Spectacle--A Novel

  Gallagher’s smart. He can handle himself. But I couldn’t help worrying. He wasn’t bulletproof.

  When they’d passed out of sight and earshot, I raced as fast as I could across the last half of the courtyard, then ducked through the gate into the employees-only section of the Spectacle.

  The dormitory was the nearest building. The entrance was locked, but the collar sensor mounted over it was dark. The stolen employee ID opened the door, and I slipped into the dimly lit rear hall as it fell shut behind me.

  I went to the women’s dorm first, but before I could use my key card on the locked door, I heard footsteps approaching from the left.

  “Hey!” a familiar voice shouted. I turned to find Bowman aiming his pistol at me. “I should have known you were involved in this.”

  I dropped my armload of unactivated batons, which clattered to the floor and rolled in all directions. “If you value your life, you’ll turn around and go home. Right now.”

  “What, because the system’s down?” He shrugged, holding a remote control with a dark screen. “They’ll get it restarted in a few minutes—we’ve trained for glitches like this—and until then, all the doors are automatically locked.”

  I slid the stolen employee ID beneath the waistband of my pants as subtly as I could. “The system’s not just down. It’s destroyed. We smashed every computer in the control room.” I couldn’t resist a smile when his face paled. “Did you train for that?”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m offering you a chance to live. Every cryptid in this place, hybrid and beast alike, is unrestricted. If you don’t want to be gored by a manticore or eaten by an ogre, you should leave. Now.”

  Bowman’s eyes narrowed. He took several steps toward me, his gun aimed at my chest. “Drop the baton!”

  Reluctantly, I dropped my weapon a foot away, and it buzzed on the ground. He hadn’t told me to turn it off.

  Bowman shifted to a one-handed grip on his pistol and pulled a set of metal cuffs from his waistband. “I’m going to give you these, and you’re going to cuff yourself.” Because he wouldn’t touch me without wearing gloves.

  Unfortunately, while I was sure he deserved the worst the furiae had to give, she still slept peacefully. I hadn’t actually seen Bowman hurt anyone but me.

  I would have to take him down on my own.

  He marched slowly closer, holding the cuffs out at arm’s length. When he was close enough, I reached out as if I’d take them. Instead, I shoved his gun hand upward.

  The pistol went off, and bits of Styrofoam tile drifted down from the ceiling. I dropped into a squat and grabbed the baton by the rubber grip and swung it at him.

  The side of the baton hit his leg as he tried to aim. His muscles spasmed, and the gun went off again.

  The bullet whizzed past my head. My ears rang, then the world went silent. I spun to find the bullet lodged in the wall behind me.

  Still spasming, Bowman fell to his knees and lost contact with the baton. He blinked, then frowned, as his eyes began to regain focus. So I hit him with the baton again and electrocuted him until he passed out.

  Stunned and with my head still ringing, I stood and pulled the ID card from my waistband, then held it under the scanner. The door unlocked with the soft scrape of metal, and I pulled it open to find a crowd of women staring at me.

  “Delilah?” Mirela’s lips moved, and I recognized my name on them, but I heard nothing. “What—”

  “I can’t hear you, so just listen, okay?”

  An entire room full of women nodded, eyes wide and terrified.

  “It’s time to go. Just a sec.” I ducked into the hall again and grabbed one of the unactivated batons. “Gallagher and I destroyed the collar system, which means the door sensors and remote controls don’t function. So here’s how this is going to work. There are a dozen more of these on the floor in the hall.” I held up the weapon. “This is an electrified baton. If you don’t have claws or fangs or some kind of natural defensive ability, grab one. Turn it on, but only touch this rubber handle, because the rest of it will shock you. If someone tries to grab you, hit him or her with it.”

  “What’s the best way off the compound?” Lenore said, and I actually heard most of her question, though it seemed to be coming at me from the other end of a long tunnel.

  “Through the woods,” Magnolia said.

  “No.” Simra shook her head. “That’s too slow. We need cars.”

  “She’s right.” I turned to Lenore and Zyanya. “Take them to the parking lot and find the largest vehicles. Do you remember what Abraxas showed us? How to hot-wire a car?”

  Several of the former menagerie captives nodded. Most of them had been taught to drive out of necessity, because Metzger’s was a traveling menagerie.

  “Good. Pile into the vehicles and leave. Just go.”

  “Where?” Lala asked, as I handed her my baton.

  “I don’t know. I shouldn’t know, that way if they catch me, I can’t tell them. Later, when and if it’s safe, we’ll try to find each other. You and Mirela will be our best hope of that.” Through their premonitions. Though the shifters might be able to track anyone who fled on foot. “But tonight the goal is to get out of the Spectacle. Okay?”

  The crowd nodded again, though several of the women looked more scared than eager.

  “Okay. Go.”

  “What about you?” Zyanya asked as the women pushed past me into the hall, wide-eyed gazes searching for danger in every direction.

  “I have to open the rest of the doors, but then I’ll be right behind you.”

  She pushed a poof of dark curls back from her face. “I’ll help.”

  “No.” I met her gaze. “Help them.” I nodded at the rest of the women. “You know how to drive and you can pass for human. They need you. I’ll be fine.”

  The shifter nodded reluctantly. Then she stepped into the hall and began herding the women toward the rear exit.

  I freed the men and gave them the same instructions, though I had no more batons to hand out. For safety in numbers, I ran with them in the direction of the employee lot, then veered toward the “stable,” where Vandekamp kept prey for the hunt. But before I could open the door, it opened on its own, and nearly two dozen shifters and nonshifting hybrids—including three centaurs and a satyr—nearly trampled me.

  The last one out the door was Payat, who’d recovered from the hunt.

  “Hey!” I grabbed his arm, and he whirled on me, ready to fight until he saw my face.

  “Delilah!” He pulled me into a hug. “I’m so glad to see you!”

  “You too. How’d you get out?”

  “Gallagher unlocked us. He’s looking for you.”

  Alive with relief, I kissed him on the cheek. “Zyanya and the others are heading for the parking lot. Can you help her get everybody out of here? And if you see Gallagher, tell him I’m heading to the infirmary.”

  Payat nodded and gave me another brief, tight hug. Then he took off running.

  Eryx

  Deep in the maze of hallways beneath the arena, the minotaur sat up, suddenly wide-awake in his windowless cell. From two doors down, the cockatrice gave another ear-piercing shriek and clawed the concrete. She’d been irritable since her narrow defeat of the wendigo, because she’d lost the last two inches of her tail to the cannibal in the ring, but this wasn’t her usual angry ranting.

  The cockatrice sounded...excited.

  Across the hall, the chimera roared, and the hairs stood up on Eryx’s thick forearms. He stood and looked through the window in his cell door, and at first he couldn’t process what he was seeing. The chimera’s goat and lion heads were pushing each other aside to claim the view through its window. They were so close to the door that breath from the lion’s muzzle fogged the
glass.

  The minotaur’s eyes narrowed as he watched. The collars should have shocked and immobilized the beast before it got within two feet of its door.

  From farther down the hall came a great thud, and the groan of heavy hinges as one of the other beasts rammed its cell door.

  Eryx looked up at the sensor over his own door. It was dark, as usual, and there was only one way to test its functionality. The minotaur’s massive lungs expanded as he sucked in a great breath. Then he stepped closer to the door.

  The sensor remained dark. No pain came.

  He took another step and slowly exhaled. The sensors were broken.

  The cockatrice crowed again, and the minotaur’s huge heart seemed ready to burst through his thick chest.

  The time had come.

  Eryx studied the door as carefully as he’d ever considered any opponent in the ring. He bent at the waist and took another deep breath. His left hoof pawed the dusty concrete floor, but he was as unaware of the motion as he was of the ancient instinct that drove it. He was lost in a memory of himself as a younger bull in a much smaller box made of rough wood planks rather than concrete.

  The minotaur backed up as far as he could and pawed the ground again. Then he ran at the door with every bit of energy and strength he had.

  His massive horns punctured the steel like a fork through a tin can, but the hinges held.

  Eryx yanked his head free and backed up to try again. The wooden box faded from his thoughts, as did the infant minotaur who’d failed to breach it. The beast who ran at his cell door this time was more than two thousand pounds of solid muscle and sheer determination, driven straight at the only obstacle standing in the way of his freedom.

  He barreled into the door and ripped it off its hinges with a groan of tearing steel. Momentum carried both the bull and the punctured door across the hall, where they rammed into the cinder-block wall beside the chimera’s cell.

  Eryx stood and wrenched the door from his horns. He dropped the ruined hunk of metal at his feet just as another door flew open down the hall. A young giant—no more than twelve years old, yet seven feet tall—barreled into the dim passageway and glanced around to gain his bearings. Then he charged down the broad hallway past the minotaur, the earth shaking beneath his huge bare feet with every step.

  Cacophony rose from the cells all around Eryx as the other beasts rammed their doors, eager to gain freedom. He looked to the left, then the right, then finally took off behind the giant.

  As the minotaur approached a corner to the left, a sharp scream rose above the low-pitched growls and grunts from the beasts enclosed in cells on both sides of the hall. The scream ended in a gurgle, and Eryx rounded the corner, he saw the young giant running up ahead, blood dripping from his thick, pale fingers. On the ground behind him lay the corpse of a black-clad handler, still leaking blood from his crushed skull.

  Eryx knelt carefully and plucked the ID from the dead handler’s uniform, which he’d often seen used to unlock doors. The badge read Derek Oakland. He turned the badge over to examine the bar code on the back, then he gave it an experimental swipe beneath the card reader beside the nearest cell door.

  The card reader flashed green, and Eryx pulled open the door. The troll inside gave him an aggressive grunt, then barreled toward the opening. The minotaur lunged to the side, narrowly avoiding a clash with the hairy, gray-skinned biped, then watched, amused, as the troll raced down the hall and around a corner in his uneven gait.

  For a moment, the minotaur only stared at the card in his thick grip, considering. Freeing the animal hybrids and sentient predators would cause a panic. With good reason.

  It would also cause one hell of a distraction...

  Eryx raced down curving hallways and around sharp corners, opening doors and dodging newly freed beasts as he searched for a way out. But no exit appeared in the labyrinthine passageways.

  Frustrated, Eryx turned and retraced his own steps, pushing his way past furry forms and dodging scaled and horned appendages, searching for whatever wrong turn he’d taken. Within minutes, he found himself standing again in front of his own destroyed door. Most of his neighbors were still locked in their cells, growling, roaring and howling their outrage.

  The minotaur stood before the chimera’s door, stolen ID badge ready.

  “Eryx?”

  He turned, his heart thumping madly beneath his chest at the familiar voice. Rommily stood near the end of the hall, dwarfed by the high, arched ceiling and exaggerated width of the passage. Swallowed by her own ill-fitting clothes.

  Never had the bull so thoroughly hated his mute bovine tongue.

  A smile broke over the oracle’s face, and she ran toward him, thin arms outstretched.

  Behind her a steel door flew open and crashed against the cinder-block wall. The ammit—a one-ton beast with the hindquarters of a hippo, the front half of a lion and the head of a crocodile—burst from her cell and barreled down the hall, cracking the concrete floor beneath her huge four-toed rear hooves. Content to trample anyone in her path.

  Rommily screamed and lurched forward. Eryx raced toward them both. The ammit snorted as it charged toward freedom, blowing Rommily’s hair forward as she ran.

  At the last second, Eryx darted into an open cell, reaching out for Rommily. His thick hand wrapped around her arm and he pulled the oracle into the deserted room, shielding her with his own body as the ammit barreled down the hall. Past them both.

  When the threat was gone, Eryx stepped back. Rommily looked up at him, dark eyes wide. Then she smiled and took his hand.

  And the oracle led the mighty minotaur out of the maze through a service entrance.

  Delilah

  The synchronized clomp of boots sent my pulse racing. I lurched around the corner of the dormitory building and dropped into the shadows just as an entire squad of armed handlers jogged around the corner from the building that housed cryptids destined for the hunt.

  “What the hell happened?” the man in the lead demanded into his radio. “The stable was standing wide-open. Perkins nearly got trampled by three centaurs and a satyr.”

  “The collars are disengaged,” the staticky voice over the radio shouted. “Repeat—the collars are disengaged. Approach with caution and shoot to kill. Lethal force is authorized. Don’t take any chances out there, guys.”

  “Fuck that.” One of the men stopped jogging, and the others came to a haphazard halt around him. “I didn’t sign up for this.”

  The handler in the lead grabbed his man by the edge of his puffy protective vest. “The hell you didn’t. What did you think the hazard pay was for? Now, shut up and keep your eyes open.”

  “Do you hear that?” Another handler turned toward the rumble of several engines echoing across the quiet compound. “Backup’s on the way. I think she called in the fucking marines.”

  When I realized he was staring toward the parking lot, I gave a silent cheer. Even if Tabitha Vandekamp had called in the marines, that wasn’t what we were hearing.

  “The engines are heading away,” one of the other men said. “That’s not backup. It’s deserters!”

  Actually, it was the very creatures they’d been sent out to kill, currently stealing their cars in order to escape.

  “Let’s go!” the leader shouted, and his men fell back into two lines. When they’d passed me, I stood and peeked around the corner of the building, wishing I’d kept one of the electric batons for myself as I watched the men jog toward the next building.

  Shivering in the fall air, I crept behind them into the next unlit patch of grass.

  “Stop right where you are!” one of the men shouted, and I went still, terrified for a second that I’d been caught. But the men were all aiming their rifles in the opposite direction—at a satyr and a nymph, frozen in the beam of someone’s
flashlight.

  Gunfire rang into the night, and I gasped as the defenseless cryptids were shot where they stood. Then the squad of handlers moved on with their mission, heading east across the compound, while I stood shaking in the shadows.

  It took at least a minute for me to regain control of my trembling legs and press on, avoiding even a glance at the bodies of my fellow captives as I passed them.

  I was a good fifteen feet from the infirmary entrance, still hidden by shadows, when a great, angry screech split the night. The thunder of heavy hooves shook the ground beneath me, and I froze again, my heart pounding.

  Human screams rang out from the east, then several were suddenly silenced.

  The stampede got louder by the second until a manticore rounded the corner of the arena, its scorpion tail arching ten feet in the air, spiky lion’s mane blowing in the late night breeze. A black-clad human arm was speared on the beast’s stinger, still dripping blood in an arcing pattern as it swayed over the creature’s back.

  I backed up until my spine hit the wall of the infirmary, as deep into the shadows as I could get, and I could only watch as beast after beast followed the lion-scorpion hybrid toward the courtyard and the topiary garden.

  Three giants and an ogre alternately swapped blows as they fled the arena, and when the ogre got in too good of a punch, one of the giants uprooted a small tree from near the dormitory and swatted him with it.

  The ogre flew backward and smashed into the side of the infirmary, on the other side of the entrance. Glass shattered and bricks crumbled down around him, but he was up in a second, brushing chunks of stone from his head and shoulders as he jumped back into the fray.

  From near the end of the stampede, a phoenix tried to take flight, holding the corpse of a handler in its claws, but only made it ten feet into the air before its clipped wings brought it crashing to the ground again. It landed on a large lizard of some kind, which opened its mouth as if to screech, but breathed fire instead, singeing the poor bird in a weak imitation of the damage the phoenix would do to itself, at the end of its molting cycle.