Spectacle--A Novel

by Rachel Vincent

  Our handlers marched us toward a service entrance at the rear of the octagonal building, and as we approached, the familiar shape of the building finally sank in.

  This is the ring.

  We stepped into a large, cold room with white tile on both the floor and the walls. Three large drains in the floor formed a broad triangle, and two industrial hoses were wrapped around large hooks above faucets set into the wall.

  The white tile room was made to clean up messes. Big messes.

  My throat tightened so suddenly and severely I could hardly breathe but the others marched straight ahead, as if they’d seen it all before.

  Our handlers led us down a wide concrete hallway lit by hanging fluorescent fixtures, then into a kitchen virtually identical to the one in the main building. The same chef I’d seen the night of the bachelor party was hard at work again with an even larger staff.

  A new event coordinator greeted us in the kitchen. Her name tag read Olive Burnette, and her smile looked frozen in place. She gave Drusus and the others each an assignment number, then dismissed them, and as their handlers led them out of the kitchen—oddly, none of them carried trays—the coordinator turned to me.

  “Okay, I’m only going to say this once, so listen closely. You’ll be serving one of our wealthiest guests in one of our luxury boxes.” She tucked a strand of her blond bob behind one ear. “Keep his glass full and food within reach. The box seats are pretty well stocked with everything customers could want, but if you run low on anything, just press the red button on the wall, and someone will come see what you need.” She glanced over my shoulder at Bowman. “Obviously you’ll be monitored by a handler at all times.”

  The coordinator straightened her fitted silver suit jacket, then marched out of the kitchen. Bowman shoved me into the hall after her.

  A service elevator took us up four floors and opened into an empty, curving hallway, which obviously ran around the perimeter of the arena. Burnette led me past several open doors, where I could see into private viewing boxes, each of which held either a professional server or an engaged cryptid waiting to serve guests who hadn’t yet arrived.

  Finally, she stopped to open a closed door, then waved me into a box where three tiers of plush theater-style seats faced a wall shielded from view by a red curtain.

  Bowman followed me inside and Burnette quickly closed the door behind him, clearly glad to be relieved of my company.

  “Delilah.”

  Startled, I turned to find Woodrow, the gamekeeper, standing on the other side of the box, his black tactical gear blending in with a sidewall painted a very dark gray. Like Bowman, he wore leather gloves and had turned up his collar, to expose as little of his skin as possible.

  “If you’re any trouble tonight, the boss will put a bullet in your head. But first, he’ll make you watch your boyfriend die.”

  “Boyfriend?” But then I understood. “Gallagher and I aren’t together. Not like that.”

  “Bullshit,” Bowman said from my left. “He snapped a man’s neck trying to get to you, and after they dragged you out, he pulled Hilliard’s head clean off. He would have killed everyone else in the room to get to you, if not for his collar.”

  I started to argue, but then I recognized the futility. They obviously couldn’t conceive of a motivation that didn’t involve either money or sex.

  The gamekeeper grabbed my chin in his gloved hand and made me look at him. “Are you as protective of Gallagher as he is of you?”

  I didn’t have to answer. He saw it in my eyes. But there was a bigger problem at hand. “I didn’t do anything to Murphy. He touched me. I can’t prevent what happens to people who touch the furiae voluntarily.”

  “So we’ve heard. If you feel this furiae surfacing, gesture to one of us, and we’ll take care of it.” His hand settled onto the tranquilizer pistol holstered at his waist, in case I had any doubt about what he meant. “Tonight’s guest knows he can’t touch you. He’s just here to watch the fight. The only way this can go wrong is if you make it go wrong, and if that happens, you can kiss your boyfriend goodbye. But not literally, of course. Do you understand?”

  I nodded, then swallowed the sick-tasting lump at the back of my throat.

  “Good.” Woodrow pointed to the back wall of the box, where a countertop was equipped with a bar sink and a small refrigerator. An assortment of stemmed glasses hung upside down from a rack over the sink. “There’s white wine and champagne chilling in the fridge. Red wine and liquor are on the counter. Soda and beer are on tap. The basic snacks are in that cabinet, and someone will come by with food soon.”

  “I’m not a bartender.”

  “Anything more complicated than beer or wine will come in from the bar down the hall. Just tell us what you need, and we’ll radio it in.”

  “So, I just give this guy drinks and food, and Gallagher gets to live?”

  “What happens in the ring is up to him. But if you behave, we won’t kill him. That’s the deal.”

  Gallagher was scheduled to fight.

  Fighting for someone else’s entertainment is barbaric, even when humans get paid to do it. But being forced to fight? That was an especially cruel assignment for a redcap, a warrior sworn to fight for something real. Something important.

  I wasn’t sure Gallagher would participate at all. He would never willingly smudge his honor, no matter how much pain the collar could put him through. But if they could somehow make him fight, surely it would be a short bout. I’d never met anyone, human or cryptid, who could take Gallagher in a fair fight.

  Would the fight be fair? Would they handicap him, for entertainment’s sake?

  The door opened before I could ask any of my questions—not that Woodrow would have answered them—and Olive Burnette escorted a portly man in his early sixties down to the center of the first row, her arm looped through his. Her smile no longer looked frozen in place. When he slid a one-hundred-dollar bill into the pocket of her suit jacket, I understood why.

  “Mr. Arroway, this is Delilah. She’ll be taking care of you tonight. Now, did the hostess go over the restrictions with you? Delilah isn’t safe to touch.”

  “What is she?” Mr. Arroway twisted in his chair to look at me, and his neck cracked audibly.

  “She’s very rare and very special. If you need anything, just let her know. The event will be starting in about ten minutes. Have you placed your bets?”

  “I’ve got six figures riding on the first two bouts.” Mr. Arroway resettled into his chair and pulled a folded piece of paper from his jacket pocket. “But I don’t know anything about the challenger in round three. Is he new?”

  “Yes, and we don’t think you’ll be disappointed!”

  Olive gave me a private wink on her way out of the box, and I clenched my jaw. The new beast in round three was obviously Gallagher.

  Before the door could fall closed behind her, a waitress in slacks and a silver vest pushed the door open again with one elbow, then set a tray of appetizers on the counter.

  “Well?” Mr. Arroway twisted awkwardly in his chair and looked not at me, but at Bowman. “Is she going to bring me something to eat or not?”

  Bowman glanced at me with his brows raised, and I grabbed the tray. Weakened by my hunger strike, I wobbled beneath the additional weight, and for a second I thought I was going to drop the entire tray full of tiny crackers topped with seafood paste or goat cheese and tiny scones filled with smoked turkey.

  But then the room came back into focus and my legs remembered how to work stairs.

  “Sir, would you like an hors d’oeuvre?” I asked, bending to put the tray within Mr. Arroway’s reach, even though the indignity of being dressed up like a doll and forced to work for no pay burned all the way into my soul.

  Gallagher’s life was worth it.

  “H
ell no, I don’t want any of that fancy shit.” Arroway pushed the tray away, and I scrambled to keep it from tipping over. “I want peanut butter crackers. And beer. Something American. But none of that light crap.”

  “I’ll see what I can find,” I said through clenched teeth. But when I stood, I found Woodrow scowling at me, pointing at the old man’s nearly bald head. “Sir,” I finished. Then I raced up all four steps and set the full tray on the counter.

  After a panicked scan of the countertop, I opened one of the lower cabinets and rifled through small bags of chips, pretzels and trail mix. At the back were three cellophane-wrapped packages of peanut butter cracker sandwiches. They must have been stocked just for Mr. Arroway.

  I plucked all three packets from the assortment and set them on an empty tray, then filled a beer stein from the first domestic beer tap my gaze landed on, leaving room for a significant head of foam.

  Mr. Arroway didn’t acknowledge me as I set his snacks on the built-in tray that folded over his lap from the arm of his chair, and as I stood to return to my spot at the back of the room, the red velvet drapes along the front wall slid open with the soft hum of a small motor and the gentle swish of the fabric.

  Through the wall-sized picture window, I saw that Mr. Arroway’s private viewing box sat at the top of a steep, narrow arena overlooking a sand-filled oval ring several stories below us. The ring itself was encircled by a tall, thick, transparent barrier, like a hockey rink’s safety shield on steroids.

  The size of the enclosed space and the concentration of lights at the center gave it an intimate feel more like that of a theater than a ballpark. All the seats were good seats, but the box seats were great.

  The less expensive stadium chairs were mostly filled, and as the remaining patrons found their seats, I stared out at them in fascinated horror. From the outside of the building, little of its size had been evident because much of the arena had been dug out of the ground—though we’d only gone up four floors in the elevator, we were at least six stories in the air.

  I made my way slowly up the shallow risers as the house lights began to dim, and by the time I leaned against the wall at the back of Mr. Arroway’s private box, someone had appeared in the center of the ring wearing a suit and carrying a wireless microphone. I couldn’t make out his face, but the moment he spoke, I recognized Willem Vandekamp’s voice.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the arena! As most of you know, the fights were our very first event—the original savage spectacle—and they continue to be our biggest draw. In fact, tonight we are completely sold-out, because making his debut in our third and final match of the evening is a creature you can’t see in captivity anywhere else in the world.”

  The crowd cheered, and I took a deep breath, trying to slow my heartbeat.

  “If you haven’t completed your wagers yet, please do so in the next few minutes. As always, the house minimum is a total of ten thousand dollars placed in any combination over the course of the evening’s three fights. For those of you joining us for the first time, the rules are simple. No restrictions. No weapons. No time-outs. And in our third match, two combatants enter the ring, but only one may leave alive. I promise you that tonight’s show will be both savage and spectacular!”

  Horror hit me like a stab to the gut, and I hunched against the pain. I grabbed the countertop to keep from falling.

  It’s a fight to the death. But Gallagher had sworn only to kill those who deserve a violent death.

  If he refused to participate, he would be slaughtered in the arena.

  If he won—and he would win if he fought—breaking his oath would kill him.

  Regardless of the outcome, if Gallagher took the ring, he would die.

  “And now...let the games begin!” Vandekamp threw his hands into the air, still holding the microphone, and the stadium erupted into applause. Mr. Arroway cheered around his mouthful of peanut butter, spewing crumbs all over his lap and the floor.

  My stomach lurched toward my throat, and I had to swallow to keep from vomiting.

  Vandekamp jogged out of the arena as the house lights dimmed even further, and I found myself holding my breath. A single spotlight appeared in the center of the arena, and the buzz from the audience swelled. I watched, fascinated, while two combatants were introduced. The first was an ogre in his midtwenties. He wore only a large loincloth, and in the close-up on a high-definition screen suspended above the arena, I could see that his body was scarred all over with whip marks and healed cuts and gashes. Several of those scars came from wounds that would easily have killed a human.

  Yet this ogre was only the challenger.

  His opponent, and the reigning champion in the “bipedal beast” category, was a giant in his late thirties, who towered over the ogre by at least three feet and outweighed him by a good two hundred pounds, by my best guess.

  When they stood alone on the sand, facing each other, an eerie hush settled over crowd.

  A high-pitched tone made my head ring, and even from Mr. Arroway’s box at the top of the stadium I could see the twin flashes of red when the combatants’ collars were stripped of all restrictions. Except, presumably, the one that would let them leave the ring.

  The ogre and the giant ran at each other, massive lungs expanding with each breath, thick muscles bulging with every movement. They kicked up sand with each racing step, then crashed into each other near the middle of the ring, and the sound was like a clap of thunder. The impact sent a tremor through the arena, all the way up to the box where I stood.

  The crowd roared its approval, hoisting overpriced bottles of beer and glasses of wine into the air, where the beverages sloshed onto patrons already drunk with anticipation, if not yet with alcohol.

  Mr. Arroway leaned forward, littering the carpet with more crumbs, and shoved another cracker sandwich into his mouth, transfixed by every bloody blow, the full horror of which was captured in high definition on the screen overhead.

  I made it through about ninety seconds of barbaric violence before I looked away in disgust, determined not to legitimize the savagery by granting it even one more set of eyes.

  The gamekeeper wasn’t watching the match either. He was watching me.

  Mr. Arroway was too absorbed by the fight to require any service, but the moment the house lights went down so they could drag the poor unconscious ogre out of the ring, he twisted in his seat to demand another beer and a bowl of butter-pecan ice cream.

  Once again, the staff had anticipated his oddly specific request—I found an unopened pint waiting in the small freezer, as well as a bowl, scoop and spoon in the cabinet.

  The second match pitted a manticore—a huge red lion with the tail of a giant scorpion—against a hydra—a snakelike dragon with multiple heads. This particular specimen only had two heads, which was the most common genetic variation, despite the fact that the topiary version in Vandekamp’s garden was of the rare seven-headed variety.

  Though I watched as little of the fight as possible, I could tell every time blood was spilled based on the roar of the crowd, including Mr. Arroway’s inarticulate, full-mouthed grunts of pleasure.

  Before the third and final round of the evening, I poured another beer for my client, but my thoughts were on the ring. I’d assumed Gallagher would face someone near his own size and strength and number of limbs, but what if I was wrong? Redcaps were truly fearsome warriors, but they weren’t fireproof, and they only had one head.

  As I served the full stein, a spotlight appeared in the center of the ring again, where Willem Vandekamp had reappeared to introduce the final fight.

  “As most of you have already read in your programs, tonight we are excited to bring something extraordinary to our finale—a creature brand-new to the Savage Spectacle’s stables—and we’re thrilled to be able to tell you that he is the only member of his species curren
tly in captivity in the entire world. But we’re so confident in his ability to take down our reigning champion that rather than make him work his way up through the lesser fights, we’re going to start him at the top. Tonight he will either spill blood and emerge a champion or leave the ring in a box.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, tonight I present to you one of the least-studied varieties of fae, the only redcap confirmed to exist not just in captivity, but anywhere on the planet. Please put your hands together for our challenger...Gallagher!”

  Delilah

  A second spotlight appeared in the ring, and Gallagher stood in the middle of it, bound in enormous chains and staring at the ground. He wore only tattered black pants and his traditional red cap, his feet and enormously muscled chest and arms bared to the crowd.

  For one long moment, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t feel or hear a thing. I couldn’t drag my focus from his form standing on the sand, until I realized the screen overhead offered a much closer look.

  “No...” I murmured, and Woodrow stepped closer with his remote control in hand, anticipating whatever fit he thought I was about to throw. “Please don’t make him do this,” I whispered. “You don’t know what this will do to him. You don’t know anything about him.”

  The gamekeeper shrugged. “We know that fear dearg need to spill blood like they need to breathe air. They have to kill to survive. Look how tense he is. He’s like an addict staring at a needle.” Woodrow took my chin in his gloved hand and made me look at Gallagher’s image on the huge screen. “He needs this. He won’t be able to resist the blood.”