Willem
Stadium fixtures lit the indoor arena like sunlight, glittering on sequined dresses and diamond rings as the crowd mingled. On the sand, the body of the Cerberean hound lay just as it had fallen in the final bout, broken necks ringed by manes of limp snakes. Canine jaws gaping, tongues sprawled onto the ground, dusted with sand.
Willem Vandekamp stood inside the challenger’s gate at one end of the oval ring, hidden by deep shadows as he assessed what he could see of the crowd. The after-party was always well attended, but tonight, almost everyone had stayed. Patrons spilled into the hallways lining the perimeter of the arena and down onto the sand itself, eager for a close look at the felled beast.
But neither the number of guests nor the size of their respective bank balances could put Willem at ease as he watched them mingle, accepting glasses of wine and bite-size appetizers from waiters in silver vests and matching bow ties. Willem was looking for a specific face in the crowd.
Light footsteps tapped on the concrete behind him, in a rhythm he knew well. “How does it look?” Tabitha appeared at his side in a floor-length gray satin gown, her shoulders bare but for a layer of appliquéd chiffon.
“Gallagher was a hit. But it doesn’t look like Bruce Aaron stayed for the party.”
“Are you sure he came at all?”
Willem nodded. “I comped him a box. Olive said he brought Senator Wilson and Senator Pickering and his wife. They’re both on the committee. This could be very good or very bad.”
“But the fight went well?”
“It was a flawless demonstration of the technology.”
When he couldn’t put off his entrance off any longer, Willem took his wife’s hand and stepped into the ring. The first cluster of guests who noticed them began to clap, and everyone else turned to look. Within seconds, the entire arena had burst into applause.
Willem nodded, graciously accepting approval he knew he deserved. Yet still he scanned the crowd.
“I hate the sand,” Tabitha whispered as she subtly clutched his arm for balance in her heels. “Can we let them come to us?”
“Of course.” Willem led his wife a few steps farther into the ring, then stopped as the first cluster of guests approached.
“Great show tonight!” A man in a shiny blue button-down raised a glass of red wine, and his friends followed through with an informal toast. “That last one—the red hat?”
“Redcap,” the woman to his left corrected as her elaborate cascade of curls caught the light.
“Yes, the redcap. He was something. You said he’s fae?”
Willem nodded. “Fear dearg specifically. They’re a race of warriors required to dip their caps in the blood of their victims to survive.”
“How perfectly savage!” The woman with the curls smiled, her blue eyes alight with excitement. “He’s a killing machine!”
“Yes, he is.” Tabitha Vandekamp gestured to the corpse of the massive hound, where it lay on the sand fifty feet away. “You can see the result for yourselves.” At her invitation, they moved toward the body, breathlessly recapping the hound’s demise as the next group of guests came forward.
Willem settled into his postfight routine, answering questions about the competitors and accepting praise from enthusiastic fans of the event as they ate and drank. In the stands, a crowd had formed around Olive Burnette, who was taking ticket requests for future bouts on her tablet, increasing the Spectacle’s cash flow with every order she took. But Willem didn’t begin to truly enjoy himself until he spotted a familiar pair of gentlemen standing with a woman in her fifties on the opposite side of the ring, studying the hound’s corpse from a respectable distance.
“Excuse me, please.” Willem slid his arm from Tabitha’s tight grip and abandoned both his wife and a cluster of patrons as he walked purposefully across the sand.
“Senator Wilson.” He offered his hand to each of them in turn. “Senator Pickering. Mrs. Pickering. I’m Dr. Willem Vandekamp. My event coordinator tells me you were both guests of Senator Aaron’s tonight. Is he still here?”
“No, he left during the first round,” Pickering said, as Wilson took a sip from a glass of red wine. “But we enjoyed the exhibition.”
Willem swallowed his frustration and forced his jaw to unlock. “I’m glad to hear that.”
“Enjoyed may be overstating it a bit,” Senator Wilson said. “But I was quite entertained, especially by that last match. We both expected the hound to bite several chunks out of the fellow in the hat, but he hardly got a taste at all.”
“Yes. Gallagher is formidable.” He followed the senator’s gaze to the broken body of the hound. “We hope to get several months out of him, at least.”
“And what will you do with him afterward?” Pickering asked. “I assume you’d be willing to donate the remains of such a rare find?”
“Of course. We have a standing agreement with a research facility in Atlanta, and they have permission to report all their findings to the government.”
“Who was the creature in the lit window?” Pickering used his wineglass to point to the box where Willem had arranged for Delilah to be displayed. “From across the stadium, she looked like a normal woman wearing a costume.”
“And a collar,” his wife added.
“I assure you she is anything but normal. She’s a furiae. We acquired her at the same time as Gallagher, and she seems to be the only thing that motivates him.”
“They’re a couple?” Mrs. Pickering asked, as she plucked a bacon-wrapped scallop from the tray of a passing waitress. “Some cryptids form couples, right? Like the ones that can pass for human?”
“Some do,” her husband said. “But scientists believe most of them to be incapable of complex emotions, hon. They’re driven by procreative instinct and base needs, much like any household pet or zoo animal. Very few of them mate for life.”
“Yet he was willing to kill for her.” Mrs. Pickering shrugged. “Sounds pretty romantic to me.”
“They’re simplistic creatures, dear,” her husband insisted.
Willem knew better. But he never made a point that would cost him money.
Wilson turned to Willem with a frown. “Regardless, what you’re really saying is that you need this furiae because your collar can’t control him?”
“It can, and it does.” Willem’s posture relaxed and his speech quickened with the opportunity to discuss his technological innovation. “At the first sign of aggression from him—a surge of either testosterone, adrenaline or a species-specific hormone we haven’t yet assigned a name to—the collar paralyzes him completely. Our difficulty lies not in preventing violence from him outside the ring, but in eliciting it for the sake of the fight.”
Pickering gave him a puzzled look over the rim of his glass. “Didn’t you say he needs to kill to survive?”
“Yes. But he doesn’t like to perform. So tonight we used Delilah—the furiae—as both a reward and a threat. To motivate him. But make no mistake. The collar can neutralize any cryptid. Under any circumstance. I’m so confident in my technology that I routinely take the sand with them, to introduce them, with nothing standing between me and the beasts but my collars.”
“We noticed that.” Wilson nodded. But his eye was drawn back up to that same box seat. “What exactly is a furiae? Another species of fae?”
“No.” Willem considered his phrasing, well aware that an outright lie could come back to haunt him, if he were granted an audience on Capitol Hill. “She’s a beast driven by revenge. Under normal circumstances, she looks so ordinary as to be nearly useless here at the Spectacle. But when she gets mad, she turns into a monster. Unfortunately, as with Gallagher, we can easily neutralize her, but we can’t make her perform on command.”
“That’s a shame.” Pickering drained the last of his wine. “I hope you didn’t pay much for her.”
“I think a revenge cryptid sounds quite useful.” His wife transferred her weight onto the ball of her left foot and pulled her right heel from the sand. “I’d unleash her the next time one of the ladies from my garden club gets bitchy.”
Her husband and his colleague laughed, but Willem was struck silent with a sudden epiphany. “I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me. Please enjoy the rest of your evening, and let me know if you’d like to see another show. On the house, of course.” With that, he headed straight for the champion’s entrance.
His wife watched him go from the other side of the ring.