Undaunted Read online

  The night hung heavy and dark over the meadow and smothered the woods beyond it. I took a steadying breath and forced my gaze away from the shifting shadows. Behind us, Arsenal was an island of light in the middle of the river — an oasis in the darkness, throbbing with human activity. Unlike the very dark, very chaotic world of the Feral Zone.

  “Are you okay?” My dad’s voice broke through my very dark, very chaotic thoughts.

  “Fine.” I glanced back and gave him what I hoped was a reassuring smile. My dad did not look reassured. “I just forgot how dark it gets without electricity.” I upped my smile and added, “I’m good.”

  As if anyone would ever use the word good to describe a criminal on the run. Oh well. I’d be safely out of reach soon enough. Safe in the Feral Zone, ironic as that was. Biohazard agents couldn’t cross the quarantine line to arrest me. I couldn’t go home again, true, but that didn’t matter so long as my video convinced the West that people still lived in the East — both healthy people and infected — and that they needed our help.

  I glanced at Bearly, whose gaze flicked between my dad and me. No doubt every word we spoke would make it into her report, which she’d probably have typed up and turned in before sunup.

  “Drop them at the gate,” Captain Hyrax told Bearly and Frank. “You don’t set foot inside the compound. Not one step. You unload the gear and come straight back to base.”

  They both snapped out a “Yes, Captain” followed by a salute. And then, just as the driver took his foot off the brake, a hideous howl echoed through the night — part human, part who-knew-what. Every warm drop of blood drained from my body. Surprisingly, no one else seemed affected. A guard in the tent sipped his coffee. Another wiped down a monitor screen.

  I tightened my ponytail and crossed my fingers, my fight-or-flight instincts on red alert, as our jeep rolled into the meadow. I was back in the Feral Zone — birthplace of my nightmares.

  As we left the sweeping spotlights of Gateway Station behind, the darkness closed in around us. The jeep’s headlights lit up the windswept prairie grass like a lighthouse beam stretching over a turbulent sea. Perched on top of the backseat, Bearly switched on the flashlight mounted to her assault rifle and scanned the darkness on either side of us.

  “Watch out for those monkey holes,” she told Frank.

  “Chimpacabra,” I corrected hoarsely. “They’re chimpacabra warrens.”

  “Right,” she scoffed. “Because that sounds much more reasonable.”

  There was nothing reasonable about falling into a chimpacabra’s larder. In fact, just thinking about my time underground with Rafe, surrounded by paralyzed animals of all sizes, glassy eyed and terrified as they waited for the chimpacabra to come back and eat them alive, had me feeling very unreasonable indeed. But I wouldn’t think of that now. Couldn’t. Not if I wanted to stay sane.

  We bumped over the patches of asphalt until we crossed into the woods, where the trees seemed to have crept closer to the road since my last visit. These were the woods of my father’s bedtime stories. Only now, at midnight, the setting seemed more horror movie than fairy tale. Especially since I couldn’t see the glow from Arsenal Island anymore because the road had veered inland, though I could still hear the rush of the river.

  “Turn here,” Bearly told Frank, and he veered the jeep onto what was left of Route 92.

  The two-lane highway wasn’t nearly as overgrown as the road through the woods; however, we didn’t even get half a mile before Frank had to pull up short. An enormous tree lay across the broken asphalt like a ship run aground. He shifted into park and rose in his seat to look around. “We can get through there.” He gestured to the overgrown meridian strip with its tangle of trees.

  My dad leaned between the front seats, shaking his head. “The brush is too thick. The jeep won’t make it through.”

  I heard the tension in his voice. I twisted around in my seat, wanting more than anything for him to reassure me, but his eyes were ticking over the fallen tree and the overgrown vegetation on either side of the road. Did he feel it too — that creeping sensation of being stalked? Hopefully it was just mongrels peering out from between the trees and not something more … intentional. Chorda stepping from the woods flashed through my mind, and I went cold all over. My fingertips prickled with tiny aftershocks of pain.

  Bearly shouldered her assault rifle and hopped out of the jeep to walk the length of the fallen tree. “We’ve got boulders on this end,” she called when she reached the unearthed roots. “Then a steep drop to the river.”

  Cursing under his breath, Frank hefted his gun and climbed out to join her. I slid a six-inch serrated knife from its sheath, which instantly brought to mind how Rafe had strapped a blade to his leg every morning the way other people put on socks.

  Something about the fallen tree felt wrong. I rose halfway in the front seat and squinted past the headlights. The moss on the trunk was torn up, same with the shelf mushrooms, as if the tree fell someplace else and was dragged to this particular —

  “It’s a trap!” I shouted to the guards just as my dad yelled, “Get back in the jeep!”

  As I scrambled into the driver’s seat, Frank went down with a shout and some invisible force dragged him into the thigh-high scrub. He twisted onto his back to fire blindly at whatever had hold of him, but when he vanished into the darkness, the gun fell silent.

  Bearly charged after him, swerving her rifle, looking for a target, when a tawny-skinned woman appeared above her, balanced on the fallen tree trunk. She was larger than life — a spiky-haired Amazon whose muscles gleamed in the glare of the headlights. I gasped with recognition. She’d traded her frayed evening gown for cargo pants and combat boots, but Deepnita had lost none of her rock-star glamour. Maybe it came from being infected with lion, or maybe she’d honed her regal air as Chorda’s queen years ago, but her fierce beauty still had a mesmerizing effect. Bearly whipped around, gun trained on the lioness, only to blink in surprise, which was all the time Deepnita needed to pounce.

  “Lane, get —” My dad’s shout became a muffled cry as he was jerked backward.

  I twisted to help him just as something heavy slammed onto the jeep’s hood. I reeled back to see auburn curls spill over the steering wheel. Above me, another one of Chorda’s discarded queens leaned over the windshield, the furriest of them — the most mutated. Charmaine. The limbs of the other lionesses had been dusted with golden hair, while Charmaine had a pelt. Her wild eyes — Chorda’s eyes — narrowed as she reached for me.

  Pain exploded between my brows. I shoved back in the seat to escape her even as my vision flickered from the pain. I knew this ache. It was too precise to ever forget. It came whenever I’d stared too long or too hard at my computer screen. But I wasn’t editing Feral Zone footage now, just focusing on a living, breathing manimal. I closed my eyes and knuckled the throb with my knife hand, only to have the blade slip from my grip as my hands went numb. I forced my eyes open and kicked at the gearshift to pop it out of park. Once. Twice. But before my boot could connect a third time, the lioness hauled me up by the wrist, forcing me onto my feet.

  Her eyes were wilder now than back in Chicago, and Charmaine had not been all that sane back then. She wrenched my arm higher to peer into my face. Recognition sharpened her gaze, and then she took in my T-shirt and canvas pants with a hiss. “You could have been a lion … But you became one of them?” She flicked her free hand at Bearly, who was flailing within Deepnita’s crushing embrace.

  “I’m not —” I clenched my teeth against the white-hot ache in my arm socket. “I’m not a guard.” I tried to twist in her grip to get a glimpse of my dad, but she just hiked my wrist higher, forcing me onto my tiptoes. Pain blazed through my shoulder as the joint began to dislocate.

  “I freed you,” I gasped.

  “Because you needed us,” she spat back. “If you could’ve saved your friend without us, you would’ve left us there to rot.”

  She was right. I probab
ly wouldn’t have unlocked their cage if I’d had another option. I’d realized by the time I reached Chicago that helping Chorda get free of Rafe’s snare had been a terrible mistake. The worst of my life. And with their long ivory fangs, gleaming eyes, and big-cat grace, the lionesses had reminded me much too much of the insane tiger-king. I would’ve been too scared to free them, though they’d all suffered at Chorda’s hands.

  I writhed in Charmaine’s grip. If I could get enough leverage to throw myself backward, she’d tumble face-first over the windshield. She put a foot on the glass as if anticipating my move and leaned down, her breath hot on my face. “What have you done with my sister?”

  “Wh-what?”

  “Mahari!” she roared. “Where” — she shook my arm, wrenching a shriek out of me — “is she?”

  Another shake, another shriek, and then she tossed me out of the jeep like a cat flinging aside a dead mouse. I hit the ground hard, the impact knocking the air from my lungs. I forced my eyes open even though I couldn’t rise yet. Nearby, Bearly had gone still in Deepnita’s hold, though she was alert. And radiating fury.

  I craned my neck but didn’t see my dad in the back of the jeep — probably because he was underneath the lioness who was lounging there. A teen with snarled blond hair, surfer-girl beauty, and muscles worthy of the entire Olympic beach volleyball team — Neve. She broke into a toothy smile and waved at me, which made her seem demented, not friendly.

  Charmaine leapt off the hood and landed in a crouch. She had the body of a marathon runner, roped with muscle, which she showed off in low-slung red track pants and a cropped tank. She stalked toward me with the fury of a goddess.

  I rolled onto my knees, blinking against the throb between my eyes. “I don’t know where your sister is.”

  “You took her,” she hissed.

  “No! I —”

  “Humans like you. Guards.” She loomed over me. “They caught her outside Moline and threw her into a truck. I’m going to kill a human for every day she’s gone. That’s twelve days so far.”

  “I don’t know where she is. My dad and I … We just came east tonight.” I held up my hands to ward her off. We were going to die for something the patrol had done. For all I knew, Frank and my dad were already dead. “We drove through the base — didn’t stop. We’re going to live over here. In Moline,” I panted. “We’re not here to hurt you. I don’t know why the patrol took Mahari.” I met Charmaine’s glare and hardened my expression. My terror would only excite the predator in her, and she already seemed more feral than sane.

  “You run to your island, little rabbit, and you tell whoever’s in charge that they can have these two back” — she swept a hand from Bearly to the jeep — “when they return our sister.”

  “No!” I pushed to my feet and stumbled toward the jeep. Charmaine stepped into my path. Even with her blocking my way, I could see my father’s legs hanging off the backseat.

  “Dad!” I tried to dodge past the lioness, but with a single swipe, she knocked me flat.

  “He’s good,” Neve called. Then she lifted my father’s arm and waved with it. His hand flopped limply as she said in a deep voice, “Hi, honey. I’m fine.”

  I shoved up to face her. “Please let me check him.”

  “You’re not listening,” Charmaine warned softly.

  “Your plan won’t work,” I sputtered. “If you take a guard hostage” — I hooked a thumb at Bearly, who stood rigidly and showed no fear — “the line patrol will storm into these woods with Uzis. They will maim and kill every manimal they see until they get her back.”

  Charmaine growled. “You’re lying.”

  “You’re diseased animals to them, and the guards are just itching for an excuse to put you down.” If I could just make her see that I was closer to them than the guards. “I came here to find my friend Rafe. Remember him? Chorda caged Rafe just like he caged —”

  Bearly’s shout cut me off. I whirled to see her flying through the air away from us. She arced impossibly high before hitting the ground in the distance. I gasped. Her spine had to have snapped in two with that landing. But before I could run to her, she flipped over and glared at Deepnita, who must have thrown her.

  The largest lioness pointed at Bearly. “Stay,” she ordered, then strolled over to us, scooping up Bearly’s assault rifle on the way. “So, Lane …” she said with a languid smile.

  She remembered my name! I clenched my jaw shut to keep from gaping at her.

  “You being so smart and all,” Deepnita went on in her rumble of a voice, “tell us, what would you do if the patrol took one of your family?”

  Charmaine sent her a furious look, but Deepnita shrugged a shoulder. “She knows the layout of the base. She can help us. After all” — this time her smile included a flash of fang — “if she came here to find him, she’ll want to know where to look.”

  Hope pushed up from my gut, sudden and raw. “You mean Rafe?”

  “That’s not his name anymore,” Neve called as she propped her filthy Converse sneakers on the driver’s seat headrest. “He’s called Wraith now.”

  “Wraith? What — why?”

  She tipped her head, considering. “It’s scary?”

  I drew a slow breath but couldn’t keep my questions from bubbling over. “Is he all right? Where is he living? Did you talk to him?”

  “We’ll tell you everything. Where he is. How he is.” Deepnita’s dark amber eyes gleamed as she angled closer, her voice pitched low. “When you bring us Mahari.”

  In other words, find out where the guards had stashed the lioness, break her out, and then escape from a high-security base. I was seventeen and had zero military training. Piece of cake. The only thing I had going for me was the burning desire to know that Rafe was okay.

  Deepnita began to say more but then cocked her head. In the beat of silence, I heard the rumble of jeeps closing in fast. I caught Bearly’s eye over the lioness’s shoulder.

  “Camera,” she called with a nod toward the pinprick of red, glowing on the jeep’s windshield.

  Neve sprang up. “Fleeing,” she sang out over the whip of jeeps tearing through prairie grass, then ran off.

  “We’ll be watching from the tree line. Come at night.” Deepnita threw the assault rifle into the tall grass a good distance away from Bearly. “And come alone, except for Mahari.”

  “Unless you want to see how predators bring down prey,” Charmaine added. Then, with inhuman speed, the two women whirled and bounded over the tree trunk.

  Bearly sprinted in the direction Deepnita had thrown her assault rifle while I ran to my father. He lay on the backseat of the jeep, blinking as a small line of blood trickled down his temple. He gripped the front seat.

  “Maybe you should stay down,” I said.

  Ignoring my suggestion, he hoisted himself upright and assessed me. “Did they hurt you?”

  I shook my head, deciding to keep quiet about my nearly dislocated arm.

  “I shouldn’t have brought you,” he muttered, lightly touching his bloody temple. He frowned at the fist-sized rock on the ground, and I knew I had to diffuse his anger before he decided we’d be better off returning to the West.

  “They’re mad because the guards kidnapped one of their pride.” I took a seat beside him, speaking softly in case Bearly was listening. “They know where Rafe is.”

  “Where?”

  “They wouldn’t tell me,” I said as four jeeps plowed to wet stops around us. A dozen armed guards leapt out, guns raised.

  On a gesture from Captain Hyrax, the guards fanned out. “I want them alive,” he ordered. His gaze cut to Bearly, who rejoined us, having recovered her gun. “Which strain?”

  “Lion, sir. I think. I can’t say for sure,” she replied in a military clip. “McEvoy knows them.”

  My dad didn’t know anything about Chorda’s ex-queens except what I’d told him. But then Hyrax locked hard eyes on me, and I straightened. Oh. She meant me.

  “Could o
ne of them be infected with something else?” he demanded.

  I was coming off the rush and beginning to shake, but I considered his question. “I don’t think so. They call themselves sisters because they’re all part lion.”

  Hyrax’s lips thinned with displeasure. “You’ve got no way of knowing for sure what they are.”

  “I know that they were bitten by the same feral — just not at the same time.” Under Chorda’s rule, infection was grounds for instant divorce. That way, when he grew tired of a wife, he could end the marriage fast. He’d forced each out-of-favor queen into a tiny space between two caged ferals. Given the choice between a bite laced with lion DNA and a bite laced with baboon DNA, no surprise, all four had picked lion.

  “Maybe they lied,” Hyrax sneered. “Want to know what doesn’t lie? A blood test.”

  Two guards crashed through the brush — Frank with his arm slung over the other man’s shoulders. “Frankfort, how are you, son?” Hyrax called.

  Frank gave the captain a shaky salute, and I sagged under the weight of my damp, sweaty shirt, so thankful the lionesses hadn’t killed him.

  “Take him to the infirmary. Tell Solis to scan him for open wounds,” Hyrax told the guard bearing Frank’s weight and then shifted his attention to my dad. “We’ll get this tree moved and have you on your way in no time.”

  “No.” My dad hefted himself out of the jeep. “I’m not taking my daughter into Moline until I see what’s going on there.”

  “Dad, no.” He couldn’t be thinking of sending me back to the West. I’d be in far more danger there than at the compound.

  “She can stay on base tonight,” Hyrax allowed. “But that’s it. One night. The government isn’t paying us to babysit civilians. She can sleep in the infirmary.”

  “That’s fine,” my dad told him, then turned to me. “I’ll come to Arsenal tomorrow and let you know if it’s safe.”

  “And if it’s not?”

  He wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “Then we go home.”

  “The West isn’t my home. Not anymore.”