The Black Forest Read online

  Bobbing my head along with them before they express additional congratulations and assume a seat at the farthest side of the cell, I swear to the sun, moon and stars I will free my loved ones. I turn and trade glances with Reyna, Ara and Pike. I lock eyes with each of them, silently sharing my intent. Each of them knows I have promised to get them out of here or die trying.

  Chapter 2

  Darkness envelops me, cradling me into a deep sleep. Though I spend the night huddled against Pike and holding Ara’s hand through the bars as he and I keep a shoulder to them, I manage to sleep better and longer than I have since I was brought here. The notion seems absurd. Impossible even. Since our capture and imprisonment, my mind hasn’t shut down long enough to sleep without interruption. Peace, in any and all forms, has eluded me. But not this night.

  My eyes pop open to see threads of light winding their way in through a high window in the farthest corner of the cell, a window long-since boarded from the outside and fortified with metal bars. At first glance, everyone here appears to be asleep, yet I feel the press of eyes. Sweeping the room a second time, I am met with a gaze. Onyx in color and demanding my attention wordlessly, the gaze belongs to Kai. He sits against the far wall, arms the size of my thighs folded across his massive chest, and stares at me. I clip my chin toward him in acknowledgment. He doesn’t mirror my gesture. Instead, he signals for me to join him.

  Releasing Ara’s hand, I stand slowly. My muscles and joints complain. Every cut and bruise screams. The arena has left me battered. Sleeping on the stone floor doesn’t help matters. But I’d sleep on a bed of freshly sharpened blades to have my sister and brother safe. To have them by my side. I look down at their sleeping forms as I make my way over to Kai. “Sit.” The word rumbles from deep in his chest and sounds like an invitation not a command. I sit down beside him. He turns and looks directly into my eyes, studying them for a moment before saying, “Did you mean what you said yesterday?”

  “About leaving?” I ask.

  Kai’s gaze doesn’t waver. “Yes.” He pauses for a moment. “Did you mean it?”

  “I meant every word of it,” I reply with steadfast determination. “I’m not living out my days here, killing for their entertainment.” I shake my head and swallow the bitterness that rises in my throat as I recall Prince Cadogan, about what he thinks is a lucrative offer. “I refuse to take an innocent life, and I don’t mind dying if it gives them a chance to be free.” I look away from Kai. My gaze trains on Ara and Pike. Kai follows my eyes and makes a sound.

  “Hmm,” the bass in his voice rolls. “I understand. You love your brother and sister. I had a brother and sister once. Nala and Orion. Younger than me, both of them,” he says as he stares off into the distance, his eyes unfocused. “We were all here once. Nala was so thin and small for her age. She couldn’t even hold a weapon. And Orion…” Kai’s voice trails off. He clears his throat. “Orion wasn’t like us. His mind was strong but his body wasn’t. He couldn’t stand on his own. His legs didn’t work like ours.” I watch Kai intently. A thin stream of tears runs to his chin. “The Prince, he didn’t care, you see. He still sent Orion out onto the sand. Had Urthmen drag him out.” He wipes the tears with the back of his hand. “Orion never stood a chance. And there was no glory in killing a boy like that, a boy who didn’t have a real chance to defend himself.”

  I sit, staring at the enormous man before me with tears running down his face as he recounts the atrocities committed against his family, and am sickened anew. There is no low too deep for an Urthman to sink. They are not only without honor, but without compassion. Without feeling. I didn’t think it possible to despise them any more than I did before talking to Kai, but after hearing his story, I do. I see them as a society of cruel, ruthless, savage beings.

  “I want out of here, too. I don’t want to kill other humans. I don’t want to be like them.” Kai inhales deeply. He squeezes his eyes shut and frowns. “I don’t want to be like them. I don’t want to become them,” he finally says, then adds, “Like Cas did.”

  Kai is right. Cas did become like the Urthmen. He did as they said for so long that doing as they do became reflexive. He followed their rules. Believed their lies. Accepted their “benefits”. Killed for their perverse amusement until it became his own. Until he enjoyed it every bit as much as they did. The roar of the crowd. The promise of bloodshed. Cas became one of them. Kai doesn’t want to. I certainly don’t want to either. “I understand,” I answer and mean it. I hadn’t considered the possibility until now, until Kai said it. The risk exists. Being surrounded by savagery as we are, we’re at risk of becoming vulnerable, of it permeating our defenses and infecting us. Cas, whether worn down or welcoming it, was affected. It overtook all that was decent in him, all that was human. He became vicious. He became an Urthman. Though he wasn’t one by birthright. He was one by design. Perhaps that was and is part of their plan, to turn us into them. Perhaps I give them too much credit and they simply use us to amuse themselves. Regardless, I want no part of it. I want Ara and Pike away from it as quickly as possible. “We need to get out of here as soon as we can,” I think aloud.

  Hearing me, Kai nods. “Good. But here’s my question: even if we somehow manage to get out of here, where do we go? The world belongs to them.” He snarls his upper lip and tilts his head toward the Urthman guard passing in the hall.

  “I lived most of my life free,” I tell him.

  Kai’s eyes widen.

  “There was an entire village of more than a hundred of us. We hunted and cooked. We learned about surviving. We slept in our own huts. Things were organized. And peaceful.” I look at Kai. His eyes shine with emotion.

  “A village?” he asks. His face is a mask of hope. A broad smile stretches across his face. He suddenly looks youthful. I’m reluctant to dash that hope.

  “There was.” I swallow hard. “Urthmen stormed my village. Killed everyone there except the kids. I watched my parents die then was brought here with my brothers and sister.”

  Kai’s smile capsizes. “There’s nowhere for us to go?” The glimmer in his eyes fades and hope seeps from him.

  “No. That’s not what I’m saying. Not at all.” I shake my head. “I’m saying if there was one, there are others. It’s out there. I know it is. And we’ll find it.”

  Kai rubs his chin then scratches his jaw, arms folded across his barrel chest. He stops mid-motion. His shoulders sag. In a haunted voice, he speaks four words. “What if we can’t?”

  I pause. The existence of more villages is likely. Whether or not we find them is the question. “I’d rather die out there searching, free, than here, animals used to entertain them.”

  Kai nods slowly. One corner of his mouth lifts in a half-smile. He extends a large hand to me. I take it in mine. His grip is firm when he says, “I’m with you, brother.” Truth rings in his words. Sincerity radiates from him. Sincerity and honor. I realize my family and I are not alone. Others, namely Kai, retain humanity in this inhumane place.

  “Thank you.” My eyes meet his. “I’m going to need everyone here to be with me. We won’t have a chance unless they all join us.” I look around at roughly twenty or so men and fifteen or so women in the two cells. If just one of them decides to betray us, escape will be unfeasible.

  “Let me start working on that,” Kai offers.

  I’m about to thank him when the shrill sound of screaming echoes down the hallway. The bloodcurdling sound causes me to spring to my feet. Kai does the same. “Oh no,” he mumbles. The voice is human. That much is clear. And it’s growing louder and closer. Within seconds, Urthmen guards are at the gate. A man, not much older than I am, is with them. He shouts and flails in a wild panic as the guards unlock the cell door. He twists and turns, pleading in a piercing voice. “No! Please! You can’t leave me here! Why are you doing this to me?” While he twists and turns in a futile attempt to escape their grip, the light catches his face. I recognize him immediately. He’s from the Task Center, where ca
rs and tools are both reworked and built. Where “bred” humans reside and work for the advancement of Urthmen. They do not see the inside of the arena. They do not fight. They’re kept, separate and apart from the rest of us, unaware of the fact that they are the same species. What is his name? I can see him, standing beside Aaron, both men wearing long, white coats, but can’t recall hearing his name. “Please! Stop this nonsense! I don’t belong here!” he continues to cry.

  “Animals! All of you,” an Urthman guard spits and shakes the man.

  “He still doesn’t get it,” one of the guards with him laughs.

  A third Urthman approaches. He grips the man’s face and forces him to look into his monstrous face. “You are one of these animals,” the Urthman says.

  “No!” the man shakes his head violently. “I’m not! I’m a bred human!” Confusion and abject horror scores his pale features. Spittle dribbles from his lips. He is a mess.

  “You think that matters?” the Urthman before him barks. “You think it matters where or how you were born?”

  “Yes!” the man shouts. He bobs his head like a lunatic.

  The Urthmen laugh at him. The one in front of him says, “You are a fool!” he then shoves the man. “An animal is an animal no matter where it’s born. Its parents are animals. You are all animals!” he screams so loud a vein that looks like a bolt of lightning appears at his temple. He then reaches out and grabs the man’s arm. I see that his hand is wrapped, taped to a flat piece of wood for support. Despite the wood and bandages, however, the hand is clearly mangled. “You ruined one of the hands that serves us,” the Urthman continues to rant. “You’re of no use to us without that hand. Your only use now is to let us enjoy your death on the sand.” The Urthmen laugh. It is a hideous sound filled with venom.

  The man cowers. He looks at his hand then to the Urthman. His lower lip quivers. “I was told I was being brought to a retirement community for bred humans. A place to rest. And that I’d be consulted on new projects.”

  The three Urthmen stare at him for several beats then erupt in a fit of cruel laughter. “This is why you’re a fool!” the Urthman before him says.

  “Only a dumb animal would believe that!” one of the others says.

  “Stupid animal!” the other adds.

  Realization registers on the man’s face as the Urthmen laugh at his expense. He sees he’s been lied to. “No! Please!” the man turns and looks at us. “You can’t leave me in there with them!” Frantically, he grabs the Urthman in front of him. “Please! Don’t do this!”

  The Urthman looks down at the man’s hands gripping him. He pulls his club from a loop at his hip and hoists it high. He whips it through the air and brings it crashing down into the man’s shoulder. The man cries out in pain. The Urthman doesn’t acknowledge it in the least, is unfazed by it, and throws the man to the stone floor. The slap of skin and pop of bone meeting the hard surface makes me cringe. But not as much as the sight of the man, looking up pleadingly, just before his face is met by a giant, booted foot. Blood sprays and the other two Urthmen guards join in, kicking him mercilessly until he is lying on the ground, curled in a bloody ball and sobbing like a child.

  “This is my favorite part,” one of the Urthmen says.

  “When they finally get it,” another says.

  “Yeah, it is the best part,” the third agrees. “Retirement community!” he scoffs and they all begin laughing again.

  The guards lift the man to his feet and shove him inside. He collapses to the floor as the cell door is locked behind him.

  “Oh my gosh,” Kai breathes.

  Everyone in the cell is awake now. No one utters a word. They simply stare in shocked silence. The only sound inside is that of the man crying. Pathetic as the sight is, I can’t help but feel bad for him. He is misguided, clueless to what his purpose was and is now. He was used his whole life, and promised a future that would never come to fruition. I pity him. But at the same time, it occurs to me that he could be the key to our escape.

  As that thought begins to take shape, Micah and Xan approach. They circle the man like a pair of predators smelling fresh blood. “Hey, bred human,” Xan says tauntingly. “Welcome.” His greeting is neither friendly nor hospitable. He then kneels beside the man and hisses. “I can only hope I’m the one who gets to end your miserable life out there.”

  Micah chuckles.

  “I-I don’t know how to fight,” the man barely manages between sobs.

  “Well then, it’ll be that much easier. I only hope you can clutch a weapon with your one good hand,” Xan says and laughs.

  The man attempts to scramble to all fours. It’s hard to watch. Especially when, without warning, Xan rises to his feet and kicks him to the ground. The man wails in agony and fresh tears begin.

  Anger coils in the pit of my stomach, spiraling tighter and tighter. Micah and Xan torment him without reason. He is what he is. It isn’t his fault. The Urthmen who threw him in here believe they’ve sealed his fate. I hope to change that.

  “You will fight and you will die,” Xan growls. Xan and Micah both move in on him to attack.

  “Enough!” I yell. I close the distance between us. “Leave him alone!”

  Xan and Micah freeze in place. Both stare at me, confused.

  “This thing here, this bred human, thinks he’s better than us,” Xan says with disdain.

  “He spent his whole life believing that, sleeping in comfortable beds and never facing the arena,” Micah sounds like a child. A jealous child a foot-stomp away from a tantrum. “It’s time he learns what he is. We want to teach him.”

  Reining in my mounting annoyance, I say evenly, “I think he gets it. He’s one of us now.”

  “What? No—” the man starts.

  “Shut up!” I shout at him. “I’m trying to help you and you’re not helping me do that!”

  “See?” Micah points to him. “That right there! That’s what I want to break him of. That arrogance.”

  Although a very small part of me comes dangerously close to seeing their point, I don’t agree with the violent methods with which they want to “break him” of his arrogance.

  “He’s not suddenly one of us. He’s always been one of us. He just thinks he’s better,” Xan snaps.

  “I know that,” I reply. “He’s just getting it now. Leave him alone.” My tone leaves no room for challenge. My words are an order. One I’m prepared to defend if need be.

  “Fine,” Xan says. He steps away then adds, “But when he meets one of us in the arena, he won’t have you to protect him.” He gestures between him and Micah. “And who knows? It might even be you he meets. And dies by your blade.”

  I stare at Xan unflinchingly. “If that happens then so be it. He will die by my blade. But for now, leave him alone. Understand?”

  They both mutter responses, agreeing to leave him alone then turn and walk away. They huff and grumble as they retreat to their usual corner.

  “Thank you, human,” the man says.

  “Lucas. My name’s Lucas.” I offer a hand to help him up.

  “My name is Brad,” he replies. I wait for him to say “Brad the bred human,” but he doesn’t. If he had, I’d have had trouble refraining from laughing in his face.

  “Nice to meet you, Brad. I remember you from the Task Center. You worked with Aaron, right?”

  Brad looks at me. Cocking his head to one side as if shocked that I recalled him, the Task Center and Aaron, he says “Yes, I did.” He groans as he tries to hobble to a better sitting area than right in front of the cell door. “Thank you again, Lucas. You probably saved my life. There’s no telling what those two would’ve done to me.”

  “Oh I have an idea, and I probably did save you in some way,” I say and take a quick glance at Xan and Micah. “But no thanks necessary.” I stop and lock eyes with Brad. “You’re the person who’s going to get me out of this place.”

  Eyes wide and mouth partially agape, Brad simply stares at me, dumbfound
ed.

  “Now close your mouth and either smile or just let your face relax. Makes no difference to me. Whatever you need to do so you don’t look like I just kicked you in the groin.”

  Brad gulps loudly then nods. His expression calms. He chances a look over at Xan and Micah. Xan makes a slitting motion at his throat then points to Brad. He mouths the word “dead” and for a moment, I fear Brad will soil himself. Instantly, his eyes are on me again, pleading. “O-okay,” he stammers. “I’ll help. I’ll do whatever you want. Just keep them away from me.” And in that moment, I realize hope may not be as dangerous a prospect as I once believed it to be. Hope is now what drives me. Hope is all a man has sometimes.

  I’m hopeful.

  I’m determined.

  I will get my brother and sister out of here.

  Brad is my new best friend.

  Chapter 3

  Unfiltered sun blazes from overhead as I swing my wooden blade at Kai. He grunts and deflects my swipe, narrowly avoiding getting clipped in the ear. “You’re fast,” he says and turns right. A faint breeze whispers against my damp skin. He and I have been sparring since the sun was far closer to the horizon. Both of us are soaked in sweat and slightly winded, still we continue.

  “Thanks,” I reply. In my periphery, I see that, other than Xan, Micah, Reyna and her female sparring partner, everyone has slacked off considerably. Exertion and heat has slowed them. My body refuses to relent. It’s keeping pace with my mind.

  “Where’d you learn to fight like you do?” Kai asks.

  “My dad.” I advance a quick step and turn just in time to escape having Kai’s sword meet my ribs. “He was the best swordsman in the village.”