My escape would only benefit me.
And without Gallagher there to prevent the worst of the abuse...
I stood, and the metal chair squeaked with the motion. “Gallagher, we can’t go.”
“What?” He looked up from his bag, his forehead furrowed.
“You can send Adira and Nalah over the border but we can’t just leave the rest of them here to suffer. I’m supposed to avenge them, not abandon them.”
“Delilah, there’s nothing else we can do for them. Ruyle already wants me fired, and when Metzger finds out I didn’t break you—that I wasn’t even the one who got you to transmute—he’ll be ready to send me packing. We can’t stay.”
He turned to pick up his bag, but I seized his hand and with it, his attention. “Gallagher, I can’t walk away from this place while they’re all still locked up! They’re just like us. You said you’d be my sword and shield in all things. I thought your word was your honor.”
“And both are beyond reproach.” He set his bag on the ground and glared down at me. “If we stay here, they’ll eventually kill you, even if they have to go through me, and I will have failed. I’m leaving, and I’m taking you with me.”
“No! I’m staying, and so are you. You’re a warrior, right?” I stared up at him, reckless exhilaration firing through me with each beat of my heart.
“You know I am.” He was still scowling, but something stirred behind his eyes in response to my excitement. What moved me would move him, evidently. For the rest of our lives.
“Then why wouldn’t you want to fight? War is all or nothing, right? You take everything, or you lose everything?”
He nodded, and curiosity showed through his stern facade like the bulge of muscles through his sleeves. “When it’s done right, war is a glorious commitment to a cause. The fallen die as heroes. The survivors change the world. There is no more noble commitment.”
“That’s excellent, because I have an idea.” A crazy, dangerous, impractical, and quite possibly ill-conceived idea that would either bring freedom to every sentient, sane captive at Metzger’s or get every last one of us killed. “We’re not going to leave the menagerie. We’re going to take it.”
“Take the menagerie? As in mutiny?” His narrowed eyes said he couldn’t tell whether or not I was joking.
“Yes. A hostile takeover. A mini-emancipation. Blood will be shed, and wrongs will be righted. This is our fight, Gallagher. This is what we were meant to do.”
“Delilah...” Each syllable of my name was weighted with his skepticism. “Even if we could take control of Metzger’s—and what glorious bloodshed that would be—what are we going to do with a caravan full of cryptids?”
“Any chance the sultan would let us drive the whole menagerie over the border?” I was mostly kidding—I hadn’t thought that far ahead—but Gallagher frowned as he leaned back against my wagon, clearly considering the possibility.
“Not literally. But if the captives were all willing to swear fealty, and there was good press to be gained...” He shrugged. “Maybe, if I pitch the idea with just the right spin.”
Anticipation tingled in my every nerve ending. “Can you go back into town and give that your best shot?”
He nodded. “But I need to know exactly what you’re planning here, Delilah.”
“We’re a couple of days from the border, right?” I said, and he nodded again. “You can pass for human, obviously, and I am human.” Not that my species had mattered, in the end. “Lenore passed for, like, twenty years, and there are others who could pass for employees with sunglasses, or hats, or work gloves, just long enough to get us to the border.” I stood, grateful for the freedom to pace as I thought. “And if we could get Alyrose on board, with her skills and supplies...”
Gallagher took my arm before I could pace very far. “Speaking of Alyrose, what are you planning to do with all the human employees? I can only kill the ones who directly threaten you.”
“And those will be yours to tear apart. But with any luck, the rest will simply walk away,” I said, and when his frown deepened, I patted his massive left biceps. “How much do you know about encantados?”
Gallagher’s frown lingered for a second, then his eyes widened, and I knew he’d caught on. “We have two. Renata and Raul. As a species, they’re very smart, very curious, and very mischievous. In captivity, they’re kept heavily sedated, which only works because they transmute into dolphins instinctively every time they hit the water.”
“How long would it take for the sedation to wear off?”
He shrugged. “I administer a specially formulated dose every twelve hours.”
“There’s no vet?” No wonder I’d never been examined by one.
He shrugged. “Cryptid vets bill as much per hour as a lawyer, and even if we could afford one full-time, they don’t typically favor the camper-and-pie-car lifestyle. The old man brings one in every three months to perform the required quarterly exams and reassess all the dosages.”
For the first time since graduation, I could actually see a potential use for my crypto-biology degree. “So, if you were to skip a dose, both encantados would be fully functional in less than twenty-four hours?”
“Functional, and a hazard to every human in the room. There’s a good reason the name of their species means enchant or bewitch.” Gallagher’s eyes widened as understanding dawned in them. He studied me with what looked suspiciously like respect, not for the beast that could make men spill their own blood, but for the idea that might let us take the menagerie without shedding a single innocent drop. “You may be the most brilliant woman I’ve ever met.”
“I may be? Come back when you’re sure.” I climbed into my cage, for once eager to be locked up so he could put in motion the first stage of my plan.
“I’m sure,” Gallagher said as he slid the door closed between us. He placed one hand against the mesh, and I laid mine against it, fascinated by the combination of warm flesh and cold steel. “It is my profound honor to serve at your side.”
Gallagher
The name of the town closest to this latest county fairgrounds escaped Gallagher. He’d seen too many in the past year to count, but what he did remember about this particular town was that it lacked pay telephones entirely. The day before, he’d been forced to purchase a six-pack of some beer he’d never heard of for the privilege of using the convenience store’s line for a call to Mexico.
If he hadn’t mastered the art of the phone card nine months before, he might have had to wait and pray that the next town had a telephone booth.
The bell over the convenience store door chimed, and an unnaturally cold blast hit Gallagher as he stepped inside. The air smelled stale—like artificial coolant and dust—and as he headed for a row of cold glass cases at the back, he was struck with the sudden certainty that the owner was preserving himself through refrigeration just as surely as he was preserving his beer and soft drinks.
At the register, Gallagher set a small carton of cheap beer on the counter, along with a twenty-dollar bill, and the man behind the register handed him the wireless phone handset without being asked. He remembered Gallagher from the day before.
Few people ever forgot the man in the red cap.
Gallagher dialed from memory as he walked to the other side of the store, and someone answered on the second ring. “Gallagher for Sultan Bruhier,” the menagerie handler said, without waiting for a greeting from the other end.
An unfamiliar voice replied, “One moment,” and a second later Bruhier was on the line.
“You’ve called for a decision about your friend’s passage?” The sultan rarely wasted time with pleasantries, and Gallagher respected that about him.
“Actually, I have a revised proposal for you. I will deliver your daughter and her companion as promised, and if you grant Delila
h passage under the same terms you’ve granted me—admission with no obligation of fealty—we promise to bring with us up to three dozen others prepared to swear allegiance in exchange for citizenship.”
For a long moment, the sultan was silent. “You’re asking for additional passage for thirty-six?” His lyrical accent stressed odd sounds and syllables.
“I’m offering up to thirty-six new citizens to add strength to your kingdom and honor to your name. The whole world will know that the generous merid sultan has taken mercy upon a host of abused refugees. Your people will further adore you. There is nothing but benefit for you in this arrangement.”
“Yet not enough,” the sultan insisted. “I will accept your terms with one condition. You must also bring me a human named Christopher Ruyle. My eyes and ears in the U.S. tell me he is responsible for the purchase of Adira and her companion.”
Gallagher could not verify the truth of that statement, but Ruyle was far from innocent. “Agreed. Look for us in two days, at the crossing near Laredo.”
“If I may ask,” Bruhier said, before Gallagher could hang up, “who is this woman, that you would go through so much trouble for her?”
“She is...” Gallagher considered his reply carefully. “Worthy. I have offered myself as her sword and shield, and she has accepted.”
“You’re her champion?” the sultan said, surprise thick in each word, and Gallagher gave an affirmative grunt. “Does she mean that much to you?”
“She means that much to the world.” Gallagher pressed the button that would end the call, then he returned the telephone to the clerk. As he walked out into the heat of the day without the beer he’d paid for, Gallagher reveled in a private moment of triumph.
He’d been waiting for this day his entire life.
Millions flee the country as the federal government begins assigning cryptids to walled-in reservations, to protect the human community from the threat of further attack.
—January 2, 1987 headline in the Toledo Tribune
Delilah
They came for Geneviève in the middle of the afternoon. Two of them—handlers I recognized but couldn’t name—with Ruyle driving the transport flatbed. Genni began to whine the minute she saw him. She’d been in wolf form all day.
Claudio growled when Ruyle got out of the truck and took a tranquilizer rifle from the gun rack mounted behind the seats. “Settle down, Papa,” the lot supervisor said. “You know how this works.”
Claudio’s growl only deepened, and when a feline yowl joined in, I looked up to see that Zyanya and Payat were both in cheetah form, pacing back and forth in their cages, while on the other side of Payat, Mahsa sat on her haunches, growling, her black tail swishing angrily behind her.
“Fuss all you want,” Ruyle said. “This is happening.”
When the handlers approached Genni’s cage, she huddled in one corner, her silver tail curled protectively around the rest of her body. One of the handlers unlocked the side panel and slid it open just far enough for Ruyle to stick the barrel of his rifle inside.
Genni whined and trembled. Claudio paced and growled. Zyanya, Payat, and Mahsa made deep, angry bleating sounds. The trolls and ogres grunted. From farther down wagon row, metal clanked and clanged as the other captives rattled cage doors in protest.
The communal outrage made my heart ache.
Ruyle fired his rifle. Genni yelped, and her whole body twitched. She blinked twice. Then her head sank onto her front paws and her eyelids fell.
The supervisor lowered his gun and the other handler slid the cage door all the way open. He reached inside, hesitantly, and when Genni didn’t move, he grabbed her left rear paw and pulled her to the opening. The handlers carried her to the cage strapped onto the flatbed of the transport truck, and Ruyle followed, still aiming the rifle, just in case.
When the cage slammed shut behind his daughter, Claudio howled. The sound was an outpouring of anger and grief, and it pierced me like a spear straight through my soul.
One of the handlers slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine, and the cacophony from wagon row rose into an earsplitting din of growls, howls, grunts, screams, and clanking steel. When the truck drove off and Genni was gone, I sat with my knees pulled up to my chest, and I only realized I was crying when tears fell onto my arm.
Claudio howled for his lost daughter until he lost his voice, as well.
* * *
“Claudio,” I whispered, as the thud of Eryx’s hooves faded into the distance, along with the squeal of the loose wheel beneath Payat’s cage. There was no one left on wagon row now except Lenore and Finola, in the crate to my right, and Zyanya and Claudio across from us. “Can you hear me?” I asked softly, but the werewolf didn’t even look up from the corner of his cage.
“He can hear you,” Zyanya said, and I realized I would have to take her word for it.
“You’re going to get Genni back,” I said, and the cheetah shifter clucked her tongue to scold me.
“Don’t give him false hope. How can he get her back when he can’t even get out of that cage?”
“I’m going to get him out,” I whispered, and Zyanya snorted. “I have a plan, and it’s going to work,” I insisted. “This time tomorrow, we will all be free.”
Zyanya made another rude sound from deep in her throat and Claudio didn’t even open his eyes, but from my right, Lenore cleared her throat. “Do you mean it?”
“Yes. Be ready,” I told her. “We’ll need your help.”
Hours later, I realized none of them had asked me who else “we” included.
* * *
“We’ve only got an hour before you’re due in Alyrose’s trailer for costuming,” Gallagher said, lifting the sidewall as he stepped into my tent.
“Did you talk to the merid...king? Or whatever?” I asked, the instant the canvas fell closed behind him.
“He’s a sultan. His name is Bruhier.” Gallagher pulled a bottle of water and a cylindrical silver package from his backpack, then dropped the bag on the table beside the tent entrance. “And, yes, I called him from town. He’s agreed to everything we asked for—”
Relief washed tension from my limbs, and I had to fight the urge to squeal with excitement.
“—on the condition that we deliver Chris Ruyle to him.” Gallagher opened the tray slot and slid the bottle of water through, along with what turned out to be a hot dog fresh from the midway.
“Thanks,” I said, my mouth already watering from the scents of beef and mustard. “Why does the sultan want Ruyle?”
“So he can take the pound of flesh he feels he’s owed. Though no doubt it’ll be much more than an actual pound. Ruyle is the one who bought Adira and Nalah for the menagerie,” Gallagher explained.
I swallowed my first blissful bite, then gulped from the bottle of water. “So you’re just going to hand him over to be tortured?”
“Yes.” Gallagher didn’t even blink. “That’s the price for your freedom and for that of every other sentient cryptid at Metzger’s.”
Ruyle was an asshole and a generally reprehensible human being, but death by torture at the hands of a djinn sultan? At least Clyde’s death had been quick. If brutal and messy. “There has to be another way.”
“He’s not innocent, Delilah.”
“I know, but torture? Are you sure he deserves it?” I was supposed to be avenging injustice, not perpetuating it.
Gallagher frowned. “He sanctioned what Clyde did to Genni to bring out your beast. He’s the one who’ll be torturing Claudio tonight. And he’s the one who suggested bringing in one of Zyanya’s cubs from the petting zoo, if hurting Claudio doesn’t work.”
“Zyanya has kids?” How had I not known? In the two weeks I’d been with the menagerie, she hadn’t been taken to see them once, and they certainly hadn
’t been brought to her.
“Three-year-old twins. A boy and a girl. And Ruyle would see them electrocuted just to make you perform.”
My dinner went tasteless on my tongue and in spite of my empty stomach, I had to force myself to swallow. Fire burned in my gut at the thought of Ruyle anywhere near Zyanya’s babies. He was a monster. The furiae stirring inside me agreed.
“Give him to the sultan.”
Gallagher laid one hand on the beautifully carved frame of my wagon. “I was thinking we could hand him over in your cage.”
“Poetic justice. I like it.” I took another bite of my hot dog, then spoke around it. “Why didn’t you just use Clyde’s cell to call the sultan? It’s not like he’ll be around to check the call list.”
“The fae can’t use cell phones. Or computers. Or most other electronic devices. They crash about a minute after I start pushing buttons, which is one of the reasons my camper is thirty years old. That, and it was cheap.” He curled his fingers through the mesh side of my cage.
“Wow. No electronics?”
He nodded. “After millennia of hiding from humanity—often in plain sight—the avoidance of electronic technology will no doubt be what someday exposes us. On an individual basis, at least.”
I chewed my last bite of hot dog while I thought about that, and I decided that most of the fae were safe for the moment—no state in the union had enough manpower to go door to door checking for cell phones and digital cable.
“Where do we stand with the encantados?” I asked as I slid the hot dog wrapper to Gallagher through the tray slot.
“Both received an injection of pure saline at noon today. By midnight, any human who gets within earshot of them will completely lose touch with reality.”