Inhuman

24

We entered the brick shell of a house, which was missing much of its second floor. The rain streamed in, creating clouds of steam and smoke. Everything around us — the blackened remains of a couch, a charred desk — was one kick away from crumbling into ash. A metal picture frame lay facedown on the floor by the fireplace. I crouched, brushed away the grime, and lifted an edge, using my shirt to protect my fingers in case the metal was still hot. Under the cracked glass, colors bubbled and swirled. The photograph was so heat damaged, I couldn’t even tell if it had been of a person.

Rafe toed through the wreckage as if there was anything left to find. I lifted my face to the cold pinpricks of rain and swallowed the tight feeling in my throat.

All this way. We’d come all this way for nothing.

Rafe drew his gun. All the color had drained from his face. “If this is a coincidence, I’ll lick this place clean.”

Coincidence? What did it matter? I’d failed my dad. I had nothing to offer Spurling in exchange for his life except broken dishes and clumps of melted plastic.

“Come on, we’ve got to get out of here.” His hair was slick and darkened with rain. His soaked shirt stuck to his lean frame. “This place was torched.”

Yeah, I could see that, despite the smoke that burned my eyes and chapped my throat with every breath.

“Lane,” Rafe said as if trying to wake me. “Torched on purpose.” He pressed something cold into my hand. His knife.

My fingers curled around the handle even though I didn’t want to go where his thoughts had carried him. “You said houses in the zone burn down all the time.”

“You think this house — and only this house — just happened to catch fire last night? Even my luck doesn’t suck that bad.”

A cold snap cleared my brain. Chorda had my dad’s messenger bag. And that meant he had Spurling’s letter. I’d refused to give up my heart, so he had found another way to rip it from me — by making sure that I couldn’t save my father.

“I like being the trap setter, not the settee.” With a hand on my elbow, Rafe ushered me toward what was left of the doorway. “I guarantee cat-chow’s around here somewhere, sharpening his claws.”

I should have done it Everson’s way back in Moline when he’d offered to help by having his mother use her clout. Why had I thought coming to Chicago was the better choice?

We stepped into the drizzle and Rafe pressed a finger to his lips. Something about his posture set my senses on high alert. He slowly withdrew his gun, motioning for me to stay put.

What did you hear? I wanted to ask. Chorda? I clenched my jaw shut as he moved into the street. Then I too heard the noise that had made him skittish — maniacal laughter. Somewhere close by people were trading hee-hee-hees as if demented giggling were a language.

Rafe hauled me back into the gutted house. “Hyboars,” he hissed.

Hyena-boars. My dad had woven them into stories and Cosmo had relayed facts. He’d told us that the handlers used hyboars to hunt down runaway manimals.

I followed Rafe through the burnt shell to the kitchen, where a section of the back wall had collapsed. We clambered through the hole and dashed across the overgrown yard. More braying laughter stopped us midsprint. A bristling creature scrabbled over a pile of debris that had once been a garage. The beast paused at the top to shift its powerful, sloping shoulders like a boxer priming for a fight.

I wheeled around to see more hyboars stampeding through the shadowy interior of the house. Panic bloomed in my stomach. Muscular and razor tusked, the cackling beasts leapt out the gap we’d just climbed through. I pressed into Rafe and felt him draw a shuddering breath. He followed them with the tip of his gun but there were too many.

Longhaired men stormed into the yard. They wore leather butcher aprons — just as Cosmo had described. Handlers. Other giveaways: the hunting rifles clutched in their meaty hands and the knob-topped batons and dog whips tucked into their apron pockets. They surrounded us, grabbed our weapons, and frisked us roughly without a word. When they turned back to the house, I went as still as a cornered animal.

A gruesome man stepped through the gap in the wall. Going by his face and scalp, I could tell he’d had a close encounter with some serious claws and teeth. A chunk of his nose was missing, along with one eye, a fact that he didn’t hide under an eye patch — the sunken cavity and badly sewn eyelid were on full display. He strode toward us. Instead of an apron, he wore a leather coat with a fur collar. “Drop,” he ordered. “Face down, hands behind your back.”

“Fun as that sounds,” Rafe replied evenly, “we’re here on a job and we need to get going.”

The man’s brow lowered over his empty eye socket, and he made a sharp gesture.

The hyboars sprang. I screeched, flinging myself backward into Rafe. The beasts stopped just short of us and hunkered low, chuckling like maniacs. If I could’ve, I would’ve crawled down Rafe’s shirt to hide.

“It’s your choice….” The one-eyed man bared his yellow teeth in some evil version of a smile. “Get down or the hyboars will take you down.”

With a sigh, Rafe planted himself face-first on the wet ground. I remained frozen in place, mesmerized by a drop of drool suspended from a hyboar tusk.

“It’s okay, Lane,” Rafe said, his voice uncharacteristically gentle. “Come lie next to me.”

Some fetch I was. I stretched out beside him, my cheek pressed into the soggy weeds, my eyes searching his desperately. His blue-green gaze was steady as always, and it reminded me that we might be on the ground surrounded by hyena-boars and crazy people, but that didn’t mean we had given up. “Don’t mention the silky,” he whispered.

A handler straddled me and yanked my arms behind my back. I gasped as he tied my wrists together. Another handler bound Rafe’s wrists, and then we were hauled to our feet. Rafe glanced at the handler gripping his arm. “Nice apron. You guys do a lot of baking?”

“No, manimal training,” the handler snapped. “And none of us is looking to get bitten in the groin.”

As Rafe grimaced at that image, the handlers wheeled us around to face the one-eyed man.

“I am Omar,” the man said casually, “the king’s overseer.”

Omar — the man who had put Cosmo in the zoo for licking a spoon.

“You are in violation of the laws of Chicago Compound, which apply to the whole of the city and the surrounding areas. Trespassing,” Omar ticked off, “possession of unauthorized weapons, and failure to display proof of your health. Therefore, your freedom is forfeit.”

“By forfeit, do you mean —” Rafe’s words cut off with a grunt as a handler’s baton slammed into his ribs.

“The only time you’ll speak is to answer my questions,” Omar said. “Now, did you come here alone or with others?”

“It’s just the two of us,” I said. As hard as it was to look at his ravaged face, I didn’t take my eyes from him. “We’re here tracking a rogue feral. One that’s killed a lot of people.”

Omar’s gaze sharpened on me. “You are a hunter?”

“If that’s what a compound needs.” I was certainly as dirty and bedraggled as the hunters and hacks I’d seen in Moline. I shrugged like I didn’t care what he called me. “We lead scavenging trips too. Feed us, and we’ll do practically anything.”

“And you’re certain it’s just the two of you?” Omar asked again.

“I don’t hunt in a pack.” Rafe shot a scornful look at the gaggle of handlers surrounding Omar.

“Maybe not yet …” Omar smiled. “But we’re good at getting beasts to obey.”

I felt Rafe stiffen beside me. “Who are you calling a —” This time the handler slammed the baton into his gut.

“Stop talking,” I hissed under my breath. How were we going to escape if he was a battered mess?

Omar jerked his chin and a handler gripped my arm and propelled me forward. Rafe’s handler used the knobby end of his baton to get Rafe moving. What did they want with us?

“Keep going,” my handler ordered as he directed me around the house. He was younger than the others. With his blond hair tied back, he didn’t look nearly as cruel as the rest, even if his grip was cutting off my arm’s circulation. He ushered me onto the weedy street where four rickshaws stood waiting, each pulled by a manimal of considerable size: three bull-men and one guy who might have been part rhino, going by his leathery skin and the fact that a sharp-tipped horn had sprouted along the bridge of his nose.

A hyboar thrashed on the ground behind the last rickshaw. A chain ran from the metal-link collar around the creature’s neck to the wheel bar under the passenger bench. The handler who’d been prodding Rafe along snatched the dog whip from his apron pocket and lashed the animal. “Get up!”

As the creature slowly rose on its hind legs, my perceptions reeled and reconfigured. I wasn’t looking at an animal, but a barrel-chested man. A man infected with hyena. Long, coarse fur covered every inch of his body. In fact — I looked away quickly, cheeks hot. The man was so hairy I hadn’t realized that he was naked. He remained in a crouch, poised to spring at the handler who’d struck him. His claws and elongated jaws glistened with drool.

The handler grinned and lifted the whip in warning. “You want more?”

The feral launched himself at the handler with a snarl, only to be brought up short by the chain. I glimpsed his awful face, so inhuman and insane, I felt my own sanity slipping. Clawing at air, the slavering thing screeched at us. I stumbled back. There was no hint of the man this feral had once been. No humanity that I could see left in him at all. He had become an it. My whole being flinched at the idea and my control began to splinter. Suddenly I understood Rafe so much better. The callous distance he put between himself and manimals, his choice to live alone in a prison rather than in Moline — he was terrified of becoming a creature like this.

The blond handler gave Rafe a prod with his baton, leaving the other man to deal with the feral.

I needed to shut out the hyena-man’s screams and focus on escape. But I still didn’t understand how the handlers had known we were here. “What were you doing at the house back there?” I asked.

The handler shot me a suspicious look. I must have appeared harmless enough, though, because after a moment he shrugged. “The guys on watch reported the blaze last night, so we swung by to see what burned down.”

A horned bull-man, brawny and impassive, set down the long poles attached to the rickshaw and knelt by my side. A heavy leather chest plate and harness encased his upper body and a collar encircled his thick neck.

“Get on up,” the handler directed.

I looked back at him. With my hands tied, exactly how was I supposed to climb up to the padded bench? “I can’t step up that high.”

“There’s your stool.” He pointed to the bull-man’s thigh. “Irving doesn’t mind. Do you, Irv?”

The bull-man grunted in answer. Still, I hesitated. My boots were heavy and lug soled. Plus, I didn’t exactly weigh nothing. Before the handler could bark at me, Rafe put a booted foot onto the bull-man’s thigh and hefted himself up to the rickshaw’s padded bench. The bull-man didn’t so much as flinch. I shot Rafe an annoyed look. “Thanks for the demonstration.”

Omar sat alone in the first rickshaw. When we were all in — me squeezed between Rafe and the blond handler on the bench — the bull-man lifted the poles from the mud. He then pulled our rickshaw along behind Omar’s. The other two rickshaws, which were loaded up with handlers, fell into line behind us. The hideous, tusked hyboars loped alongside of us and kept me from even thinking about jumping out.

Our odd procession rolled through the dead city along a street that was bounded with piled cars. I kept my eyes on the buildings and side roads, noting every sign and distinct feature the way I had learned in orienteering. Most likely Rafe and I were going to have to find our way back to the jeep in the dark. Hopefully, Everson and Cosmo were there now, awaiting Cosmo’s mother. If Rafe and I didn’t make it back by midnight, they were supposed to leave without us. I wondered if Everson would stick to the plan. I hoped so. If they tried to rescue us from the compound, they’d just get “arrested” too. I glanced at Rafe, who’d settled into a corner of the padded bench as if he hadn’t a care in the world. He caught my look. “Sweet ride.”

“How is this sweet?” I demanded, not caring that the handler was listening. “There is a man in a harness breaking his back to pull us around.” The manimal might be massive, but our combined weight had him huffing like a steam engine.

“You sure know how to suck the fun out of life,” Rafe grouched.

As we traveled east, rain pattered on the roof of the rickshaw, and another sound rose on the air, a low, resonant moan that sent a cold wind over my skin. The sound grew louder as we turned south and rode along an iron fence, the area beyond it obscured by trees and brush. I caught flashes of stone buildings, clawed hands gripping iron bars.

“The zoo?” I asked the handler, who nodded.

“They do that every time we take a feral out of there,” he said, sounding annoyed.

The lament intensified, turning ferocious. The infected people in their cages were keening. The hair on my arms stood on end. Rafe shifted uncomfortably next to me. There was something powerful and dangerous to the noise and it seeped into me like a threat.

The sound faded as we rolled farther south. The buildings sprouted to fifty stories and more and blocked out the light of the sky. The bull-man struggled to heave the rickshaw across the metal mesh surface of a bridge, overgrown with vines. I felt terrible for him, but my hands were literally tied and the stitches in my calf had reached an epic level of throb, which would make walking torturous. There was nothing I could do but stay put as the feeling of helplessness burned a hole in my gut.

On the other side of the river gleamed the razor-wire fence that encircled the Chicago compound. So much of this scene reminded me of Arsenal Island — the gate at the end of the bridge and guards standing by. Only instead of gray camouflage, these men wore leather aprons. The rain had stopped. In a way, I missed it. I liked having the sky cry, since I wouldn’t let myself. My trip into the Feral Zone had yielded nothing but ash — a total failure by anyone’s definition. Standing in Director Spurling’s burned-out living room, I’d thought I’d hit bottom. Silly me.

I estimated we’d gone over three miles when we stopped at the perimeter of yet another fence, this one a tall briar hedge, thorns and all — trained to grow around coils of barbed wire. Beyond the brambles of metal and wood stood a pale limestone building that took up the entire city block. A section of the briar hedge swung in, and the rickshaw rolled through. We halted in the middle of a lush garden. An enormous caged enclosure took up one corner of the grounds. I jumped down from the rickshaw, gasping as pain ripped up my calf. I desperately hoped I hadn’t torn open the stitches. I leaned against a life-sized bronze bull to steady myself and then noticed that, despite being green with age, the statue was uncomfortably similar in looks to Irving, the manimal standing beside it.

Rafe landed next to me and eyed the caged area. “This just keeps getting better,” he muttered.

The building before us — the castle — could have been an armed fort. Handlers with guns stood on either side of the front door. Others ran to unhitch the feral who’d been trailing behind us. The hunched, shaggy man slowly pulled himself to full height with bared fangs like stalactites in his gaping mouth. “Get him primed,” Omar ordered.

One of the handlers extended his baton and beat the hyena-man until he fell to his knees. I reminded myself that I was supposed to be a hunter — someone who saw ferals as a payday, nothing more. I grit my teeth as the handler forced the feral to crawl across the yard to a dog run, where a metal collar dangled from a high wire. It took three handlers to get the collar snapped around the feral’s neck.

“What does that mean?” I asked our handler. “Get him primed?”

“They beat him to get him worked up,” he replied. “Not enough to do real damage. We want a good fight.”

“Someone is going to fight the feral?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

“Best way to know if a new handler is ready for the job.”

Now that the feral was collared and chained, he couldn’t escape their blows, and yet the handlers beat him until he was bellowing with rage and swiping his clawed hands at them. I couldn’t look on any longer. I spun away to find Omar watching me.

A smirk spread over his wrecked face. “A hunter, are you?” He shifted his gaze onto our handler. “Keep them in the yard while I inform the queen of our visitors.” He swept up the stairs and disappeared through the mammoth front door of the castle. Nearby, the handlers continued to hit the feral with their batons, making him roar. I stalked away. “Hey,” the young handler called.

“Do you think I can climb a fence with my hands tied?” I snapped over my shoulder. That must have satisfied him because he stayed put as I headed over to the caged area.

Rafe caught up with me. “Getting a little feral yourself, aren’t you?”

Now that I’d seen a real feral up close, I didn’t ever want to joke about it. I ignored him and studied the enclosure. Not surprisingly, it was furnished for human occupants. A table and upholstered chairs had been dragged into a sunny patch while tents took up two corners of the caged area. Not weatherproof tarps like what I’d learned to set up in my survival skills class. These could have housed an Arabian prince.

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.”