Spectacle--A Novel

  I crossed the white tile floor silently, aware only of the wrathful need pulsing through me. As Sutton reached for Rommily, cursing the spray of water from the tap, my hands were pulled toward his head, my claws eager to sink into his temples. But then he turned, and my hand landed on the side of his neck instead.

  My claws found no flesh, but his skin burned beneath mine. Sutton froze. His arms fell limp at his sides, then began to tremble. His teeth chattered.

  Pick on someone your own size, the furiae within me mumbled, as I obliged her vengeful demands. Someone exactly your size...

  When the fire inside me began to abate, I removed my hand from the handler’s neck. My claws were gone. My hair had settled over my shoulders.

  Someone gasped behind me. Where I’d touched Sutton’s bare flesh, there now appeared a red imprint in the shape of my hand, with a pinpoint of red at the tip of each finger, where my claws had rested but had not broken through.

  As I stared, Sutton curled his right hand into a fist and launched it at his own nose.

  I flinched and stepped back, but the handler threw another punch at himself, then another and another, without complaint or any sign of hesitation. He grunted with the violence of each blow. His nose crunched and spurted blood. His cheek split open and showed gory strands of muscle.

  The crowd at my back inched closer. I could feel their bewilderment, but it was the murmured buzz of relief—a quiet celebration of justice—that sent a peaceful thread of contentment through me as I watched the furiae’s handiwork.

  In seconds, Sutton’s face was ruined. Bone showed through in several places, and his eyes were both swelling shut. His lips were split and he’d chipped several of his own teeth with his elaborate wedding band. Yet the punching did not stop.

  “What’s happening?” Simra whispered from behind me, but I was too fascinated by the bloody spectacle to answer her.

  “Delilah made him pay. That’s what she—” Zyanya’s answer ended in an agonized scream, but before I could turn, fire shot through my neck and down my spine. Agony raced down my arms and legs with a clinical precision that could only have come from the cruel shock collar.

  A chorus of screams rose in echo of my pain, as behind me, my dormmates were each crippled by an electric current of their own.

  My legs folded and I collapsed, immobilized on my left side on the cold floor as fire shot through me over and over. The others lay spread out around me on the tile, several frozen in the threshold, unable to vocalize more than a whimper of pain. Terrified and in agony, I rolled my eyes to look through the doorway and saw that everyone still in the dorm had collapsed as well, and several were seizing from the force of the electricity being pumped through them.

  My lungs burned with every rapid breath I sucked in. My heart raced and my vision swam.

  The dormitory door opened with a familiar squeal, and a dozen handlers burst into the room. One of them clicked something on his remote, and the pain ended. I exhaled, blissfully numb for a second. But when I tried to sit up, my body would not respond to the order from my brain. The paralysis had not ended. We all lay frozen and helpless on the floor.

  And through it all, I heard the repetitive thunk of flesh on flesh as Sutton continued to punch his own ruined face.

  “What the fuck?” Woodrow demanded, pushing his way into the bathroom while his men aimed tranquilizer rifles at the cryptids they considered most dangerous, just in case.

  Three of the guns were aimed at me.

  Woodrow stepped over several prone forms, and on the edge of my vision, he grabbed Sutton’s arm, to end the self-inflicted violence. “Sutton! Stop it!” The gamekeeper had to hold back the handler’s bloody fist with both hands, visibly struggling to control him. “Cuffs!” he shouted to his other men, and two of them lowered the rifles they were aiming at me and helped cuff their coworker to protect him from himself.

  Neither of them even glanced at Rommily, who lay in the shower, immobilized, with water pouring over her torn clothing. Or at Mirela, whose ruined nose was still dribbling blood on the tile floor.

  “What’s that on his neck?” one of the men asked.

  Woodrow pulled down the collar of Sutton’s shirt and studied the fresh red mark. “It’s a handprint. Right where she touched him.” The gamekeeper turned to me, and I realized he’d seen the whole thing. Either the camera in the dormitory could see into the bathroom, or there was one hidden in the bathroom, as well. “Cuff her and throw her in a cell. Keep her paralyzed until the door’s locked.”

  Two of the handlers rolled me onto my stomach, and though I couldn’t move, one pressed his knee into my back. My lungs could not expand beneath his weight. Panic made my head spin, and pinpoints of light floated across my vision. When the weight was finally lifted, I gasped for air, but the sound was eerily hollow without the use of my vocal cords.

  Woodrow turned to the man who’d cuffed Sutton. “Take him to the infirmary, but don’t take the cuffs off. I’ll radio the boss.” Then he marched out of the room.

  The handlers who’d cuffed me picked me up by my arms and carried me through the dormitory and into the hall. Still frozen on the floor, my friends could only watch, mute, as I was hauled away.

  * * *

  I’d been in the small concrete cell for no more than an hour when the lock clicked. I looked up from where I sat on the floor as Woodrow opened the door, but he stayed in the hall, out of my reach, even though I was still cuffed. “Are you going to behave, or do we need to paralyze you again?” He held up his remote for emphasis.

  “As long as you don’t try to beat up any defenseless women, we should be just fine.”

  “Get up.”

  I stood, which wasn’t easy with my hands bound at my back. Woodrow took my arm in a tight grip. “How are Rommily and Mirela?” I asked as he marched me out of the building and through the iron gate for my third trip to the boss’s office in my first week at the Savage Spectacle.

  Woodrow remained silent all the way across the grounds and into the main building.

  Both Vandekamp and his wife were waiting for me in his office. They stood as soon as the door opened.

  “What did you do to Sutton?” Vandekamp demanded before the gamekeeper could even close the door.

  I shrugged. “You can’t stop justice with a collar. I warned you.”

  “Justice?” Tabitha Vandekamp demanded. “He knocked out four of his own teeth and exposed his skull in three places. They had to sedate him to keep him from killing himself in the ambulance.”

  I tried to look unaffected by the gory details, but now that the whole thing had passed, knowing that I was the conduit for such violence made me uncomfortable, even though Sutton deserved what he’d gotten.

  “How long will he be like that?” Vandekamp demanded.

  “I don’t know.” I was as interested as they were in finding out how long their man would suffer self-destructive urges. But they would probably never tell me.

  “How long will the handprint last?” his wife asked.

  “I don’t know. That’s never happened before.”

  Vandekamp’s gaze narrowed on me. “Then why did it happen now?”

  Another shrug. “I can only assume I’m growing into my potential.”

  “Willem.” His name sounded like a weapon, the way his wife wielded it, and I realized she was continuing some conversation I hadn’t heard the start of.

  “She’s not a surrogate, Tabitha,” he insisted. “Surrogates didn’t leave marks on anyone.”

  No, they’d brainwashed thousands of parents into killing their own children. At least, as near as anyone had been able to piece the whole thing together.

  “Whatever she is, she can’t perform on demand and you can’t control her. What’s to stop her from making the handlers kill one another, then us?” Tab
itha demanded.

  “Ma’am, that wouldn’t—” Woodrow began, but she cut him off.

  “You don’t know anything about her. That’s the problem.” She turned to her husband again. “She’s dangerous. Put a bullet in her head.”

  “They’re right.” I had to fight past the lump of terror in my throat to be heard. “I couldn’t turn someone into a murderer even if I wanted to. That’s not how justice works. The furiae rights wrongs. She doesn’t make new ones.”

  Mrs. Vandekamp’s jaw clenched. “Take her back to isolation,” she ordered Woodrow.

  “No,” Vandekamp said, before the gamekeeper could do more than grab my arm. “Take her to the dorm. She’ll be serving tonight.”

  “Serving?” I glanced from face to face, but no one even acknowledged that I’d spoken.

  Woodrow frowned. “Sir, are you sure that’s a good—”

  The look Vandekamp gave him could have withered an oak tree. “They’re expecting her in costuming and makeup at three, with the others.” His gaze narrowed on me. “Many of our beasts aren’t safe to touch, and we’re prepared to deal with that possibility for you. Until further notice, I’m instructing my men to treat any problem from you as an emergency. At the first sign of trouble, you will be paralyzed, then handled with gloves and a snare—a cable loop on an aluminum pole, like dogcatchers use. Should that become necessary, you can forget about ever speaking to Gallagher again.”

  As I was hauled into the outer office, Mrs. Vandekamp turned a fiercely angry look on her husband. “Willem—”

  “We paid good money for her. I’m not going to euthanize her until I know she can’t be used.”

  “Then sell her. Get your money back.”

  “You know exactly why we can’t sell—”

  And as Woodrow closed the door behind me, I realized I too knew why the Vandekamps couldn’t sell me. Or likely any of the other captives they’d ever taken.

  The Savage Spectacle’s business model wasn’t entirely legal. If he sold me, I’d be free of the limits of my collar and might tell my next owner exactly what was going on in the well-kept open secret that was the Spectacle. Old man Metzger had obviously been willing to keep private dealings private, in exchange for the rental fee he charged for his off-season acts, but most others would not be. Vandekamp’s world could come crumbling down around him.

  The obvious conclusion settled over me with a fresh jolt of fear.

  None of us were ever going to leave the Savage Spectacle.

  Delilah

  Woodrow adjusted my collar to lock me in the dormitory, then pushed the door closed in my face.

  The long-term residents of the Spectacle stared at me as I crossed the room to sit on the floor by one of the windows. I couldn’t make out much of what they were whispering, but the distance they kept from me was telling. However fascinated they might have been by my ability and the vengeful form it had taken, I had caused them all a lot of pain.

  I would have avoided me too.

  Mirela and Rommily weren’t in the dorm. Nalah sat against one wall, shooting rage-filled looks my way. Zyanya and Mahsa were busy comforting Lala, and I decided to give them some distance.

  Lunch came shortly after I arrived, and as soon as I sat with my tray of raw spinach, bread and a chicken thigh, Simra settled onto the floor next to me.

  “Zyanya said you’re a furiae. What does that mean, exactly?” she asked, pushing strands of fine, silvery hair back from her pale face.

  “Basically, I’m possessed by the spirit of vengeance.”

  “Possessed?”

  “That’s what it feels like.” I bit a chunk from my chicken thigh, then began stripping the meat from the bone.

  “But you really are human?”

  “I really, really am. Not that it matters.” Not that it should matter. Deciding who should be free and who should be locked up based on chromosomal features made no more sense than basing that decision on eye color.

  Simra plucked a leaf of spinach from her tray and stared at the tiny green veins on the back side. “What did you do to that guard?”

  I arranged my chicken and spinach on my slice of bread and folded it over to form half a sandwich. “I just made Sutton want to do to himself what he’d done to Mirela and Rommily. I like to think of it as poetic justice.” Though I had little control over what form that justice took.

  Simra seemed to think about that while I took a bite of my makeshift sandwich. But I had little appetite.

  As I pushed my tray away, the dormitory door opened, and one of the handlers shoved Magnolia inside. She stumbled and fell to her knees, and her face was shielded by a curtain of her fallen-leaf-colored hair, threaded through with thin woody vines. The handler aimed his remote at her, and both the sensor over the door and the one in her collar blinked red.

  Magnolia didn’t even look up.

  I frowned, studying the dryad. She looked different from when they’d taken her the afternoon before, but I couldn’t...

  Her hair. She’d had several beautiful whitish blooms blossoming in her hair.

  Now those blossoms were gone.

  One of the other ladies knelt next to her and laid a hand on Magnolia’s shoulder, but the nymph turned on her, teeth gnashing. Mossy-green eyes flashed beneath the tiny woody tendrils growing in place of her eyelashes.

  “Oh...” Simra breathed, and I turned to her with a questioning look. “They got rid of it.”

  “It?”

  “The baby.”

  “She was pregnant?” I whispered, horrified. “Vandekamp ended it?”

  “His wife. She won’t let the ‘monsters’ breed.”

  The only thing I could imagine worse than being forced to end the pregnancy was how Magnolia might have gotten pregnant in the first place.

  * * *

  The handlers called my name a couple of hours after lunch, and along with two of the long-term captives, they also called Zyanya and Lenore. That choice was not random. Vandekamp had selected women he knew I would want to protect.

  The shifter and the siren were living threats, intended to keep me in line.

  The five of us were marched down a series of hallways into a bright, cold room equipped with six salon-style chairs, several racks of skimpy clothing, an entire arsenal of makeup and three women in khaki pants, collared shirts and pink aprons bearing the Savage Spectacle’s silver logo.

  The ambient scents were a confusion of perfume, hair spray, lotion and various cosmetic pastes, glosses and powders. And glue.

  We were each seated in one of the chairs, but were neither handcuffed nor shackled. Instead, our collars were programmed to paralyze us for the duration of the makeup session. Which took hours.

  The “artists” moved us into whatever position their work required, posing us like dolls as they drew on our faces. As they curled, pinned and sprayed our hair. There were no mirrors in the room, because it didn’t matter what we thought of their efforts, so while I could see some of what was being done to my fellow captives, I couldn’t really tell what was being done to me. Except for the heavy false eyelashes. Those were impossible to miss.

  The artists chatted as they worked, asking for opinions and offering suggestions as they discussed their families and social lives. It took most of my concentration to keep tears at bay as I listened to them discuss the very things I’d lost, while I sat there locked out of my own body, one step away from being rented out by the hour.

  When my makeup was finished, the artist fitted me with a black lace masquerade mask, which fastened beneath the mass of dark curls she’d created. The mask was small enough to display the ridiculous lashes and whatever else she’d done to my face. I felt as if I were wearing several pounds of primer, foundation, glitter and whatever art had been drawn onto my temples and cheeks.
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  The other two artists finished with their living palettes early and moved on to the two remaining captives while my extensive makeover was completed. When they were finished, the makeup artists headed out for a coffee break, leaving us immobilized in our chairs, staring at a blank wall.

  For a long time, we sat there like corpses, imprisoned in our own minds, and I wouldn’t have known the handlers were still stationed against the wall behind us if I hadn’t heard them breathing.

  I couldn’t ask the other captives if the wait was normal. I couldn’t even turn to look at them. I could do nothing more than swallow the saliva gathering at the back of my throat, and try not to let the itch inside my left ear drive me out of my mind.

  Finally, the hair and makeup ladies returned, smelling of coffee, and they solved the mystery of how we were supposed to get dressed without messing up their work.

  We weren’t.

  The handlers pulled us to our feet, and we could only stand there, immobilized, while the makeup artists stripped us down to bare skin, then stood back to assess the as yet unpainted portions of their canvases.

  My face flamed. The indignity was a familiar one, but no less infuriating than it had ever been, and the knowledge that an audience of handlers stood behind me made my flesh crawl.

  After they’d taken stock, the artists rubbed thick, glittering lotions and oils into our skin, then dressed us in skimpy costumes that didn’t have to go over our heads or slide over our sparkling limbs.

  Zyanya’s costume was a cheetah-print bikini top with a micro skirt, slit up both sides, all the way to the waistband. Lenore got a skimpy, asymmetrical gold dress that wrapped over one shoulder and draped—barely—over her breasts before falling to midthigh. Her artist tied a matching sash at her waist, then helped her into a pair of gold gladiator sandals that laced up to the top of her calves.

  The others were both in variations of generically sexy scraps of cloth draped over strategic parts of their flesh, and everyone but me was decked out in bright colors and extravagant fabrics.

  But just like in the menagerie, I wore all black. I was also the only one in a masquerade mask, presumably to help disguise the fact that I had no telltale cryptid features to highlight.