Delilah
“What’s going on?” I demanded as Pagano opened my door early one evening, several days after I’d awoken in the private cell.
He adjusted my collar’s settings with the press of a button and waved me into the hall. “You’ve been engaged.”
“But I delivered lunches today.”
“You’re filling in for one of the other females.”
“Who?” My pulse spiked with worry as he led me down the hall toward the exit. “What happened to her?” Had someone else been injured? Been robbed of an unborn child? Or had I lost another friend?
Pagano’s refusal to answer as he marched me down the hall left a bitter silence my brain filled with every horrible possibility for what had happened. For where we were going. For what might happen to my baby if this engagement went wrong.
Or if it went right.
The baby was never far from my thoughts. Every wave of nausea, bite of food and moment of inexplicable fatigue reminded me that I was pregnant. Each occasional beat of joy that pulsed through me with that thought immediately triggered an answering wave of guilt and anger. I couldn’t be happy about the life growing inside me without agonizing over how it got there. Without feeling like I was betraying the past version of myself who’d suffered through the conception.
A hundred times a day, a bitter carousel of unanswered questions turned around and around my head, forever seeking answers that couldn’t be caught. I knew only two things for sure.
First: I wanted the baby, no matter how I got it. No matter who its father was.
And second: I would not get to keep it, even if I got to birth it.
“Is this another one of those boring political parties?” I asked Pagano, desperate to reroute my thoughts. I’d served at two of them in the past few days, and though boring could reasonably be called a synonym for safe, it also made the time drag terribly.
Pagano gave me a strange look as he held the exterior door open. As if he hadn’t expected me to notice that Vandekamp had addressed several of his guests as congressmen and two as governors.
His hand tightened on my arm as my bare feet hit the cool sidewalk. We walked the rest of the way to the prep room in silence, but this time only two of the chairs were occupied, one by Simra, the other by Zyanya.
Pagano led me to an unoccupied chair, where the third makeup artist stood ready to work on me, and when I was seated, he aimed his remote at my collar and took away my ability to move. And speak.
By then I’d been paralyzed countless times, but as always, my sudden helplessness hit me like a knife driven straight through my gut. I’d spent days at a time locked up in a menagerie cage, yet I’d never felt as vulnerable there as I did in the Spectacle’s makeup chair, unable to either defend or express myself.
When we were all dressed and ready, the handlers led us out of the prep room, and I got a look at my fellow captives. The marid’s costume consisted only of strategically draped swaths of a filmy, sparkly blue material, so that she appeared to be wearing a flowing sheet of water. Her glittering silver hair had been pulled back from her face, where her huge blue eyes were magnified by expertly applied makeup.
Zyanya had been rubbed with body glitter so that she seemed to glow everywhere except the small patches of skin covered by her cheetah-print bikini. Her hair was pulled back and tied into a tight bun so it couldn’t fall and obscure her cat eyes, and bright red lipstick made a stark contrast to her sharp feline incisors.
As we were escorted into the kitchen, where a dozen silver trays were already loaded and ready to serve, the event coordinator announced to the handlers, “The hunt starts in about ten minutes. The spectators are placing their final bets now.”
The hunt? Dread twisted my stomach, triggering a resurgence of nausea.“You go out in two minutes,” the event coordinator said to us, as Pagano left me in line with my fellow servers.
“I hate the hunts,” Simra whispered.
Zyanya nodded. “One of these days they’re going to take me out of the kitchen and set me loose in the woods, and I’ll come back with an arrow sticking out of my chest. Or not at all.”
“That won’t happen.” But I was speaking from a platform of ignorance. I had no idea who Vandekamp used as prey for his hunts. I’d just found out there were hunts.
“Of course it will happen.” Simra shrugged bare, sparkly shoulders. “When she’s no longer young or pretty enough to serve food, they will hunt her. If she goes feral before that, they will hunt her. If they run out of prey, they will hunt her. That’s how this works. Everyone dies eventually, during a private engagement, on the sand or in the hunts.”
I could only stare at the marid, too horrified to argue.
Could I truly bring a child into this world? Would it be more merciful to let Tabitha Vandekamp end the whole thing, before the poor kid had a chance to truly suffer?
The event coordinator—Glen Fischer, according to his name tag—told us to pick up our trays.
I followed Simra through another door into the back of a large, dark room. The walls and floor were covered with black carpet, which dampened sound and seemed to absorb light. I started to step forward, but Zyanya grabbed my arm. When my eyes finally adjusted, I realized she’d stopped me from tumbling down a series of broad steps that formed stadium-style tiers the entire length of the room.
Instead of individual seats, each tier held a long, cloth-draped table with chairs lined up on one side, facing the sunken front of the large room, where a grid of huge television screens was mounted high on the wall. The seats were filled almost to capacity with an audience that was ninety percent male.
In front of the screens, low enough that his head wouldn’t block anyone’s view, a man wearing all black sat in front of a bank of computer monitors and what looked like high-tech editing equipment.
Though the overhead screens were blank, the tech was already busy adjusting settings on the displays in front of him, most of which showed various shots of the woods, filmed in the flat green glow of night-vision cameras.
Pagano stepped up to my side from his position with the other handlers against the back wall, when he noticed my confusion. “Those are live,” he explained with a nod at the technician’s monitors. “When the hunt begins, he’ll throw those feeds up onto the big screens, so everyone can see.”
He stepped back, and I followed Simra down the unoccupied side of the topmost table while Zyanya took the second tier. They distributed glasses of red and white wine while I offered a selection of heavy hors d’oeuvres. The meatball sliders and pork-belly wontons were big favorites, and it took most of my self-control not to vomit all over the tray at the scent of the meat.
Since when did morning sickness stretch into the evening?
The men all ogled, and several reached out to touch Simra. Either they’d been warned not to touch me, or my lack of cryptid features failed to fascinate them, either of which was fine with me. All I cared about was not falling down the tiered floor or throwing up my balanced lunch all over the guests.
The women looked at us with interest, yet only one reached up to run her finger over Zyanya’s lower lip, boldly pulling it down to expose her canines. But when the lights dimmed and the television monitors at the front of the room lit up, Fischer waved us toward one wall, so we couldn’t block anyone’s view.
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Savage Spectacle’s weekly hunt,” he called out from the front of the room. “At this time, all wagers should already have been placed. If you’ve misplaced your receipt, please see the lovely lady at the back of the room.”
I turned to find Olive Burnette, the other event coordinator, standing near the rear exit with her hands folded in front of her silver pencil skirt.
“Tonight’s hunters reserved their spots several months ago, as we advise, because the wait is generally pretty long, but a spot in early December has opened up unexpectedly. If you’re interested in claiming that spot, again, please see Ms. Burnette at the back of the room.”
Two of the men and one woman stood, and all three made quick but polite strides toward Burnette.
“In case anyone is new to the event, let me go over the rules. There will be two hunters per round, competing to track down one prey. The level of difficulty increases with each round, as does the strength of the weapons issued to our hunters. Round-one hunters will be using Tasers. Round-two hunters will each use a longbow. Round-three hunters will be given hunting rifles. All hunters must use the weapons issued here at the Savage Spectacle. No personal weapons are allowed. All hunters must also use the safety equipment provided here at the Savage Spectacle, including Kevlar helmets fitted with night-vision cameras, safety goggles and Kevlar vests. Hunters in rounds two and three must be certified with their respective weapons either through the courses taught here at the Spectacle or through a qualifying third-party instructor.
“Each hunter will enter the hunting ground from a separate location, equidistant from the prey’s starting point. For the safety of the general public, the hunting grounds are fully enclosed and impossible for the prey to escape, thanks to our proprietary containment collars. To keep the event both fair and challenging, only the first hunter to track down his prey is allowed to fire, and he’s allowed one shot only. In rounds two and three, if that shot proves fatal, the hunter receives the top honor given here at the Spectacle, and everyone who bet on him will go home happy, drunk and with a wallet full of cash. And as an added incentive, if both the round-two and round-three prey are killed in accordance with the rules of the game, Mr. Vandekamp will issue a full refund to both champions!”
A cheer went up all across the room, but it was clear from Fischer’s chuckle that such an event was rare.
“Okay, is everybody ready?”
The crowd cheered again. I clenched my teeth.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is our technical guru, Charles Wheeler.” Fischer gestured to the man seated in front of the bank of equipment. “Charles is in charge of the cameras, their feeds and the screens you see before you, and he’s promised to give you the best show he can. Are you ready, Charles?”
“Always,” Charles answered, to another round of cheers.
“And is our first pair of hunters ready?”
“Yes, they are. Up in round one, we have Henry Brewer and Jensen Miles. Mr. Brewer, please wave your hand in front of your helmet cam, so we can find you.”
A hand appeared in front of one of the screens. “I’m here. Locked and loaded.” He held his Taser up in front of the camera, and several of the audience members laughed.
At Charles’s instruction, Mr. Miles also waved for the camera. Then the event coordinator began counting backward from ten. The audience chanted along with the countdown. Their gleeful, sadistic anticipation made my stomach churn.
When they got to the number five, one final television screen lit up, treating the entire room to a view, in shades of night-vision green, of the intended target, crouched on the ground in human form.
I sucked in a horrified breath.
A terrified squeak leaked from Zyanya’s throat before she slapped one hand over her mouth, clutching her empty tray to her chest with the other.
“Who is it?” Simra whispered from my right.
When the audience shouted “One!” Charles pressed a button on his keyboard with a dramatic flourish. On-screen, the crouched form stiffened, then howled in pain as a red light flashed from his collar. Then he took off running.
“Ladies and gentlemen, tonight’s target is a male cheetah shifter, approximately twenty-five years old, who goes by the name of Payat.”
“He’s her brother,” I whispered to Simra, as Zyanya trembled in silence against the wall.
On-screen, both hunters took off at a run, crashing through the woods with limbs scratching their faces and snagging on their clothes. The screens on the front wall showed each of their perspectives, and as soon as the camera that had showed Payat lost track of him, the image on that screen switched to his point of view. They’d strapped a camera onto him too, and had presumably attached it so that it wouldn’t be dropped if he shifted into cheetah form. Which would be a serious risk for him, because of the time it would take.
Several other screens showed different views of the woods from some high vantage point. The cameras were probably strapped to the upper branches of trees.
“They’re armed with Tasers,” I reminded Zyanya in a whisper. “He’ll survive.” Physically. But being hunted through the woods in front of a live studio audience was a trauma and humiliation he might never truly recover from.
Zyanya nodded, but her gaze stayed glued to the screens. After twenty minutes of watching two amateur hunters thrash their way through dense forest, Olive Burnette motioned for us to follow her from the room. I had to practically drag Zyanya away.
We reloaded our trays in the kitchen, then headed back into the viewing room, where one glance at the screens on the front wall made me catch my breath. One of the hunters was squatting, staring right at a thin, hunched figure in the brush.
“I’ve got him,” the hunter whispered into his microphone. “If I can just...get...close enough.”
The audience had gone silent, as had the event coordinators and the handlers. The only person in the room who wasn’t frozen in fascination was Charles, who was quietly monitoring the screens in front of him, to make sure that his audience had the best possible view.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Miles has the target in his sight. If you placed money on him this evening, it looks like you made a very wise decision.”
“If I could just...get a little...closer,” Mr. Miles said, clearly oblivious to Fischer’s narration. On-screen, he lunged through the brush. We heard a soft thunk, then a grunt and the buzz of electricity. The shadowy hunched form in front of him fell into the greenish underbrush with a thump and the crackle of dead leaves. “Got him!” Miles shouted, and Zyanya’s sob was swallowed by cheers from the audience.
“Ladies and gentlemen, it looks like we have a—”
“There he is!” Mr. Brewer whispered from his feed, on the far left.
The coordinator spun toward the wall of screens at his back, and the hand holding the microphone fell to his side in surprise. Square in the middle of Brewer’s view was a thin, hunched figure, similar in silhouette to the form his competitor had just dropped with a stun gun, and was now carefully approaching across a bed of underbrush.
My focus volleyed from feed to feed, and the general movement of heads from the crowd in front of me appeared to be doing the same thing.
“Charles, are you seeing this?” Fischer seemed to have forgotten that the rest of us could hear him. “Did we release two captives onto the hunting grounds?”
Charles shook his head, but I couldn’t hear what he said.
“Can you patch me through?”
“Of course,” Charles said. “Which one do you want to talk to?”
A confused buzz of voices rose from the crowd in front of us and Zyanya grabbed my arm so tightly in her free hand that I almost dropped my full tray.
“Give me Brewer,” Fischer said. Then he turned to face the room full of spectators. “Ladies and gentlemen, there seems to be some confusion in the field. Give us just a moment to sort it out.” His smile blossomed wide enough for me to see from across the room, even in the near dark. “And please consider this extra excitement to be on the house!”
The audience chuckled, but their gazes stayed glued to the screens. As did mine. And when the coordinator waved a handler forward and spoke to him privately, I knew exactly what he was saying.
Go get Vandekamp.
“You’re hooked in,” Charles said, and the coordinator turned back to the screen on the far left.
“Mr. Brewer, are you certain you’ve spotted your target?”
The image on Brewer’s screen jumped as he did, startled by a voice he obviously hadn’t expected to hear from inside his helmet. “Yes. He’s just feet away,” the hunter whispered. “Can you see him?”
“We see something,” Fischer said, and the tension in his voice was quite clear. “But we aren’t sure what, exactly. Please approach with caution.”
“Will do.” Brewer stepped almost silently out of his hiding place, and at the bottom of his screen, his hands extended in front of him, holding his stun gun.
On the other screen, Miles slowly approached his downed target, twigs cracking with every step he took.
Brewer fired his stun gun with an audible jolt of electricity. The form in front of him jumped with the impact, then shook as electricity passed through him. An instant later, he hit the ground with hardly a sound. He’d landed in a patch of bare dirt.
“He’s down!” Brewer bounded forward and his hand rose toward the screen. Something clicked, and a flashlight shone from his helmet onto the form at his feet. “I’ve got him! I won!”
And he had. Payat lay on the ground, unconscious. Still in human form.
“What the hell...?” Again, the coordinator forgot he was holding his microphone, and this time Brewer heard him, as well. “Then what did the other guy catch?”
As one, we turned to Miles’s screen as he finally switched on his own flashlight. The beam skirted the underbrush, then settled on a fur-covered form lying on its side, its ribs rising and falling with each labored breath. “What the hell is that?” Miles demanded, as the audience gasped. “That’s not a cheetah.”
“No, it isn’t.” The coordinator turned to Charles. “It’s a werewolf. Patch me through to him.”
“You’ve got Miles,” Charles said with the click of a few buttons.
“Mr. Miles, slowly back away from the creature, and stand very still. We’re sending help your way immediately.”
“What the hell’s going on?” Instead of backing away, Miles leaned forward for a closer look. “What the—”
The creature lunged at him in a blur of sharp-toothed muzzle and glowing eyes.
Miles shouted and stumbled back. The werewolf’s muzzle clamped closed around his left forearm. Miles screamed and swung his stun gun like a hammer. The wolf let him go and backed away, growling.
Blood soaked through Miles’s sleeve, a darker shade of green on the infrared cameras. He fired the last load from his stun gun, and the werewolf collapsed on the ground, trembling as the second dose of electricity coursed through him.
“We appear to have had a breach.” Fischer had clearly seen what I’d already noticed—the fur-covered form on the ground in Miles’s feed wasn’t wearing a collar. And while the coordinator clearly thought one of the Savage Spectacle’s captives had somehow gotten out of his collar and escaped his cell, I knew better.
I recognized the form on the screen in front of me, even though it was painted several shades of night-vision green. I knew that fur, and I knew that muzzle, and I knew the single eye blinking sluggishly up at the camera.
Vandekamp hadn’t lost one of his werewolves; he’d gained one.
Claudio had come to claim his daughter.