CORA SHIELDED HER EYES against the bright savanna sun. It glinted off the hood of the nearest safari truck, blinding her so that all she could make out of Roshian was a dark outline.
She took a shaky step backward, nearly tripping over the uneven ground. “Dane, what’s going on?”
He stood at the base of the veranda steps, blocking her. “You heard him,” he said quietly, tossing the yo-yo. “Run. You might have a chance.”
“You brought me here to die?”
His eyes snapped to her. “That’s up to how fast you are. I can’t say I’m optimistic.” He shoved the toy in his pocket, and when he spoke again, his tone was more resigned. “I’ll tell Lucky that you died in an accident. I’ll watch out for him. He could go far here.”
She contemplated hurling herself at him, clawing his face, ripping out clumps of his hair, but it wouldn’t change anything—he wasn’t in charge.
“You!” She spun on Roshian. “If this is just about some trophy, take it! I’ll give you my hair, no favors in return, no questions asked.”
“It is the trophy I want,” Roshian said calmly. “But the trophy means nothing without the hunt.”
He picked up the old rifle, an enormous dark-gray monster that had to weigh twenty pounds, nothing Kindred about it in the slightest.
“Just run already!” Dane hurled his yo-yo at her feet.
She let out a hoarse cry. Her mind kept spinning, trying to find a rational explanation, as Roshian stroked the length of the rifle barrel. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t kill a human. And then he rested a finger on the trigger, and her spinning mind stopped.
Apparently, somehow, he could.
“Only one way to escape the Big Bad Wolf,” said Anya’s voiceless whisper, and for a second, Cora was glad at least she wasn’t alone. “That’s to run.”
Cora’s heart throbbed harder. Anya might think in riddles, but this one wasn’t hard to decipher.
Cora turned and ran.
Heat rose from the ground, turning the artificial savanna into hazy waves. Tall grass. The watering hole. Rolling hills. Not many places to hide, which was exactly how it had been designed.
Behind her came the metallic clicks of a rifle preparing to fire. Back in DC, her father had once dragged her to a shooting range for a political photo op and made her put on ear protection and fire at a person-shaped target. She had hated everything about that dank cement room of sweaty men, but she remembered one thing: it was a lot harder to shoot a moving target.
Her long dress tangled around her ankles, slowing her, and she jerked it up around her knees so she could run faster, darting and weaving to make herself harder to shoot. Her feet pounded over stone and tufts of grass, throwing up sand behind her. She ran for the closest hill. If she could get behind it—
A bullet whizzed by her side.
She shrieked and veered to the right, throwing herself behind a tree. She could just make out Roshian on the horizon, still standing by the veranda steps. He had lowered the rifle to reload. Even if the bullets were artificial, they would still immobilize her so that he could slice her throat. Her breath slammed in her chest as she dug her fingernails into the tree.
What chance did she have? He was Kindred, and all Kindred were faster, and stronger, and smarter. Tessela, Cassian, Lucky, and Mali—none of them could help her, because they had no idea that at this moment a twisted creature in a safari uniform was lifting a rifle to aim again.
“Anya,” she thought as hard as she could. “Help!”
For a minute, there was nothing. The sun beat down mercilessly. It was only a matter of time before Roshian would corner her, shoot her, and cut off her hair and keep it as a deranged trophy. No one would be left to run or cheat the Gauntlet.
And then:
“Don’t give up, little rabbit.”
The words batted around in Cora’s chest, giving her just the slightest amount of hope.
“How?” Cora whispered aloud.
“Make a twin.”
Anya’s voice echoed in her head. A twin? No, a decoy! That would work, but Cora had nothing except the clothes on her back. She ripped the heavy golden fabric of her dress at the knees, and then tossed it over a branch so it flickered in the wind. Anya was right. From a distance, it might look as if she was hiding there.
She shoved off and ran for the hill. A gunshot went off behind her, splintering a chunk of the tree. The torn fabric of her dress fluttered again as he fired once more.
She dropped to all fours and crawled through the tall grass. Roshian would soon realize the decoy was just fabric and follow her trail of footsteps through the sand. She needed a way to not leave a trail. If there was a river, she could wade through the water to hide her tracks. If there was a paved road, she could walk on it. But there was only sand.
“The trees offer shelter.”
Cora tossed her head up, squinting into the high branches. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
In the cage, Lucky had taught her how to climb trees—it had been terrifying for someone with a fear of heights, but effective. Now, she gripped the lowest branch of a mango tree and swung up into the branches thick with leaves. She climbed as silently as she could, remembering what Lucky had taught her, trying not to disturb the branches as she leaped to the next tree, and then the next. The trees didn’t stretch far, but she just needed them to span the sandy patch where Roshian would see any tracks she left. It would look as though she had just vanished.
The last tree ended at a grassy patch, where she dropped down and crouched low.
She closed her eyes and listened.
It was completely quiet, except for her own strangled breath. She didn’t dare look over the grass to see where Roshian was. For all she knew, he might be ten feet away, stalking her with his mind.
A twig snapped nearby, and she bolted.
Bullets ricocheted in the grass behind her, spraying sand into the air. He was just on the other side of the mango trees. She tore through the grass, flinching as it twisted around her ankles, threatening to pull her back down.
“The Big Bad Wolf is clever,” Anya’s voice said. “But you have magic too. Use it!”
Magic? Anya must mean levitation, but what was Cora supposed to do, stop the bullets with her mind? She could barely hold a die a few inches off the ground! If only there was something she could nudge, like Cassian had trained her, like a boulder perched on a cliff above Roshian. But there weren’t any cliffs and the only boulders were on the ground.
Another bullet flew by her. She pivoted and sprinted toward the watering hole. At least there were rocks there, where the animals sunned themselves when they weren’t in their cages, and some boulders she could hide behind. She raced onto the rocks, avoiding the water so she wouldn’t leave a set of wet tracks for Roshian to follow. She dived behind a boulder and pressed her back against it, fighting to catch her breath.
No animal had ever escaped the Hunt. But she wasn’t an animal. She was human, and that had to count for something. There had to be some advantage humans had that the Kindred didn’t.
She heard Roshian’s boots on the rocks just on the other side of the watering hole. He’d be there soon.
She thought of all the times Cassian had talked about the roots of his fascination with humanity. Curiosity. Art. Affection. Forgiveness. None of that was going to help her against creatures with skin as thick as metal.
But not giving up—that might help. If Charlie were here, he would definitely tell her that now was a good time to be stubborn.
Cora rooted her feet.
The Kindred weren’t completely invulnerable. Their hard, metallic skin was difficult to pierce, but what about the eyes? In Bay Pines, Cora’s cellmate Queenie had once gotten in a fight on the exercise field with another girl much bigger than her. Queenie had never stood a chance in a fight, so she had gone straight for the other girl’s eyes. Cheating, she had told Cora later, can be useful for a lot more than just cards.
Cora hunted through the pebbles and leaves at her feet until she found a small stick the width of her thumb, and maybe eight inches long. Hardly a match for bullets, but it was a chance. She scrambled around the boulder and found footholds to climb on top, moving slowly, making sure that Roshian was always directly on the opposite side so he couldn’t see her. She pulled herself up, wishing her heart wasn’t pounding so hard.
There he was.
Just on the other side of the boulder. Three feet below where she crouched, he was creeping silently, his rifle at the ready.
Three.
Two.
One!
She leaped off the boulder and landed on his back, using the momentum to sling him to the ground. He reacted fast, trying to twist the rifle around, but she was too close for him to aim. He tossed the rifle aside and drew a Kindred-issue pistol out of his holster. She struggled to keep him on the ground, clawing at his arms. Blood spurted everywhere, though she hadn’t felt a scratch. He let off a shot. Pain ripped through her shin and she cried out. He’d used a tranquilizer bullet—the chemicals were already spreading through her bloodstream, starting to immobilize her. He shoved to his knees, setting the end of the pistol against her forehead—even a tranquilizer bullet would kill her this close—but she drove the stick at his face first.
“Do it, little rabbit!” Anya’s voice urged.
It connected with a sickening squish. Roshian let out a scream that sounded impossibly human as he reached for the stick emerging from his eye socket. She stumbled back, breathing hard. Her leg was already numb. She looked down to see where she was bleeding. Her shin. Where else? Where was all the blood coming from? There was something gritty under her nails. Metallic, like tiny slivers of silver sand.
Roshian swung his head around to look for the rifle with his one remaining eye. She shoved herself to her good foot, limping, trying to get away before her entire body was immobilized. Hope surged with every footstep. The veranda wasn’t far away. She might have a chance to climb those steps before the chemicals spread through her entire body. Crawl into the lodge, open the backstage door, scream until the others came running. Roshian surely wouldn’t kill her in front of witnesses.
She reached for the railing. She couldn’t feel her right leg at all, and her fingertips were going numb. She hobbled up, step by step.
At the top of the stairs, a bullet went off just over her head.
She collapsed to the stairs. When she turned, he was ten feet away, one hand clutched over the stick in his eye, the other eye burning with fury. “One more step and I’ll shoot you in the back of the head, even if it means ruining that pretty hair of yours.”
He sounded so savage, so brutal, so completely unlike a Kindred.
“Anya,” she thought. “Anya, what do I do?”
But Anya’s voice said nothing now.
“Turn around,” he said. “I want to watch your face as you die.”