Menagerie

by Rachel Vincent

  Then Gallagher made an aggressive move toward my mother, and I lurched after him and grabbed his arm. “Wait! That’s my mom.”

  Gallagher stopped and made a confused sound deep in his throat, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away from my mother. “Delilah?” she said, and tears blurred my vision. My mother was alive, and she was fifty feet away, and I wasn’t an orphan after all.

  I hopped down from the podium and raced across the sawdust-strewn ground toward her. The tent flap fell closed at her back, and her arms opened. I slammed into her so hard I almost knocked us both over, then she was crying, and I was laughing, and we were both talking at once.

  “What’s happening, Lilah?” she asked, as I buried my face in her hair and breathed in the scent of her shampoo. With that scent came random memories from my childhood, relevant to that moment only because she’d smelled the same in each of them, and because the scent of artificial strawberry would forever be linked to the safest, most stable moments of my life.

  “We’re taking over the menagerie,” I said, still caught between laughing and crying, and when my mother pulled away to look at me, I realized that the rest of the tent had gone still and quiet, watching our reunion.

  “You’re taking the menagerie?” my mother said, and I almost laughed at her expression. “And here I thought you’d need to be rescued.”

  “She does,” Ruyle said, and when I turned toward his cage, intending to tell him exactly where to shove his unwanted commentary, I found him standing in deep shadows three feet away, one hand at his ear.

  He was aiming a rifle at my head.

  Delilah

  “I want you to climb back in your cage,” Ruyle said. “Right now.”

  A glance to the right revealed that my cage stood wide-open against the rear sidewall.

  How the hell had he gotten out, when I still held his keys?

  Gallagher growled from my right, and I realized he’d followed me across the tent. I could tell from his stiff bearing and from the anger emanating from him like heat from a fire that he was mentally ripping the former lot supervisor limb from limb.

  “Put the gun down,” Lenore said, and the compulsion in her voice rolled over me on its way to Ruyle. I knelt beneath the power in her words, intending to put down the key ring just in case it might be mistaken for a gun, until Gallagher caught my arm and pulled me back up, breaking the siren’s spell. Which probably wouldn’t have been possible, if it’d actually been aimed at me.

  When Ruyle didn’t respond, I squinted and noticed the orange tip of an earplug sticking out of his left ear. To his right, a crate of supplies—including guns, tranquilizer rifles, handcuffs, and earplugs—stood open. I still couldn’t understand how he’d gotten free, but with his mind clear once the encantados’ enchantment had faded, he’d obviously raided the stock in the shadows while I’d talked and everyone else was distracted by the prospect of freedom.

  I scanned the tent, looking for Raul or Renata, but they’d returned to their tanks to rest and rehydrate after hours of work on our behalf. They could not help us.

  “Gallagher, cuff your cryptid slut, then cuff yourself. Kevin, cuff your wife, then slap some duct tape over her mouth.” When no one moved to comply, Ruyle cocked his rifle—still aimed at my head. “Do it! Or I’ll blow Drea’s face wide-open!”

  Gallagher growled again, putting to rest any doubt that he wasn’t human.

  Heart slamming against my chest with every beat, I slowly slid my hands into the air, and Gallagher did the same, demonstrating that he didn’t have any cuffs and would have to find some. Kevin acted out the same concept, charades-style, since the former supervisor couldn’t hear us.

  “Lift up the top of the podium.” Ruyle gestured to the platform I’d stood on. “We keep extras in there.”

  Kevin knelt to do as instructed, his jaw tightly clenched.

  “Where’s the bull?” Ruyle demanded, as Kevin tossed a set of cuffs to Gallagher, and that’s when I realized Eryx had disappeared at some point during my speech.

  Kevin stood with another set of cuffs, while everyone else stared, most too terrified to move.

  Gallagher was wound so tight I was afraid he’d explode and take half the tent with him. His glare was fixed on Ruyle with the savage hatred of a thousand fear dearg, and for a second, I could almost imagine him on the battlefield, surrounded by his red-capped brothers in arms, ready to paint the earth red with the blood of their enemies. “I’m going to tear you—”

  “Don’t say it!” I hissed, as he slowly pulled my arms behind my back, stalling for time. “We need him alive.”

  Suddenly another side panel was lifted from the outside, and bright morning light poured into the tent, momentarily blinding us all. “Hey, where the hell is every—” Carter, the handler who’d driven off with Genni in her cage, stepped into the tent and froze, as blinded by the darkness as we were by the light of day.

  Startled, Ruyle turned toward the new arrival, and his aim tracked away from me. Gallagher tackled his former boss, and the rifle went off as they fell, gunfire echoing within the walls of the tent.

  Someone screamed—a bloodcurdling, primal screech of agony—and as I turned to see who’d been shot, I spotted Eryx in a dark corner of the tent, suddenly exposed by the intrusion of light. The bull snorted and pawed the ground, and my pulse tripped too fast. I saw no sluggishness in his eyes. No drugged glaze.

  What I did see was a very familiar destructive rage.

  “No—!” I shouted.

  Gallagher stood and pulled the lot supervisor to his feet, ripping the rifle from him at the same time.

  The minotaur charged, and the ground trembled with every thundering step.

  Gallagher turned to look just as Eryx drove his curved right horn through the supervisor’s stomach, tearing him from the redcap’s grip.

  Ruyle made a gruesome, wet choking sound, which I could hardly hear over the screaming, and my stomach pitched.

  Eryx stood up straight, snorting in triumph, with Ruyle still impaled on his gore-smeared horn. The lot supervisor howled. He struggled and kicked, eight feet in the air, but the huge bull-man didn’t even sway beneath the weight. Blood poured down Eryx’s head, between his eyes, then dripped off his bovine nose as Ruyle’s struggles quickened his own gory demise.

  “Eryx, put him down!” I shouted, horrified not just by the violence, but by the loss. We needed Ruyle alive.

  The minotaur blinked at me, and what I saw in his eyes bruised me all the way to my soul. The source of his rage was pain. Deep, profound pain and loss.

  He shook his head slowly, declining my request while Alyrose and Lenore and several of the cryptids still locked in cages wailed, horrified by what we were witnessing. Eryx seized the feet flailing weakly in front of his face and pulled with such force that his horn ripped Ruyle’s torso in two, from belly button to left shoulder.

  Blood poured over the mighty minotaur. Ruyle’s arms stopped flailing.

  I gasped, and my hands flew up to cover my mouth, along with my horror.

  Eryx gave a mighty bovine bellow, then hurled Ruyle’s dripping, half-bisected corpse far over my head, where it smacked the opposite side of the tent and slid down the sidewall, leaving a thick, gory smear in its wake.

  All the air leaked from my lungs. No Ruyle, no passage. The sultan would not let our people in. All of our hope and effort and ideas had been for nothing.

  Zyanya was right. I was hopelessly naive. I’d just sentenced us all to death.

  Terrified into motion, Carter dropped the tent flap, temporarily blinding us all again, and dived toward the open crate of weapons. On my right, Kevin overcame his shock in time to reach into the open podium and pull out a pistol, just as Carter aimed a gun in my direction with one shaky hand.

  “No!” My mother stepped in front
of me as Carter pulled the trigger. Kevin fired four times, in rapid succession.

  My mother fell into my arms as the handler stumbled backward into the tent wall, blood pouring from his chest. He slid to the ground as a dark pool quickly formed around him.

  I sank onto the sawdust with my mother on my lap. Tears blurred the red mess her chest had become, and my screams joined the other voice still shrieking over another casualty I hadn’t yet discovered.

  My mother blinked up at me, pain tugging her features into a mask of suffering. “Mom...” I pressed both hands over the hole in her chest, but blood poured between my fingers. Her wound was too big. There was nothing I could do.

  “I always loved you best,” she whispered, and I leaned closer to listen, as my tears fell onto her hair. “Maybe that was wrong, but it’s the truth. I always loved you most...” Her body stiffened beneath my hands, then her eyes fluttered closed. She took two more short, halting breaths. Then she went still.

  I threw my head back and screamed.

  “Delilah.” Gallagher tried to pull me up, but I fought him, determined to stay with my mother. “Delilah!” He took me by both arms and hauled me to my feet, heedless of my blows, as if he didn’t feel them. “Your mother died an honorable death, and the earth welcomes her nourishing blood. Don’t take that from her by letting her death be in vain.”

  I choked back another sob and scrubbed tears from my eyes, finally pulling his face into focus.

  “Warriors die, Delilah, and your mother was a soldier. I know that without ever having met her. Make her proud. Keep fighting. There are still people depending on you.”

  I nodded shakily, and he let me go. “I’m okay,” I said. Later that might not be true, once my loss had a chance to sink in, but for the moment, he was right. I had to stand straight and keep going, or I might never get up again.

  The sidewall behind Eryx swished. I couldn’t see the source of the movement, with the minotaur blocking it, but Gallagher let out a mighty roar, then lunged for the loose panel. I hardly processed his absence. All I could see was blood. All I could think about was how badly I’d failed everyone I’d tried to help.

  A hand settled onto my arm, and I looked up to find Eryx staring down at me, blood still dripping from his horn and rolling down his face and chest.

  “Did you let Ruyle out of the cage?” I demanded, tears standing in my eyes as another chunk of hope died a fiery death, deep within my soul. The minotaur nodded, and I found no remorse in his eyes. “Why?”

  Eryx pointed at the ground, where I found letters written in the sawdust, in the minotaur’s labored but legible print. One word.

  Rommily.

  When I looked up to ask for more, I found him pointing at Ruyle’s ruined corpse, still propped against a far sidewall of the tent.

  “It was Ruyle? Ruyle broke Rommily?” I said, and Eryx nodded slowly. Firmly. “Are you sure?” I asked, and again he nodded. “I understand. He had to pay.” But now, unless Gallagher could renegotiate with the sultan, we would all pay for the sins of one horrible man.

  I turned to look at Rommily and found her standing on her knees in her cage, between her sisters, all three gripping the metal mesh.

  Rommily met my gaze boldly. “And the bull shall stand tallest of them all.”

  Chills rose all over my skin. I had no idea what she was talking about, but it seemed to mean something to Eryx. He walked toward the oracles’ cage with slow, deliberate steps, then slid his thick fingers through the mesh. With bulging arms and a mighty bellow, he ripped the sliding panel right off the cage and dropped it on the ground at his feet. Then he reached out for Rommily.

  She placed her small hand in his huge grip and let him help her out of her cage, unfettered. Then she wrapped her thin arms around him as far as they would go and laid her cheek on his massive human chest, heedless of the fresh blood.

  When I finally looked away from their private, bittersweet moment, I saw that Alyrose, Kevin, Abraxas, and Lenore had started unlocking crates. People were climbing out of their cages, many for the first time, unfettered. But they were not celebrating. They weren’t even talking. They stared, almost as one, at a cage near the center of the circle, where the screaming that had begun right before my mother was shot had become a high-pitched keening.

  I pushed my way through the crowd, dread eating at me from the inside, but before I’d gotten close enough to see, the crowd began pushing against me, backing up as one unit. I slid between the berserker and one of the giants and gasped at what I saw.

  Nalah sat on the floor of her cage, holding Adira’s limp body. Blood covered the merid from the bullet hole in her neck all the way to her waist. But Nalah was clean. She was also completely nude, and I didn’t understand why until I felt the heat radiating from the cage. Her internal temperature had risen so steeply it had burned both the blood and clothing from her flesh.

  “You!” Her gaze met mine, and the yellows and oranges in her irises burned brighter. Her normally golden skin had taken on a darker hue, glowing from within like a lit coal. “You did this.” Nalah stood and laid Adira on the floor, where the merid’s skin sizzled against aluminum that glowed red with heat. “You took everything. You had no right. Now she is gone.” Nalah extended one hand toward her companion’s corpse. “And he is pledged.” She threw her other arm out toward the wall of the tent, and I realized she was talking about Gallagher. “And you will pay for your theft with the fire of a thousand suns.”

  My pulse leaped into my throat as a wave of heat washed over me, and the djinn cage began to melt right in front of us. Adira’s corpse burst into flames, but Nalah didn’t seem to notice. She gripped the metal mesh, and it melted beneath her fingers, just as the floor began to bow beneath her feet.

  Heart pounding, face flushed from the heat, I took a step back as she pushed her way through the melting metal screen and stepped onto the ground. “I will sear the flesh from your bones and make a stew from your organs.” Sawdust burst into a thousand tiny sparks beneath her feet. “I will dance in your ashes. I will—”

  A soft thwack echoed from behind me. A tranquilizer appeared in the ifrit’s bare thigh, and she crumpled to the ground. A drift of sawdust burst into flames beneath her hair, then died as the fuel was consumed.

  Gallagher pulled me back from Nalah’s still form and clutched me close. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying. She’s lost everything.” He aimed the tranquilizer rifle at the ground.

  “She has us,” I said, as—deep inside me—the furiae seemed frustrated by the injustice of the young ifrit’s loss, and by the fact that there was no vengeance to be had on her behalf. The princess’s killer was already dead. “But we’ll have to keep her sedated until she can accept Adira’s death.”

  Gallagher nodded. “That may take a while. I hope your masquerade idea works, because we may need it long-term. Bruhier will never let us in now. We’ll be lucky if he doesn’t take out a contract on us both.”

  “No Mexico?” Lenore said, and I looked up to find the siren and her husband standing over Carter’s corpse. The pistol still dangled from Kevin’s hand.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, but Kevin didn’t seem to hear. He was staring at his former coworker’s body.

  “You didn’t have any choice,” Lenore told him. “You saved Delilah’s life.”

  Eryx and Rommily stepped closer, and the oracle’s eyes were huge as she stared down at the corpse. “Multiple gunshot wounds to the torso,” she said.

  Kevin’s eyes went wide, and he stared from the oracle to the body at their feet. His empty hand went to his own chest, as if to verify that he was still whole, and Rommily’s smile looked satisfied, as if she’d finally broken through a barrier she’d been chipping away at for years.

  “Hey, Gallagher, what do you want me to do with him?” Abraxas called. I turned to ask what he was
talking about, and my jaw nearly fell open. Rudolph Metzger lay unconscious at his feet.

  Gallagher had lunged at the moving tent flap to find the old man, about to make an entrance and discover the coup.

  “The hood of his truck is still hot—he must have just gotten back. I want to see if the sultan will accept him as a peace offering.” Gallagher bent to pick the old man up like a baby, then slid him into the cage Ruyle had vacated. “Would you like the honor?” He stepped back and leveled a grand gesture at my open wagon.

  Nodding, I grabbed the cage door, ready to slam it shut.

  “Wait!” Mirela ran toward us and skidded to a barefoot halt, with Lala not two steps behind her. “Don’t forget this!” She tossed the old man’s top hat into the cage, and it landed square on his little potbelly.

  “And this!” Lala slid his formal black walking stick in next to him.

  I slammed the cage shut, severing Rudolph Metzger from his liberty, once and for all.

  Rudolph

  The old man woke up on his side, in the dark, and no matter how many times he blinked, his surroundings would not come into focus. There was not enough light to see by.

  His head ached fiercely, and a gentle probe with his fingers revealed a tall, tender bump on the back of his head, but for his life, Rudolph could not recall how he’d gotten it.

  The world jostled and bounced beneath him, jarring him terribly, and when he tried to stand, his knees and hips screamed with arthritic pain. The room jumped beneath him again, and he smacked his elbow on something hard.

  Rudolph sucked in a deep, calming breath through his nose, trying to get a handle on impending panic, and that’s when he noticed the smell. Stale hay, and...manure.

  And urine.

  Fear began to gather at the back of his mind. Rudolph felt around on the floor, and his fingers bumped over a raised pattern. His heart began to thump. His throat constricted. He reached a little farther, and the tips of his fingers brushed something hard and thin. He slid his hand up, and his fingers pushed through a grid of some kind. A hard, metal...grille. Like a chain-link fence. Or the side of an animal crate.