Kinyi strode across the cracked street toward the neon sign that flickered in the dark puddles beneath it. She held her chin high and kept her eyes sharp. At the entrance of the bar, people stepped back to let her pass, and the bouncer opened the door before she even slowed down.

From the entrance, sound spilled out into the night like a tidal wave, threatening to rock Kinyi back on her heels. Heady bass vibrated the back of her teeth. Smoke, blood, and rage curled out on a breeze through the open door of the bar.

As she passed the bouncer, she appraised his hulking body and coiled masculinity. But her attention snagged on a glint of metal. His hand. The fingers were rusted joints, and thick black grease dripped from his palm.

Kinyi swallowed, and her stride wavered.

Cyborg.

She’d first heard of cyborgs from an Arakid trader who’d met a Frenoid who had worked with one on an ocean drill rig. He’d been half human and half machine. The drill boss had worked him four times as hard as anyone else, his mechanical arms and one leg only needing additional grease to keep moving. But his heart had been human, and one evening, someone had heard a splash far below. No one ever saw the cyborg again.

Kinyi had doubted the story until coming to Earth over three months ago. She’d followed the whispers of the White Horn’s human name to Cyn City, and here, the cyborgs swarmed the waterlogged streets of the lower city in greater numbers than the humans.

Here, humans were the endangered species, and sometimes, if they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, they were the prey. They’d wake up the next morning missing kidneys or lungs, limbs or eyes. If they were lucky, a temporary cybernetic replacement would be fitted in its place, though plenty didn’t wake up at all, their organs sold on the black market for a pretty credit.

Cyn City, Kinyi had quickly learned, was not a nice place.

She averted her gaze before he noticed her attention. Giving him plenty of space, she slipped into the club.

Smoke lingered low in the air. The lights were dim, casting everything and everyone in a hazy shroud. The music was loud, but the people were louder. They laughed and shouted and banged their drinks against their tables as they watched human women dance around a tall metal poles.

Kinyi inhaled deeply, but she smelled nothing that resembled the musky spice of a Draqon male. She prowled through the room, aiming for the long bar at the back of the club, where patrons gathered and drank. From there, she could watch the room inconspicuously.

As she walked, her ice-blonde hair swished against her bare back. The dress she’d chosen was short, revealing her muscular, pale thighs, and her long black coat brushed against her knees. She hated the dress—no room for kicking—but she loved the thigh-high leather boots and the metal spiked heels. She could spear someone’s jugular with these boots. Dangerous or not, her outfit received a fair share of attention from the men in the club. Most even peeled their eyes off the nearly naked women on stage to watch her walk past.

She rolled her eyes. Her contact had called the place a club, so she’d dressed accordingly. She held back a laugh at the thought that these human males found her attractive. Perhaps they even wanted to bed her. She could kill any one of them within a few heartbeats.

After hunting the White Horn for months and dealing with the putrid conditions on Earth and the desolate humans who lived on it, she kind of wanted to kill something just to burn off her pent-up frustration.

She found an open stool at the bar and sat. The people around her, sensing her sour mood, drifted away. Her eyes lifted to the cracked mirror behind the bar.

She looked away before she caught her reflection.

She’d tried to cover her face with her hair, but she couldn’t hide everything. If she looked close enough, she would see what she’d done to herself. It made her stomach turn acidic.

Zayd thought she wouldn’t die for her planet. He thought she cared about nothing. But he had no clue the lengths she was willing to go to save Kladuu.

“Something to drink?”

“What?” She snapped off the word more harshly than she’d meant to, but when she looked up, the bartender was waiting for her order, completely unfazed.

He handed off a couple mugs of beer to a waitress before turning back to her. Muscles upon muscles stacked his powerful form, his neck as thick as a tree trunk on Kladuu.

She nodded at him, one warrior to another. “No.” And then she remembered the human custom. “Thank you,” she added reluctantly.

He raised an eyebrow. “You came here wearing that dress and don’t want a drink? If you’re looking to start trouble, you’ll find it, drink or not. And a drink means I get paid. You feel me?”

She smelled it when he shifted to lean a massive forearm against the bar. Grease. Oil. In the mirror behind him, she saw metal peaking above his shirt collar. Another cyborg.

Was this club full of them?

She pulled a roll of credits from between her breasts, tucked there for safekeeping. The bartender watched her peel one bill off the stack. She laid it on the bar. “Whatever this will get me.”

He didn’t pick it up. His eyes moved from the money to the side of her face where her skin still burned and ached. Lowering his voice, he asked, “Are you here for the fights?”

She hesitated only a moment to consider her answer. “Maybe.”

He jerked his chin toward her face. “With those cuts, you’re looking for the fights. No need to play coy. Follow me.”

He ducked beneath a section of the bar. As she stood from her stool, her eyes were drawn to the mirror like a magnet.

Her pale face shone in the dim light, but a series of bloody cuts defiled her left cheek. Some had scabbed, but most were raw, seeping wounds. The scales she’d once been so proud of, that she’d considered her most beautiful asset because they were part of her heritage, had run deep, and when she’d pried and ripped them from her skin, they’d left huge tears.

In the months she’d been tracking the White Horn, she’d had to rip her facial scales off at least four times a week. The humans of Earth didn’t think twice about a bloody face, but ice-blue scales would have garnered too much attention.

Kinyi turned her gaze away from the mirror.

In a few long strides, she caught up with the bartender, falling into step beside him as they threaded through the crowd, which, for the most part, gave them a wide berth.

At the back of the room, another cyborg stood beside a bent metal door that looked like someone’s head had been rammed into it. With a nod, the second cyborg swung the door open, and the bartender started down a steep set of rickety metal stairs enclosed in a dark staircase. The only light came from a single swinging bulb. The walls thumped with a great noise deep beneath them.

“I hope you brought another pair of clothes to fight in besides that dress,” the bartender said. He glanced back at her as they descended. “Or maybe you’re just going to fight naked.”

“Or maybe I’ll just kick you down the rest of these stairs.”

The bartender grinned, flashing perfect white teeth. “Point taken.”

He paused at the bottom of the stairs with his hands on another door. He pushed down on the handle and said, “Good luck.”

The door opened, and a blast of sound rocked Kinyi back. She had to push herself through it. The bartender closed the door behind her.

She stepped into the subterranean room and let out a long breath.

The club was a fight club.

In the middle of the room, a massive cage contained two brawling humans. They pounded on each other to the cheers of hundreds of spectators pressed close to the bars, their eyes wild and spit flying.

She pulled her hood up over her hair and folded herself into the shadows to make a slow circuit around the room.

Air ducts tracked back and forth across the ceiling. Exposed light bulbs swung from wire ropes high overhead, casting lilting shadows and sudden pockets of brightness. The walls were graffitied bricks, and the windows lining the top of the room were sprayed with dense black paint. Kinyi’s heel slid in thick liquid, which, upon inspection, she realized was blood.

With a hiss, she scraped her boot heel across a clean spot of concrete and continued her slow circuit of the room.

A roar went up from the center of the room. One fighter had the other pinned and was raining punches down on the prone man’s face like hellfire. Blood smattered the man’s snarling face. The spectators rattled the cage. After one last punch, he stood, tearing the prone man’s arm from his body, and threw it at the cage bars.

The spectators didn’t flinch. It drove them wild.

Kinyi shifted to get a better view. The arm lay in the middle of the ring, but instead of veins and blood spilling from the severed limb, there were snapping electrical wires and oil. The torn skin looked plastic in the flickering light.

To the sound of boos, the beaten man pulled himself to his feet and picked up his arm. From the gaping hole in his shoulder, more wires sparked. The men exited the cage, and small swirling robots swept into the ring to clean up the oil, blood, and bits of metal.

As the men left, Kinyi saw what she had missed. Bits of metal peaked from beneath their torn skin. Though other parts bled, cuts on their legs and arms revealed pockets of metal and oozed streams of black grease. They should have been close to dead from that fight, but they walked off, shoulders close together, heads bowed.

The man who’d won helped the other fighter down the back stairs, and they disappeared behind a guarded doorway. Private rooms, no doubt, for them to recover.

Kinyi blinked and glanced around.

A cyborg fight club.

These Earthen humans were fucking crazy.

She snaked through the mob of people, eyes on the back rooms. Down here, no one even spared her a glance as they threw money and alcohol around like it came in easy supply. She knew better, though. These humans were desperate, and nothing liked violence more than desperation.

Human women worked the room, their trays laden with empty glasses and drinks. But they weren’t the pretty, fleshy types like upstairs. These women pushed back when someone knocked into them, and their eyes were hard and snapping, their mouths pressed into a grim line of determination.

At the back of the room, the lights were dimmer and the ceiling was lower. The sounds were less manic, and she felt her heart rate slow. The cigarette smoke wasn’t as thick either, and she took a steadying breath.

And froze.

Her head snaked around, her nostrils flaring wide.

Slowly, she turned on her spike heels and prowled forward. She felt the smile tugging at her lips, and she bowed her head, looking up through her lashes.

She breathed again, narrowing her focus.

It wasn’t the musky spice she’d expected. She’d been looking for a scent like Zayd’s or Maxsym’s.

This scent was different.

It smelled like war and death, char and ash. Like a field the next day after a battle, when the bodies had been left out in the sun and the cries of the wounded drifted into silence.

Kinyi sucked the scent deeper into her lungs. It was divine.

The source of the smell was a towering man with night-drenched black skin and short-cropped dark hair. He wore a grungy, torn thermal shirt, stretched to its limits around barrel-sized biceps, and cargo pants that hugged his tapered hips. He spoke to a young man at least a foot shorter than him.

He hadn’t scented her yet.

Her smile grew.

She stopped a few paces behind him and settled into a slight crouch in case he attacked.

Her muscles sang with anticipation. She hoped he attacked.

She would love to fight him.

Lowering her voice so only he could hear, she whispered his name like a lover’s caress. “White Horn.”