Delilah
I was confined to my cell for three straight days, and by the end of the second, I’d decided that solitary confinement qualified more as torture than rest. I saw no one but Pagano, who was evidently under orders to check on me every few hours, in spite of the fact that a camera had been installed in the corner of my cell while I was doped out of my mind and being stabbed by a needle.
They wouldn’t let me see or talk to Gallagher, but when I told Pagano that isolation was stressful, and that stress wasn’t good for the baby, he told me that Gallagher had been given the night off from the arena, since I couldn’t be there to make him perform.
It worried me to think that he might not know why I wasn’t there. He might think I was dead. He might try to tear through everyone he came into contact with until someone got off a lucky head shot.
After breakfast on the fourth day, when I’d run out of songs to sing, stories to tell myself and gruesome deaths to plot for my enemies, Pagano showed up to take me for a walk around the grounds.
“Thank you,” I said as we rounded the building, headed for the topiary garden. “If I had to stare at those walls for another minute, I might have lost my mind.”
“In that case, I hate to tell you what your evening’s going to look like.”
“Let me guess. More grilled chicken, green peas and wall staring?”
He actually gave me a small smile as he clicked something on his remote to allow me through the iron gate. “How are you feeling?”
“Like a caged hamster without a wheel. Any word on those test results?”
“Not that they’ve told me. I’m sure you’ll be the first to know.”
But he was wrong. If the baby was Gallagher’s, I wouldn’t know until I was strapped to another table. “Michael, I need a night out.”
He laughed. “So, what, Italian food and a movie?”
“I’m serious. Can you get me the dinner shift? I feel good, and I need more than a stroll around the yard. Seriously. Tell Tabitha the baby needs it.”
Pagano stopped and studied my face, looking for any sign of a ruse, but there was none to find. I truly needed to see something other than the inside of my cell. The fact that a work shift would give me time to observe more of the Spectacle’s security measures and potentially talk to several of my fellow captives was incidental, at that point.
“She’s not going to go for it. This isolation isn’t just about rest. She’s enforcing a gag order. I don’t think she’s told her husband about your...insemination yet.”
I blinked at him. “You heard?”
“Through the glass door. Tabitha’s threatened to fire me if I tell a soul, and she’s paying me triple overtime. She’s not going to let you near anyone you could tell about her plan.”
“So tell her to silence me. I don’t think that’ll hurt the baby, and I won’t make a fuss.” But Pagano looked reluctant. “Please. Just try.”
“Okay,” he said, as he gestured for me to head back in the direction we’d come from. “But I’m not promising anything.”
* * *
Dinner came and went with no word from Pagano. Someone slid my tray beneath my door, and by the time I got close enough to the window to see through it, there was no one left in the hall.
The sun set, and the lights came on in my cell. I brushed my teeth and paced across the length of my room 467 times. Then Pagano opened my door. He was smiling.
“I couldn’t get you the dinner shift, but I told Tabitha how upset you were and mentioned that your mental health could have a direct effect on the baby. So she said you could have one hour of a special duty.”
“Special duty?” I stopped and ran my fingers through my damp hair. “What duty?”
“Nurse’s aide. One of the shifters got hurt during the hunt last night, and since we’re down one doctor...” He shrugged. “But you’ll be restricted to one room, and you won’t be crossing paths with any of the other staff, just in case.”
“Then what good will I be?”
Another shrug. “It’s mostly just to give you something to do and someone to talk to, to elevate your mood. To keep the baby happy.” But I could tell with one look at him that he hadn’t really been thinking about the baby.
“Thank you.”
He adjusted the settings on my collar and led me down the hall and out of the building. The air outside was unexpectedly crisp and the night was so clear that the earth seemed to be blanketed by a sheet of stars.
“Do you think I could just lie on the grass and look up at the sky for a minute? You can’t see anything but treetops from my window, and it’s been a while.”
“Tabitha would kill me if I let you catch a cold from lying on the ground.”
“But the earth holds heat much longer than the air. The ground’s probably still warm.”
He shook his head, so I continued down the path reluctantly, the sidewalk rough but not really cold against my bare feet.
“My favorite part about running the menagerie was closing time. For hours, there was nothing but calliope music and bright lights, and callers shouting at the customers, trying to get them to play a game or buy some food. But when the customers went home, we could turn all that off, and the world just felt so...still. So quiet. So civilized.”
Pagano chuckled. “That’s not a word often used to describe carnival life.”
“Well, after we’d freed everyone who could safely be free, that’s what it felt like. It was the first time most of them had been allowed to step out of their cages and eat real food. Put on real clothes. Spin around and around, then fall down on the grass, too dizzy to move. There’s nothing more civilized than freedom.”
“But they can’t read. They can’t add.”
I shook my head. “Civilization isn’t about what you know. It’s about how you behave. How much respect and dignity you give to those around you. The staff here...” I let that thought fade away, because insulting my handler when he’d gone to bat for me wasn’t a great way to buy future favors.
“Say it,” he insisted, as the infirmary drew nearer.
I stopped walking and turned to look at him. “You guys have never been denied adequate food. Proper shelter. The right to raise your own children. To choose to have them. To choose who to have them with. You don’t know what it’s like to truly suffer, so it means nothing to you to perpetuate suffering in others.”
“You’ve given this a lot of thought.”
“No, I really haven’t. It doesn’t require much thought. Dignity and respect are the most basic of social concepts. Children understand them before they can even say the words.”
Pagano rolled his eyes and started walking again, leaving me no choice but to follow. “Okay, but not all cryptids are like you. You were raised human. You are human.”
“That’s bullshit. People are different just like cryptids are different. Some are kind, and some are cruel. This isn’t a one-species-fits-all world.”
Pagano looked like he had something to say. Or something to ask. But we were feet from the infirmary, and someone was already waving at us from the well-lit foyer.
He opened the glass door and waved me inside, where a woman in pink scrubs and a white lab coat looked me up and down. Then took a step back. “You’re sure this is safe?” she said to Pagano over my shoulder.
He nodded as he clicked something on the remote, restricting me to the infirmary. “But you won’t be with her anyway. Lead the way.”
Instead, the nurse gave us directions. “Third door on the right. Restrict her to the back half of the room. There’s a shifter cuffed to the last bed. She can get him water and talk to him. But that’s it.” Then she crossed her arms over her chest and watched us follow her directions, mumbling under her breath about how unsafe it was to have me “wandering the halls.”
As far as I could tell from glancing through the long viewing windows, the first two rooms were full. In each, a row of narrow, sturdy steel cots was bolted to the floor. The occupants were all cuffed to the cots and covered up to their chests by a white sheet. Most appeared to be sleeping.
A small figure in the second room caught my attention, and I stopped to stare through the window. “Genni.”
Pagano followed my gaze. “They say she’ll have a limp, but she’s going to be fine.”
“For how long?” How could a thirteen-year-old with a limp possibly survive another round of hunts? “Why do you even know that?”
He didn’t answer. Yet I understood.
“You’re betting on her? Or against her?”
“I don’t gamble,” he insisted. “But I hear the talk. Her odds are good, if she gets placed in the second round again.”
“And if she’s placed in the third?”
He shrugged. “No one’s odds are good in the last round.” He waved me forward again, and I had to leave little Genni asleep, chained to her bed.
The third room looked empty, but unlike the first two, it was divided in half by a wall and a doorway fitted with a red sensor, and I couldn’t see much of the back half.
Pagano adjusted my collar to allow me through the first two doorways, but when I stepped into the rear section, I forgot he was even there.
“Claudio!” The werewolf’s hands were cuffed to the side rails of an actual hospital bed and his ankles were secured with chains to something beneath the thin mattress. “What happened?”
“J’ai survécu.” His voice was even huskier than usual for a shifter, as if his throat were very dry. “They hit me with a Taser, not an arrow, so I will live to run for my life another day.”
“Those bastards.” I took a small plastic cup from the counter to my left and filled it with cold water from the sink. “The game is rigged in their favor and you can’t fight back, yet they think they’ve somehow conquered the universe by cornering an unarmed man in a closed course.”
Claudio lifted his head, and I helped hold it up so he could drink from the cup. “Merci,” he said, when he’d finished. “Have you seen Genni?”
“She’s next door. She took an arrow to the thigh, but they say she’s going to be fine. She’s strong, Claudio. Just like her father.” And it killed me to know that thirteen years may be all the parenting she would get.
“Have you spoken to her?”
“Not since the hunt.”
While I was refilling Claudio’s cup for the third time, footsteps clomped into the other half of the room, blocked from sight by the wall. A handler told whoever he’d escorted to have a seat on the bed. Steel groaned, and I heard the metallic click of cuffs being locked, accompanied by the rattle of heavy chains.
“Not that I’m not glad to see you,” Claudio said, as I carried the water back to him. “But why are you here?”
I shrugged, and a drop splashed over the rim of the cup. “I have friends in high places.” Wherein friends could only be defined as mortal enemies. But Claudio didn’t buy that for a second, so I told him as much of the truth as I could. “I’ve been in isolation for four days, and my handler finally had pity on me.”
“Why...?” Claudio sniffed the air in my direction. Then his golden wolf eyes widened. “Congratulations.” He frowned. “Or condolences. Which is it?”
I gaped at him. “How can you tell?” I whispered, hoping whoever was in the other room couldn’t hear me and hadn’t understood him.
“I can smell the hormones,” he whispered, following my lead as Pagano clomped toward the bed.
I turned to find my handler scowling at the werewolf. “You can tell just from smelling her?”
Claudio nodded, his hair catching on the rough material of the pillow. “But only because I know what to look for.” His voice was so low I could hardly hear him. “Is it a secret?”
I could tell from his lack of concern that he had no idea what the Spectacle’s official pregnancy policy was. “Yeah, it’s...complicated.” I whirled to face Pagano. “He won’t tell anyone.” Then I turned back to Claudio, and whispered, “You won’t tell anyone, will you?”
Tabitha must not have known that shifters could smell my hormones, or she wouldn’t have let me come see him. Which meant that if she’d left me in the dorm with Zyanya and the other female shifters, everyone at the Spectacle would probably already know.
“I won’t tell,” Claudio whispered. His gaze held mine with a conflicted gravity. “Delilah, Melisande and I were forced to breed five children in captivity, and each was both a blessing and a curse.”
I slid my hand into his and tried not to think about how much of my situation I couldn’t explain to him.
“Each was taken from us early, and it kills me to know that they’re growing up in cages all over the country. But I know that the world is a better place with them in it. And I know that they will fight for their children just like I fought for mine. Just like you will fight for yours.”
My eyes watered and I sniffled. Pagano retreated to a chair by the wall, evidently satisfied that Claudio wouldn’t tell anyone.
The sharp squeal of metal made me gasp. A chain rattled, and Gallagher appeared in the doorway, clutching the rail he’d ripped from the hospital bed. The cuff dangled from his wrist, where it had been freed from the broken metal bar.
Since he hadn’t intended to hurt anyone—thus didn’t produce the monitored hormone—his collar hadn’t stopped him from tearing the bed in two.
Whichever handler had left him alone was about to be very fired.
Gallagher’s gray-eyed gaze found mine. “You’re...?” His expression cracked and fell apart, exposing a vulnerability I’d never expected to see in him. “Are you sure?”
Claudio’s eyes widened, as he drew conclusions I didn’t have time to explain.
I nodded. “About eight weeks. I wanted to tell you, but—”
“Gallagher, drop the bed frame.” Pagano lifted his remote, and I could tell from the way he clutched it that he was considering going for his gun instead.
“Don’t.” I turned to my handler, arms spread to show him that I meant no harm. “He’s not going to hurt anyone. Right, Gallagher?”
Gallagher’s eyes closed, as if Pagano presented no threat, and when his lips moved silently, I realized he was counting backward. Trying to confirm that he was going to be a father.
“It’s not an exact science,” I said, my voice steady and low for Pagano’s benefit. Trying to keep everyone calm. “But yes, the baby may be yours.”
Gallagher’s eyes opened, and swimming in them, I found a stunning confusion of emotions. Joy. Fear. Wonder. Confusion. Then that all collapsed in one horrible instant of pain. “Wait, may be mine? Who else’s could it be?”
“There are a couple of other possibilities.” My gaze dropped to the ground, but then I dragged it up again. What had happened to me was wrong, but it wasn’t my wrong. It wasn’t his wrong. It was a wrong made possible by the world we lived in. By a man who thought it acceptable to own people. By a woman willing to ruin several other lives to get what she wanted.
“Delilah, what happened?” Gallagher’s voice was so deep I could hardly hear it and so gruff it must have scraped his throat raw. His grip on the bed frame tightened until his fingers were white with tension. Until the metal began to groan. “I’ll kill every last one of them.”
He’d said it. He couldn’t take it back. And as tears burned twin paths down my face, I realized I didn’t want him to. I wanted him to tear into everyone who’d ever made me do anything against my will. Who’d ever put me in chains, touched me without invitation, drugged me or locked me up.
“Put the bed frame down and put your hands in the air.” Pagano aimed his remote at Gallagher with one hand and pulled his gun with the other. His real gun. Nervous sweat dripped down his forehead. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to.”
Gallagher’s fist tightened. Metal squealed in his grip. His biceps bulged with tension, his gaze trained on my handler.
Pagano raised his pistol, aiming at Gallagher’s chest.
“No!” I cried.
Gallagher lifted the bed frame.
Pagano put his finger on the trigger.
I lunged between them, blocking the handler’s shot, but Gallagher leaned around me. His arm rose so fast I saw only a blur of motion on the edge of my vision. Something long flew across the room, end over end.
The handler pressed a button on his remote, and Gallagher made a stunned choking sound. He fell to the floor with a heavy thud just as the broken end of the metal bed frame punctured Pagano’s chest like a pencil through a sheet of paper, driving him backward until he hit the wall.
Pagano coughed up blood. Then he slid down the wall and fell over sideways, staring sightlessly at the doorway.
“No!” I sank onto my knees next to Gallagher. His legs were shaking, his heels crashing into the floor over and over; he was having a seizure. “Gallagher! What can I do?”
His eyes rolled back and his teeth clacked together.
“Get the remote!” Claudio growled, fighting his restraints in a vain attempt to get out of the bed. “It’s still shocking him!”
I scrambled across the floor and pulled the remote control from Pagano’s limp hand, silently apologizing for his bloody death, after the relative kindness he’d shown me. The remote had a smart screen, with half a dozen “quick touch” options. An icon at the bottom of the display read End Voltage.
I pressed it three times before I was sure the device had accepted my command.
Gallagher went still. I crawled back to him with the remote control in hand. His eyes were closed. “Gallagher.” I bent low to speak into his ear. “Gallagher. Please wake up! We have to move.” We weren’t going to get a better chance to escape, and we had no choice.
He’d killed a handler.
If Vandekamp caught us, he would have Gallagher killed slowly, brutally in the arena. In front of a crowd. And he’d make me watch.
“Is he okay?” Claudio asked, still straining for a better view.
“I don’t—”
Gallagher’s eyelids twitched. Then they opened. He blinked, and his gaze focused on me. “Delilah. Are you—” He sat up with no sign of vertigo, and when he saw Pagano’s corpse, he exhaled. “I got him.”
“He didn’t hurt me, Gallagher.”
“He wasn’t...?” His gaze fell to my stomach.
“No!”
Gallagher shrugged. “Pagano was keeping you locked up. That made him our enemy.” And for him, it was truly that simple.
He pushed himself to his feet, then reached down to help me up. “We’re leaving.”
“Okay,” I said, and he looked surprised that I wasn’t arguing. “But we can’t leave all the others.”
“We won’t.” Gallagher turned to Claudio. “Can you walk?”
The werewolf’s cuffs rattled when he shrugged. “Not quickly.”
“Okay, then you’ll stay here—stay safe—until we come back for you.” Gallagher glanced at me. “You figure out the remote. I’ll find the keys. It won’t be long before the nurse comes in to check my stitches.” He lifted his arm, and I saw that a long gash stretching toward his elbow had popped three stitches and begun to bleed. Which was why they’d brought him to the infirmary.
While Gallagher dug in Pagano’s pockets, I went through the remote control’s menus and functions, careful not to press anything that might hurt any of us. “Okay,” I said, when I’d found what seemed to be the home menu. “There’s an option that will remove all restrictions. I’m going to try that, but anyone else with a remote will still be able to reprogram them.”
“Not for long.” Gallagher unlocked his cuffs and dropped them into a trash can against one wall. Next he unlocked one of Claudio’s cuffs and handed him the key, then covered the unlocked hand with the white sheet. “Stay put until we come for you, or until we give the all clear. Then you can unlock the rest of the cuffs.”
Claudio nodded.
“Okay.” Gallagher turned to me. “Remove my restrictions.”
I aimed the remote at him, and a new line appeared on the screen, confirming that whatever command I issued would take effect on “Gallagher. Collar number 47924.” I pressed the button marked Remove All Restrictions.
The remote asked me to confirm my command, and I pressed the button again.
Gallaher’s collar flashed red.
“Okay, I think we’re good. But maybe we should test it.”
“There’s no time.” He turned to the cabinet against one wall and gave the locked drawer a hard pull. The lock gave and the drawer slid open. Gallagher rifled through the contents until he came up with a slim pair of scissors with long handles. “Okay, I need you to slide these between the collar and my skin, then carefully snip the metal...spine...things.”
I held the scissors up to the light to examine them. “These are suture scissors. They’re made to cut thread, not metal.”
“They’re the only set slim enough to fit. And these spines are very thin.”
“But for all we know, that could kill you.”
“That’s why we’re not trying it out on you.”
“Try it on me,” Claudio said.
“No!” I insisted. “Genni needs you.”
“I’m doing this for Genevieve. Just promise you’ll get her out of here. No matter what.”
“We promise.” Gallagher grabbed the scissors from me and helped Claudio sit up, which was only possible because we’d freed one of his hands. He examined the werewolf’s collar. “Remove the restrictions.”
“Done.” I was a step ahead of them. “But that doesn’t mean the collar won’t shock him—or worse—the minute you try to sever the connection to his spine.”
“We’re willing to take that chance,” Claudio insisted.
Gallagher gently slid the scissors between the back of Claudio’s neck and his collar. When the werewolf reported no pain, Gallagher carefully snipped the first spine. Claudio flinched, but made no complaint, so Gallagher slid the scissors a little deeper and snipped again. “This last one’s hard to reach. Any pain yet?”
“No.” Claudio held his head stiff and still.
“Okay, here goes.” Gallagher snipped again.
The remote in my hand beeped, and a notice popped up on the screen. “‘Collar deactivated,’” I read. “Claudio. Collar 47927.”
Claudio exhaled, and Gallagher actually smiled. Then he slid the collar up as far as it would go on the werewolf’s neck. “I can’t get this off, but that’s just as well. If they see you without the collar, they’ll know something’s wrong. But I can get these spines out. Hold very still.”
Gallagher gripped the highest of the three tiny spines with the tips of his blunt fingernails and pulled it straight out of the wolf’s neck.
Claudio’s eyes squeezed shut and he took a deep breath, but when he reported no pain, Gallagher removed the other two spines and dropped all three into the trash. “They can’t hurt you with this thing anymore.”
I snipped and removed Gallagher’s spines next, then he removed mine. My neck stung when he pulled the metal free, but the euphoria I felt when they clinked into the trash more than made up for it.
Vandekamp had placed his faith, his safety and his entire career on his collars, and that had led him to drop his guard.
He would have no idea what hit him.