The Hunt - Megan Shepherd Page 0,4
toward Kindred guards posted on the upper level of the marketplace that she hadn’t noticed before. “If you were to claim that humans have evolved, no one would believe you. They would ask for proof that you could not reliably demonstrate. You have the potential, yes, but not the mastery. And when you were not able to prove it, those guards would declare you mentally unstable and lock you away. Do you not remember what happened to Anya?”
Anya. The Icelandic girl Cora had seen trapped in the Temple, drugged and delirious.
“On a stage not unlike that one,” Cassian continued, “Anya once performed a fairy-tale play her private owner had written. She decided to alter the script. Instead of picking artificial flowers from a vase, she levitated them with her mind. I could not stop the Council when they came for her.” He lowered his voice even further. “Stubbornness can be an endearing trait, but it can also be your downfall. There is a way to get what we both want. Do not let your anger at me blind you to reason.”
His words only stoked her anger more. She could feel it growing inside her, and yet a memory pushed forward. Her older brother, Charlie, shaking his head after she’d fallen out of the oak tree at the edge of their property for the tenth time in a row. He’d dusted her off and said, You know what stubborn means? Cora, eight at the time, had shaken her head, and he’d explained, The definition of stubborn is to know what the right thing to do is, but not to do it anyway just to prove a point. And right now, you should really just give up.
She clenched her jaw and looked away from the platform. “Okay. But this doesn’t mean I’m agreeing to anything.”
He didn’t answer. Silently, he led her through the marketplace, then down into roughly hewn hallways that cut through the asteroid core itself. These dank places made up the Kindred’s private world: menageries, brothels, gambling halls—places where the Kindred could safely uncloak and seek the emotional thrills they craved. A row of doorways was dug into the rock, and in front of each doorway was a podium staffed by a young Kindred male or female.
“Hosts,” Cassian explained. “To greet their guests. Each door leads to a different menagerie. You’re going to the Hunt.”
Cora held up the old-fashioned golden dress. “So what is that, some kind of Prohibition nightclub?”
“Not exactly.”
He said nothing more as they passed the first few doors. One host wore a leopard-print caveman’s toga. One hostess looked like a Viking maiden. Another was dressed in a baseball uniform.
“The menageries have only recently opened for this rotation, so it is a relatively quiet time. There will not be many guests yet. They operate on a roughly terrestrial schedule of day and night, for the comfort of the humans who live here.”
Cora let out a smirk. Comfort. “How many human days make up a rotation?”
“The exact conversion rate requires complex algorithms, as it changes based on a variety of astrophysical factors. Humans are incapable of this level of mathematics, but suffice it to say one rotation is equal to anywhere between one and two weeks.” He stopped at the sixth door. The hostess here wore what looked to be a safari uniform: khaki blouse with the shoulders cut out, thick leather belt, hunter-green skirt, with a pith helmet perched on her perfectly combed hair. Like all the hostesses, she wore glasses with eyes painted on the front, though Cora knew that behind them her eyes were uncloaked and almost as clear as a human’s.
The hostess smiled stiffly at Cassian. “Welcome back, Warden.”
Welcome back? Cora had never imagined him playing dress-up in some club.
He inclined his head. “Issander.”
The hostess opened the door for them. Heat coated Cora’s skin like a thick lotion. The air was muggy, as warm as the light that cast long shadows throughout the room. The calls of tropical birds reached her ears first, then other sounds: the roar of a far-off truck, low chatter and clinking of glasses, soft instrumental music.
“Be cautious.” Cassian nodded back toward the door. “The Council has watchers posted through the station whose job is to report back any unusual activity. Improper relations between Kindred and humans, humans disobeying the rules, that sort of thing. Their identities are kept hidden. I do not know if Issander is a watcher, but she is not sympathetic to our cause.”
“Won’t that be a problem?”
“I