Читать книгу Menagerie - Rachel Vincent - Страница 14

Delilah

My ears roared with my own pulse as my friends followed me through the low entrance into the soaring tent, where a circle of faux-vintage wagon cages surrounded a bright red circus ring. The ring was empty except for a tall stool in the center, dramatically illuminated by a stark spotlight. Unoccupied bleachers lined the shadowy perimeter of the space, set up for a show to come later that night.

The farm scent was much less noticeable in the hybrid tent, where all the exhibits were at least part human, but there was yet more hay beneath our feet and the prevailing ambient noise was still the whisper of paws against hard surfaces and the occasional clomp of hooves.

Like the wagons in the bestiary, those in the hybrid tent had solid steel—or iron?—end panels, complete with massive, heavy-looking couplings with which they could be connected to the other cars. In theory. However, the rust on the hitches made me doubt that they were ever hooked to anything for very long.

Though we couldn’t see inside the cars with their end panels facing us, we could see into the wagons across the ring, where vaguely humanoid beings paced, slouched, or sat in the corners of their cages, wearily trying to ignore their audience.

A woman in a red sequined leotard and red-trimmed black top hat stepped forward when we got to the entrance of the ring, defined by padded crimson ropes strung between two shiny metal posts. “Welcome to the human hybrids tent, where every genetic atrocity you can imagine is on display to satisfy your curiosity!” Her name tag read Wendy, and she was cradling something in the crook of her left arm.

“Oh!” Shelley rushed toward the woman and the small bundle she held. “He doesn’t look so atrocious!”

Wendy gave her a slick, indulgent smile. “No, this little guy is damn near adorable.” She leaned into the light and I saw that she held an infant satyr, whose furry brown goat legs ended in tiny hooves. His chubby little belly and everything north of it was human, except the tiny horns growing from the sides of his skull.

I’d never seen anything cuter in my life.

“His mother just fed him, and I was about to take him back to the petting zoo.” Wendy twisted toward the circle of cages with hardly a glance at her young charge. “His mother’s the one at the back of—”

“Oh, can I hold him first?” Shelley asked, already reaching for the infant.

“I...um...” Wendy sputtered, obviously unsure how to answer. “I guess. Just for a second.” She laid the child in my best friend’s arms, while Rick and Brandon watched, dumbfounded.

“His fur tickles.” Shelley ran one finger down his fuzzy shin and over his hoof, but the child’s eyes never fluttered. He didn’t even seem to feel the touch.

“Why isn’t he moving?” I asked Wendy.

She shrugged. “He has a full belly. He’s passed out cold.”

That much was true, but it had nothing to do with the state of his stomach. I gently pulled back the baby’s left eyelid, then his right. “He’s not full, he’s sedated.” I frowned up at Wendy. “Why would you sedate an infant?” I demanded. Brandon put one hand on my shoulder to calm me, embarrassed by what he no doubt saw as an irrational tantrum on my part, but I shrugged him off. “He’s not a threat. He’s a baby.”

Wendy’s patronizing smile faltered. “If the reaping taught us anything, it’s that a threat can come in any size.” She took the baby back, and with it, her bright, cheery expression, which now looked as false as her ridiculously long, ridiculously red fingernails. “Now, if you’d like to see the kind of monster this little guy will grow into—” she swept her empty arm toward the wagon car on our left “—start here and follow the circle counterclockwise.”

My gaze followed the path formed between the outer loop of wagons and the inner, twelve-inch-high circus ring. Several other customers were clustered at various points on the path.

“When you get to the far side of the circle, go through the gate to the adjoining tent for a look at our special exhibits.”

Rick’s eyes brightened. “Is that where you keep the mermaids?”

She nodded and gave him an almost intimate smile, as if she were letting us in on a special secret. “Along with a couple of our other rare specimens. Including the Brazilian encantados—dolphin shape-shifters—and our world-famous minotaur.”

Brandon shoved Rick’s shoulder. “I told you there were mermaids!”

Wendy’s smile grew, and she was now ignoring me completely. “Just make sure you stay on the path and out of the center ring.”

“Why? What happens there?” Shelley asked.

“At the eight-o’clock show, one of the werewolves will do a live shift. I’ve seen it a million times, and it’s still incredible. You can’t miss it!” She laughed at Shelley’s worried expression. “They’re chained the whole time, even inside the safety cages, and they’re surrounded by armed handlers, too.” She gave each of us a full-color glossy pamphlet. “And the ten-o’clock show is stunning!” She gestured toward the ring with a familiar, wide-armed wave. “The draco sets two rings on fire and the cat shifters jump through them.” Her arm rose gracefully to take in the soaring ceiling of the tent. “They put a bird net around the whole thing, and the harpies make several breathtaking dives. I guarantee you’ve never seen anything like it. It’s the highlight of the evening.”

I stared at the pamphlet. I wanted to see the draco breathe fire and the harpies swoop and dive, but wanting something didn’t give one the right to have it. While I could rationalize my willingness to walk through passive exhibits I found fascinating yet morally repulsive, I could not justify sitting through a show in which sentient creatures were forced to perform against their will.

Though the prices Metzger’s was able to charge made it clear that I took the minority viewpoint on that.

“Do the shows cost extra?” Rick asked.

“Um...let me see your bracelet.” Wendy glanced at the wrist he held out. “Nope, you guys have the deluxe admission. You can go anywhere and see anything, except for the staff-only and staging areas.”

“Awesome,” Shelley said.

Wendy smiled and wished us a great evening, though her smile staled when it landed on me, then gestured for us to enter the ring. As we approached the first huge circus wagon, I glanced back to find her talking to Gallagher, the handler in the red cap, who’d snapped at me for touching the chimera cage.

They were both watching me.

I made myself turn back to my friends just as Shelley gasped. “He’s so big!”

For a second, I thought she was talking about the huge handler, and I almost nodded in agreement. Then I realized she was staring into the first cage, a silver-trimmed green masterpiece with fleurs-de-lis and stylized howling wolf heads carved into the corners. I hurried to catch up with my friends and as soon as I stepped in front of the first cage, labeled Claudio—Werewolf, I lost my breath.

Claudio was beautiful.

His eyes were golden, like multifaceted bits of amber, and while they were clearly wolf eyes, they contained an obvious understanding—a self-awareness that ordinary wolves’ eyes didn’t have. His fur was thick and silver and glossy, and when he paced into the half of his cage that was lit from the overhead lights, I saw that his silver coat was actually made up of many different shades of black, white, and gray. His fur shifted with each movement, the color rippling and buckling as each individual hair reflected the light at a slightly different angle.

I stared, transfixed.

Claudio growled at us softly, padding back and forth in a cage that was much too confined, because Shelley was right. He was huge.

“I didn’t realize how big they’d be,” Brandon said.

“Ordinary wolves don’t get that large,” I whispered, uncomfortably aware that the shifter could both hear and understand me, assuming he spoke English. “One hundred seventy-five pounds, max, for males. Most are closer to one-fifty.” By contrast, Claudio was two hundred pounds, by my guess—a wolf the size of a grown man—and in spite of an obviously confined lifestyle, he looked lean and powerful.

“The reality isn’t like the old monster movies,” I said, still speaking softly because somehow that felt more respectful of Claudio. “They don’t have superpowers. They’re strong and fast because they’re wolves, but they’re not superstrong, or superfast.”

“Yeah, but even a regular wolf can rip a man’s throat out,” Brandon said, and I couldn’t argue.

I stepped closer to the cage, fascinated, and Claudio snarled at me, lips curled back to reveal a muzzle full of lethally sharp teeth. The lump in my throat threatened to cut off my airway. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, and the growling stopped. Claudio blinked and tilted his head in an oddly human display of surprise, and that stream of guilt trickling through me swelled into a veritable river, until my veins surged with it.

Claudio didn’t belong in a cage, and just by coming to observe him in captivity, I’d become part of the problem.

Anger on his behalf uncoiled like a living thing deep inside me and I gasped at the hot, unsettling sensation in my belly.

“Lilah!” Shelley called as she moved on to the next cart, a green-trimmed silver inverse of the werewolf’s, with full moons carved into the scrolling frame. “There’s a girl wolf!”

Claudio’s snarling resumed, more intensely than before, a reminder that he not only heard everything we said, but understood us, as well.

The plaque on the next circus wagon read Geneviève—Werewolf, but at first glance, the cage appeared empty.

“I don’t...” Something flashed in one dark corner of the cage, two pinpoints of yellow light, there, then gone. Then there again.

Geneviève was blinking.

Curiosity got the better of me and I squinted, trying to get a better look at her, but I could barely make out a small, hunched form in the shadows.

“I can’t see her,” Rick complained. “What good are two-hundred-dollar menagerie tickets if the exhibits are just going to hide?”

“I think she’s scared,” I said. Brandon took my hand, and Shelley nodded mutely.

“She’s scared? She’s the monster. We’re supposed to be scared of her.” Rick scowled, already walking backward toward the next car, which, according to the sign, held one of only four adlets currently living in captivity.

Adlets were the wolf version of a satyr, stuck in an in-between state with both canine and human features. They were also cannibalistic, highly aggressive, and one of the most effective arguments in favor of keeping cryptids locked up.

“Hold on a minute, now, you don’t want to miss this,” a voice called from the darkness behind the werewolf cages. Hay crunched beneath heavy footsteps, and a moment later something clanked against the bars on the rear of Geneviève’s cage.

The light reflecting from her yellow eyes blinked out.

Claudio’s snarling deepened and from our right, the adlet responded with a fierce, eerie howl of its own. On the other side of the ring, hooves and paws scraped the floors of other cages as the captives paced nervously.

Unease gathered in the pit of my stomach and crawled along my arms. My hair stood on end. The hybrids’ anxiety was both obvious and contagious.

“Just a sec.” A handler stepped into the light falling over and through half of Geneviève’s cage. He was a stout, balding man in a Metzger’s T-shirt but no vest, hat, or sequins whatsoever. His shirt was stained with sweat, his boots caked with dirt, and a lit cigarette dangled from his mouth. This was a behind-the-scenes man if I’d ever seen one. He held what looked like a thick stick. “This ought to get her up for you.”

Geneviève whined, and the sound reminded me of a puppy we’d had when I was in middle school, before she’d chewed up the legs of my dad’s favorite chair and he’d made us give her away.

Claudio growled, accompanied by a snarl from the adlet, and when assorted hisses, growls, and the clang of metal rang out from across the ring of circus wagons, I realized that the entire hybrid section of the menagerie knew exactly what was about to happen.

“Last warning, Genni,” the handler said, and though her whining intensified, her eyes did not open. Too late, I realized that the handler’s stick was actually an electrified cattle prod.

“No!” I shouted, and dimly I was aware that I’d squeezed Brandon’s hand hard enough to make him flinch. My other hand had crushed the glossy pamphlet.

“It’s okay,” the handler said. “She makes us do this all the time.” He shoved the cattle prod through a small hole in the steel mesh at the back of her cage.

Geneviève yelped in pain, and Claudio’s growling crescendoed until it was almost all I could hear. The handler jabbed the traumatized werewolf one more time, and she scuttled out of her corner and into the light.

Rage filled me like a bonfire lit deep inside my soul. Geneviève was a little girl, no more than thirteen years old. She trembled on the floor of her cage, knees drawn up to her chest, heels tucked close to her body in an attempt to cover herself. She wrapped her arms around her legs and buried her face in the hollow between her knees, letting her long, tangled blond hair fall down her nearly bare back.

“Oh...” Shelley breathed, clearly horrified, and this time Brandon’s hand clenched mine. None of us seemed to know what to say. Even Rick looked uncomfortable.

“Stand up, honey, and let them get a look at you,” the handler said, as Claudio continued to growl and pace in his cage. The male werewolf couldn’t see Geneviève, but he obviously cared about her, and he clearly knew what was happening. “I’m not going to tell you again,” the handler taunted, his cigarette bobbing with every word, and the girl-wolf began to tremble.

The cattle prod scraped the iron bars on its way into the cage, and Geneviève stood faster than I would have thought possible. She scrambled toward the front of her cage to escape the weapon, her eyes still squeezed closed, as if her refusal to see us somehow meant that we wouldn’t see her.

In that moment, I wished more than anything in the world that I’d made my friends sit through a boring birthday dinner with me instead of using Brandon’s tickets, so that at least we could have spared Geneviève this one moment of humiliation in the string of such instances that no doubt comprised her entire existence.

Genni’s hair brushed the base of her spine and did much more to cover her than the white bikini bottom and tube-style swimsuit top she’d been made to wear. Her arms and legs were thin and her rib cage was plainly visible through her skin. The outsides of her thighs were peppered with pairs of red welts that could only be burns from the cattle prod.

Little Geneviève obviously resisted her handler quite often. I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved by that fact or horrified by it, so I settled for a deep sense of awe that a child so young had survived—so far—an existence I couldn’t even imagine.

On display. Nearly naked. Ordered to perform, and tortured for refusal.

I hated myself for being there to see it.

I started to head to the next cage and relieve Geneviève of the audience that gave her handler the chance to abuse her. But then she opened her eyes, and I was too mesmerized to move.

She had Claudio’s eyes. Exactly. Beautiful golden wolf eyes in a little girl’s face.

“Open your mouth, Genni, and let them have a look at your teeth.” The handler circled the end of her cage, still carrying the cattle prod, and Geneviève scuttled away from him. The name embroidered on his shirt was Jack. The tip of his cigarette glowed red in the shadows.

“Genni...” he warned, and when Claudio started howling, Jack banged on the end of the male wolf’s cage with the fist holding the cigarette. “Pipe down, Papa!”

Understanding crashed over me with a devastating weight and stunning intensity. The father was caged feet from his half-naked daughter, unable to protect her, yet forced to hear every offense heaped on her.

“Genni!” Jack shouted, and she turned on him, hissing, hair flying, her lips curled back to reveal long, sharp canines among the teeth in her otherwise human mouth.

“Ain’t that somthin’?” Jack took a long drag on his cigarette. “Have to file ’em down once a month, or she’s likely to bite a finger off when we groom her.”

“You groom her?” Brandon sounded sick. Shelley looked pale, and Rick was staring at his feet.

“Have to. That one won’t do nothin’ on her own. Has to be prodded into brushin’ her own teeth in the mornin’.” He brandished the forked end of the cattle prod at her and she hissed again, then retreated to the back of her cage. “No, no, don’t sit down, Genni. Give the good people their money’s worth.” Jack turned back to us. “Wanna hear her howl? She’s got a helluva voice, that one. Not much for speaking, but she howls like her mama did.”

“Did?” I didn’t want to ask, but I wanted to know. “She died?”

Jack shrugged, and the tip of his cigarette left squiggles of light dancing in front of my eyes. “Who knows? Sold her off last year.” He turned back to Geneviève, who stood in the darkest corner of her cage. “Give us a howl, darlin’.”

But Genni had had enough. She sank to the floor against the rear wall of her cage and vanished into the shadows again, closing her eyes so the twin points of yellow light disappeared.

Jack moved toward her with the prod again, and the fire burning in my belly burst into a full-body blaze.

“Leave her alone,” I said, and when the entire hybrid tent went silent around me, I realized that my voice sounded...different. Not lower in pitch, but larger somehow. More robust.

Brandon, Rick, and Shelley turned to look at me, their eyes wide. Distantly I realized that my scalp had started to tingle and that the heat blazing deep inside me now threatened to burn me alive.

It was a boundless and terrible heat. And it was not entirely unfamiliar.

Creatures in cages all around the tent turned to stare. Sounds I hadn’t even realized I was hearing suddenly ceased—the snort of something equine; steady small splashes from the special section across the ring; and the constant rustle of feet and hooves on hay.

Jack was too intent on causing pain to notice the sudden silence. “It’s no trouble.” With his back to us, he moved toward the center of the cage to lengthen his reach. “It’s just—” he twisted something at the base of the prod “—a little jolt.” He shoved the cattle prod between the bars and through the mesh, and Geneviève howled when the tip touched her right calf.

“Get the hell away from her!” I shouted, and my hair rose on my scalp, as if the power sparking through me had charged it at the roots. It floated around my head, not in thin tendrils, but in heavy ropes of hair, twisting around my face in my peripheral vision.

My pamphlet fell to the ground. Brandon dropped my hand. Shelley made a strange noise as she and Rick backed away from me.

Jack pulled the prod from Geneviève’s cage and turned, his mouth already open to yell at me. The first syllable died on his tongue. The cattle prod thunked to the ground. My hands found the sides of his head, and dimly I was aware that my fingers looked too dark, the nails long and vaguely pointed.

I gripped his skull and felt several tiny pops as my nails pierced the skin at his temples. Jack’s eyes rolled up into his head and his arms began to twitch. His teeth clattered together and sweat poured from his forehead. Blood dripped from his temples.

I saw it all, but none of it sank in. I registered nothing in that moment except the sparks still firing inside me, firing through me, out the tips of my fingers and into Jack’s head, where every synapse fried within him eased a bit of the demand for justice seething inside me.

How do you like it? I demanded, but my mouth never opened. My tongue never moved.

Shelley screamed. The sound of her terror cut through my rage and I pulled my hands from Jack’s head in one swift movement. I stumbled backward, horrified by what I’d done, sucking in great gasping breaths that did nothing to soothe the fire burning deep in my chest.

What had I done?

The handler wobbled on his feet. Blood leaked from four pinpoint holes on either side of his balding scalp. Eyes unfocused, he thumped to his knees on the ground, then felt around in the hay without ever looking down. His thick fist closed around the cattle prod he’d dropped and he twisted a knob on the end as far as it would go. Then he raised the prod as high as he could in both fists and rammed it down on his own thigh. The forked tip plunged through denim and into flesh.

The handler began to convulse. For a moment, no one else moved. The entire hybrid trailer watched Jack electrocute himself. Then hooves and paws began to pound against their cage floors. Wolves howled, something avian screeched, and several human mouths cheered.

“What did you do?” Shelley wailed.

My heart pounding, I turned to see my friends staring at me in horror, backing slowly toward the adlet cage to get away from me.

Rick tripped over the low circus ring and went down on one hip.

“I...” I looked at my hands and blinked to clear my vision, but my vision wasn’t the problem. The problem was my hands. They were too long and bony, my fingers ending in narrow black points. I had needle-claws, where I’d had normal fingernails before.

Blood dripped from the tip of one. I shook my head in denial of what I was seeing—of what I’d done—but instead of settling over my shoulders, my hair was twisting around my head, if the standing-on-end feeling in my scalp could be trusted.

I backed away from the handler still electrocuting himself and from Geneviève’s cage, where she stared at me through yellow wolf-girl eyes. Panic dumped adrenaline into my bloodstream and I suddenly itched to run. To escape.

“What the hell?”

I turned to find Rick staring at me, one dusty brown cowboy boot on either side of the bright red circus ring.

Another handler stepped out of the shadows and kicked the livestock prod from Jack’s hands. He stopped convulsing, but his eyes regained no focus. His mouth hung open.

“What are you?” Wendy, the woman in the sequined leotard, demanded, and I could only blink at her, because I had no answer. Yet even in my mounting terror, I knew that if I’d had an answer, I shouldn’t give it to her.

You are normal. You are human. You are ours. The memory of my mother’s bedtime mantra played through my head as it always had in moments of fear and doubt since I was a small child. It had never in my life felt more relevant. Or more like a total lie.

The handler in the red cap pushed Wendy aside and stomped toward me, reaching out for me. Then, suddenly, his gaze darted over my shoulder. “Wait!” he shouted, and I turned to run.

The last thing I saw before my skull exploded in pain and the world went dark was the face of the hybrid tent ticket taker in the top hat as he swung a felt-covered mallet at my head.