Spectacle--A Novel Read online

  “Whatever I want from you, I will take.” His declaration carried no emotion; it was a simple statement of fact. “I own you.”

  “But I’m human.” No sentient being ought to be property, but because of my species, I truly wasn’t, legally.

  “Several hundred people have seen you become a monster. No one’s going to believe a blood test over their own eyes. I’m not entirely sure I do.” Before I could object, he pressed a button on his telephone dock.

  “Yes, Mr. Vandekamp?” the secretary in the outer office replied.

  “Send the handlers back in.”

  “You will regret this,” I said as the door opened, but my voice held none of the furiae’s rich depth.

  “I assure you I won’t.” Vandekamp looked past me to Bowman and the other handler, whose presence I could feel behind me. “Take her back.”

  One of them grabbed my arm.

  “Wait!”

  Bowman pulled me out of the room, and when I refused to walk, he and the other handler each lifted me by one arm and hauled me out of the main building, then through the topiary and the iron gate. In the housing building, they removed my cuffs, then threw me into my dormitory, where I landed with a bruising thud on one hip.

  Bowman adjusted the settings on my collar to keep me in the room, then he slammed the door.

  “What happened?” Mirela demanded as soon as they were gone. “Did you see Gallagher?”

  “No. Vandekamp can’t be trusted, no matter what he promises.” I glanced around at the crowd of former Metzger’s captives and the long-term residents alike, most of whom seemed to think I was stating the obvious. “Don’t make any deals with him.”

  If I hadn’t been desperate, I never would have tried.

  I would not make that mistake again.

  Willem

  The lanterns hanging from gazebos and trellises left spots in Willem Vandekamp’s vision as he crossed the topiary garden, and the string quartet was already giving him a headache. But he had to admit it, Tabitha knew how to throw a party.

  She wore strapless white silk tonight, and in it, she looked every bit as fresh and young as she had the day they’d met, even with the snowy, feathered mask hiding the top half of her face.

  “What do you think of the new painter?” she whispered, as Willem slid his arm around the gathered waist of her gown. “I think she’s worth every cent.”

  “Which ones are hers?” He glanced around the Savage Spectacle’s monthly masquerade, noting a familiar mask here and a distinctive chin there as he took inventory of the regulars among the incognito guests.

  “The leopard. And the Egyptian goddess. And the snake...girl.”

  “She’s an echidna.” His gaze snagged on the cryptid in question. In human form, her most prominent tells were her diminutive fangs and her eyes—coppery, with vertically oriented oval pupils. But thanks to Tabitha’s latest hire, the echidna now sported hand-painted scales down her spine and the backs of both of her legs in a luminous python-like gold. Which didn’t resemble her natural coloring in the least.

  As usual, Tabitha was more concerned with the aesthetics of her projects than the accuracy of them. And as usual, she’d made the right call.

  “Gorgeous.” Willem pulled her close to murmur against the back of her jaw, just beneath her ear. “The governor and her guest seem to agree.”

  The governor, a small woman in red sequins, was recognizable in spite of her nondescript black mask by her petite stature and her ubiquitous French twist. And—for those who knew her—by the covetous way she ran one hand down the echidna’s back when the cryptid turned to offer a tray of hors d’oeuvres to another guest.

  The governor’s companion also wore a mask, but she would have had to wear much more than that to pass as the First Gentleman of the state.

  “How long before we can engage the rest of the new additions?” Tabitha asked. “It’s time they earned their keep.”

  “Any that don’t need costumes can be used immediately. Just like her.” He nodded at the leopard shifter as she carried a fresh tray of champagne from the outdoor bar set up on the fringes of the party. “Except for Delilah.”

  “But I thought—” Tabitha swallowed the rest of her sentence as a pair of guests approached the host couple.

  The man wore a laser-cut mask inlaid with jade and copper in a harlequin diamond design. “Beautiful evening,” he said, smoothing down the front of an elegantly cut dark gray suit jacket, buttoned over a tie that matched his mask.

  “It’s even more beautiful now.” Willem offered his hand to the man’s wife, a curvy woman in jade satin with a neckline that plunged nearly to her navel.

  She smiled beneath a simple black feathered mask and gave him her hand.

  “How are you enjoying the party?” Tabitha asked, as the man’s gaze trailed down her dress, then finally wandered back up.

  “It’s splendid, as always,” the man said.

  “Really lovely,” his wife agreed.

  “I’m so glad.” Tabitha smiled and ran one hand up her husband’s arm. “Will you be booking an extended engagement this evening?”

  “We will, and we’ve made our selection. Dear?” The husband turned to his wife.

  “That one,” the woman said, pointing with one finger at a young naiad as she emerged, naked and dripping, from the fountain at the center of the garden. “We’ll take her. For the rest of the evening.”

  “Wonderful choice.” Tabitha let go of her husband’s arm and took a step back. “Come this way, and I’ll get that set up for you.”

  Willem watched his wife as she escorted the couple toward one of the event coordinators standing on the edge of the party, electronic tablets in hand. She returned minutes later, as the coordinator led the customers toward the main building, tapping on her tablet and chatting with them as they left the party, to make sure they understood the options and limitations their private event would include.

  “That was the candy couple?”

  Willem chucked. “Their corporation owns the companies that produce nearly every candy bar you’ve ever eaten.”

  “Well, they better not be paying in chocolate coins.” Tabitha returned a nod from a guest in a maroon suit and a Phantom of the Opera–style mask studded with matching red rhinestones, then she snuggled closer to her husband. “Tell me again who the man in the silver suit is?” Tabitha’s gaze settled on the man in question, standing off from the rest of the guests. “The one in the silver-and-black gladiator mask?”

  “Senator Aaron,” Willem whispered. “Chairman of the Cryptid Regulation Committee. I’ve been inviting him for months, but this is the first time he’s come.”

  “A senator. So this is about influence, not money, right?”

  Willem gave his wife a private frown, but Tabitha only shrugged her bare, shapely shoulders.

  “You said most politicians can’t afford our services,” she reminded him.

  “Yes, but that’s a generalization, and a crass frame of mind.” Though accurate, in this instance. A strong champion in the senate would enable Willem’s containment collars to move beyond the current small-scale beta-testing phase. “If you think like that, it’ll inevitably show in your bearing,” he scolded gently. “So just be your usual charming self, and I’m sure he’ll be eating out of our hands.”

  “I think he’s more interested in a different set of hands.” She nodded subtly at the masked senator as he accepted a flute of champagne from a slim cryptid who had been meticulously painted with leopard rosettes across her exposed breasts, limbs, and the sides of her torso, leaving her navel undisguised. Her bikini bottom had been decorated to match the rest of her, but she wore significantly more paint than material. “I assume any services he requests are on the house?”

  Willem nodded. “For toni
ght, at least. Let’s give him a taste of the possibilities and hope he develops an appetite.”

  A man with a secret is useful, Willem’s father used to say. But a powerful man with a secret is indispensable.

  Delilah

  “Mirela,” I said as the oracle stepped into the line behind me. We’d stacked the sleeping mats and folded the blankets, which put us near the back of the bathroom queue. “Were you awake when they got back?” I nodded toward Lenore and Mahsa, who were several spots ahead of us in line.

  “Yeah. You?”

  I nodded. “Who could sleep?” We shuffled forward a couple of feet, and I rubbed my temples, as if that would actually fend off my day-old headache.

  “Did they say anything?” Mirela whispered, staring at the siren’s back.

  “No, but I haven’t asked.” It killed me to see our friends taken out of the dorm night after night, knowing they were headed for humiliation and abuse, and that there was nothing I could do to stop it. “I assume they’re bound by the same gag order that crippled Finola and the others.”

  Mahsa turned to us with a small, cryptic smile, showing off her feline incisors. “We are,” she said. I should have realized she’d hear us—shifters have great ears no matter what form they take. “And that’s a real shame, considering how much trouble I had brushing blood and tiny chunks of human flesh from my teeth when we got back.”

  My eyes widened. “You bit someone?”

  The shifter shrugged. “I can’t answer that. But what I can tell you is that—hypothetically—if one of these collars is set to let a shifter shift, it might not be able to stop that shifter from biting.”

  “Mahsa, you’re brilliant!” I seized her hand and gave it a tight squeeze. Hypotheticals were a very clever work-around for Vandekamp’s standard gag order!

  She shrugged, but her face practically glowed with pride.

  “But why would they let you shift in the first place?” Mirela asked.

  “It’s usually more of a requirement than an allowance.” Simra spoke up from behind us. She was the last in line. “Some of the clients just want to look. Some want to touch. Others want to see ladies with nonhuman parts dressed up in six-inch heels, holding trays of fancy food. Some like to see shifters shift. Whatever the client wants, he makes us do.”

  “He can make shifters shift?” Horror surged through me like ice in my veins, chilling me from the inside.

  Simra shrugged. “He can make anyone do anything.”

  My mind spun with the horrific implications. Was she saying that he would simply shock those who refused to perform? Or that Vandekamp’s collars could trigger the release of hormones that led to the performance he wanted to see?

  That was it. Understanding slid into place in my head with an ominous, nearly audible click.

  That’s why he’d been so desperate to find out what I was—so he could make me transform.

  Vandekamp had figured out how to effectively disarm cryptids of their distinguishing traits and abilities, while retaining the ability to draw out those same traits and abilities on demand. On display. For money.

  He had created push-and-play functionality in his living captives, with a built-in punishment for failure to perform.

  “I thought you weren’t allowed to talk about that,” Mirela said.

  Simra shrugged. “I’m not allowed to talk about my engagements.”

  Because I was still reeling from her previous revelation, it took me a second to realize she’d just revealed another gap in Vandekamp’s security system. A big one. “Thank you!” I seized the marid’s hand and squeezed it.

  Simra looked puzzled. “Why does that make you so happy?”

  I hadn’t even realized I was smiling. “Because Vandekamp denies us information and communication to isolate us, even from each other. To keep us weak, scared and dependent. Every single thing we learn that he doesn’t want us to know is a victory. It’s a crack driven through the chains keeping us here. And you only have to break one link to destroy a chain.”

  Simra frowned, her fingers grazing the front of her collar. “Is that what you’re doing? Trying to break the chains?”

  I had to think about that. I hadn’t been consciously planning an escape. Where would we go, even if we could break free?

  “That’s what she does,” Zyanya said softly, passing by us on her way from the bathroom. “That’s all she knows how to do.”

  “I’m just keeping my eyes and ears open,” I insisted. I had no concrete plans—no real ideas—and I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up.

  The marid’s eyes sparkled even more than usual. “Yeah. Me too.”

  Mirela frowned at Simra as she stepped into the bathroom just ahead of us. “You’ve been here almost a year, and you’re just now figuring out you can speak in generalizations?”

  “It never occurred to me to try, before. I mean, talking typically hurts, so...” The marid shrugged.

  “So you all just stopped trying,” I finished for her.

  Simra nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “But none of that answers my question,” Mirela said. “Why would Vandekamp let—or make—Mahsa shift if he knew that would also allow her to bite?”

  “He didn’t know.” I shuffled forward in the line again, and the closer we got to the bathroom, the better we could hear water running in the sink. “His long-term captives quit trying to fight back, so he had no true gauge of the limits of his technology. It’s trial and error.” Because Vandekamp wasn’t just trying to exert control over us. He was still testing his technology. He had to be, if it had been implemented so recently. “Now that he knows about the weakness, he’ll fix it.” I tuned back to Mahsa. “Were you punished for biting?”

  Mahsa flinched and stiffened for a moment, and I realized that trying to answer had triggered pain from her collar. Then her eyes brightened with a new idea. She twisted and lifted her scrub top to show me a fresh, oblong bruise slanting across her rib cage.

  “That’s from a baton,” Simra said. “But if that’s all they did, there must not have been any complaint from the customer.”

  “No complaint?” Mirela echoed as I finally stepped into the bathroom. “But she took a bite out of him.”

  Simra shrugged. “Some of the customers like that. They seem to think the scar makes them look tough.”

  “Sick fuckers,” Lenore said, as she stepped up to one of the available sinks.

  “Yeah, and that’s the one thing the Spectacle won’t give them. We’re not allowed to hurt them, no matter what they want.”

  “It’s probably a legal liability,” I explained, as more of Vandekamp’s business model began to fall into place in my head. “They may think they want pain—and some of them truly may—but most will change their minds when the reality sinks in. Others will go home to husbands and wives who have objections. A single lawsuit could put the Savage Spectacle out of business.” And cripple any future endeavors.

  “We should be so lucky.” Light shone brightly on Mahsa’s pale brown skin as she stepped up to the sink beside Lenore. “I bet—” But the shifter’s words were cut off by a piercing scream from the other side of a row of toilet stalls.

  “Rommily!” Mirela took off toward the showers. Lala and I raced after her to find Rommily still screaming in front of the communal shower block, where water already poured from one of the heads. Her eyes were wide with panic. A handler loomed over her, pointing into the shower with one hand, holding a handful of her shirt in the other. According to the embroidery over his heart, his name was Sutton.

  “It’s been five days!” he shouted. “If you’re not willing to meet the minimum hygiene standard, I’ll meet it for you.”

  “Wait! She just needs—” Mirela reached for her sister, but the guard turned to block her, his forehead furrowed
, eyes narrowed, and too late, I realized he’d mistaken her gesture as an act of aggression. He let go of Rommily, then shoved the butt of his rifle at Mirela’s head.

  A spray of blood burst from her nose and she fell backward, clutching her face with both hands.

  Eyes full of tears, Lala pulled Mirela across the floor, away from their middle sister and the guard. She grabbed a handful of brown paper towels from a dispenser on the wall and held them to her older sister’s nose.

  Sutton turned back to Rommily and tried to pull her shirt over her head without losing control of his tranquilizer rifle. When the material ripped, her screaming intensified. But then he grabbed her exposed shoulder, and the oracle fell eerily still and quiet. Her eyes glazed over with a white film so thick that her irises and pupils were hardly visible beneath.

  “Sepsis.” Rommily’s voice sounded strangely hollow and detached. As if it belonged to someone else. “Our staff didn’t find the bedsore until it was too late. What a tragic way for a young man to die.”

  The handler blinked at her, and though he couldn’t possibly have realized he was hearing what a doctor would someday say to his loved ones, her words triggered an instinctive, violent fear in him. “Shut the fuck up and get in the shower.” He pulled at the tear he’d already started in her shirt and ripped the material wide-open.

  Rommily’s eyes cleared and she screamed again, a terrified shrieking that bounced back at us all from the tiled walls.

  Sutton flinched, then punched her in the side of the head. Rommily slammed into the shower wall with a thud. Her mouth snapped shut as she slid down the tile to sit in a puddle on the floor, still half-clothed, her gaze out of focus.

  But as her cry died, a fiery howl of fury kindled inside me. My vision sharpened until I could see light bouncing off individual drops of water rolling down the shower wall. My hair rose from my shoulders and slowly writhed around my head. My nails hardened and lengthened into the needle-thin claws of a creature no lab test had ever been able to identify.