Chapter 1

      The yoke hung around Lyta’s neck as she staggered along in the line. Her shoulders were raw and bloody from the weight of the steel collar and the attached chains, which kept her in the queue with the rest of the “tribute.” The collar’s edge sawed into her skin, and each shift of weight as she stepped was a brand-new spike of pain. She kept her composure, the tears having long since dried out, shed for her lost family.

      Lyta was nineteen, and just a week ago she’d been tall and athletic, with long blond-frosted curls styled by a friend utilizing peroxide. Now, six days later, she had lost fifteen pounds through sweat, lack of food, even blood loss. Her scalp was covered with slowly healing scars, nicks made when her hair was shorn off by a soldier of the Panthers of Mashona. He’d scraped her from hairline to nape of neck with a sharpened knife, and years of growth and hours of coloring ended up in the dirt, along with slivers of her scalp.

      Thankfully, Lyta had been in shock at the time. The Panthers had swooped down on her town, one of many located on the edge of Zambia, close to the dangers posed by various bandit groups. She’d watched as her father was shot through the face, and then the marauders, having slaughtered all the armed opposition, got to the task of preying on the survivors.

      Lyta remembered her face jammed into the dirt, cheek abrading against rocks and pebbles in the soil, her eye so filled with grit she couldn’t close it. Thus she was unable to look away as the militiamen grabbed her mother and threw her to the ground.

      Lyta saw everything that happened, all the way to her mother’s death, and after it. Even demise was no excuse for the cruel, bloodthirsty thugs to stop having their way with the woman’s remains.

      Lyta didn’t think of her own fate. She couldn’t remember anything, or maybe she just wouldn’t remember. Her brain had shut down, and she focused on the agony around her neck, weighing on her shoulders, her collarbone. Maybe someday the memories would surface, but she hoped that they wouldn’t. She only had the memories of being shorn, being stripped, being chained.

      The Panthers of Mashona didn’t say why they were herding humans, but Lyta doubted it was for slavery. After the miles they’d gone, the weight she’d lost, she’d be useless for physical labor.

      The sun was half of a molten disc in the sky. Sunset had arrived and painted the African skies a rainbow of purple, orange, red and yellow, deep blue at the far end of that spectrum behind her back, Lyta surmised. This part of the countryside was miles and days distant from her home, but here, there seemed to be more pollution, even though they marched away from Zambia, deeper into Mashonan territory.

      “All right! Stop!” the whip master shouted.

      The queue stumbled to a halt, and bodies bumped against each other.

      “Sit!” the whip master ordered.

      And there, the group, having been at it for six days, plopped to the ground heavily. Better to get it done and over with in one fell swoop than stretch out the torture of shifting collars and bouncing chains as they gently tried to lower themselves. Links of steel bounced between Lyta’s shoulder blades, and she wondered how much longer her backbone could take such abuse.

      Water, filthy and tepid, but water nevertheless, was handed out in ladles. Lyta slurped at the muddy slurry, swallowing and feeling the grit of sand wash down her esophagus. She drank as much as she could in a single gulp; then, as her lips parted, the cup of life-giving moisture was gone.

      Lyta’s stomach churned, but she was glad for a lack of food and a minimum of water. That way she wouldn’t have to worry, as days before, about having to relieve herself on the walk.

      Above her was the vast expanse of the universe. They’d traveled so far from relative civilization that instead of a black night, they were beneath a swirl of stars. The spine of the Milky Way looked like a scattering of diamonds across black felt.

      Lyta wanted to sleep, but as she stared into the infinite night above her, her mind drifted to the world she’d occupied only a week ago.

      It had been a world where she’d read every night, even after being with her fiancé, Usain. It had been a place where she’d had a future in telecommunications. For decades, Zambia and Harare had shared a wealth of radios stored in the depths of some underground facilities along the Zambezi River. The two nation-states used the hydroelectric power of the dams to keep their cities modern. The urgency to keep the two entities in the technological manner that they’d become accustomed to had been the impetus to discard the last remnants of pre-twentieth-century prejudices about women’s places in society and the broadening of the education system.

      Trying to keep a relative island of paradise, or even just normalcy, in the middle of a region as tumultuous as theirs was a full-time job for the military forces of Zambia and Harare. Most of Lyta’s electronics training came from a two-year stint in the army, learning her support role and apprenticing to more highly trained experts, all the while being taught the theories necessary to give her a basic grounding. With the actual science rolling around between her ears, as well as math and physics, she had the tools available to improve on the present technology.

      That was something that Zambia needed desperately. Zambia and Harare weren’t in a race against each other. Mashona, on the other hand, was a large region with little in the way of central government, defined now more by the Panthers militia than anything else, and even then, the bandit army was still in contention with smaller gangs and individual madmen who sought domination. Because Zambia and Harare cooperated but didn’t try to become a whole nation, they were able to support each other while the forces of chaos were fragmented, pitted against their neighbors.

      Maybe that’s what we’re here for. We’re going to be the ingredients for the glue that makes the Panthers of Mashona into the only game in town.

      Lyta looked to the stars, her mind turning that theory over and over.

      So who would want nearly dead people? she asked herself. How could I, as I stand now, be of any worth to a force that would provide this militia with the undisputed position of power in this region?

      She gave her lower lip a bite. Things moved around her, but the damned steel collar left her with only one position to look—straight up. Lyta had long since gotten used to the sound of boots crunching on the stalks of long grasses, the snap of twigs and the grinding of dirt as guards paced up and down the line, making certain that their cargo of the walking damned stayed in place.

      Odd that the guards are not interested in taking a little ass while we’re lined up like this.

      The Mashonan soldiers didn’t want to assert themselves over this queue of the doomed. They didn’t need to feel the kind of cruel control that rape provided. They had control. They had the power. There wasn’t a shred of weakness in the gunmen who lorded their might over this hungry, thirsty, battered mob. They didn’t feel like they needed to be violent, to crush them.

      Maybe it’s the collars.

      Lyta took a deep breath.

      “We’re human sacrifices.” The man behind her spoke softly, a whisper that was so light, if it needed to travel another inch, it would have been swept away by the night breeze. “The old gods awaken. And they hunger.”

      Lyta peered at the speaker out of the corner of her eye. She couldn’t make out any physical details. None of the people shared names with each other, as they hadn’t been allowed to by their guards. The only details she could distinguish were the back of the man’s head in front of her, the breadth of his shoulders and the signs of scars woven across his flesh.

      No one else had a face.

      The man before her could have been Usain. He