Menagerie

by Rachel Vincent

  Finally Eryx twisted on his knee to look at me, and the second word was revealed. CAP stood next to RED, written in those same shaky capital letters.

  “Red cap.” I frowned while he watched me expectantly. “Red cap. Whose cap, Eryx? Are you talking about Gallagher’s hat?”

  He shook his head, but then nodded, and I translated his frustrated contradiction into “no, but yes,” a sentiment I’d often expressed with no more clarity, in spite of my fully functional human mouth.

  “So, Gallagher’s hat, but not his hat.” And suddenly I got it. “You’re talking about Gallagher himself, aren’t you?”

  Red cap was a descriptor. Maybe he didn’t know how to spell Gallagher. Or maybe that would have taken too long.

  Eryx nodded, and warmth spread throughout my chest. I was proud of us both, and not miserable for the first time since I’d woken up at the sheriff’s station eight days before.

  “Okay, so what about Gallagher? You want me to tell him something for you? Why can’t you just spell for him?” But the minotaur was already shaking his head. “You don’t want me to tell him anything?” Eryx nodded, and I assumed that meant I was correct. “So...you want to tell me something about him?”

  That time I was rewarded with a grand, exaggerated head nod, and I realized the minotaur was just as frustrated with my slow comprehension of his words as I was with his pace in writing them.

  But before I could guess again, the untethered sidewall rustled and Gallagher called from outside the tent. “Eryx? Where did you—”

  The minotaur swiped one huge hand over the words he’d written half a second before Gallagher pushed back the blue striped canvas flap and stepped into the tent with an armload of material.

  “Eryx, what the hell are you doing in here?” Gallagher dropped the linen-and-wool bundle on the table, knocking over several of the berserker’s pictures, then scowled at the minotaur, whose horns reached the handler’s shoulders, even kneeling.

  Eryx blinked up at him, and I realized that for whatever reason, the minotaur was playing dumb. And he was good at it.

  “Well, get up!” Gallagher snapped. “Don’t tell me you’re stuck like that. It’d take a crane to lift you.”

  Eryx pushed himself to his feet slowly and with exaggerated effort, then let Gallagher lead him back outside. When the handler returned, he looked thoroughly perplexed. “What happened?” He plucked a clean dress from the pile on the table and shook it out on his way across the tent.

  “I don’t know,” I lied. But my mental gears were grinding and smoking, trying to figure out what Eryx wanted to tell me about Gallagher, the man who held my safety and well-being in his big, rough hands.

  “What was he doing in here?”

  I shrugged, still clutching the dirty blanket. “He doesn’t talk, remember?”

  “A quality I’m starting to appreciate.” Gallagher slid a fresh pair of underwear and a cotton bra through the tray slot in my cage. “Why was he on the ground?”

  “He fell.” I looked right into his eyes, but they narrowed with obvious suspicion.

  “You’re lying.”

  “Does that mean I don’t get clothes?”

  Gallagher huffed and let the dress hang from one finger. “This partnership is starting to feel a little one-sided. I give, and you take. Does that seem fair to you?”

  My temper flared and my cheeks burned. “You said there would never be a price.”

  “I’m not asking you to pay. I’m telling you to learn how to transmute, so I can put you back in the show.” He opened the tray slot again and pushed the clean dress inside. “That’s not negotiable for either of us, Delilah.”

  “Don’t you mean Drea?” I grabbed the dress, clutching the blanket to my chest with my free hand. “You can’t change my name.”

  “I let you keep your initial.”

  “How magnanimous of you. Turn around,” I snapped, and his growl was deep enough to impress a werewolf, but he turned.

  I changed into the fresh underwear as quickly as I could. “I’m keeping my name.” I pulled the clean dress over my head before he could get mad and decide to take the clothing back. “Is this really the best you could do?” I held out the hem of the new dress to show him that it was too small—more suited to one of the djinn girls than to a grown woman.

  “You have a strange way of expressing gratitude.”

  “I’m better with logic, so let me put this ‘gratitude’ in perspective for you. I appreciate the fact that you’ve kept me alive, Gallagher, but I am entitled to life. I shouldn’t need you to keep me from starving to death, and that’s really all you’re doing. You’re flatlining on the morality EKG, expecting me to praise you as if you’d spiked an actual ethical pulse.”

  I threaded my fingers through the wire mesh and stood on my knees again, putting myself as close to eye level with him as I could. “I will get out of here. I can either go with you or through you.”

  His focus volleyed between my eyes, as if he were searching for something. “You’re fearless.” The pronouncement had the feel of an official ruling.

  “Well, one of us should be.”

  He blinked, betraying a flash of anger. “You think I’m a coward?”

  No. He’d taken plenty of risks for me. But at the end of the day, I was still locked in a cage. “I don’t know what else to call a man who knows what’s right, but refuses to act on it.”

  Gallagher was like a puzzle put together all wrong. The pieces shouldn’t have fit, yet there he stood, made of equal parts compromise and rigidity. Compassion and mercenary determination to protect his paycheck.

  “Don’t mistake patience for cowardice, Delilah,” he mumbled, and something grim and foreboding passed behind his eyes.

  Anticipation raced through my veins like fire blazing along a trail of accelerant. Patience? I gripped the metal mesh tighter. “What does that mean? You’re waiting for something? For what?” And what would he do when he got it?

  I stared into his eyes, but the truth—if it was there—was buried too deep for me to see. “What are you doing, Gallagher? Are you planning something?” Or was he stringing me along with hope, to make me cooperate?

  “You help me keep my job, and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

  “Promise? Because I hear your word is your—”

  He scowled. “I swear on my life. And my word is my honor.”

  When I found no hint of doubt or hesitation in him, I exhaled. “Fine.” I pushed the tray slot open and shoved both the mildewy blanket and my damp clothes onto the ground. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Learn to transmute.” He began to pace in front of my cage while he spoke. “I’ve been thinking about the one time it happened, and anger seems to have been the catalyst. But you’re angry all the time, and that hasn’t helped, so today I did what I could to re-create that kind of intense anger. However...” He shrugged, and the gesture looked all wrong on him. He had too powerful a build for such a casual motion.

  “What does that mean? What did you do?”

  Gallagher picked up the blanket, shaking sawdust from it. “I got out of the way.” He crossed the tent and traded the dirty blanket for the clean one lying on the table.

  “Out of the...? You...?” I sat back on my heels as the depth of his betrayal became clear. “You took the day off just to put me at Clyde’s mercy. So he would piss me off.” My throat felt tight.

  “No.” Gallagher spoke with such force that his denial could have driven a tent stake into the ground. “I had business in town today, and since I had to be gone, I took the opportunity to let him do what I couldn’t.” He slid the clean blanket through the tray slot, but I didn’t even glance at it.

  What he couldn’t do. Starve me. Strip me. Humiliate me.

  “Why couldn’t y
ou—” I hadn’t realized how betrayed I felt until my voice cracked in the middle of the question. Even if he was only doing his job—keeping me healthy enough to perform—I’d come to expect decency, if not actual kindness, from Gallagher. “Why couldn’t you do it yourself?”

  “My reasoning doesn’t matter.” His stone-gray eyes betrayed nothing.

  “He threw out my food and drenched me with a hose in front of God and half of the menagerie. He gashed open my head, then left me to pass out in my cage!”

  The iron clench of his jaw was the only hint that my suffering bothered him. “I know.”

  “You know?” Rage exploded inside me. I shook the wire mesh as hard as I could, but it barely rattled. Of course he knew. He’d expected most of that, which was the reason he’d left me with Clyde in the first place.

  His expression was carefully blank as he studied mine. “How do you feel? Any change in vision? Does your hair feel...weightless?”

  I jerked back from the side of the cage. He was still trying to turn me into a monster by making me mad. “Stop! It’s not going to work!”

  His forehead furrowed and he grabbed the metal mesh, his grip just outside of my own, and for the first time since he’d pinned Clyde to my cage, I saw something real—something raw and wild—flash in his eyes. “We’re running out of time, Delilah.” The urgency in his voice stole my breath. “If you can’t perform by next week, they will take you aw—”

  Gallagher’s mouth snapped shut so quickly I wasn’t sure what I’d almost heard. “They’ll sell you,” he finished. “And I won’t be able to protect you.”

  “Protect me? Is that what you think you’re doing?”

  His gray eyes widened almost imperceptibly. “That’s all I’ve done since you got here. I’m making enemies. I’m disobeying orders. I’m breaking laws, Delilah. All to keep the old man from selling you to a collector who’ll ring every dime he can out of you, then let some sick bastard pay for the privilege of finally ending your miserable life.”

  “Why do you care?”

  Gallagher blinked, and whatever I’d seen in his eyes was gone, suddenly concealed by the stone facade he wore as easily as other men wore sunglasses. He let go of the cage and stepped back. “That isn’t relevant.”

  “It is.” If I knew I could trust him—that he wasn’t just manipulating me into performing to save his job—I might be willing to compromise. “Tell me the truth.”

  “I’ve never lied to you.”

  “Then don’t start now. Talk, Gallagher.”

  He exhaled slowly, then met my gaze from across the tent. “I was wrong when I said you were just like all the other beasts in cages. You’re not. You came to the carnival passing for human, and you could have left the same way. The only reason you’re not at home in your own bed, wearing your own clothes right now, is that you exposed yourself to help Geneviève.”

  “I didn’t know what I was doing.” I shook my head. “I didn’t know what it would cost me. I can’t take credit—”

  “You’d have done it even if you’d known,” he insisted, though I kept shaking my head. “That’s who you are. I’ve seen that in a dozen other, smaller ways since you got here. That draws people to you, Delilah. It makes assholes like Clyde want to conquer you, and it makes people like Claudio want to be your friend. It makes me want to keep you safe, even if that costs me things you can’t possibly understand.” And he clearly wasn’t going to explain those things. “But the only way for either of us to protect you is to make sure you are valuable to the menagerie. You have to do what Metzger wants.”

  I was starting to concur, but not for reasons he’d like. I’d probably have significantly fewer chances to escape from a private collection than I would from the menagerie, where I was routinely removed from my cage and my handlers were often distracted by other duties.

  “Gallagher, I don’t know how. It’s only happened that once, when Jack was hurting Genni.”

  “I’m still trying to figure that out.” Gallagher stared down at me, frustration written in every line on his face. “Why is your transformation linked to the torture of a werewolf pup you’d never even met a few days ago?”

  I had no answer. What did Genni have to do with—

  “Maybe it isn’t.” I sat straighter as a fresh memory fell into place. “I felt it coming on in the travel trailer yesterday, but no one was being hurt.” Though we were all suffering.

  Gallagher came closer, and his shadow stretched across the ground. “What were you thinking about?”

  “Rommily. Claudio was telling me about what happened to her, and I got so furious I couldn’t think about anything else, and...” My words trailed off when I realized Gallagher was staring at me in astonishment. “What?”

  “I can’t believe I didn’t see it.” He stepped back and pressed both hands to the sides of his faded red ball cap. “The first time I saw you, I felt all this rage in you, but I misunderstood...”

  I shook my head. He wasn’t making any sense. “I wasn’t angry until I saw Jack take a cattle prod to Geneviève.” And I wasn’t sure how he could have “felt” my anger, either way.

  “The fury was always there,” he insisted, and eyes that had previously looked as gray and unyielding as stone suddenly shone like polished steel. “You have an endless font of it, Delilah. You are made of rage and power, all tied up in this deceptively delicate form.” His focus never wandered south of my face, but I felt his attention like a tangible force. “Your beast was just waiting for the right moment, for something to call it out of you.”

  “You’re saying my inner monster is rage?” That didn’t make any sense, but I could hardly think it through because he was still looking at me as if I were the only candle burning in a dark room—the first glimpse of light strong enough to lead the way.

  As if I were something he needed.

  “Yes, rage, but rage with a purpose. It’s been there all along.” Gallagher clutched the decorative frame of my cage and stared down into my eyes with an intensity I’d never seen from him. Or from anyone else. “This whole time I’ve been looking for your species, but it’s not that simple. Nothing with you is ever simple. But my point is that you could be any species. You could be a siren, or an oracle, or—”

  His sentence ended so abruptly I thought he might have bitten his tongue off with it.

  Gallagher turned, and in three huge steps he’d crossed the tent and snatched his bag from the table. He rummaged through the front pocket, then came back clutching a folded sheet of paper in one huge fist, his gray eyes bright with fervor. He unfolded the page and held it up a foot from my face on the other side of the steel mesh.

  The first thing I noticed was how deep and worn the creases were, as if he’d folded and unfolded the paper many times. Then I saw the date at the top. “This is a week old.” My voice sounded strange. Hollow.

  “Nine days,” he corrected, and I realized I’d lost track of time. But by then I’d found the box at the bottom, where the result of my blood test was printed.

  I blinked. Then I blinked again, but the words didn’t change.

  “This says I’m...human.” But that couldn’t be right. No human could do what I’d done to Jack.

  “That’s why they’re running your blood work again.” Gallagher stared down at me. “They don’t believe it either.”

  Confusion warred with shock inside me. I couldn’t think straight. “How long have you had this?”

  “Since your second night in the menagerie.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded.

  “Because I thought it was a mistake, and believing you were human would not have helped you bring out your beast. But the test is right. You’re not a cryptid, Delilah, not that it matters anymore—”

  “You think that doesn’t matter?”

  “—b
ecause what you are transcends species. You’re an ideal. An abstraction.” He gripped the steel wire with his free hand. “You are the incarnation of justice.”

  “Wait. What? I’m human, but I’m also rage...and justice?” He clearly had no idea how little sense he was making.

  Gallagher nodded, his gray eyes shining with feverish excitement. “You’re a furiae, Delilah.”

  “Furiae?” I frowned, thinking back to a class I’d had in college. Not a crypto-veterinary class—a literature elective. “As in, the Erinyes?”

  “Yes.” He grabbed a folding chair from beneath the table and set it in front of my wagon. “Those who avenge unrighted wrongs. That’s you.” He looked so satisfied. Almost euphoric. As if what he’d figured out somehow meant as much to him as it should to me.

  “But the Erinyes aren’t real. They’re just the personification of a concept.” Many, many cryptids were once assumed to be folklore and myths, but the Erinyes... “They’re just symbols, Gallagher. Stories intended to reassure people that justice would be meted out in the afterlife if it was overlooked in this one.”

  “Oh, the Erinyes are real.” He sat in the low chair, and for the first time since we’d met, he had to look up at me. “They’re very rare, though, because they’re not born. They’re made.”

  “Made?” I wasn’t sure how much to believe. I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to believe. How could I be human, yet still have no rights? How likely were the authorities to believe a blood test, when at least fifteen people had seen me turn into a monster? “How are the Erinyes made?”

  “Through sacrifice.” Gallagher cleared his throat and leaned forward in his chair, capturing my gaze as if nothing in the world could mean more than whatever he was about to say. “People think they are masters of the universe because they’ve conquered the skies, and the seas, and the heavens. Because they can kill with the press of a button and speak to anyone else on the planet, anytime they like. But there are things older and wiser than humanity. Things more powerful and significant. Love, and loss, and birth. Pain, and bliss. Vengeance. They’re more than just words, Delilah.” The shine in his eyes was captivating. Practically hypnotic. “They’re inalienable truths, in the most powerful sense of the word, and they’re the only things that mankind can never truly touch, much less own.