“So, I’m that something horrible?” I sank onto my knees in my cage, already regretting the question. It didn’t matter what he thought of me, since he could not be manipulated to benefit my escape.
Gallagher looked like he would answer, but then a shadow fell over the opening in the back of the tent. The minotaur ducked slowly beneath the canvas and his brown-eyed gaze met mine. For just a second, the drug-haze seemed to lift from his eyes as recognition filled them. But then his gaze fogged over again and his focus dropped to the ground in front of my cage.
“Over here, Eryx,” Gallagher called. He harnessed the minotaur to the cage, then my cart began to roll toward the opening in the back of the tent.
Outside, daylight made me squint and the heat was like a quilt draped over me, suffocating me. Tree limbs rocked and bowed in the distance, well behind the fairgrounds, but tents and food trucks blocked the breeze from most of the carnival.
Behind the tent, I found a small truck pulling an open trailer stacked with the disassembled casing of a menagerie wagon—a frame designed to fit over my naked cage. Even I had to admit that the casing was beautiful. The side panels looked like huge hand-carved picture frames. They were red, trimmed with ornate gold edges and corners, and embellishments that curled over the arched facades. The end panels were solid red, with “Metzger’s Menagerie” painted in scrolling gold lettering.
Gallagher waved to several men waiting for orders, and two of the thick sweaty roustabouts lifted an ornate frame into place over one side of my cart, their arms bulging with effort. Two more rushed in with electric drills plugged into a generator on the back of the truck and began bolting the frame into place.
When all the facades were attached and my wagon sat low on its wheelbase from the additional weight, a man brought out a set of four matching wooden hubcaps, which were bolted to the front of the functional rubber tires to disguise them.
Just minutes after they’d started, the crew was done, and though I couldn’t see any of it from the inside, I knew my cage had been transformed into a vintage-looking circus wagon, like the ones I’d seen the night before, as a carnival patron.
I exhaled, stunned and devastated by that thought. How could that possibly have been less than a day ago?
“Okay, Eryx, take her back in.” Gallagher made a gesture toward the darker and slightly cooler interior of my tent, and as the minotaur pulled me into it, I noticed that though the roustabouts had all left, one red-clad handler had stayed behind to retrieve the bull.
When my embellished cage was in position and Eryx was gone, Gallagher closed and refastened the tent flap.
“So, these are my sequins?” I asked. He stood to look at me and I propped my hands on the glittery hips of my costume. “This new cage is my ribbons and lights, right? Because I’m that something horrible, that Metzger’s charges admission to see?”
Gallagher crossed the tent and gripped the steel mesh separating us. “You are only one of the horrible things at Metzger’s.”
I started to argue, even though I could no longer reasonably claim to be normal, but he shook his head. “Most people have something horrible hidden inside. A beast. A secret. A sin. What makes you and the other exhibits different is that your inner monster can’t be explained by the laws of physics and biology as we know them. What people don’t understand, they fear. What they fear, they lock up, so they can come see whatever scares them behind steel bars or glass walls and call themselves brave. But that only tells you who they are, not who you are.”
“You’re one of them.” The accusation in my voice surprised me. I wasn’t telling either of us anything new.
“Yeah. I am.”
“But you’re not afraid of me.” I looked right into his eyes, and his gaze stayed glued to mine. “Why don’t I scare you, Gallagher?”
His voice was so low it could almost rumble in my bones. “If what scared other people scared me, I wouldn’t be very good at my job.” He turned and walked out of the tent, leaving me to puzzle through his meaning alone.
Gallagher
Gallagher stood just inside the tent, watching the crowd file by behind the red velvet rope. The space was dimly lit and the shadows near the tent wall hid him almost completely. Gallagher had many unusual skills, but his talent for going unnoticed was among those he valued most when the press of the crowd began to drain his patience and sharpen his temper.
Delilah’s tent was square, with a red-and-white-striped canvas. It was eight and a half meters across and could easily have held two or three wagon cages plus the crowd, but for her debut, she had the tent all to herself. If they expected her to play ball just one day after being sold to the menagerie, with no training and no time to adjust to her new place in the world, they would have to give her some space. And carefully controlled lighting.
When Ruyle and the boss canvas man had tried to overrule him on the tent issue, Gallagher had stared them down with stony silence. Then he’d backed them down with blatant physical intimidation, and when push came to brutish shove, neither had been willing to openly deny the boss of livestock what he wanted.
Few ever were.
Rudolph Metzger and Delilah Marlow were two of the exceptions. Metzger was old as dirt, and he signed the paychecks, but Delilah...
Gallagher’s gaze found the dimly lit cage, where she sat staring at the hay-strewn ground, the very picture of civil disobedience.
Delilah could not be controlled.
Ruyle and the rest of the staff believed she’d been damaged beyond any usefulness as an exhibit by the circumstance of her youth.
What they couldn’t understand—what Gallagher himself was only just starting to realize—was that her tireless defiance stemmed as much from nature as from nurture. She could be caged, but she could not be restrained. She could be bought, but she could not be owned.
Despite Metzger’s ironclad demand, she could not be broken.
Gallagher studied her from the shadows. She sat with her legs folded beneath her, theatrically made-up hands resting on her knees, where the only direct light shining into her cage glinted off the points of her fake claws. She would not transmute. She would not perform. She would not even look at the viewers who’d paid for the chance to gawk at her.
Delilah negotiated when she was cornered. She cursed at Clyde when he bullied her. She wore wit like armor. Even having known her for only twenty-four hours, he suspected she was one of the strongest people he’d ever met.
Which told Gallagher that he’d made a mistake.
The old man could have her beaten, stripped, starved, isolated, drugged, or whipped, or he could simply turn a blind eye while the least noble among his men came at her in the night, and eventually they might actually crack her mental armor, along with her bones. But that wouldn’t be breaking Delilah. That would be psychologically obliterating her and, as Rommily had proved, a mentally shattered menagerie exhibit was no good to anyone.
If Chris Ruyle weren’t as dim as a box of busted lightbulbs, he’d see that they were already close to losing little Geneviève, thanks to Jack and his damn cattle prod.
Gallagher’s only regret over what had happened to Jack was that he hadn’t played a role in the bastard’s downfall. That was all Delilah, and he’d loved watching her work.
He craved another glimpse of her potential, not because exposing her beast would save his job, but because he needed to understand her.
Delilah wasn’t mindless violence like the adlet, or uncontrollable temper like the ogres. She was destruction given form and purpose. Hers was an elegant savagery—he’d seen that the night before. She hadn’t ripped open Jack’s flesh or pulled apart his bones, as any of the other beasts would have. Somehow, she’d inspired him to inflict damage upon himself.
Her violence was art.
Delilah’s incarceration hadn’t g
one as he’d hoped. He’d thought she would be safe in the menagerie—surely anyone foolish enough to anger a woman who could scramble the human brain like an egg deserved whatever he got. And secretly, he’d hoped to see that very thing.
No one was more surprised than Gallagher to realize that she’d thought she was human. That she had no idea how to call on her beast. And that no matter how strong she was mentally, without access to her cryptid abilities, she was as physically vulnerable in the menagerie as any of the cubs, foals, and hatchlings in the petting zoo.
Despite her strength, she needed him.
Something primal twisted in his chest with that thought. Something alarming and intoxicating. Something fierce and suffocating, and Gallagher wasn’t sure whether he should fight its clutch or submit to this strange, powerful grip on his soul.
I am needed.
Gallagher had never been needed. After a lifetime of searching for a purpose—a drive as ingrained in him as the need to breathe—he’d given up hope of ever finding one. His grim cravings had never served anyone other than himself, but they could, with Delilah. They could for Delilah.
Yet many obstacles stood in the way of that possibility.
“What is she, Mommy?” a child’s voice said near Gallagher’s knee, and he looked down to find a small boy in khaki overalls holding his mother’s hand while they both stared across the tent at Delilah in her display wagon.
“Some kind of monster.” The mother pointed at the placard Gallagher had hammered into the ground in front of the cage. “That sign says they haven’t figured out what kind yet, but that she’s very dangerous.”
“Is she gonna do something?”
“We’ve been standing here for ten minutes, and she hasn’t moved a muscle,” a man said from farther up the line. “I’m mermaid-bound. Who’s with me?” His daughters squealed in delight, and Gallagher scowled as half of the crowd followed the young father out of the tent.
As intriguing as it was, Delilah’s strength would be her ruin. If he couldn’t bring out her beast and convince her to show it off, Metzger would sell her and she would be forever beyond his protection. Beyond his reach.
A young man stepped into the tent and slid into a dark alcove on the other side of the entrance instead of joining the line. His obvious desire to hide caught Gallagher’s attention, and the familiarity of the man’s features spiked the handler’s temper. It took him several seconds to place the face half-hidden by the brim of a black cattleman-style cowboy hat, but then the circumstances fell into place.
The sheriff’s station.
Tonight, Deputy Atherton wore civilian clothes.
Gallagher stepped out of the shadows, and three long steps later, he stood in front of the man in the cattleman hat, blocking his view and shielding him from Delilah’s line of sight, should she actually open her eyes. “Out,” Gallagher growled, and the deputy frowned up at him.
“Excuse me?”
Gallagher hauled him from the tent by one arm, heedless of the smaller man’s spiritless protests, then pulled him behind a bank of blue portable toilets. “Leave now, or I will pop your skull like a balloon.”
Atherton took off his hat and stared up at Gallagher. Sudden recognition lit his gaze. “I remember you. You bought her.”
“My boss bought her. Yours sold her. We failed her in equal parts.”
Atherton looked surprised by the admission. He scuffed one boot in the dirt. “Could I talk to her? Just for a minute? I want to tell her I’m sorry.”
An inarticulate threat rumbled from the handler’s throat. “If you’re still here in two minutes, you’ll never speak again.”
Atherton put his hat back on, and with it, he seemed to find mettle. “She’s not a monster. She doesn’t belong here.”
Gallagher seized handfuls of the deputy’s shirt and pulled him close. Atherton grunted. Stitches popped beneath his armpits.
“You think she doesn’t belong here because she looks human?” the handler growled. “Or because you like her? You think deciding that she’s the exception to everything you know about cryptids makes you noble, but it only exposes your ignorance. No one belongs here. But at least here she’s accepted by her own kind.”
“Maybe not.” Still in the handler’s grip, Atherton clumsily pulled a folded piece of paper from his back pocket and held it out.
Gallagher let him go, then snatched the paper and opened it. It only took him a few seconds to read the printout, but then he read it again. “This can’t be right.” He read it a third time.
Atherton shrugged. “Sheriff thinks there was a mix-up, so they’re gonna run the sample again, but I thought you guys would wanna see this. I don’t know what it would mean for her, if this is accurate, considerin’ money’s already changed hands...”
“This can’t be right,” Gallagher repeated, as doubt battered against what had seemed certain moments before. “I saw her.”
Atherton nodded. “You and more’n a dozen other people.”
“Leave,” the handler growled.
The deputy blinked, obviously surprised to realize he was still being expelled from the menagerie. “Can I just talk to her for a minute?”
Gallagher advanced on him, wearing the threat of violence as casually as other men wore clothes. “You can walk out on your own, or I can tell the ambulance where to pick you up.”
“I’m going.” Atherton backed toward the portable toilets, headed for the midway. “Just...take care of her, okay?”
“She will come to no harm on my watch.” The handler gave the deputy an unguarded moment of eye contact. “My word is my honor.”
When Atherton had gone, Gallagher read the printed report one more time, and his focus lingered on the information in an official-looking box at the bottom, after several paragraphs of explanation.
Subject: Delilah Elizabeth Marlow
Classification: Homo sapiens sapiens.
Blood tests on the initial group of one thousand surviving children from last month’s massacre have confirmed that in fact, not one of them is human. Authorities aren’t prepared to say exactly what species these things are, but it is becoming increasingly clear that women who gave birth in March of 1980 in the U.S. went home from the hospital cradling something other than their own natural children.
—From the front-page article of the September 20 edition of the Detroit Daily Journal
Delilah
“Claudio, are you awake?” I practically had to shout to be heard over the road noise, lying curled up on my right side with my nose inches from the side of my cage. My blanket was too thin to provide any real padding and I’d woken up the day before with bruises on my hips from the floor of my wagon.
“Oui. Que tu vas bien?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” But I hadn’t really been fine in eight days, twelve hours, and a handful of minutes, if the weak light oozing into the travel trailer through the vent at the top could be trusted. Hunger and exhaustion were chief among my complaints, but the lack of bathroom facilities was a growing concern. “How much longer do you think we’ll be stuck in here? I really have to pee.”
Claudio scooted closer to the side of his cage. “According to roustabout chatter, this is a nine-hour drive. We must be getting close.”
Nine hours in the travel trailer, plus at least three before that, spent sipping from my bowl of murky water while I’d waited to be loaded with the other exhibits. So, twelve hours and counting, with no bathroom break. I could only imagine that the bestiary trailer reeked to high hell, since I was set to bust my personal record.
And possibly rupture my bladder.
But my biggest fear was that drinking dirty water and eating questionable meat would lead to some kind of bacterial infection. Unlike most of the other captives, I hadn’t built up immunities in childhood.
/> “Papa,” a soft voice called from Claudio’s right, and I looked up to find Geneviève’s golden eyes shining in the shadows. “Dites-moi une histoire.”
“You need to go to sleep, chère,” he replied, so softly I could hardly hear him over the road noise. But she would have heard him just fine. Shifters have great hearing.
“She wants a story?” Listening to the werewolves over the past week had brought back a lot of the French I’d learned in school.
“Oui,” he said. “But she needs to sleep.”
“Maybe a story would help her sleep. I know lots of stories.”
Genni sat up, and I heard a high-pitched whine, which I interpreted as the lupine version of “Pleeeeease, Papa!”
Finally, Claudio nodded, and the pup settled in. “Have you heard about Hansel and Gretel?” I asked, practically shouting over the highway noise.
She shook her head, and Claudio chuckled. “She can hear you better than you hear her. You don’t have to shout.”
I nodded, then launched into the story about a girl who saved her brother from being eaten alive by a cannibalistic witch, and only halfway through did I realize Genni might miss the “girl power” message entirely, disguised as it was in action and gore. But when I finished, she curled up in the far corner of her cage and made a contented sound, deep in her throat.
Minutes later, she was asleep.
“Did you hear where we’re going?” I asked, as Claudio’s golden eyes shone at me in the gloom. Most of the handlers had stopped talking around me, since Ruyle had told them to quit arming me with information.
“Tomorrow’s our first night in Texas.” Claudio’s blanket rustled. “Where is Texas?”
His question surprised me. “Have you ever seen a map of the U.S.?”
“I once saw one painted on the side of a ticket booth.”
“At the bottom of the map, in the center.” Claudio was smart, but he’d never been to school. He’d been born in a carnival near Avignon and sold to Metzger’s as a teenager, and though he spoke fluent French and English, he could read neither language. “Texas is about the same size as France, but it’s a lot dryer, and there’s lots of open space. There are places in the western half where you can drive for hours without passing a single town.” Which might explain our nine-hour ordeal.