The Menagerie Series

One of the men in bite suits reached into the pen and grabbed Rommily’s ankle with his bare hand. Her eyelids flew open to reveal featureless white orbs—the signature trait of an oracle in the grip of a premonition.

“Crushed by the weight of your own hubris,” Rommily said, each word running into the next as they fell from her mouth. “Broken rib. Punctured lung. Massive internal bleeding.”

Startled, the guard let go of Rommily and turned to his coworkers—the first lapse of judgment I’d seen from any of them so far. “What the hell is she saying?”

“That’s how you’re going to die.” Mirela’s voice was low-pitched and eerily steady, like the undisturbed surface of a deep lake. “When is anyone’s guess.”

“Is she serious?” the handler demanded from coworkers, who had no answer for him.

“Just grab her, Bowman,” the man in tactical gear snapped.

“Bowman...” Rommily repeated, blinking shiny white eyes at him. “Grab her...”

Bowman gritted his teeth and seized the oracle’s ankle again, then hauled her roughly toward the opening of the pen. Rommily’s head smacked the floor of her cell, and I flinched as her normal irises returned. Pain had driven her out of her vision.

Lala gripped the door of her cell. “Please be careful. She’s not dangerous. She’s just confused.”

The handlers led Rommily into the building with no particular care for how roughly they handled her. Yet neither of them touched her bare flesh again.

After the oracles had gone, I was alone in our trailer, and when the handlers unlocked my metal cell, I lowered myself to the ground before they could even reach for me. I didn’t fight when they each took one of my arms, and I held my head high as they marched me into the building, then down a hallway lined with steel doors. My dignity and the clothes I wore were all I had left in the world, and if being sold to the menagerie had taught me anything, it was that those would soon be taken away too.

Bowman opened a door halfway down on the left side of the hall and shoved me into a six-by-eight-foot gray brick room with a tall, narrow window at one end. There was a rolled-up blanket on the floor, next to a stainless-steel toilet/sink combo and a single roll of thin toilet paper.

Bowman cut the plastic binding from my wrists, then closed the door at my back. A soft beep told me it had locked automatically. The door had a square Plexiglas window at eye height and a rectangular cutout at the very bottom that was just the right size for a food tray.

As soon as the men were gone, I rubbed my sore wrists, then drank several handfuls of water from the sink, but I made myself stop when my stomach began to churn. Recovery from dehydration must be slow and steady. Then I used the toilet, my attention trained on the window in my door, to make sure no one was watching.

Seated on the blanket, I listened to footsteps and the beeping of more locked doors as the rest of my friends were marched and stored. The sun sank slowly outside my window, labeling the directions for me, but ignorance of the exact time and my own location ate at my thoughts like an infection. I’d only been imprisoned in the menagerie for about a month before our coup, and since then, I’d lost focus on the reality of captivity. I remembered pain and hunger and humiliation. But I’d forgotten about ignorance and dependence, and how they preyed on the mind rather than the body.

For hours, I sat in an impenetrable concrete cell, deprived of both food and information, and with each passing second, my anger grew until it overwhelmed my fear. The Spectacle was using ignorance as a weapon, keeping us in the dark to leave us disoriented and pliable.

At some point, immeasurable hours after I’d been locked up, a folded stack of material was slid through the opening at the bottom of the door. A food tray followed the clothing, and on it was an empty paper cup lying on its side, a boiled chicken leg, a slice of white bread and half an apple.

Before I could pick up the tray, Bowman’s face appeared outside the door window. “Change clothes and slide your old ones through the slot.” He disappeared without waiting to see if his instructions would be followed.

Still dressed in my grubby Metzger’s uniform, I filled the paper cup with water and ate every bite of food on my tray. Then I changed clothes not because I’d been told to, but because my Metzger’s polo and jeans were covered in grime from a trip I couldn’t remember.

The new uniform was a set of gray scrubs, a wireless sports bra and a drab but clean pair of underwear. The message sent by the prison-like clothing came through loud and clear.

I spread my blanket out on the concrete floor and curled up with my hands beneath my head, and soon I realized that the intermittent traffic past my door was now headed in the opposite direction. My fellow captives were being removed from their cells one at a time.

None of them came back.

Despite having just awoken from sedation, I fell asleep on the floor and when I woke to the scrape of metal as my door was opened, I found a beautiful starlit night shining through the window in my cell.

I sat up to find Bowman staring down at me from the doorway. He’d changed from his puffy bite suit into tactical gear and he was holding a pair of steel handcuffs. “Orientation. Let’s go.”

Still weak from exhaustion, I stood. He spun me around by one arm and secured my wrists at my lower back, then led me into the hall, where one of his coworkers took possession of my other arm.

“How many cryptids did Vandekamp buy?” I asked as we walked. “Is there a big guy named Gallagher?”

They said nothing as they led me through the door at the end of the hall, then down two more passageways and into a cold, lab-like room several times the size of my cell, equipped with a sink and countertop along the back wall.

Woodrow—the gamekeeper—sat on one side of a small square table with a file open in front of him. Bowman pushed me into a folding chair opposite the gamekeeper, then stood guard on my left while the man who’d had my other arm headed for the cabinets at the back of the room. I twisted to see what he was doing, but then the gamekeeper cleared his throat to capture my attention.

“Delilah Marlow.” He tapped the page in front of him with the tip of a ballpoint pen, and his focus never left my file. “Also known as Drea.”

“No one knows me as Drea. What are we doing here? Did Vandekamp buy all of us?”

“You’re twenty-five?” he said, and I nodded. “It says here that you grew up believing you were human until you were exposed at Metzger’s. Which you were attending as a customer. Huh.” His brows rose, but his gaze stayed glued to the file. “Is this information accurate?”

“Yes.” A cabinet door squealed open behind me and I turned to find the third handler lining up a syringe and two blood-sample vials on a stainless-steel tray. “But it’s incomplete.”

“So I see,” the gamekeeper said as I turned back to him. “They still don’t know what species you are. Do you?”

“I’m human.”

Woodrow’s gaze finally met mine. “You might as well tell us the truth. We have literally dozens of witnesses who’ve seen you transform into a monster. We have internet photos and video.”

“And I have a blood test performed by the state of Oklahoma that says I’m human. It’s in my camper, in the front pocket of a black backpack on the floor at the end of the couch.”

He glanced at his wristwatch. His foot began to bounce beneath the table. “We’ll run our own tests. Shaw?” Woodrow glanced over my shoulder, and the third handler’s boots clomped toward us. “Let’s get going.”

Shaw set the stainless-steel tray on the table. Bowman cuffed my left wrist to the chair beneath me, then tilted my chin up so that I had to look at him, and at the butt of the rifle he held inches from my nose. “If you even look like you’re going to try anything, you’ll wake up two days from now naked and concussed in a hole in the ground. Do you understand?”

Clearly my reputation preceded me.

Bowman stepped back, but remained within blunt trauma range.

“Make a fist,” Shaw said, and when I complied, he tied a rubber strap around my right arm, above my elbow. He didn’t smile or chat as he cleaned the puncture site, but he hit my vein on the first try, so I made no objection to the two vials he filled, then labeled with my name and a number I couldn’t quite read.

“What happened to the cryptids Vandekamp didn’t buy?” I hadn’t seen Raul and Renata, or Nalah, the ifrit. Or Zyanya’s toddler kittens. Or Gallagher.

But they were pointedly ignoring my questions.

“So...what do we do with her?” Bowman said as Shaw untied the rubber strap and took the full vials to a mini fridge beneath the cabinets at the back of the room.

“Store her in the dormitory with the others,” Woodrow said, as Shaw’s boots clomped across the floor toward us again. “But keep a special eye on her until her test results come back. The boss says she’s seditious.”

Shaw returned to the table carrying a square gray box made of thick, textured plastic, like an expensive tool kit. It was about the length of my hand. He set the box on the table in front of Woodrow, who unlatched it and flipped it open. Inside, nestled on a bed of laser-cut black foam, was a polished steel ring just a few inches in diameter, about the thickness of my smallest finger.

“Basic settings only, for now,” Woodrow said. “We’ll adjust when we have more information.”

Chills crawled over my skin as the gamekeeper pulled a thin but rugged-looking device from his pocket. It vaguely resembled the cell phone I’d had until the state of Oklahoma had stripped my right to own property. Woodrow tilted the device’s screen toward himself, then scrolled and tapped his way through a series of options I couldn’t see. A red light flashed on the front of the steel ring, then it flashed three more times in rapid succession, as if confirming whatever settings he’d programmed.

My heart thumped so hard I could actually hear it.

“Okay.” Woodrow set the remote on the table, but the screen had already gone dark. “Let’s get it done.”

Shaw lifted the steel ring from its formfitting padding, and I frowned when I got a better look at it. The blinking red light had come from a tiny LED bulb that sat flush with the surface of the steel. The ring was designed to swing open on a set of tiny interior hinges, which wouldn’t be accessible once the device was closed around...

Around what? The circumference looked about right for my upper arm, or my...

My neck.

Terror pooled in my stomach, like fuel set ablaze. That ring was a collar.

I instinctively tried to scoot my chair away from the shiny, high-tech device, but Bowman’s heavy hand landed on my shoulder. Vandekamp’s collar was much lighter, sleeker and cleaner than the thick iron rings Metzger had fitted around resistant centaurs and satyrs, but even diamond-encrusted collars are for pets.

Woodrow picked up the control device and used it to point at the collar Shaw still held. “I’m going to explain this to you once. That is an electronic restraint collar, which can be controlled by any of the remotes carried by the Spectacle’s staff. Those tiny spines will slide through the back of your neck and into your vertebrae, where they can deliver specialized electric signals with the press of a button.”

Shaw tilted the collar to show me that the inner curve of one half of the collar held a vertical line of three very thin needles.

I stared at the steel ring, trying to control panic as it clawed at my throat. “It’s a shock collar?”

“It’s much more than that.” Woodrow clipped the remote back onto his belt and met my gaze for what he obviously considered the most important part of my orientation briefing. “This collar can deliver a painful shock or temporarily paralyze the beast wearing it from the neck down. The settings prevent cryptids from using their monstrous abilities until those settings are changed, which only happens during scheduled engagements. Which means the sirens can’t sing, the succubi can’t seduce, the shifters can’t shift and the beasts can’t lift a hand in aggression. Until we want them to. So consider this fair warning.”

“The collar’s receptors also receive signals from every single door in the compound,” Shaw added. “Restricting you to any room or wing we choose.”

I could only stare, stunned. I’d never seen or heard of anything like it. “How can that possibly work?”

Shaw’s eyes lit up. “Vandekamp designed it himself. Receptors in the spines respond instantly to the spike in adrenaline and in species-specific hormones that—”

“Shaw,” Woodrow growled, and the handler’s mouth snapped shut.

But I’d heard enough to understand.

Woodrow stood. “Get on with it.”

“Okay, now, hold still.” Shaw came toward me with the collar, and panic lit a fire in my lungs.

“No.” I stood, and the folding chair scraped the floor then fell over, hanging from the cuff attached to my left wrist.

I can’t wear a collar.

“Sit down,” Woodrow demanded, while Bowman aimed his tranquilizer rifle at my leg. “That’s the only warning you’ll get.”

“Please don’t do this.” I backed away from them both, dragging the chair, though I had nowhere to go. “I’ll be reasonable if you will. There has to be another—”

Woodrow glanced at Bowman. “Do it. And don’t forget to write a report and log the spent dart.”

I turned to Bowman just as he fired. Pain bit into my left thigh. The tiny vial emptied its load into my leg before I could pull it out with my free hand.

As I backed farther away from them, my focus flitting warily from face to face, the edges of the room began to darken. The scrape of the metal chair against the floor sounded suddenly distant. My central vision began to blur. “Stay back.”

My legs felt weak half a second before they folded beneath me, and I didn’t even feel my knees slam into the tile. The ceiling spun around me as I fell onto my back. The chair clattered to the floor, and Woodrow’s weathered face leaned over me.

“Gallagher’s going to kill you...” I warned, but my words sounded stretched and distorted.

“Do it now, before the bitch wakes up again,” Woodrow said, as the world faded to black around me. “Looks like she’s going to have to learn everything the hard w—”

“Culminating in a narrow Senate victory, Congress has passed the Cryptid Containment Act, which will allow cryptids to be housed and studied in both public and private labs, for the purpose of scientific advancement.”

—from the February 4, 1990, edition of the Boston Herald

Delilah

“Wake up, Delilah.”

The surface beneath me felt hard and rough, but neither cool nor warm. Light glared through my closed eyelids, and something snug was wrapped around my neck.

My eyes flew open, but the world remained hazy. The three women bending over me had blurry faces, and their grayish clothing was shapeless and unfamiliar.

“She’s waking up,” one of the blurry forms said, and I recognized Lenore’s voice even without the mental tug of her siren’s lure. I exhaled slowly. I was among friends.

“What happened?” Blinking to clear my vision, I pushed myself upright on a rough concrete floor and reached for my neck, but someone grabbed my hand.

“No, don’t touch it!” Lala cried.

The faces were finally starting to come into focus.

Lenore. Lala. And Zyanya, the cheetah shifter. A few feet away, Mirela sat next to Rommily, who was curled up asleep on the floor with one thin arm tucked beneath her head. In addition to those stupid gray scrubs, they all wore—

My hands flew to my neck, and my fingers brushed smooth, warm steel that had taken on the temperature of my skin. I felt along the curve of the high-tech collar until I got to the hidden hinge at one side, distinguishable only by a tiny crack where the two sections were joined. “How can they—”

“Don’t!” Lenore cried as I slid my finger beneath the front of the collar. Excruciating pain shot through my entire body, lighting every nerve ending on fire. My jaw spasmed, trapping a terrified cry of pain inside, and the jolt didn’t end until someone knocked my hand away from the collar.

“What the hell was that?” I demanded when my jaw finally unclenched, as painful aftershocks coursed through me, far outlasting the initial pain. I leaned back against the concrete wall to keep from falling over. I felt like a human lightning rod.

“You can touch the collar, but if you pull on it or put your finger under it...that happens.” Lala’s gaze was full of sympathy. “We’ve all tried it. They really don’t want us taking these things off.”

“As if we could,” Zyanya snapped. “The damn joints locked the second they snapped it closed, so this shock treatment’s overkill. These things aren’t coming off until someone cuts them off.”

“They’re not afraid we’re going to take the collars off,” I said, as my gaze roamed the large concrete room, where we sat among at least two dozen other women of various humanoid and hybrid species, each of whom wore the same uniform and collar. “They don’t want you to pull on the collar because the needles will damage your spine.”

“Like they care,” Lala said.

“They care about the money Vandekamp has invested in us. Just like Metzger did. If you give yourself nerve damage, you’re worth less to them. Which gives them less incentive to keep you alive.”

“On the bright side,” Mahsa said, and I turned to find the leopard shifter curled up in a nearby corner. “I haven’t seen anyone beaten yet.”

“Give it time,” Zarah said, as she and Trista padded toward us on bare feet. “Only paying customers get to cause damage.”

“What does that mean?” Mahsa crawled closer, and we formed a protective ring of former menagerie captives.

“Exactly what that gamekeeper said. This isn’t a circus, ladies,” Trista explained, pushing long pale hair over her shoulder. “The rumors about the Savage Spectacle seem to be true. They rent cryptids to their customers with no bars and cages to stand between them.”

I’d heard no rumors. But then, I hadn’t spent my entire life in captivity, piecing together an understanding of the outside world through stories traded with new prisoners.

“We wondered how they did that.” Zarah ran one finger over the outside of her collar. “Now we know.”

Mahsa blinked wide leopard eyes. “Rent us for what?”

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to.” Finola’s voice was full of bitter resentment. Like Lenore’s, it now held none of the calming effect she’d once used to help her friends through the transition from captives to masters of their own fate in the liberated menagerie. The collar had robbed her of her purpose in a way no cage ever could have.

“Why is your shirt inside out?” Lala asked.

I followed her focus to the shallow V-shaped neckline of my scrubs top, where the back side of the seam showed. My jaw clenched. They’d stripped me while I was unconscious, then put my clothes back on inside out. Was that intentional, so I’d know...

Know what?

“They were looking for your tell,” a soft voice said from my left, and I turned to see a young dryad sitting against the wall, braiding a long length of hair, among which grew thin woody vines blooming with small white flowers. “To figure out what you are.”

She held one hand out to us, palm down, and I saw that her veins appeared bright green beneath her skin, rather than the normal blue or blue green. Her feet looked much the same. If she were ever allowed back into the woods—the forest nymph’s natural habitat—she would be able to bury her feet in the dirt and draw sustenance from the earth’s nutrients, like a plant.

But I could tell from her pale skin and the dark circles beneath her eyes that nothing more yielding than concrete had been beneath her feet in a long, long time.

“They couldn’t have done anything more than examine you unless they paid the rental fee. There are cameras everywhere. No one gets away with anything here—neither the jailed nor the jailers.” She returned to her woody braid. “I’m Magnolia, by the way.”

Without waiting for us to return the introduction, she stood and wandered across the room toward a small cluster of captives gathered against the opposite wall.

My focus followed her, taking in the large, mostly empty room. “Where are we?” The walls held a series of tall, narrow windows. I couldn’t tell which direction the sun was coming from, but the weak daylight felt like early morning. Equidistant apart on the ceiling were two dark security camera domes, like the kind used at any department store for 360-degree surveillance.

“At first I thought it was a holding cell.” Lenore tucked her knees up to her chest with her arms wrapped around them. “But there’s a bathroom through there.” She nodded toward an open doorway on the opposite wall. “And I think those mats and blankets are to be slept on.”

I followed her gaze to the left, where three stacks of blue vinyl-covered gymnastics mats were lined up against the interior wall, with folded blankets neatly piled on top.

“You’re right. This is a dormitory.” My focus skipped from face to frightened face. “Ladies, I think we’re home.”

Lenore slumped against the wall. “Well, it’s bigger than a cage. And at least we’re together.”

I nodded because I didn’t want to poison her optimism, but I felt none of it. Vandekamp hadn’t rescued us from the misery of a new menagerie; he’d delivered us into a whole new brand of captivity. A fresh hell.

“So, has anyone tested the collars, beyond the one-finger booby trap?” I asked.

“Yeah.” Zyanya tapped the concrete floor with one long, thick claw—a remnant of the feline form that, along with her eyes and incisors, remained even when she took on human form. “I tried to shift earlier, but the second I thought about taking on fur, my whole body froze from my chin down. I couldn’t move at all.” She trailed the point of one nail over the front of her collar. “How does this thing work?”

“I think it recognizes increased levels of adrenaline and feline hormones. Basically, it senses what you’re going to do before you can do it, and it sends electric impulses into your spine, temporarily paralyzing you.” I turned to Lenore. “What about you? Have you tried to sing?”

“No, but I tried to inject a suggestion into my tone of voice earlier. It was an accident. I was trying to help calm Rommily, and I didn’t realize what I’d done until I was flat on my back, immobilized.”

“It doesn’t prevent visions,” Lala said with a shrug. “I guess those aren’t much of a threat.”

That, or Vandekamp hadn’t been able to isolate the proper physiological signals.

“Speaking of guards, where are they?” There was no one in the large room but us and our fellow captives, yet the door wasn’t made of steel or iron, and it didn’t meet the standards typically required by facilities licensed to house cryptids.

“Who knows?” Mirela said as she stroked Rommily’s hair. “I’m starting to think they’re not needed here. These damn collars won’t let us leave the room, except to go to the bathroom. And there’s one of those sensors in the bathroom doorway too, in case they need to stop us from emptying our bladders, for some reason.”

“It’s all about control.” My hand strayed to the collar, trying to ease the persistent feeling of constriction, and only Zyanya’s quick grab for my wrist saved me from another brutal shock. “This place is cleaner and nicer than the menagerie, because the upscale clientele pays for exotic and beautiful, not skinny and dirty.” The thought of exactly what that clientele would expect for its money made my stomach churn. “But the truth is that Vandekamp has a measure of control over us that Metzger could never have dreamed of. We won’t have any hope of getting out of here until we figure out how this system works.”

“Maybe they can answer those questions for us.” Mirela stared across the room at the other female cryptids.

“Maybe.” I studied our new roommates. Most were shifters or anthropomorphs, like sirens and oracles, but several were species I’d never seen in person. I counted three nymphs, who had feathers, leaves and vines in place of normal human hair. A young echidna had the upper body of a human woman and the lower body and fangs—and likely the venom—of a very large snake. They watched us warily from several small cliques, however none, other than Magnolia, seemed willing to breach the gap and make an introduction. “But until we get to know them, it’s probably better that we don’t ask.”

“Why?” Lala said.

“Because they might be willing to sell us out for extra food or privileges,” Zyanya explained, and it broke my heart to know she spoke from experience. “Or for time spent with their children.”

“Children!” Mirela turned to her in sudden horror. “Zyanya, what happened to your kids? Did Vandekamp buy them?”

She shook her head slowly, and an old ache reawakened deep in my chest. I’d known the cheetah shifter for weeks in captivity before I’d found out she had children. The only way Zyanya knew of to deal with being isolated from them and unable to protect them was to keep the pain of separation to herself and to hoard her memories.

“He didn’t buy any of the kids,” Lala said.

I exhaled slowly. The coup I’d incited had cost Zyanya her family. There had to be a way to get the kids back. I had to find a way.

“Do you have any idea where—” A sudden thud turned us all toward the exit, where the door was now propped open by a gray-clad figure lying on the floor, sprawled into the hall from the shoulders up.

“Rommily!” Mirela was up in an instant, dark wavy hair trailing behind her. Lala and I raced after her.

The ambient buzz of soft conversation died as the other captives turned to watch, and just as Mirela grabbed Rommily by the ankles, the poor, fractured oracle began to convulse.

“Somebody help!” Mirela shouted as she pulled her middle sister through the doorway and back into the dormitory. But when she knelt next to Rommily’s head, the older oracle suddenly stiffened. Her eyes went wide and her jaw clenched so hard her teeth ground together.

“Pull them back!” I shouted at Lala, as she stared at her sisters, horrified and confused. “They’re too close to the sensor.”

I tugged Mirela back by one arm while Lala pulled Rommily by her ankles, and as soon as they were more than a foot away from the door, the convulsing stopped. Mirela blinked up at me in confusion, and I suddenly wished I’d pushed her into the hall instead. Surely the convulsing would have stopped once she was away from the doorway, whether she was inside or out. The sensors were based on proximity, and they didn’t care which direction the signal came from. Right?

“Are you okay?” Lala asked her sisters, and her voice drew me out of my thoughts.

“Yeah.” Mirela sat up and leaned over her middle sister, who only looked up at us, blinking tears from her eyes. “Rommily, what hurts?”

Heavy footsteps clomped toward us from the hallway, then two armed handlers stepped into the room. The first held his remote at the ready, the screen facing away from me. “Back up,” he warned, one finger poised to cause more pain.

When Lala carefully pulled Rommily back, Mirela and I followed her.

“What happened?” the second handler demanded, glancing at the screen on his own remote. “Our system indicates that Oracle 02—known as Rommily—tried to breach the doorway.”

“She wasn’t trying to breach.” Mirela stood, putting herself between the handlers and her younger sisters. “She just got confused.”

The second handler pointed to the doorway, where I noticed that a pinpoint of red light glowed from the apex of the arch. “Do not pass. It’s pretty damn simple.”

“She’s...disoriented.” I joined Mirela, trying to decide how best to explain about Rommily, to protect her. “Traumatized. She doesn’t always understand what she’s told. Or what she sees. It’s not her fault, and it can’t be fixed. So I suggest you get ready to make some exceptions on Rommily’s behalf.”

The second handler stepped closer, as if his presence could possibly intimidate me more than the collar around my neck already had. “Is that a threat?”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Most definitely.”

Neither of them seemed to know how to respond to that.

“Just keep an eye on her,” the first one said at last, glancing from me to Mirela, to Rommily, then back to me.

Evidently I’d just become an honorary oracle. Which was fitting, considering that I’d just predicted an early death for anyone who messed with Rommily.

Or with me.