Page 4

CHAPTER 3

C alla

T he dark settles in, and with it comes discomfort with everything around us. Even the slavers seem to be concerned about the things we hear. Frank—it’s hard to read Frank.

The Tangle is… alive . That much is clear. Vines move outside of the perimeter. Trees seem to be in one spot for a moment, and when you look again, they’re gone. Chittering, creaking, and scurrying can be heard, and it sounds too big to be one of the carnivorous plants.

There’s no wind right now, but the leaves still rustle. Almost like they’re whispering. Then a howl sounds out. A deep, guttural sound that makes my stomach twinge like it did when I started worrying my supplements were wearing off. The howl gets everyone’s attention, including the hybrid.

“A wolf?” Carl asks apprehensively.

“I’m not sure,” Frank growls, cracking his neck and baring his fangs. “Doesn’t smell right.”

Carl reaches for his gun and motions for the brothers to do the same. Everyone gets quiet. They’re not watching us anymore. They’re watching the trees. The vines. Staring into the silence that follows the howl. Then I hear another sound. It’s softer, but closer, like scratching or something grinding against bark. A low growl echoes through The Tangle and the vibrations rattle the ironwood floor.

“Something’s hunting,” Frank mutters.

“Us?” one of the brothers asks.

“No,” Frank replies, stepping closer to the perimeter. His emerald eyes glow faintly in the darkness. “Not yet.”

“I don’t want to be eaten,” Tansy whimpers.

“We’ll be last on the menu,” Nara mutters, but it does little to ease our concerns. “This cage will keep them out just as easily as it keeps us in—as long as it’s a beast, instead of a hybrid. I’m pretty sure Frank knows how to use a key. Unlike the hybrids I teach my students about.”

“Nurse Calla, I’m scared,” Fiona sniffles, huddling close to me.

Brenna shifts to her knees and stares into the darkness. She doesn’t seem to be as scared as the rest of us. I’ve heard things are bad in the Lower District, but I never imagined being eaten by something in The Tangle as a preferable option to living there.

A vine streaks across the ground near the cage and starts twisting around the wheels. I pull Fiona away from the bar as it gets closer. Even Brenna scoots away from it. I raise a hand to swat at it, unsure if that will help, but it retreats before I can swing. I glance at Nara—she noticed it, too, but a louder growl, followed by a howl, draws all our attention.

“They’re getting closer,” Frank says.

“They?” Carl slides his hand across his gun and chambers a bullet. “How many are there?”

“Four… Maybe five,” Frank growls. “We’re no match for that many of them and they know we’re here. We just have to hope we’re too much trouble to be their next meal.”

“Fuck this.” Carl jumps up. “You want some, motherfucker? Come get it!”

An explosion of gunfire makes me cover my ears and squeal. I’ve seen the peace officers in Haven North carrying guns before, but I’ve never heard one actually fired. It’s so loud it makes it sound like it is thundering inside my head.

“Stop!” Frank roars, shoving the barrel of Frank’s rifle toward the ground. “They’re moving away.”

“That’s what I thought, motherfucker!” Carl shouts.

“It wasn’t your outburst that did it,” Frank mutters, glancing at the cage for a moment. “It was something—else.”

His gaze lingers on me too long for comfort, then he looks to the vine still wrapped around the wheel. It twitches, then shrinks back into the forest.

“What do you mean, something else?” Carl snaps, his voice still trembling from adrenaline. “There’s nothing else out here except us.”

Frank doesn’t answer. He stares into the dark, his jaw flexing like he’s grinding something between his teeth. Finally, he turns his attention back to Carl.

“Jeb can take first watch. I’ll take second,” Frank says, moving back to the center of the campsite.

“Don’t touch any of the girls,” Carl says threateningly, pointing at Jeb. “You do and you’re walking back to Haven North to get a replacement. Maybe even two, as an apology for keeping the buyers waiting.”

Jeb’s lip jerks into a snarl, but he nods in agreement. The Tangle is quiet now. Almost too quiet. An eerie stillness that keeps me on edge, even after Carl, Frank, and Jed settle in for the night. Jeb glances at us several times. There’s a hunger in his eyes I’ve never seen before, but I know what he’s craving. His hand moves to his crotch, and he rubs it a few times, as if he’s confirming it is lust fueling his stare.

I put myself in front of Fiona and Tansy, trying to shield them from his hungry gaze. Brenna seems worried but not panicked. Nara is still relatively calm, despite everything. I’m scared, but I’m angry, too. I bite my tongue, remembering what Nara said. We can’t do anything until the cage door is unlocked, and I’m not going to antagonize Jeb into whipping one of us to make that happen.

Jeb eventually loses interest or gets tired. He walks around the perimeter with his knife in his hand, aiming it into the darkness with a lot more bravado than he had when the wolves were howling. The stillness around us allows my adrenaline to fade. Fatigue begins to set in.

“We should do the same thing they’re doing,” I whisper. “Four of us sleep and one of us keeps watch. If anything happens, they can wake the others.”

Nara nods in the dark beside me. “Make sense,” she murmurs. “I’m surprised by how tired I am, considering how long we were out.”

“Some sedatives don’t give you a peaceful rest,” I say. “I doubt they got theirs from the Upper District, where the good medicine is.”

“Want me to take first watch?” Brenna offers, still glaring at Jeb.

“No, I got it,” I mutter. “You can have second watch.”

Despite the fatigue, I’m not ready to close my eyes yet. Fiona curls up next to me, resting her hand on my leg. Tansy shifts close to Nara. Brenna finds a spot away from all of us. I sit cross-legged and stare. At Jeb. At the darkness. At the mysterious Tangle that encircles our campsite. Waiting is about all we can do. If one of our captors opens the cage door right now, running would be difficult. I can’t even see the road from here, and staying on it in the dark would be almost impossible.

Jeb’s patrol ends and he wakes Frank. Frank sits up with his teeth bared, then relaxes. He rubs his eyes, growls, and mutters something to Jeb I can’t hear before standing up. In the dark, he looks more lion than man, but I’ve only seen lions in old books. In school, they were one of the animals believed to be extinct. I guess their hybrids survived—maybe they just evolved.

Frank waits until Jeb is asleep, then he approaches the cage. I sit up and prepare to wake the others, if needed, but Frank doesn’t seem to have any anger or lust flickering in his emerald-green eyes.

“I assume the asshole didn’t feed you?” Frank growls.

“No,” I answer.

Frank nods and walks to the space that separates the cage from the front of the cart. My heart skips a beat when his fingers brush against the whip, but he doesn’t grab it. He opens a box, removes several packets of rations, and tosses them into the cage.

“Here,” he says, putting a canteen down on our side of the bars. “You’ll have to share the water.”

“Thank you,” I whisper, biting my tongue as soon as the words leave my lips. I shouldn’t be thanking him for basic decency, but he’s the only one who has shown kindness so far.

“I’ll have to collect the canteen before I wake Jed for his watch,” Frank says, turning away to resume his patrol.

“Wait,” I whisper, moving Fiona’s hand away from my leg and moving close to the bars. “You’re a hybrid, right? Part… lion?”

“Something like that,” Frank answers. “Did they teach you that in school? Behind that big fancy wall that is supposed to keep you safe from beasts like me?”

“They taught us about hybrids,” I confirm. “Not much, just that they showed up during the heat storms. Nobody is sure where they came from.”

Frank’s lip twitches. “Is that so?” he snarls. “They know exactly where we came from. They created us.”

“What?” My eyebrows shoot up in surprise.

“We were designed to be weapons of war,” he says. “You’d be amazed what your scientists could do before the flare took all their toys away. But we’re a dying breed. Most of us are forced to wander The Tangle with no hope of ever finding a mate.”

“Fertility issues? Like us?” I question. “People; I mean… non-hybrid people.”

“There were sixteen in my Pride when I was a cub,” Frank says. “I’m the only one left.”

Frank walks away without elaborating further. I don’t try to stop him. I saw the emotion in his eyes when he talked about his Pride. The kind no supplement could regulate, and I doubt he’s ever had a cycle. I’m almost certain mine has worn off. Extreme emotional events usually do that, and mine wasn’t working the way it was supposed to before I got kidnapped.

I turn to Nara and give her a gentle shake. She wakes up like a bullet fired from Carl’s gun but doesn’t explode.

“Frank gave us some rations and water,” I whisper. “You and I should eat and then we’ll wake the others.”

“Good call,” Nara yawns, shaking her head and forcing her eyes wide. “I think I’ll take second watch anyway, since I’m up.”

We stash two bags of rations in our clothes and divide the others into five equal shares. The water can’t be rationed so easily, but we take our best guess as we pass it back and forth between bites. I fill Nara in on what I learned from Frank. Everything except the part that brought his emotions out. That… seems too personal to share.

“ We made them?” Nara questions. “They don’t mean us, obviously. Nobody that lives in Haven North. He’s talking about people who are practically our ancestors.”

“Yeah, over two hundred years ago,” I whisper, remembering the lessons from history class. “Back when the area Haven North is built on was just a small part of an enormous city called New York.”

“It got bombed in the Great War,” Nara continues, her knowledge as a teacher shining for a moment. “Devastated, really. Then the solar flare and the heat storms came. The hybrids became a threat after that, when people were banding together, forming tribes, and trying to rebuild.”

“When we realized we were no longer the apex predator?” I sigh, a chill sweeping through me.

“Exactly,” Nara says. “But if scientists were creating hybrids , they only left books about things like that in the fiction section of the library.”

“At least he isn’t taking it out on us,” I mutter, stuffing the last bite of my rations into my mouth. “I don’t think we’re going to get any food or water after he lets Carl or Jed take over the next watch.”

“Frank probably pities us,” Nara sighs. “The only person here treating us like a human being isn’t even one.”

“I don’t think he pities us.” I stare into the darkness where Frank disappeared. “I think… I think he was in a cage once, too.”

“Had to be pretty strong to hold him.” Nara clears her throat and takes a sip of water.

“Not all of them have bars,” I mutter, glancing in the general direction of Haven North. “I think I’m beginning to see that now.”

“Haven North wasn’t a cage, Calla. It was home.” Nara narrows her eyes for a moment. “We should wake the others so they can eat and drink some water.”

We wake them one by one. Fiona first, just so I can comfort her some before Tansy inevitably cries or Brenna tries to glamorize our fate, like we’re Brides instead of slaves. Once everyone has had food and the canteen is dry, I put it outside our cage. Frank retrieves it a short while later, not even looking at us as he does.

Then Jed takes watch.

“I’ll stay up,” Nara offers. “I don’t feel like going back to sleep. The rest of you get what you can.”

“Thank you,” I whisper. “But if there’s any trouble…”

“I’ll scream loud enough for the wolves to come back.” She forces a half-smile and motions for me to lie down.

I scoot toward the edge of the cage. Fiona lies against my back. I feel her trembling for a while before she finally falls asleep. My eyes get hazy as the first flicker of sleep nudges in. Then I see something moving and it clears my gaze for a moment. It’s a vine—weirdly, it looks like the one from earlier, but it’s coiling. My eyes get wider, but then it stops. I don’t even draw a breath.

Then it creeps toward me, slithering against the ironwood. For some reason, I’m not sure if it’s real or a dream. I don’t feel threatened. I feel almost at peace. The vine stops a few inches from my hand. It twists and weaves itself into the shape of a key.

“What the…” I whisper.

Then I wake up. It’s daylight. I was dreaming. My lip twitches slightly and I exhale sharply.

Except…

There’s something in my hand.

A vine—still green, still pulsing with life—twisted into a shape. I blink, bringing it closer and squinting. It’s thick, like the summer vines children used to braid into bracelets back in Haven North.

Only this isn’t a bracelet. It’s a shape I recognize. The same shape from my dream.

A key.