A movement behind the crosshatched steel wire caught my eye. I angled closer and spotted a woman off to one side, sitting on her haunches on a pile of furs. She was a tawny creature — skin the color of burnt caramel glinting under a light dusting of gold fur. Her dark hair streamed down her back in wild waves. Infected with lion maybe? As I approached the enclosure, she stood — faster than any normal human could have moved — and I skittered back. She tilted her head, studying me with golden eyes.
“Um, hi,” I said. Her brows quirked as if I amused her. “Can you understand me?”
“Of course.” The corners of her split upper lip lifted. “English is my first language. But if you prefer to converse in French or German, I’m fluent in those as well.”
“I-I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I thought — Never mind.”
“You’re not feral.” Rafe pressed closer, voicing what I had avoided saying.
“No, but the day we get loose” — she eyed the handlers with simmering rage — “feral won’t even begin to describe us.”
“We?” I asked, and as if on cue three more curvaceous forms slipped out of the shadows. At one point their gowns had been elegant but now the skirts hung in frayed strips.
“I am Mahari,” the first lion-woman said and then cast a hand at the others. “Charmaine, Deepnita, and Neve.”
They sauntered forward, elongated fangs protruding from their feline lips. The lion DNA had added muscle to their frames and a catlike grace to their movements, making them breathtakingly beautiful and utterly terrifying.
I cut a look at Rafe but his attention was wholly focused on Mahari’s ample curves. Heat flashed through me. Because he was ogling her? Like I cared!
“And you are … ?” Mahari prompted.
“Lane and Rafe.” My voice came out higher than usual.
“She would make a nice addition,” Deepnita said, directing her amber gaze at me. With her dark, spiked hair and leonine features, she had a tough glamour to her.
“Think so?” Mahari laughed softly, her tongue lolling toward the back of her mouth. She leaned into the steel wire, her nostrils flaring as she took in my scent. “She seems more rabbit to me.”
“What? No,” I sputtered. Maybe when I’d first arrived in the Feral Zone. But not now.
Rafe guffawed and I glared him down to a smirk. Maybe I wasn’t a lion, but rabbit? Not even a little.
“Handlers,” hissed Charmaine, before retreating into the far corner. She crouched in the shadows with her wild curls curtaining her face. Only her luminous eyes and low, steady growl gave her away.
Two handlers approached the enclosure, dragging a fire hose. “Bath time, girls,” one announced with a leer. He turned the nozzle and aimed the jet of water through the fencing so that it slammed Mahari across the cage.
Rafe and I scrambled back as the handler chortled and turned the hose on the other lion-women. Deepnita roared like an enraged jungle cat as the spray knocked them to the floor. Neve rolled onto her stomach and struggled to rise in her soaked gown, but the handlers pinned her to the concrete with the blasting water and laughed themselves sick.
I ground my teeth to keep from shrieking at the sadists. No matter how dangerous these lion-women were, in that moment I would have thrown open the cage door if I had the key.
Rafe stepped between me and the wire wall of their enclosure. “We can’t help them.”
Help them? I wanted to see them tear these men apart. “My hands are tied. I can’t do anything.”
“Yeah, but you’re thinking it.”
True. I knew now not to set free a trapped feral — or a murderous tiger-man. But these women were sane. They might have years left before turning feral. They shouldn’t have to spend those years in a cage.
Rafe watched my face as if he could see the thoughts tumbling in my brain. “Figure out how to get us free and then worry about Cosmo and your silky.”
He was right. I’d already failed my dad. I couldn’t let them down too. My gaze fell on Neve, the youngest of the lionesses, wet and panting. My resolve faltered. Wasn’t there a way to do both? Escape and help these women?
Handlers surrounded us. When one raised his knife, I panicked. But he simply used it to cut the ties that bound our wrists. “Queen Sindee demands your presence in the throne room,” he announced.
Did he have any idea how absurd that sounded? Probably not, since he was too young to know what life was like before the country had divided.
The circle of handlers moved, and we had to move with them or be trampled.
We were marched through the brass doors and into the entry hall, which was three stories tall and dominated by an immense staircase. Despite the fact that I was a hostage, the castle’s white marble interior took my breath away. I hardly noticed the handlers who stood at attention on the landing as we climbed the stairs. We were ushered through an archway and into a room topped with a dome made of iridescent glass. A mosaic. “What was this place?” I asked in an awed whisper.
“The Chicago Cultural Center,” said a sultry voice from behind us.
We turned to face a woman tottering on impossibly high heels, swinging an ivory-headed cane. Her black hair had been teased into a stack — No, wait…. That wasn’t hair; it was a fur turban, which really wasn’t any stranger than her frayed evening gown and floor-length cape of blue leather. But even in odd clothes, she was very beautiful.
“So, you’re hunters,” she drawled, but within a heartbeat, her lowered lip plumped with displeasure. “Omar, they’re not kneeling. Why aren’t they kneeling, Omar?”
We stared at her, dumbfounded.
“Well, Queen Sindee,” Omar said with feigned patience, “perhaps they don’t realize —”
“I don’t care what they realize. I won’t be insulted in my own castle. Not by anyone.” She jabbed her cane at us. “Feed them to the hyboars.”
25
Rafe and I dropped in unison, wincing as our knees hit the hard marble. The queen sniffed. “Better.” With a flip of her blue cape, she faced Omar. “I want them for the court.”
It was like we’d dropped down Alice’s rabbit hole. How were we going to get out of this place?
“We don’t even know if they’re healthy,” Omar ground out.
She gave an impatient wave. “Then test them.”
With deliberate slowness, Omar took a silver cigarette case from the inside pocket of his coat. He snapped open the case and extracted two plastic sticks. He then beckoned two handlers forward and handed each a white stick. “Open wide,” he told us.
“Why?” Rafe looked as if he might throw a punch.
“It’s a Ferae test,” I told him. “He’s going to rub it under your tongue.”
The plastic stick was coated with a chemical biosensor. It wasn’t nearly as accurate as a blood test, but a trace of the virus in saliva would turn the stick bloodred.
Reluctantly Rafe opened his mouth and allowed the handler to rub the stick under his tongue. I was more cooperative, and within a minute both of our sticks had brightened to electric blue — meaning we were virus-free.
I inhaled deeply. A saliva test wasn’t infallible, but all the same, I felt lighter. I still couldn’t believe that I’d escaped Chorda unscathed.
When the handlers held up our blue sticks, Omar turned smug. “Good thing we didn’t let the hyboars have them, hm?”
The queen shot him an evil look as she fingered the blue stick that hung on a chain around her neck. I saw that Omar and the handlers wore their Ferae tests as well — like dog tags. The blond handler gave us each a thin cord to thread through the ends of our sticks. “Keep your health status on display at all times,” he told us. “By the king’s order.”