Helgi bumped into me, her eyes wide as they stared outward at the city streets. Dragon Bloods of all shapes and sizes, all golden-haired and blue-eyed, followed along waving scarves and flags, their faces wreathed in smiles. I wasn’t dumb enough to think they were happy to see us. This was something else, but we were definitely part of it. The pen moved smoothly, propelled by unseen forces.

The mercs were to my left, Dunstan visible to our right, and wait, there were the twins stuck in between a couple of female Skins with thick, sloping brows and slanted Dreki eyes. Where was the redhead? A cheer went up as we rolled into a wide circular space, neat and clean, with tall, glistening buildings rising on either side. The crowd here must have been a thousand strong. They waved flags painted with the Draco symbol of interlocked triangles. Their perfect faces and perfect smiles made my heart ache with anger, and then I saw him, the leader of this empire—Gustov Imperial, the man who’d slain the dragon queen, who’d led the Dragon Bloods to freedom from the tyranny of the Dreki. He stood tall and proud, his golden hair streaked with silver, his pale blue eyes alight with triumph as he looked down upon us from his podium suspended in the sky by a metal balloon. It was horrifying and fascinating and terrible, because if they could do this, what hope was there for us Skins trapped in a pen with collar bombs pressed to our throats.

The roar of the crowd was almost deafening, and then Gustov raised a hand and silence fell on the world like a heavy blanket.

“Citizens of Draco. Today is a glorious day. Today is the first step in freeing our noble men and women from the trial of a battle they have fought for much too long. Today is the first step in replacing our dignified soldiers with the traitors who turned their back on the cause a long time ago. Too long have the Skins left the burden of maintaining our lands’ freedom on our shoulders. Too long have they reaped the benefit of a motherland free of Dreki. It is time they tasted the blood and ash of the front lines. It is time they paid for their freedom in blood.”

A roar went up.

“We have reaped our first crop from the Outlands, and today we begin the process of separating the wheat from the chaff.” The sky grew dark as the sun was blocked out. It was another metal balloon, but this one hovered over us. A hatch opened and thick rods emerged, slicing down until they almost touched the top of the pen. Skins scattered to get away from the probes. Dunstan pressed himself to the bars beside me, his chest rising and falling erratically, and then the probes sprouted claws that latched onto the top of the pen.

“Only the worthy will return,” Gustov said as the pen began to rumble and rise into the air.

Below us, the city opened up like a vibrant flower. Tall glass buildings rose up to greet us, and vehicles of all shapes and sizes wound up and down slender gray roads. Gustov’s face stared out over the city from magic boards that captured his every move and magnified it a thousand times for all in the city to see. And people, so many tiny little people crawled about like ants. This was the Dragon Blood stronghold—metropolis of technology and wealth—and they’d brought us into it only to fly us out? Where were they taking us? Surely not to the front lines due north? The Dreki and Draco armies had set up home there in a decade-long stalemate that each side ached to break. Were they trying to swell their numbers by forcing us to fight alongside them? No. Gustov had said they wanted to replace the nobles with Skins. My stomach turned. Were we the first batch of many?

I was so confused.

“Anya, look.” Helgi yanked on my elbow.

We passed over the walls that hugged Draco City, over the mounted guns and sentries and into the ruins of the world beyond. Rivers and forests crawled over land that had once been dominated by urban life. As the balloon carried us forward, another wall came into view, gray and imposing. A distant memory teased my mind. A story told to a young child in the light of a roaring fire—a tale about a place so damaged that the Dreki had been forced to wall it off and forget about it. My blood went cold. This couldn’t be that place, surely? I didn’t want to know what lay beyond that wall. Was that where we were headed?

No. We veered away alongside the city walls until a viaduct came into view. A snake made of stone that led to a vast arena at the center of which sat a dark abyss.

The balloon began its descent, and Big Red was suddenly at my side. He laced his fingers through the mesh beside mine as he stared down at the amphitheater. His jaw was tight and his nostrils flared as if tasting the air.

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