“Were you looking for a safe place?” Hannah asked.
“Looking for something, I guess.” I shrugged and forced a smile to my lips.
A something I couldn’t define, but I felt it inside of me, whispering that I was closer every day. Whispering that there was someone out there looking for me, as hard as I was looking for them. Fanciful thinking, I know.
I blinked and made myself smile at Hannah. “I was here in Seattle, trying to find an old school friend,” that part was true, too, “Rose. That’s her name. We were in the orphanage together back in London. Anyway, I got caught up in one of the Collectors’ sweeps of the downtown area.”
That last part was not quite true. I’d gotten very good at avoiding the sweeps, but this time I let them catch me. For Jordan.
“Oh. So you really have bad luck, then, huh?”
I choked out a laugh. “Oh, honey, you have no idea.”
Perhaps it was my laugh that turned my luck that day, calling down the wrath of some unknown god by my lack of humility. Because I believed I could outsmart the supernaturals that had claimed our world as their own. Maybe if I’d been more sober, more demure, I wouldn’t have ended up facing my worst nightmare.
A hand clamped down on my arm, and I spun to face a large, portly man, his gut hanging out from beneath a too-small shirt that was bursting at the seams under a thick pelt vest that was also too small. As it was, he looked like a sausage stuffed too tight and growing long mold.
The fur trim on his vest along with a patch emblazoned with the head of a wolf marked him as a liaison for the shifters. I had to fight the sigh of relief.
Closer and closer—it wouldn’t be long before I was with Jordan.
“You, in this pen over here,” he growled, roughly uncuffing me.
Above us, the thunder barked like a junkyard dog, booming out a warning, the lightning sparked, and the skies opened up. A sudden torrent of rain fell as if someone upended a bucket on our heads.
The northwest was known for its shitty weather, but this was a bit much. I held a hand up to the sky and flipped off the clouds. I mean, at this rate, there very well could be some other race up there just jerking us around.
Not that we didn’t have enough as it was.
Fae.
Werewolves.
Angels.
Demons.
And the worst of them all, in my opinion? Vampires. They had been at the front of the lines when the war started after the Veil fell.
Not that the war lasted long.
No, not long at all.
The combined might of the five races, their magic, and control over the elements had put us, humans, in our place in a matter of weeks.
The world governments and NATO had begged for a plea bargain, and this was what we’d been given.
An exchange system—a few lives sacrificed to spare the majority.
I lifted my hand to the chain-link fence that surrounded us. A perfectly round pen that held twenty-five women.
“Oye now, listen up! We got one pen for sex. One pen for food. One pen for slaves. And the last. . . the last you did not want to be in.” The fat vested man laughed. “Always the same. Chum. You don’t want to be in that last pen.”
Chum.
My heart lurched. “Fuck me,” I whispered. I hadn’t known that was an option.
The portly one walked around the cages, speaking loud enough to be heard over the thunder and rain. “Twenty-five women will go onto the same boat as the rest of you. But instead of setting foot onto the Empire Territories, they will be cast into the ocean over the deep of the Pacific Ocean.”
“What, why?” A woman in the pen across from us wailed. “Why would they throw us over board? Why not just send us back home if we’re of no use?”
More laughter from the fat man. “Food for the supernatural creatures of the deep my dear. They have appetites too, you know—another part of the bargain. Just one that nobody likes to make public, you got it? No telling our secrets.” His laugh rolled around us. “Ah, I forgot none of you will be able to tell anyone our secrets!”
Horror flickered through me and it was a struggle to stay on my feet. I thought I’d be made a servant at best. A concubine or part of a harem at worse. I had a plan in place for that possibility. Peeing myself would look like child’s play compared to what I was prepared to do to make myself undesirable. Now though? That had all changed because of one. Single. Word.
Chum.
Chum hadn’t even been on my list of ‘what-could-happen-if-you-go-after-Jordan’. Because no one came back from the pens to tell the tales.
I clutched at the fence and breathed through the oncoming panic, focusing on the sense in my head that this was the right thing to do. I had to go after Jordan. He needed me.
A soft, melodic voice from one of the other women began to rise around us as the rain rolled down over our bodies, slicking hair, skin, and clothes alike.
I wrapped my arms around me for a little warmth and let the haunting tune give me a moment of peace as it echoed across the stinking pens.
“One hundred women brought to the pens
One hundred cast the dice
Not all will leave alive, but all give sacrifice
To keep the peace
To stop the flow of blood
One hundred women, our tears that flood
Each phase that comes, your turn is soon,
A thousand tears, for the fullest moon.”
“Get that singer over here,” a booming voice cracked over the storm around us. “The bidders want entertainment.”
And just like that, one of us was saved. For the moment, at least. Because she played the game right. She’d charmed them.
“Double shite,” I muttered. Unless the bidders wanted a girl with a mouth full of English cursing and an affinity for finding trouble, I was in deep.
It never occurred to me that I’d have to come up with a damn talent like singing when I’d let the Collectors take me. I’d figured they get a look, realize I was far from the beauties they wanted, and I’d be a maid to a pack of barking boys. Easy peasy.
Before I could go much further down that line of thought, someone tugged on my shirt. I turned to see Hannah behind me, her brown eyes wide and shocky, her skin as pale as cream. Without even considering that I barely knew her, I threw my arms around her and held her tight—maybe needing the contact as much as she did in that moment. Her slight body shook hard against mine, and she buried her face against my shoulder.
“I’m so afraid. Sienna, what can we do? I can’t even swim! Never mind sing, or . . .”
The other women around us watched as I did my best to soothe her. “I know. All of us are in the same boat, honey. All we can do now is make the best of it.”
“The best of it?” a growling voice snapped from across the pen. “There is no best of it you stupid girl.
A woman who was probably younger than she looked approached us. Her once-blonde hair was tangled and knotted and a chunk had been pulled out from the side of her head, leaving a raw-looking bald spot She limped heavily on her right leg.
“This place is death, even if you don’t get tossed into the ocean as passage.”
Hannah blinked. “As passage?”
“That’s the price the boat pays, to bring the rest of the girls to the Territories. Chum. You heard the fat boy over there.” She smiled, showing off amazingly white, even teeth that stood out in stark relief against her dirty face. “But you think if you don’t go into the ocean, you’ll live long? The werewolves, they have their games. Hunting the humans they take. The fae look at us like bugs, insects to be squashed or stuffed into jars if we are interesting enough to bother studying.”