“You should join in,” Mordan huffed between one push-up and the next. “We need to keep up our strength.”

Sitting on the thin, dirty mattress and leaning his back against the iron bars of his cage, Grud watched the guy going through his fourth set. “What for? We are never getting out of here.”

Mordan was stupid, working out and sweating like a pig on a hot day when there was nowhere to wash up. He was just adding another layer of stench to that of unwashed bodies, and the dump Shaveh had dropped on the grate at the far end of his cage.

There were no windows to open and let the stink out, and their prison didn’t have air conditioning, or if it had, it was never turned on.

After his many days in captivity, Grud was still trying to figure out where they were being held, and what had been the original purpose of the place. At first, the rows of large cages lining both sides of the chamber had made him suspect that it was an interrogation facility. The examination table and other pieces of discarded equipment piled against the room’s narrower side only contributed to that impression.

But a few odd features made him rethink his original assessment. Like the plastic tube that supplied drinking water to each one of the cages and was activated by pressing a lever. Or the grate in the floor for hosing down excrement and other refuse.

Those two items made him suspect that large animals had been kept in those cages. For what purpose, though, he didn’t know. Except, there was no residual smell to indicate the type of animal that had been caged there, suggesting that the facility had been closed for a long time, probably decades.

But that didn’t make sense. Why keep the property for so long and not convert it into something else? After all, he was pretty sure they were still somewhere in San Francisco, where even the most crappy building was worth millions. Like the one he and his fellow soldiers had been housed in. Or at least that was what Gommed had said to explain why four soldiers had to share one small room. There was no budget for something better.

Except, what if he was wrong and they’d been taken further away?

Grud’s immortal body should have repaired the damage from a blow to the back of the head quickly enough, but what if he’d been hit again while still unconscious?

Shaveh, who’d been thrown into the cage next to him a few days later, believed that he’d been transported in a trunk of a car. He based this on the type of bruises he’d woken up with. His other theory was that the facility had been used for training circus animals.

Mordan, who’d been the last addition, had said something about experiments, but he had no idea what kind or for what purpose.

It wasn’t as if warriors at the Brotherhood’s training camp were taught anything other than fighting. Hell, most of them used to be illiterate until not too long ago. At some point Lord Navuh, in his infinite wisdom, had decided that it was time for his soldiers to learn how to read and write so they could handle modern weaponry.

Right now, Grud would have given anything to be back at the island. The training was grueling, but at least he could enjoy the outdoors and have access to as many hookers as his free time and money allowed.

He was losing hope of ever getting out.

Gommed probably assumed they had defected or that they had been taken by Guardians. In either case, their commanding officer was not organizing a search party for them. No one was coming to rescue them.

In a way, it was good that no one was coming. The shame of being captured and held prisoner by a female would have been too much to bear. They would have been stripped of their warrior status and sent to do some degrading work not worthy of men, like cooking or cleaning.

Grud would rather die with honor than live in shame.

Oh, dear Mortdh, the shame.

The woman had disabled him with a fucking Taser gun, and instead of wasting time searching him for weapons, she had stripped him naked while he’d been twitching uncontrollably on the ground. She’d then slung him over her shoulder as if he weighed no more than a sack of potatoes and carried him to her vehicle.

A blow to the back of his head had knocked him out until he’d woken up in the cage.

At first, Grud had thought she was a Guardian even though it was a preposterous idea.

Who ever heard of female Guardians?

But the woman was a freak, strong as an immortal male. She could’ve easily been one.

For days she’d kept him caged naked, with only a thin blanket to cover himself.

When his two comrades had arrived, much in the same way he had, she’d brought them clothes—filthy ones that she must’ve stolen or pulled out of the trash. Nevertheless, he was grateful to finally be covered. Even men who were not ashamed of their bodies felt stripped of their dignity when kept nude by a female. She’d reduced them to animals.

Who was she?

When she’d started asking them questions, he’d realized that the female knew nothing about anything. It was either that, or she was pretending ignorance to get them to talk. She’d kept asking where they came from, and if there were other immortals out there, but of course they’d told her nothing.

Doomers were forbidden to talk to outsiders. It was considered treason. The punishment for revealing the Brotherhood’s secrets was worse than any torture their capturer might put them through, which Grud was sure she was going to do at some point.

The woman had tried to starve them a couple of times, but never for more than two days in a row. She was either too softhearted to keep it up for longer, or maybe she’d been playing mind games with them, demonstrating her power over them. When there was no rush, starvation was a very effective form of torture.

“When is she going to bring food?” Shaveh asked. “It’s already noon time.”

It was hard to tell time in the windowless chamber, but when she brought them food, she usually called it lunch. It was the same thing every day, except for the days she’d brought them nothing. Once every twenty-four hours or so, she shoved a big bowl of beans and rice through the small opening at the bottom of the cage. They had to stand against the far wall while she did it, or they didn’t get any. Their drinking water came from the plastic tubes in their cages.

Mordan finished his last set and got to his feet. “That was a good workout.” He walked over to the tube, pressed the lever with his foot, and splashed water on his face, then dried himself off with his filthy T-shirt.

Grabbing the iron bars separating his and Grud’s cage, Shaveh said, “We need to escape. Between the three of us we can overpower her. What kind of warriors are we that we can’t take on a single female?”

“She is smart,” Grud said. “And careful.”

And merciful, but he kept that one to himself.

She’d known what they had been about when she’d caught them.

Grud’s story was exactly the same as that of the other two. He’d picked up a human female in a club, walked out with her to look for a secluded corner, and had gotten busy fucking. The moment he’d flashed his fangs, though, their jailer had come out of nowhere, Tasered his ass, and then set the human free. He’d been too busy twitching and shaking and trying to keep his heart going to notice if she’d thralled the human, but he’d figured she must have.

Later, when he’d accused her of trying to kill him, she’d said that it had been her intention and that he’d been lucky she couldn’t bring herself to cut out his black heart.

An immortal going around and killing human females had to be taken out.

She referred to them as murderous scum, letting them know she thought of them as the lowest of the low. And yet she was feeding them, even hosing down their cages once a day. She could’ve treated them much worse.

Which was proof that females were too softhearted to be warriors.

The starvation tactic would’ve eventually worked. Maybe not on him, but Shaveh and Mordan’s characters were not as strong. They would’ve broken down after a few weeks with no food and told her whatever she wanted to know.

Not that he had any idea what she could’ve done with the information. It wasn’t as if they could tell her where the Brotherhood’s home base was, or where the clan was hiding.

She would have gained no useful knowledge.

Letting them go, however, was not an option, she’d told them that multiple times. She couldn’t bring herself to kill them, but she would never allow them to harm another woman again.

Would it help their cause if he told her that he was actually grateful for her stopping him from doing so? Or that killing females was not something he and the other two wanted to do?

They were simple soldiers, and Doomers did not refuse orders.