“No, he left during the first round,” Pickering said, as Wilson took a sip from a glass of red wine. “But we enjoyed the exhibition.”
Willem swallowed his frustration and forced his jaw to unlock. “I’m glad to hear that.”
“Enjoyed may be overstating it a bit,” Senator Wilson said. “But I was quite entertained, especially by that last match. We both expected the hound to bite several chunks out of the fellow in the hat, but he hardly got a taste at all.”
“Yes. Gallagher is formidable.” He followed the senator’s gaze to the broken body of the hound. “We hope to get several months out of him, at least.”
“And what will you do with him afterward?” Pickering asked. “I assume you’d be willing to donate the remains of such a rare find?”
“Of course. We have a standing agreement with a research facility in Atlanta, and they have permission to report all their findings to the government.”
“Who was the creature in the lit window?” Pickering used his wineglass to point to the box where Willem had arranged for Delilah to be displayed. “From across the stadium, she looked like a normal woman wearing a costume.”
“And a collar,” his wife added.
“I assure you she is anything but normal. She’s a furiae. We acquired her at the same time as Gallagher, and she seems to be the only thing that motivates him.”
“They’re a couple?” Mrs. Pickering asked, as she plucked a bacon-wrapped scallop from the tray of a passing waitress. “Some cryptids form couples, right? Like the ones that can pass for human?”
“Some do,” her husband said. “But scientists believe most of them to be incapable of complex emotions, hon. They’re driven by procreative instinct and base needs, much like any household pet or zoo animal. Very few of them mate for life.”
“Yet he was willing to kill for her.” Mrs. Pickering shrugged. “Sounds pretty romantic to me.”
“They’re simplistic creatures, dear,” her husband insisted.
Willem knew better. But he never made a point that would cost him money.
Wilson turned to Willem with a frown. “Regardless, what you’re really saying is that you need this furiae because your collar can’t control him?”
“It can, and it does.” Willem’s posture relaxed and his speech quickened with the opportunity to discuss his technological innovation. “At the first sign of aggression from him—a surge of either testosterone, adrenaline or a species-specific hormone we haven’t yet assigned a name to—the collar paralyzes him completely. Our difficulty lies not in preventing violence from him outside the ring, but in eliciting it for the sake of the fight.”
Pickering gave him a puzzled look over the rim of his glass. “Didn’t you say he needs to kill to survive?”
“Yes. But he doesn’t like to perform. So tonight we used Delilah—the furiae—as both a reward and a threat. To motivate him. But make no mistake. The collar can neutralize any cryptid. Under any circumstance. I’m so confident in my technology that I routinely take the sand with them, to introduce them, with nothing standing between me and the beasts but my collars.”
“We noticed that.” Wilson nodded. But his eye was drawn back up to that same box seat. “What exactly is a furiae? Another species of fae?”
“No.” Willem considered his phrasing, well aware that an outright lie could come back to haunt him, if he were granted an audience on Capitol Hill. “She’s a beast driven by revenge. Under normal circumstances, she looks so ordinary as to be nearly useless here at the Spectacle. But when she gets mad, she turns into a monster. Unfortunately, as with Gallagher, we can easily neutralize her, but we can’t make her perform on command.”
“That’s a shame.” Pickering drained the last of his wine. “I hope you didn’t pay much for her.”
“I think a revenge cryptid sounds quite useful.” His wife transferred her weight onto the ball of her left foot and pulled her right heel from the sand. “I’d unleash her the next time one of the ladies from my garden club gets bitchy.”
Her husband and his colleague laughed, but Willem was struck silent with a sudden epiphany. “I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me. Please enjoy the rest of your evening, and let me know if you’d like to see another show. On the house, of course.” With that, he headed straight for the champion’s entrance.
His wife watched him go from the other side of the ring.
Delilah
“Where are we going?” I demanded.
Woodrow and Bowman still wore gloves as they half led, half dragged me down a wide concrete hallway deep in the bowels of the stadium. The floor was rough but warm against my bare feet, the way a basement is always warm in the winter, because of the insulation of the earth.
Based on the noise echoing above and around us from the massive after-party going on in the stands, my guess was that we were somewhere far beneath the top-tier box from which I’d been forced to inspire Gallagher’s victory.
“Shouldn’t I be headed back to the dormitory?”
“Not tonight,” Bowman said, and I glanced at Woodrow just in time to catch the censuring look he shot his subordinate.
“Why not?” Would Lala and Mirela spend the entire night worrying about me in silence?
Should they be worried?
We turned to the left into a hallway lined with steel doors nearly twice as wide and a third again as tall as I was. Trolls, ogres and giants hunched over to peek through the windows in about half the doors, but the other rooms appeared to be empty. They also appeared to be much taller and wider than the holding cells I’d spent my first few hours at the Spectacle in.
This was where they kept the poor creatures forced to fight in the ring. The “bipedal beasts,” anyway.
A third of the way down the hall, something slammed into a door as we passed it. I jumped, then flinched again when Oki, the adlet from Metzger’s, rammed the glass again. How many of the other menagerie beasts had been forced to—
“Eryx!” I had to swallow a sob when I saw the gentle minotaur watching me through one of the windows. “Has he already fought?”
Neither of the handlers answered, but a gash had scabbed over on Eryx’s forehead, beneath his left horn, and there was a chip missing from the tip of his right. I couldn’t see how much other damage had been done to him in the ring, but he was alive and upright.
“Rommily’s okay!” I shouted as they dragged me past. “Everyone’s looking after her!”
“The minotaur and the oracle?” Bowman snorted, and I realized I’d accidentally given them something to use against two of my friends.
When we reached the fourth room on the right, Bowman opened the door and pushed me inside.
Woodrow aimed his remote at me to program the door restriction. “Take a shower,” he said. “Someone will come by with food and a change of clothes.” He closed the door, and I got no further explanation for my isolation.
At the back of the cell was a doorway to a bathroom, where the facilities were sufficiently large and sturdy enough for any creature that could have required the twelve-foot-tall space. A toothbrush and a roll of toothpaste sat on the edge of the stainless-steel sink basin. At the end of the bathroom, the floor slanted toward a drain beneath a basic showerhead.
A soap dispenser was built into the wall, but unlike the facilities in my dormitory, there was no shampoo. And there were no towels. Evidently the beasts were expected to air dry.
Nausea made my stomach churn as I looked around the cell. Why am I here? Was this the arena’s equivalent of the private rooms hidden by draperies in the main building? Had one of the guests requested time alone with me?
Surely Vandekamp wouldn’t take such a risk. Unless he’d figured out that I couldn’t avenge myself. But how would he...?
A bitter lump formed at the back of my t
hroat. I’d told them about Gallagher’s oath. There would be no reason for him to swear to protect me, if I could protect myself.
But if this was some kind of big spender, after-the-fight service for a wealthy patron, why had they told me wash off all the makeup? Why had they put me in a concrete room in the basement? Was the cell part of the experience for some sick fight fanatic?
Maybe I was reading too much into the cell. Maybe the handlers were just too lazy to walk me all the way across the grounds to the dorm.
I stripped off the skimpy costume, then turned on the shower and stood beneath the stream of water. It wasn’t hot, but it wasn’t cold either, so I counted my blessings.
It took five handfuls of scentless hand soap to wash off all the body glitter and scrub my face clean, and another three to wash all the stiffening and holding products from my hair.
While I was rinsing my head for the third time, the cell door squealed open from the other room. I assumed someone had come with food and clothing—and hopefully a towel—until that eerie feeling that I was not alone didn’t fade when the door closed again.
I stood frozen under the lukewarm shower, my heart pounding almost hard enough to hear.
When no one spoke, I turned off the water and stood dripping on the floor, desperately wishing for a towel. Or some clothes. Or a weapon. I stood as still as I could, listening. And finally I heard a single deep exhalation, as if the breather had run out of patience.
“Who’s there?” I demanded, in as strong a voice as I could muster. “This room is already occupied.” As if there were any chance in hell that they’d accidentally put someone else in the cell with me.
“Delilah?”
Gallagher’s voice was such a relief that I burst into tears. I rushed out of the bathroom, so eager to verify what my ears had told me that I forgot for a second that I was naked and dripping wet.
He stood in the middle of the floor, still dressed only in his cap and the tattered pants he’d fought in, now extra tattered from Argo’s claws. Sand clung to his feet, and his arms were covered with welted snake bites. In his left hand, he clutched a bundle of clean clothing.
I froze the minute his gaze landed on me. His eyes widened when he took in my vulnerable state, then his focus snapped back up to my face with the same professionalism he’d always displayed as my handler in the menagerie. Only now there was no professional detachment. He no longer had to pretend he didn’t care about me. That he hadn’t pledged his entire existence to serving at my side and protecting me with his own life.
Gallagher dropped the clean pants he was holding and shook out the shirt, then held it out to me. “Here. Put this on.”
I tugged it over my head without argument. As soon as the huge garment settled around my bare thighs, he pulled me into a hug.
“They wouldn’t let me see you after the party,” he said into the wet hair on the top of my head. “They wouldn’t even tell me if you were still alive, after what you did to that guard.”
“I’m fine,” I assured him. “They said you killed two men.”
“The slaughter would have been much greater, if not for the tranquilizers.”
I took a step back and looked up at him. “I asked you not to make trouble.”
“I swore to rip apart anyone who lays a hostile hand on you—to litter the ground with the corpses of our enemies—and my word is my honor, Delilah.”
“I know.”
“I cannot watch them humiliate and abuse you. You can’t ask me to. You accepted me as your sword and your shield and that’s—”
“For life. I know. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. But we have to come to some kind of compromise. If you do that again, they’ll kill you.”
“I’m not going to break my vow just because it’s become inconvenient.” His scowl was heavy with censure. “That’s not how this works.”
“Your death is more than an inconvenience, Gallagher.” But it wasn’t something he feared. Every redcap hopes to die in battle, so I’d have to put a different spin on the issue. “You can’t protect me from the grave.”
“You’re suggesting I stand by and watch them hurt you?” His body trembled with stifled rage at just the thought.
“No. Nor am I suggesting that you break your vow. I’m just asking you to defer your vengeance until we can use it wisely. To help get us all out of here. Why die for a small victory—one or two unworthy lives—when you can fight for greater honor on a much bigger scale?” I could tell from how dark and eager his focus became that I’d hit the right note.
“During our escape?”
“That’s what I’m hoping. They aren’t prepared for cryptids who understand their technology. If I can get ahold of one of their remotes, or find wherever the doors are programmed, or something like that, I think we’ll have a shot.”
“But none of that will matter if they kill you. I can’t let that happen.”
“I’m not asking you to. If they try to kill me, do what you have to do. But anything short of that, I need you to prevent using your head, rather than your fists. Or add it to the list of deferred grievances.”
His thick, dark brows furrowed.
“Promise me, Gallagher.”
“You know I can’t—”
“Then promise you’ll try.”
“Fine,” he growled. “You have my word that if you are in nonlethal danger, I will try to prevent you from getting hurt using means not fatal to our captors.”
“Thank you.” I glanced around the concrete cell, relieved to have his promise. “Is this your room?”
“If such a place can be called a room. Though I’ve certainly lived under worse conditions.”
What bothered me wasn’t the bare concrete cell, but the collar, which evidently worked just fine on him, in spite of the fae’s tendency to short-circuit electronic gadgets.
“As glad as I am to see you... Why am I here, Gallagher?”
He took a step back and glanced at the floor, but I could hear the answer in what he wasn’t saying.
“I’m a reward, aren’t I? Because you won.” As far as they knew, if they didn’t reward him for his cooperation, he might have less incentive to fight for me.
“Like most humans, they seem incapable of understanding the true nature of our relationship.” Redcaps considered the lifelong bond between a champion and the one he served to be the most sacred of unions, held even above marriages. Suggesting that he and I were sexually involved was an insult to the entire concept of a fear dearg champion.
“Screw ’em.” I scrounged up a smile, and he must have heard it in my voice, because he looked up again. “I’m glad for the time with you, no matter what they think we’re going to do with it. Are you okay?” I took his hand and pulled his arm out straight.
Gallagher didn’t flinch, though the motion must have hurt. His arms were both swollen from a multitude of snake bites. “I’m fine. They gave me an injection of antivenom. I told them I didn’t need it, but they don’t listen.”
“Well, you probably did need it.”
Gallagher shrugged. “I’m not human. The bites would be gone in the morning either way.” His focus dropped to my throat, and he reached out to brush one finger over the nick from Bowman’s knife. “I’ll kill him.”
I didn’t bother to argue. Bowman had sealed his fate the moment he’d threatened me. “I know. Eventually,” I reminded him.
“Let me shower, then we’ll talk.” He stepped past me into the bathroom, and I sat on his sleep mat facing the other direction to give him as much privacy as possible in a suite with no doors.
Gallagher emerged from the shower minutes later smelling like soap from the wall dispenser. Beads of water still rolled down his chest and his scrub pants clung to his legs with the moisture. His arms already looked better, either be
cause of the antivenom or because he was fae.
His cap still sat on his head, but it didn’t even look damp. My gaze lingered there, and I realized that he no longer bothered glamouring it to make it look like a baseball cap. Or maybe he couldn’t, because of the collar. “Why didn’t you didn’t take the hound’s blood?”
“Because I didn’t deserve it. Argos wasn’t my enemy. I killed him to keep you safe, and I’m sure I’ll have to do that again, but I won’t accept any personal benefit from it unless I have no choice.”
I couldn’t drag my gaze from his face, and again I was both confused and fascinated by the disparities that seemed to define him. He was biologically driven to shed blood and required to practically bathe in it in order to survive. Yet he took no personal pleasure in the act, even when his body felt physically satiated by it.
His restraint and self-discipline were boundless, yet if I were in imminent danger, he would tear through everything standing between us until I was safe. Or he was dead.
“When will you fight again?”
“From what I’ve heard, there are two events a week, but no one competes in both of them, because if we don’t have time to properly heal, the fights will be too short. Eryx fought a couple of days ago. He and I both currently stand as champions.”
“Why did Vandekamp shave your head?” I asked as he sat on the other end of the mat, leaning against the wall.
“They did that while I was unconscious. I think they were looking for identifying marks. I woke up bald and in chains. But the collar was a surprise.” The cautious way he ran one finger over the smooth steel told me that he’d already been shocked by it more than once.
“So it’s effective on you?”
“Infuriatingly so. The moment I even think about raising a fist, this contraption shoots some kind of electric signal throughout my body, paralyzing me.”
I frowned. “It doesn’t just cause pain? The collar paralyzes you every time?”
Gallagher nodded. “Ever since I killed two handlers at that party.”
“Because pain didn’t stop you.”