Menagerie

  “Muzzle.” His voice seemed to distort the word like a funhouse mirror, stretching it thin in places and thickening it in others, but Geneviève knew that was the drugs at work.

  The man with the mustache handed him a thick leather chin harness with straps on the sides and small holes in the part that would cover Genni’s mouth. L’imbécile climbed into the cage to straddle her, staining both the knees of his pants and her grimy bikini bottom with his blood. He fitted the leather piece over her chin and mouth, then the man with the mustache lifted her head so the muzzle could be buckled at the back of her skull.

  Genni moaned in protest, fighting the leaden darkness trying to suffocate her.

  “Do everything you can while she’s out.” L’imbécile climbed down from the cage and pulled a white cloth from his pocket to press against his torn forearm. “Hose her down again, change her clothes, file her teeth and claws. Spray out this cage, and find out if Alyrose has anything to help heal those burn marks. Maybe a little of the phoenix tears. Then call All American back and renegotiate. You have less than a week to convince them she’s domesticated and breedable, and worth more than they’re offering.”

  “I have less than a week?” The man with the mustache turned from Geneviève to frown at his boss.

  “If you can pull that off and Gallagher can’t control that mutinous new monster of his, I’ll see that you get his job.”

  “What about the old man? He likes Gallagher.”

  “He’ll see the light if his boss of livestock costs him fifteen grand the same month you make a few thousand by selling Genni.”

  The mustached man’s grin smeared across reality as the pup’s vision began to lose focus. “Thanks, Ruyle. You won’t regret this.”

  The last thing Geneviève saw before encroaching darkness washed away all sight and sound was the nozzle of a fat, heavy hose aimed right at her.

  Delilah

  Hours later, I lay with my newly mildewing blanket draped over me, listening to the centaurs snort and shuffle in their sleep in their custom-height horse trailers. Several cages down from Zyanya, the adlet growled, accompanied by a metallic screeching I could only assume was the raking of his claws against the aluminum floor of his pen. He was an active dreamer.

  From even farther down, the berserker snored, a troll grunted in his sleep, and one of the pretty little djinn teenagers sang softly to the other in a language I couldn’t even identify.

  She finished her lullaby around the time Zyanya’s brother, Payat, stopped mewling in his sleep, and suddenly the most prominent sounds were crickets chirruping from the empty field behind the fairground and muffled country music coming from one of the trailers in the gravel lot, where all the staff campers were parked.

  I closed my eyes, hoping for sleep, even though my dress had never truly dried in the damp heat, but minutes later, footsteps crunched on gravel and my eyes flew open, every muscle in my body suddenly tense and on alert.

  My heart pounded against my sternum as those steps drew closer, then stopped several feet away. I rolled over silently and stared into the moonlit aisle between the rows of wagons.

  A handler stood in front of Zyanya’s cage with his back to me. He was tall, and typically thick, but I knew from the lack of a cap at the top of his shadow silhouette that it wasn’t Gallagher.

  “Zy,” the handler whispered, softly rattling the side of her cage, and I recognized his voice. It was Wallace, who’d driven the van that had brought me to Metzger’s.

  “What do you have?” she asked, and he lifted a paper-wrapped bundle. Her head appeared near the mesh wall of her cage, cat eyes flashing from a dark human face, and she sniffed the air. “Pork sausage?”

  “Quarter pound, from one of the grease joints,” he whispered. “I noticed dinner was a little sparse tonight.”

  “Dinner’s sparse every night.” But then she only stared at him through the wire mesh separating them. He shrugged and started to turn toward the other female cat shifter—Mahsa, a melanistic Persian leopard—and Zyanya finally nodded.

  When Wallace fumbled for his cage key, I rolled over to face the other direction, newly nauseated by the price Zyanya was paying, yet unavoidably jealous of what she’d bought. Similar scenes had played out several times during my week with the menagerie, and though I wanted to believe myself unsusceptible to such a bribe, the cramping from my empty stomach made me wonder what I might be willing to do after a few more days without food.

  Zyanya’s cage door squealed as it slid open, and the last thing I heard before I stuck my fingers in my ears and hummed a soft tune to myself was the low-pitched feline growl coming from her brother Payat’s cage.

  After Wallace had gone and Zyanya had quietly devoured her snack and licked her fingers clean, I realized I’d been hearing a familiar rhythmic thudding for at least a minute before the sound actually sank in. By the time I rolled over, Eryx was only feet from my cage, and though the handler guiding him was drenched in shadows, I recognized the baseball cap in his silhouette.

  I sat up, my blanket clutched to my chest.

  Gallagher didn’t say a word to me. He just moved Eryx into position at the end of my wagon and strapped him up to haul.

  The minotaur snorted softly while he was being buckled into the harness, and I got the distinct impression that he was greeting me.

  “Shh, Eryx,” Gallagher said, blocked from my sight by the end panel of my cage, and I heard him pat the minotaur, probably on the shoulder as I’d seen him do many times in the past few days. “Let’s go. Quietly.”

  “Gallagher?”

  When he leaned around the corner of my cage, his focus found my bloody forehead, then skimmed the smelly blanket I still clutched to my chest, and his brows furrowed. He put one finger over his lips, silently ordering me to be quiet, then disappeared around the end of the wagon again.

  I leaned against the rear wall of my cart as it rolled across the grass and through a back gate into the fairgrounds. Gallagher led Eryx into the first tent we came to, where, during operating hours, the berserker awed audiences by transforming first into a bear, then into a massive wolf by donning and shedding the necessary pelts.

  Gallagher unhooked Eryx from the cart, then led him out onto the midway. Metal clanked as he secured the minotaur’s chains to...something, then my handler appeared in the tent again and lowered the open sidewall, leaving us alone in the dark.

  “What is this?” I whispered, my heart thumping in my ears. What if I’d misread Gallagher completely? Was he about to show me a quarter pound of pork sausage and offer me a deal?

  Something thudded in the dark, and he swore.

  “Your phone probably has a flashlight app,” I said, when another thud told me he was wandering around lost and blind.

  “I don’t have a phone.” A second later, light flared from the pole at the center of the small tent, illuminating the blue-and-white-striped dome and sidewalls. Against one wall was a long table draped in a white cloth, on which were arranged samples of the berserker’s bear and wolf hides to be felt by spectators waiting in line, along with a collection of photographs of past performances and several framed “fast-fact” cards about the Nordic shifter species.

  Gallagher twisted a nob on the center pole, and the light dimmed. He turned to me with his arms crossed over his chest, dark brows bunched low over gray eyes, which seemed to be...assessing.

  “Why don’t you have a cell phone?” I said, still shielding myself with the stinky blanket.

  “I don’t need one.”

  “Because you have no friends and family? Or because they don’t want to talk to you? Did you abandon them, too?”

  His assessment landed on my face and stayed there. “You look pale.”

  “I’ll have to take your word for that, unless you want to haul my cage past the mirror maze.
” Hearing the hostility in my voice felt like discovering a beam of steel at the center of my spinal column, and I clung to that hidden strength, the only thing holding me upright at that moment.

  “What have you eaten today?”

  “Humble pie, my own words, and a little crow.” I tugged the blanket higher, afraid that my dress might still be wet enough to see through. “All three taste like shit.”

  “You’re angry,” he observed, his focus glued to my eyes, as if he’d just pulled that arcane secret from the mystic depths of my soul.

  “And tired, and hungry, and bruised. Does any of that matter?”

  “It doesn’t affect my job, no.” Gallagher shrugged and tilted his head, and in the harsh light from above, his cap looked oddly faded, as if it’d spent too much time in the sun. “But I don’t enjoy seeing you suffer, Delilah.”

  “Well, then, I know how to make us both happy.”

  “I can’t let you go.”

  “No, you won’t let me go.” I wanted to stand and pace, but the ceiling of my cage was too low, and because I’d hardly been out of it in two days, my legs were cramped from the lack of exercise. “You can keep lying to yourself about who and what you are, but don’t expect me to believe it. You and your fellow handlers, the managers and acrobats and roustabouts and everyone else subsisting on the suffering of others—you’re the real monsters.”

  Gallagher held my gaze.

  “You’re not going to argue?”

  He shrugged broad red-clad shoulders. “Only a fool disputes the truth.”

  I blinked in surprise. “If you don’t like seeing people suffer, then why—”

  “I said I don’t enjoy seeing you suffer.”

  I exhaled slowly, trying to interpret not just what he’d said, but what he hadn’t said. My focus followed him as he crossed the sawdust-strewn ground and knelt to pull a backpack from beneath the table. “Why didn’t I go on tonight?”

  Gallagher pushed pictures and plaques out of the way and set his bag on the table. “Because Alyrose is running out of expensive supplies, and the time spent making you up to look like what you already are could be better spent on something else.” He dug into the bag, then headed toward me with a bottle of water and a handful of protein bars. “The old man gets back in a few days, and if he doesn’t see the real you, we’re both screwed, Delilah.”

  “I’m screwed either way.” I waved one hand at the cage surrounding me.

  He shoved everything he held through the tray slot. The bottle of water only bounced off the floor of my cage once before I snatched it.

  I needed both hands to crack the lid, and when Gallagher’s focus found the blanket, slipping beneath pressure from my upper arms, I hesitated with the water halfway to my mouth. “Take it back.” I closed the bottle and pressed it against the mesh side of the cage, even though my dry tongue and throbbing head begged me to reconsider. “I don’t trade favors for food.”

  “Favors?” He scowled as understanding surfaced. “I told you not to insult me with such insinuations. I’m not going to molest you. I just realized I don’t have anything clean and dry for you to wear. I didn’t know you’d be...mildewed.”

  I stared at him, trying to determine the truth, and finally his expression cracked, and exhaustion leaked out.

  “Delilah, drink the water. Eat the food. There’s no price. There will never be a price. My word is my honor.”

  I gave him one more second to reconsider. Then I ripped into the first protein bar with my teeth and ate half of it in one bite. “Why are you doing this?” I asked around a mouthful of peanuts and oats.

  “The food is free. Answers aren’t.” He headed for the loose canvas panel, and I probably would have pressed for more information if I weren’t busy stuffing protein bars into my mouth. “I’ll be back with some clean clothes and a fresh blanket.”

  “Thanks,” I said, but Gallagher ducked beneath the untethered sidewall without acknowledging me.

  I ate all four protein bars in a span of minutes, stopping only to chug from the bottle of water, and when I finished, my jaw ached from chewing so hard and fast. I drained the last drops from the bottle, then turned to gather my trash into a neat pile—and froze when I found the minotaur staring at me.

  He stood in front of the sidewall Gallagher had left loose, an enormous chain trailing from his thick bovine ankle beneath the tent wall to whatever our handler had left him tethered to. Either my crunching had covered the sound of his entry or his chain was too heavy to rattle.

  “Eryx?” My heartbeat thumped in my throat and echoed in both ears. The minotaur was nearly a foot taller than the top of my cage, and at least half as wide. For the first time since being conscripted into the menagerie, I was glad to be locked in a pen, even if the bull was drugged out of his mind.

  There’s never a good time to find out a minotaur has a bone to pick with you.

  Eryx blinked, and his gaze held mine. He showed no inclination to ram my cart, or paw the ground, or even snort aggressively.

  Fascinated, I scooted closer to the side of my cage, covering myself as best I could with the mildewy blanket. Ruyle had said the minotaur had the intellect of a cow, but his eyes looked human to me, and in my experience, rather than being the windows to the soul, they were the windows to one’s thoughts. Which originated in the brain.

  “Eryx, do you understand me?”

  The minotaur’s broad, thick forehead furrowed over his human eyes, and at first he only studied me. Then he nodded slowly, his enormous, curved horns dipping low with the movement, and I wondered if he’d ever nodded before. The gesture looked awkward and unpracticed.

  “What are you doing in here?”

  He tilted his head to the right, and though that gesture also looked awkward, his meaning was clear.

  “Okay. Yes or no questions only. Um, did Gallagher send you in?”

  Eryx shook his head.

  “Does he know you’re here?” I asked, and when he shook his head again, slowly, I wondered how much those massive horns weighed. If the thickness of his neck was any indication, they were quite a burden. “Do you need something?”

  He seemed to think about that for a second, then shook his head again.

  “Is there something you want to tell me?” I asked, and when he nodded, my pulse raced so fast I got light-headed. It took me a moment to realize that I wasn’t about to pass out from exhaustion, hunger, or head trauma. I was exhilarated, like I hadn’t been since long before Gallagher threw me into a cage like an animal. I had a mystery. A project. Maybe...a secret.

  After a week trapped as much in my own head as in my cage, I finally had something to think about, other than my vague but persistent plans to escape.

  “Eryx, does Gallagher know you understand...everything?”

  He shook his head, and another little thrill of excitement shot through me. I felt like I suddenly had a secret ally.

  “Does anyone know?” I asked, and when he didn’t seem to know how to answer, I realized that my question was too broad. “Anyone on the staff?”

  Another head shake, and I couldn’t stop grinning. “Any of the exhibits?”

  Eryx shook his head again, and frowned.

  “Okay, what could that mean? Um...someone outside of Metzger’s?” I said, and that time when the minotaur nodded, his eyes seemed to be shining. “Family?” He shook his head, so I tried again. “Friend?” But he only shook his head again. “Um...someone you knew before you came here?” He nodded, so I kept going. “A former...um...owner?”

  That time when he nodded, I felt like my blood was on fire, and it wasn’t just that I’d figured out something that Gallagher and Metzger didn’t know. It wasn’t just that I was now party to what was starting to feel like a triumphant conspiracy. It was the fact that Eryx’s secret existed in the firs
t place.

  He had something private. Something all his own. Something they hadn’t been able to take from him, in spite of the chains, and the drugs, and the forced labor and exploitation. Eryx had won, even if his victory was small, and his success was due not to his size or strength, but to his wit and his patience. The “dim-witted” beast had outsmarted his human captors, and if he could do it, I could, too. I would just have to be smart about it. Like Eryx.

  “So, what did you want to tell me? Am I going to have to guess?”

  Eryx shook his head, and that time I could swear he was trying to smile. Carefully, he lowered himself to one knee in the sawdust. I could tell the position wasn’t comfortable for him, either because his lower legs were bovine, or because his head, arms, and torso were so massive that it was difficult for him to find balance off his feet. The minotaur slowly turned away from me and reached for the ground with one hand, resting his opposite elbow on his knee for stability. When he began to draw in the sawdust with one thick index finger, I realized I was holding my breath.

  I scooted to one end of my cage and craned my neck, trying to see what he was drawing, and after several seconds, I realized he wasn’t drawing at all.

  “Holy shit, you can write! Which probably means you can read, too.” Surely there were other exhibits who could read and write—though the siren Lenore was the only one I’d met so far who wasn’t raised in a carnival—but it had never occurred to me that the minotaur might be one of them.

  Suddenly I felt like a bigoted asshole.

  Eryx nodded without pausing, and when he shuffled to the right to start on the second word, he revealed the first. He’d written RED in uneven capital letters.

  “Red. Okay.” I had to bite my tongue to keep from yelling at him to write faster, damn it! He clearly hadn’t had much practice, but I was about to crawl out of my own skin in anticipation and Gallagher could be back at any moment.