The Hunt (The Cage 2)

The main door opened, as Tessela heard the commotion. She made a line straight for Dane and Pika.

“Listen, I don’t know what she’s—” Dane started, but Tessela dragged them both backstage as though they weighed no more than children. Arrowal started to stand, but Fian placed a heavy hand on his shoulder.

“Petty arguments,” he said. “You know how humans are.” Fian poured Arrowal another drink, glancing at Cora from the corner of his eye.

She gave him a hesitant nod of thanks.

“He’s a monster!” Pika screamed from down the hall, and Cora just had time to slip in behind them. “It’s disgusting and horrible and those poor, poor little animals!” She let out a high-pitched wail.

Cora inched closer down the hall, until she could peek into the cell room. The door to Dane’s cell was open. He was pacing, red-faced, arguing with Tessela. Lucky had one arm wrapped around Pika’s back as she sobbed into his shirt. Over her shoulder, he met Cora’s eyes. If she’d looked away for half a second, she might not have seen his quick smile.

“I swear they aren’t mine,” Dane sputtered. “Why would I want a bunch of tails? There were tokens in there! Someone replaced them!”

Pika made a gagging noise. “I can’t believe he’s been keeping tails in that cookie tin this whole time!”

Tessela picked up the whitetail deer’s tail and eyed it closely. Dane started to protest again, but she took an apparatus, which looked like a pair of binoculars, out of her safari uniform. She jabbed it at Dane and he crashed to the floor, unconscious. “This boy is no longer Head Ward,” Tessela informed them calmly. “Makayla will now assume that responsibility. Guards will come shortly to take him away for interrogation. No one is to touch him or the evidence in question.”

“What are you going to do with him?” Lucky asked.

“It is a crime to traffic in black-market objects,” Tessela said. “As we do not believe in punishment, he will be reassigned.”

Reassigned? Where were they going to reassign him to, the same drecktube they’d shoved Chicago down?

Pika still sobbed into Lucky’s shirt, clutching Dane’s yo-yo, the string hanging down limply. “I didn’t mean to find it,” she choked. “He left his yo-yo on his bed. Just sitting out in the open. He never does that. I just wanted to play with it a little, but the end of the string was caught in that cookie tin, and that’s when I found . . . ewww!”

Lucky patted Pika on the back, as though he wasn’t the one who had planted the yo-yo. Then he detached himself from Pika and came over to stand beside Cora.

“Listen, Leon’s at the drecktube door,” he said quietly. “He wants to talk to you. He said it’s urgent.”

Cora looked at Dane’s unconscious body.

She was tempted to shove him down the drecktube herself, let him get charred in the cleaner traps just like Chicago.

But no.

Whatever the Kindred had planned for him would be much more unpleasant.

32

Cora

“YOU AREN’T SUPPOSED TO come until after lights-out,” Cora whispered through the slats in the drecktube door. “Anyone could have heard you.”

“You worry too much.” Leon cracked the drecktube open, sniffing the air. “Hey, you wouldn’t have any more of those cake things, eh?”

“We barely have enough to keep ourselves from starving.” Commotion sounded from the cell room, and she cursed and dropped to all fours. “Scoot over. Let me in there too.”

She crawled in and gasped when he turned toward her. Dark, splotchy bruises marred the untattooed side of his face, barely visible in the glow of the bluelight track.

“What happened to you?”

“Nothing to worry about, sweetheart. A tussle.”

“Did Bonebreak do this? I thought you said we could trust him.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll slap some makeup on and look good as new.” He flipped his hand to dismiss it, but he’d started sweating again. “Anyway, listen. I got big news. He has a ship.”

“What?”

“I saw it by accident. He’ll crack every bone in my body if he finds out I told you, but I’m crap at keeping secrets, especially big ones.”

She slumped back against the drecktube wall in shock. “You mean we could go home?”

He let out a snort. “I didn’t say he’d take us. I just said he had a ship.”

“But he’s a businessman.”

“So you try negotiating with him.”

She rolled her eyes, but her head kept spinning with the possibilities. Could they really go home after the Gauntlet was over? Assuming she beat it, humanity would be freed. No more cages, no more rules. They could go home and not a single person could stop them.

“I want to know everything you can find out about that ship, short of getting yourself murdered.” Footsteps sounded outside the grate, and she went silent. “Listen,” she whispered. “The Gauntlet’s almost here. We can’t wait any longer to get Anya.”

“I told you,” Leon said. “There’s no backstage in her menagerie.”

“Cassian gave me a temporary removal pass so we can go in through the main doors. I don’t know how we’ll avoid being seen by any Kindred—” She cocked her head suddenly. “Wait, what did you say before, about your bruises? You said something about makeup.”

“It was a joke, sweetheart.”

“No!” She sat up so fast she nearly banged her head on the top of the tube. “That’s it. Only Kindred can get into the Temple menagerie, right? Think about how Roshian was able to pass as a Kindred. The weight lifting. His height. And you’re even bigger than he was.”

Leon looked down at his chest and flexed his muscles.

“We get the disguise kit from Roshian’s quarters,” she said in a rush. “We can make you look like one of them. You can just walk right in there and get Anya.”

Leon looked at her like she’d gone crazy. “The hostess chick will read my mind and know I’m a fake.”

“Then we’ll do it after hours,” Cora said. “The hostess won’t be there. There’ll just be the one off-duty guard who oversees all the menageries. You just flash the temporary removal pass and the guard won’t ask questions. It logs the visit, but by the time anyone checks the record, you’ll be long gone.”

Leon scratched the back of his head. “What about those magic doors?”

She paused. He had a good point. It wouldn’t look good if he approached a door and it didn’t slide open automatically. “I’ll have to come too,” she said at last. “We’ll pretend I’m another ward you’re taking to the medical officer. I can open the doors ahead of you, so no one will be able to tell it isn’t you doing it.”

Leon muttered something under his breath about lipstick and then reached into the back of his waistband and took out a handgun. “Well, at least we have this.”

Cora ducked at the sight of it. “Jesus!”

“Relax. It only works for the Kindred. Mali swiped it off Roshian’s body after he tried to kill you. But it can still be good for show. My dad did nineteen armed robberies back home and never once had to fire. People get freaked out if you just flash a gun around.”

“I guess we can use any advantage we can get. I’ll come back tonight.”

He saluted her with the gun. When she climbed out of the drecktube, two feet were waiting for her. Her heart raced until her eyes traveled up to a face framed by shaggy dark hair.

“Lucky,” she breathed. “I was afraid you were someone else.”

He crouched down. “You have to be more careful.”

“I know. Leon’s a bad influence.” She told him about their plan, and he rubbed a hand over his chin.

“You really think Leon can pull it off?”