Page 356 of Hunters and Prey

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.

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