The Menagerie Series

Willem

Willem Vandekamp watched the office door close behind his latest purchase, and for a moment, he sat lost in his thoughts. After more than twenty years in the cryptobiology field, he’d long been convinced that nothing could surprise him.

Until Delilah.

A cryptid who went to college.

A cryptid who’d taken his seminar.

She understood too much, but the real problem Delilah represented wasn’t how much she knew about him, but how little he knew about her.

Delilah would make the investors nervous. She would terrify his friends in Washington.

Speaking of whom...

Willem glanced at his watch, an obsolete device in the age of cell phones and handheld tablets, but one that gave him comfort in its simplicity. He was two minutes late for the conference call, but had no intention of actually picking up the phone for another three. Punctuality might give those congressional blowhards the mistaken impression that his time was less important than theirs.

What if Tabitha was right? Willem leaned back in his chair and linked his hands behind his head, still staring at the door. What if Delilah was a surrogate? No one had seen a single one of those sadistic little bastards since the government rounded them up nearly thirty years ago. They’d be thirty-five years old now—a full decade older than Delilah—but who knew whether they’d age like humans? Hell, if they were some kind of fae, their glamour could make them look like anything or anyone.

But Delilah wasn’t fae. According to her file, the sheriff who’d originally arrested her had kept her in iron cuffs with no effect.

Willem’s desk phone rang. His direct line. He noted the DC area code on the display and smiled. Then he let it ring two more times before he answered.

“Hello?”

“Vandekamp.” Senator Aaron sounded distinctly displeased. “We had an appointment, unless I’m mistaken?”

“I apologize.” Willem spun in his chair to look out the window at the topiary garden. “It’s been a bit chaotic here, and I’m running on about three hours of sleep.”

“Does that mean the rumors are true?” the second voice demanded in an eager baritone.

“If the rumors say that I have retaken Metzger’s Menagerie from the creatures who escaped their cages and killed the owner, then yes.”

“How could this have happened?”

“It couldn’t have, if my restraint system were federally subsidized and put into production,” Willem pointed out, without bothering to filter sharp criticism from his tone.

“If your restraint system were more than a prototype, that might be a possibility,” Senator Aaron said. “Until then—”

“It’s ready.” Willem stood and paced the length of his office, his pulse roaring in his ears. “Come see for yourself. My technology is going to change the world, Senator. You can be on the forefront of the new wave or you can be crushed by the tide. Your choice.”

He dropped his phone into its cradle and took a deep breath. Then he pressed the intercom button and spoke without waiting for a greeting from his secretary. “I want a full recording from Delilah’s collar. I need to see every hormonal fluctuation on a timeline alongside video footage from her dorm. Every twelve hours.”

As the only creature at the Savage Spectacle that Willem could neither identify nor control, Delilah Marlow was the one thing standing between him and a government contract that would revolutionize humanity’s control over the beasts it shared the planet with.

She could not be allowed to derail two decades of progress.

Delilah

A couple of hours after the sun set, Woodrow, the gamekeeper, stepped into the dormitory to conclude our first-day orientation with an announcement that lights-out would be in half an hour. He told us to clean our teeth with the brushes we’d been issued and use the toilets, then warned us—again—that failure to follow orders would result in serious consequences.

The long-term Spectacle captives began filing into the bathroom in two lines, clearly accustomed to the routine. Lala and Mahsa were the first from our group to join them, and I stepped into line after them. “How was your work assignment?” I asked, as we shuffled forward after the others. “What were you doing?”

“Vacuuming some big room,” Lala said.

“Scrubbing the kitchens,” Mahsa added.

“Multiple kitchens?”

“Yeah.” The leopard shifter shrugged. “Two of them, in two different buildings. There may be more, though.” Her eyes widened. “Did you see the bushes?”

“The topiaries? Ridiculous, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” Lala said. “But they’re beautiful. Especially the nymph with roses for hair.”

We shuffled forward again, and the women who’d been first in line began to exit the bathroom. “So, did you see any way out? The property seems to be walled in, but I assume there’s a gate up front? And maybe one in the back, for deliveries?” We’d all been unconscious when we’d arrived, but I couldn’t imagine them driving tarp-covered cattle cars past the massive front building and the valet stand.

“I—” The oracle flinched, and her hand flew to the collar at her neck.

“Lala? What’s wrong?”

Simra turned around, a couple of places in front of us and frowned at me as if I’d just asked a colossally stupid question. “She’s not allowed to talk about certain things.” But I didn’t understand until she tapped the shiny steel collar around her own neck.

Holy shit.

Vandekamp’s collar was preventing her from speaking specifically about gates and exits? How was that possible, short of paralyzing the vocal cords entirely? There was no way any electronic device could tell what someone intended to say before the words even formed.

Or was there? If the collars could anticipate a shifter’s intention to shift based on the anticipatory hormones, maybe the speech block worked similarly. Maybe the collar’s receptors simply detected the presence of whatever nervous hormone people produce when they’re about to break a rule. Or maybe it sensed spikes in blood pressure, like a lie detector. Maybe the collar simply read the physiological signs of our intent.

Stunned by Simra’s revelation, I shared a horrified glance with Mahsa and Lala as the line shuffled forward. Why was I allowed to ask questions about things others weren’t allowed to discuss?

The most likely answer seemed to be that since I hadn’t known the question was forbidden, my body didn’t react with any signs of anxiety that could trigger my collar. Would that change, now that I knew?

Disturbed by the policing of my very voice, I shifted my thoughts from the fact that we weren’t allowed to talk about something to what we weren’t allowed to talk about.

Exits, locks...

Vandekamp was censoring information that might help plan an escape.

When I got to the front of the line for the toilet stalls, Finola leaned forward to whisper from behind me. “Is that hand sanitizer?”

I followed the siren’s gaze to a line of four liquid dispensers on the wall. The sign hanging above them notified us that they were to be utilized every time we used the restroom, though I couldn’t imagine that more than a few of the captives could read. “Looks like.”

We shuffled forward as one of the stalls emptied, and Zyanya spoke up from behind the siren. “Why do they care whether we brush our teeth and wash our hands?”

“Presumably it cuts down on communicable illness in such tight quarters,” Lenore said.

“Yes, but I suspect that’s a secondary concern.” I stepped forward again, and found myself second in line. “Our value and appeal both decline if we’re sick or dirty.”

When we’d all flushed, sanitized and brushed, Lala and I helped several of the other captives arrange the gymnastics mats on the floor and distribute blankets. There were no pillows or pajamas, and the mats were worn and thin, but the accommodations were both cleaner and more comfortable than anything we’d had in our carnival cages.

The menagerie refugees and I claimed spots on the left side of the room, in our own little cluster, and seconds after we’d all chosen a mat, the lights overhead were extinguished, in both the big room and the bathroom. We were left with only the light shining in from the series of tall, narrow windows, through which I could see several security light poles.

An instant later, every collar in the room briefly flashed red, and I wondered what new restriction had just been placed on us.

For several minutes, I lay on my side, thinking about collars and tranquilizer rifles and blood tests and topiary cryptids locked in their poses. After having survived the menagerie, I’d thought I knew what to expect from imprisonment. I understood how to deal with chains and cages and hunger, but this shiny, antiseptic captivity felt like the glittery wrapping on a box full of horrors, just waiting to be unwrapped.

In the near dark, one of the forms to my right sat up on her gym mat, and I recognized Zyanya’s silhouette even shrouded as it was by baggy scrubs. She turned to me, waving one hand to get my attention, and I sat up to see what was wrong. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out.

Her hands flew to her throat, and even in the thick shadows, I saw the fear and desperation in every motion. Zyanya was terrified.

I scooted off my mat and reached for her, but when I tried to ask what was wrong, there was no response from my vocal cords. I remembered the flash of red from every collar in the room.

Vandekamp had silenced us—all of us—evidently for the entire night.

Anger raged like a storm inside me. Having lost my voice earlier made this instance no easier to bear.

With the press of a single button, Vandekamp ripped from all of us a right I’d considered not just inalienable, but literally impossible to steal without a scalpel and the courage to face the bloody reality and cruelty of a sadistic and permanent mutilation.

He’d made the process so neat and easy that it required no thought or effort, and his conscience probably never had to justify the reasoning behind such a barbaric practice.

Zyanya’s hands began to shake. Her mouth opened, forming silent words too fast for me to read on her lips. I seized her hand, and with it, her attention. I pointed at my own collar with my free hand, then covered my mouth, trying to explain that she hadn’t permanently lost the ability to speak. That we were all suffering the same temporary loss.

The shifter’s forehead furrowed, fury dancing in her luminous cat eyes, and I knew she understood. And she was pissed.

Her rage called to the beast inside me, which uncoiled like a snake ready to strike. My vision sharpened until I could see Zyanya perfectly well in the dark and my hands ached for something to grab. For some damage to wreak.

But like hers, my anger was impotent, for the moment, without a target to strike.

I mimed lying down on my mat, silently encouraging both Zyanya and the furiae to try to get some sleep. Because there was nothing else for us to do, mired in silent darkness.

Zyanya lay down with obvious reluctance and feline grace. Her cat eyes glowed at me from two feet away, reflecting what little light shone into our room.

When I finally fell asleep, her eyes followed me into my mute nightmares.

* * *

With dawn came the return of both overhead lights and our ability to speak. I’d never in my life been more desperate to be heard, simply because for the past eight hours, I couldn’t be.

I cornered Simra at one of the bathroom sinks while she brushed her teeth. “Why didn’t you warn us that we would be muted at lights-out?”

She frowned at me in the mirror, mint-scented foam dripping down her pale chin. Then she spit into the sink and turned to me. “I didn’t realize you needed a warning. Was it different in your last collection?”

“We’re not from a collection. But that’s not the point.” I traced my collar with one finger. “Vandekamp invented this technology, and as far as I know, no one else has anything like it.”

“We didn’t have it here either, until a couple of winters ago.” Magnolia spoke up from the next sink. “But Simra hasn’t been here long enough to know that. Few have. They used to keep us in concrete cells in another building. Then one day, they put these collars on a few of us and put us in a separate room, with cameras on the ceiling. And they left the door unlocked.”

Vandekamp had been testing his technology on a small sample of the captives, obviously.

Magnolia shrugged. “After a while, they put collars on everyone, and that’s when the nightly engagements began. Before that, we were on display at events, but there was no...touching.”

Chills slid down my spine, forming a cold puddle in the bottom of my stomach.

“This isn’t what it’s like everywhere else, ladies,” I told them softly. “At the menagerie, they could put us in cages and they could put us on display and they could deny us food or clothing, but they couldn’t control our words. They couldn’t control our thoughts.”

“The collars don’t do that,” Simra insisted as she rinsed her toothbrush. “I’m still free up here.” She tapped her temple with the index finger of her free hand.

“Really? If you were to think about pulling all the water out of these faucets and those toilets—” a basic skill among marids “—I mean, if you were to really consider doing it, what would happen?”

She dropped her toothbrush into the holder on the shelf above the sink. “I’d be frozen in place. Or I might be shocked.”

“Exactly. These collars not only prevent you from doing what comes naturally, they prevent you from even thinking about it. Vandekamp is eroding your will.”

“Eroding?” She let water fill her cupped palms, but then just stared at it, frowning.

“With every thought he denies us, he robs us of a little bit of what makes us who we are. Like how massive canyons can be carved from small streams over time.” A concept marids were intimately familiar with. “Vandekamp is the stream, and you are the rock, and by the time he’s done with you, he’ll have carved a hunk right out of your soul.”

Simra’s sad, but not truly surprised expression opened a fresh crack in my already splintered heart. She stepped back from the sink so another woman could have a turn, and I followed her toward the doorway.

“Simra, how long have you been here?”

“They don’t give us calendars.”

Fair enough. I knew exactly how difficult it was to keep track of time when every day was just a cruel repeat of the day before.

“How many fall seasons have you been at the Spectacle?”

“This is my second. I came north to look for Adira after she was stolen from her groom before they could wed by terrorists trying to prevent an alliance between the marid and ifrit kingdoms.”

I blinked, stunned by the story Sultan Bruhier had evidently told his people. Was he trying to avoid conflict with the ifrits?

Either way, it was not my place to deny her the bliss of ignorance.

“I was going to help bring her home,” Simra continued. “To prove my worth as a companion.”

“So you’ve been here about a year?”

Simra nodded.

“I grew up free too.”

“And you really think it’s better to live in a rolling cage and eat scraps than to be here, in a room with showers and toilets and decent food to eat? Woodrow says we’re lucky. We’re not in cages. We’re not being starved. We’re not being dragged from town to town in the back of a stifling, germ-filled trailer. Or being injected with toxic chemicals in lab tests.”

And that was the true danger in the propaganda the Spectacle was feeding its captives—the idea that they weren’t being abused or exploited just because they weren’t being starved or experimented on.

Chains and cages were only one way to crush a person’s soul.

“So what is happening to you?” I asked as I followed her into the dorm room. “What does Vandekamp do with his collection?”

“Whatever the client wants. It’s different for everyone. For every engagement.”

She tried to turn away from me, but I ducked into her path again. “What is it for you?”

“I can’t tell you that.” Her hand went to her collar and her mouth closed. Her jaw tensed. Then she stepped around me and practically ran to the other ride of the room.

“What was that about?” Lenore’s question floated on a fresh, minty breath as she stopped at my side.

“Vandekamp has his captives convinced that they’re lucky because they’re not lab rats or circus exhibits, yet they’re not allowed to talk about what goes on in these ‘engagements.’”

“They aren’t?”

“Not all of it anyway. The collars won’t let them. And I see no more logical reason for that than for the fact that we can’t talk at night. Vandekamp’s just trying to exert as much control over us as he can. It’s like he gets off on it.”

“Delilah.”

I dragged my focus away from Simra and turned to meet Lenore’s concerned gaze. “What?”

“You can’t help people who don’t want to be helped.”

But the furiae inside me disagreed.

“It’s not that they don’t want to be helped. It’s that they truly think this is the best life has to offer.” If I couldn’t help them, why the hell had fate saddled me with the vengeful beast already stirring restlessly inside me? “They just need to see someone stand up to these remote-wielding bastards. Once they know it’s possible, they’ll fight for themselves. For each other. Humanity doesn’t have the market cornered on courage and justice. That’s not human nature. It’s just nature.”

Gallagher

Gallagher glanced around the police station in disgust. The floor was grimy, but he’d certainly seen worse. The handcuffed detainees on the bench next to him were ill-mannered and angry, but no more so than the handlers and grunts he’d spent the past year working alongside in the menagerie. It wasn’t the people or the building that offended him.

It was the process.

Redcaps—the fear dearg—had never needed handcuffs or records or rooms made of bars. If a man sacrificed his honor, he forfeited his life. Even children understood that. Guilt was never in question, because the fear dearg could not lie.

Humans, though, could build entire kingdoms on a foundation of lies. They spun tall tales for their children, used fibs to avoid their parents and fed falsehoods to their lovers like chocolate and wine.

Human men would move heaven and earth for profit or pleasure or even base cruelty, but they wouldn’t lift a finger for honor.

The police were no exception. The worthless pieces of tin pinned to their chests weren’t badges of honor, they were badges of authority, and in the human world, authority was little better than a high tower built on a small footing.

It was bound to crumble eventually.

Gallagher had understood the moment he’d woken up in a police van with Alyrose, Abraxas and Kevin that Vandekamp’s men had mistaken him for human. He’d spent twelve hours sitting in a holding cell, waiting to be processed with half a dozen other prisoners who lacked the nerve to meet his gaze.

He had let the police take their pictures and restrain him with handcuffs that would hardly close around his wrists. He’d even exchanged his clothes for an orange uniform that rode high above his ankles and gaped at his stomach when he lifted his arms, because the police would speak more freely around him than would anyone at Vandekamp’s specialized cryptid prison.

But the end of the charade was near.

The police had taken his hat, and the fear dearg could not be separated from their traditional red caps for long. The hat would return to Gallagher, no matter how many locks and boxes and doors separated it from its owner. The fear dearg’s cap was a part of him, like his limbs and his organs, yet though Gallagher could survive the loss of a foot or a spleen, he could not survive the loss of his traditional cap.

And he would not have to, because nothing made by man could destroy it.

His head felt oddly bare, exposed as it was to the world. He could feel the pull of his cap like a magnet drawn to metal, and when that pull became too strong, he would have to call for its return, or die.

Gallagher waited while all the other men handcuffed to a bench in the waiting area were removed one at a time, and he knew that he would be last. Every gaze that fell on him slid away an instant later. Every cop who picked up his file put it down again with a frown. Subconsciously, the police feared him.

While he waited, sweat began to build on his skin. A cramp flared deep in his gut, and in less than an hour, it became a raging headache, of the battle-ax-to-the-brain variety. By the time the pain reached his chest, he was alone on the bench, and he could no longer clearly remember why he was there at all.

Gallagher called for his cap, a silent tug on an invisible thread.

The cap appeared on his head, and out of habit, he used glamour to suggest to everyone around him that they were actually seeing a red baseball hat. Glamour was the reason so few fae had been caught after the reaping, but it couldn’t disguise the sudden appearance of a cap on a prisoner handcuffed to a bench.

“Hey!” The cop behind the desk frowned at Gallagher, then stood. “Where’d you get that hat? I logged it with your personal items hours ago.”

Gallagher merely blinked.

“Perez, did you give that back to him?” the cop behind the desk demanded of the officer who’d taken the hat in the first place.

“No. What the hell?” Perez reached for the hat.

Gallagher gave his wrists a good tug, and wood creaked. The arm of the bench broke, and his cuffed hands slid free.

“What the...?” Perez backpedaled, drawing his gun, and Gallagher snapped the cop’s right wrist. Perez howled in pain. His gun clattered to the floor. The redcap stood over him, pondering his next move as the pain in his head slowly receded.

He’d vowed never to take a life that didn’t deserve to be taken, but short of catching a man in a dishonorable act, he could never be sure when that was the case. Because humans lied.

“Don’t move!”

Gallagher turned to find another cop aiming a pistol at him. Behind that man, two more pulled their guns. The redcap towered over all three. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.” He held his cuffed hands out in front of his chest. “So I suggest you put down your weapons.”

“He’s not human,” Perez said from the floor, where he cradled his broken wrist.

The first cop’s trigger finger twitched, and Gallagher dived to the left. The bullet thunked into the wall at his back.

Gallagher lifted the bench he’d been sitting on to shield his head and torso. Three bullets thunked into the wood. He grunted as he heaved the heavy bench at them, and all three of the cops went down like pins in the path of a bowling ball.

He turned, heading for the double glass doors beyond a half-height swinging gate into the lobby, but pain stabbed into his massive left thigh. Gallagher pulled a familiar dart from his leg. A second hit his arm, and a third lodged in his back.

The massive redcap made it three steps toward the gate, then fell face-first onto a cheap desk.

The wood splintered beneath him, and the last thing Gallagher heard before he passed out on the ruined desk was the small-town sheriff’s order.

“Call that Vandekamp fella back and tell him he missed one.”