Magic, fate and hope collide in the stunning conclusion of New York Times bestselling author Rachel Vincent’s acclaimed Menagerie trilogy...
1986: Rebecca Essig leaves a slumber party early but comes home to a massacre—committed by her own parents. Only one of her siblings has survived. But as the tragic event unfolds, she begins to realize that other than a small army of six-year-olds, she is among very few survivors of a nationwide slaughter.
The Reaping has begun.
Present day: Pregnant and on the run with a small band of compatriots, Delilah Marlow is determined to bring her baby into the world safely and secretly. But she isn’t used to sitting back while others suffer, and she’s desperate to reunite Zyanya, the cheetah shifter, with her brother and children. To find a way for Lenore the siren to see her husband. To find Rommily’s missing Oracle sisters. To unify this adopted family of fellow cryptids she came to love and rely on in captivity.
But Delilah is about to discover that her role in the human versus cryptid war is destined to be much larger—and more dangerous—than she ever could have imagined.
Weaving together past and present in this heartbreaking tale of sacrifice and self-discovery, Fury is the deeply moving finale to a series that readers won’t soon forget.
Praise for Rachel Vincent’s Menagerie Series
“[A] bravura example of fantasy series-building.... Guarantees that fans of the series will eagerly anticipate its next chapter.”
—Publishers Weekly on Spectacle
“What a disturbingly dark and haunting world Rachel Vincent has crafted...[but] it is the characters who are the heart and soul...The strength, love, and loyalty we see emerging out of the darkness...makes Spectacle so significant. I can’t wait to see what unfolds in the third book of The Menagerie Series!”
—FreshFiction.com
“[Spectacle] has the same sharp social commentary of its extraordinary predecessor, Menagerie—and adds in more than a dash of gleefully vengeful anti-elitism.”
—RT Book Reviews
“Vincent creates a fantastic world that is destined to pique your curiosity. From the first peek into the menagerie...you will be captivated.”
—RT Book Reviews, 4½ stars, Top Pick
“As depicted by Vincent, Delilah is magnificent in her defiance of injustice, and the well-wrought background for her world sets the stage for her future adventures in this captivating new fantasy series.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Vincent summons bold and vivid imagery with her writing, especially with the otherworldly aspects of the carnival.”
—Kirkus Book Reviews
“[Menagerie] is a dark tale of exploited and abused others, expertly told by Vincent.”
—Library Journal, starred review
“Amazing world-building and a captivating cast of characters. My new favorite Rachel Vincent book.”
—#1 New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong
on Menagerie
“Well-paced, readable, and imaginative.”
—New York Times on Menagerie
Also by New York Times bestselling author Rachel Vincent and MIRA Books
The Menagerie Series
SPECTACLE
MENAGERIE
The Shifters
STRAY
ROGUE
PRIDE
PREY
SHIFT
ALPHA
Unbound
BLOOD BOUND
SHADOW BOUND
OATH BOUND
For more titles by Rachel Vincent, visit her website at rachelvincent.com.
RACHEL VINCENT
Fury
For my children.
When I think of the future, you are the source of my hope.
Contents
August 24, 1986
Delilah
August 24, 1986
Delilah
August 24, 1986
Delilah
September 6, 1986
Delilah
October 4, 1986
Delilah
December 12, 1986
Delilah
February 3, 1987
Delilah
October 1988
Delilah
June 1991
Delilah
June 1991
Delilah
June 1991
Delilah
July 1991
Delilah
June 1995
Delilah
September 1999
Delilah
May 2000
Delilah
Delilah
Delilah
Gallagher
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
August 24, 1986
Rebecca Essig had a stomachache.
Truth be told, she’d gotten her period a couple of days ahead of schedule, and that was reason enough to leave Cindy Ruger’s slumber party at one in the morning as the others were digging into bowls of Rocky Road. Cindy’s new friends from the freshman volleyball team were like hyenas, ready to devour the weakest member of the pack, and if they found out Becca’s mom thought fourteen was too young to use tampons, that humiliating bit of trivia would be all over the school before Monday. She’d be ruined, one week into the school year.
Best just to go home.
Rebecca walked half a mile of neighborhood sidewalks in the dark, humming Belinda Carlisle’s “Mad About You” as she passed in and out of the glow from a series of streetlamps. When she got to her house, she dug her key from beneath her shirt, where it hung from a length of blue yarn around her neck, and let herself in through the front door.
All the lights were out, except the soft glow of the night-light from the room her younger sisters shared at the end of the hall.
Rebecca kicked her sandals off next to the door, beside her brother’s grimy football cleats, and dropped her overnight bag on the coffee table. Then she fixed herself a bowl of chocolate ice cream by the moonlight shining in through the window over the sink, to make up for the snack she’d missed at the slumber party.
As usual, her father was snoring loudly, so as she passed her parents’ room in the dark hallway, carrying the cold bowl in one hand, she pulled their door closed.
Two steps later, her bare foot landed in something warm and wet on the carpet.
Rebecca groaned, then took a bite of her ice cream and kept walking. She felt no obligation to clean up cat urine. She wasn’t even supposed to be home yet.
In front of her brother’s open bedroom door, she stepped in a second puddle. This time, Rebecca stopped and felt around on the wall for a light switch. The cat was old and had bladder control issues, but she’d never urinated in two different places in one night.
Becca’s fingers brushed the switch and she flipped it up. Light flooded the hallway, illuminating not one puddle of cat urine, but an entire trail of wet, brownish footprints.
There were so many tracks. As if someone had gone up and down the hall, in and out of every bedroom except Becca’s, spreading the dark stain with every step.
Hands shaking, Rebecca knelt in the hall and pressed her fingers into the nearest footprint. They came away smeared with bright red.
Blood.
The footprints were blood.
Rebecca stood and backed toward the wall. Her bowl thumped to the floor and a scoop of chocolate ice cream rolled onto the soiled carpet, shiny and wet, and already melting into a footprint too big to belong to a child.
But her
parents were asleep. She could still hear her dad snoring through his bedroom door. If he knew there was blood in the hallway, he would not have gone to bed without finding the source. Her mother wouldn’t have gone to sleep without cleaning it up.
And neither of them would have tracked it up and down the hallway.
Trembling, Rebecca followed the trail of bloody footprints past the bathroom and her own bedroom to the room shared by her ten-and six-year-old sisters. She took a deep breath, then flipped the light switch on.
Laura’s bed was unmade but empty, one corner of the covers thrown back.
Against the opposite wall, six-year-old Erica was asleep in her bed, her chubby left cheek pressed into the brightly striped pillowcase, her chest rising and falling with every breath. Rebecca exhaled and started to turn off the light—until she noticed a set of small, bloody footprints leading to her youngest sister’s bed from the hallway.
Erica had walked through the blood on the way to her bed.
Heart pounding, Rebecca turned off the light and closed the door. Careful not to step in any of the stains, she headed for her brother’s room, where the concentration of blood was so heavy she couldn’t distinguish individual footprints.
Unwilling to go in, she reached around the door frame and fumbled with the switch. Light flared from overhead.
Rebecca choked on shock, a scream trapped in her throat. Her arms fell slack at her sides, and for one interminable moment, her brain refused to process the carnage as anything more than a tableau of meaningless crimson arcs and pools, and a tangle of pale limbs splayed out on the carpet.
Then she found Laura’s face, her mouth open, her eyes staring blankly at the far wall, and the entire scene came into horrifying clarity. Beyond her sister’s body, her brother’s bed was—
Don’t look at the bed. Don’t look at the bed.
Terrified, Rebecca spun toward her parents’ room—then froze again. She could still hear her father snoring through the door. The footprints leading beneath it were still wet. As little sense as it made—as unthinkable as it was—the conclusion was obvious.
Rebecca raced down the bloody hall into the last room, where she threw back the covers and scooped her little sister up in both arms.
Erica’s eyes fluttered open, then focused on her. “Becca?”
“Shh...” She carried her only living sibling down the hall and across the living room and didn’t set her on her tiny, bare feet until they were out front on the sidewalk. “Come on.” She took Erica’s hand and tugged her toward the nearest neighbor.
“Where are we going? I’m sleepy, Becca.” Erica’s eyes were only half-open. Her hand was limp in her sister’s grip. And when Rebecca turned back toward the house, she could see a faint trace of her sister’s small footprints trailing behind them in the light from the streetlamp, in what was left of the blood on the soles of her feet.
“We’re going to Mrs. Madsen’s house, to use the phone.”
“What’s wrong with our phone?”
“It’s in our house,” Rebecca muttered as she reached over the neighbor’s waist-high white picket gate, to unlock it. The gate closed behind them as she tugged Erica up the steps onto the neighbor’s front porch.
Her vision unsteady from the race of her pulse, Rebecca poked the doorbell three times, and when she got no reply, she began banging on the door.
A light flickered on to her right, and Rebecca glanced at her own house to see that the front porch was lit up. Her father stepped out of the house. “Erica? Rebecca?” he called, and even from next door, Becca could see the dark stains on his shirt and pajama pants.
Terror glued her tongue to the roof of her mouth.
Rebecca pounded on Mrs. Madsen’s door again.
“Becca?” Erica tugged on her sister’s hand. “Daddy’s calling us.”
“Shh...” Rebecca poked the doorbell again, and finally a light came on inside the house, spilling onto the porch through the transom windows on either side of the door.
“Rebecca?” Her father jogged down the front steps, shielding his face from the glare of the streetlight with one hand. “Is Erica with you? What are you doing?”
“Please, open up,” Rebecca whispered as she poked the doorbell again. “Please, please...” And finally, through the transom window, she saw Mrs. Madsen make her way down the stairs from the second floor, thin, furry goat legs and narrow hooves peeking from beneath a purple robe tied around her waist. Light from the foyer fixture shined on two short horns curving out from her cropped gray curls.
“Becca?” a new voice called from next door.
“Mom?” Rebecca let go of her sister’s hand and jogged down Mrs. Madsen’s front steps, relief rushing through her veins with every heartbeat. “Mom, I thought you were... Get out of the house! Something’s wrong with—” She bit off the rest of her warning when she saw that her mother’s pink satin robe was soaked with a dark stain.
“Becca, come home,” her mother called. “We need to talk.”
Rebecca turned back to Mrs. Madsen’s door as her elderly neighbor finally made it off the stairs and clomped into the foyer, limping from pain in her knees. “Mrs. Madsen! Open the door! Please!”
“Rebecca!” Her father marched down the sidewalk, barefoot. “Come home this instant!”
Mrs. Madsen’s door opened. “Rebecca? What’s wrong, dear?”
Rebecca pushed past her neighbor into the house, dragging Erica with her and knocking the elderly satyr off balance. She grabbed Mrs. Madsen’s arm before she could fall, then slammed the front door shut, just as her father pushed through the white picket front gate.
“Call the police.” Rebecca threw the bolt on Mrs. Madsen’s front door. “I think my parents killed Laura and John.”
Delilah
“Trust your instincts!” a digitally amplified voice called out from about a block down, where a small crowd had gathered in front of a family-run pizzeria I was too cautious to patronize, even though the baby and I had been craving pizza for a month. “Humans and cryptids were not meant to coexist!”
“Well, that’s new.” Lenore leaned forward to stare out the windshield between the two front seats at the small town about a half hour away from our hidden cabin. “Not the sentiment. The...crowd.”
Zyanya slowed the van as we approached the gathering on the broad stretch of sidewalk in front of the town hall.
“That chill you get when you walk by a stranger?” the lady with the megaphone shouted amid the crowd of angry protesters. “That uncomfortable feeling when someone’s staring at you from across the room? Sometimes that’s nothing. But sometimes it’s your own instinct trying to save you. To tell you you’re in the presence of something wrong. Something that wasn’t meant to walk among us. Something that can’t be trusted. If the employees at the Baltimore aquarium had listened to their instinct, they might still be alive today.”
“I call bullshit,” Lenore whispered as we drove past the cluster of about a hundred people, as if anyone could hear us with the windows rolled up. “They can’t blame us every time some psycho walks into a building with a loaded gun.” She and Zy avoided looking directly at the crowd, for fear that they’d be recognized as cryptids, but I was afraid it’d look more suspicious if we all three ignored the crowd. So I watched from behind the fragile shield of my sunglasses.
“Of course they can blame us.” Zy shrugged. “They’ve been doing that since the reaping.”
“They’ve been doing it longer than that,” I said. “But it’s only been supported by legislation since then.”
Lenore’s image in the rearview mirror nodded. “And if it’s happening here in small numbers, it’s happening elsewhere in bigger numbers.”
“It’s coming!” that amplified voice called from behind us as we rolled slowly toward the café. “The government says there’s nothing to worry about, but th
ey’re just trying to cover their own asses! We know what’s going on. We recognize the symptoms. We remember the reaping. And we will not let it happen again!”
A cheer rang out from the crowd and I looked in the sideview mirror to see people pumping their fists in the air.
“What do you think that was all about?” Lenore asked as Zy turned right into the café parking lot.
I shrugged. “Sounds like there was another shooting.” The news had been consistently horrible since we’d escaped from the Spectacle, but I couldn’t be sure that was any different than it had always been. I hadn’t read much news before I was arrested, but I’d done little else since our escape.
My mom always used to say that there were no green cars on the road in Franklin, Oklahoma, until she’d bought one, then all of a sudden they were everywhere. Because all of a sudden she was more likely to notice them.
The recent spate of bad news could easily have been the green car phenomenon at work. But if that were true, based on the angry mob forming in the rearview mirror, I wasn’t the only one driving a metaphorical green car.
“How long ago was the reaping?” Zyanya asked, and I glanced at her in surprise. Then I remembered that people who grow up in captivity aren’t taught history. Or anything else. Since our escape, Zy had become a sponge, soaking up knowledge everywhere she found it. And retaining it virtually word for word. But she could only soak up what someone else let leak.
“It was in 1986,” I told her. “Four years before I was born. So, thirty years ago.”
My mother had told me many times what the world was like before that, back when humans and cryptids had lived and worked alongside each other. It wasn’t perfect. Humans had feared appearances and abilities they didn’t understand and considered themselves defenseless against.
Cryptids had feared the fact that the larger human population kept everyone else underrepresented in government, a predicament that could—and eventually did—lead to the loss of their civil rights and protections.
But for the most part, people were people, whether they had two legs or four. Whether they had nails or claws. Young werewolves learned to read and write in school, alongside human boys and girls. Restaurants served families of oracles and dryads at tables next to human families. There was a sort of peace, however tenuous.
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