Spectacle (Menagerie #2)(13)

Woodrow picked up the control device and used it to point at the collar Shaw still held. “I’m going to explain this to you once. That is an electronic restraint collar, which can be controlled by any of the remotes carried by the Spectacle’s staff. Those tiny spines will slide through the back of your neck and into your vertebrae, where they can deliver specialized electric signals with the press of a button.”

Shaw tilted the collar to show me that the inner curve of one half of the collar held a vertical line of three very thin needles.

I stared at the steel ring, trying to control panic as it clawed at my throat. “It’s a shock collar?”

“It’s much more than that.” Woodrow clipped the remote back onto his belt and met my gaze for what he obviously considered the most important part of my orientation briefing. “This collar can deliver a painful shock or temporarily paralyze the beast wearing it from the neck down. The settings prevent cryptids from using their monstrous abilities until those settings are changed, which only happens during scheduled engagements. Which means the sirens can’t sing, the succubi can’t seduce, the shifters can’t shift and the beasts can’t lift a hand in aggression. Until we want them to. So consider this fair warning.”

“The collar’s receptors also receive signals from every single door in the compound,” Shaw added. “Restricting you to any room or wing we choose.”

I could only stare, stunned. I’d never seen or heard of anything like it. “How can that possibly work?”

Shaw’s eyes lit up. “Vandekamp designed it himself. Receptors in the spines respond instantly to the spike in adrenaline and in species-specific hormones that—”

“Shaw,” Woodrow growled, and the handler’s mouth snapped shut.

But I’d heard enough to understand.

Woodrow stood. “Get on with it.”

“Okay, now, hold still.” Shaw came toward me with the collar, and panic lit a fire in my lungs.

“No.” I stood, and the folding chair scraped the floor then fell over, hanging from the cuff attached to my left wrist.

I can’t wear a collar.

“Sit down,” Woodrow demanded, while Bowman aimed his tranquilizer rifle at my leg. “That’s the only warning you’ll get.”

“Please don’t do this.” I backed away from them both, dragging the chair, though I had nowhere to go. “I’ll be reasonable if you will. There has to be another—”

Woodrow glanced at Bowman. “Do it. And don’t forget to write a report and log the spent dart.”

I turned to Bowman just as he fired. Pain bit into my left thigh. The tiny vial emptied its load into my leg before I could pull it out with my free hand.

As I backed farther away from them, my focus flitting warily from face to face, the edges of the room began to darken. The scrape of the metal chair against the floor sounded suddenly distant. My central vision began to blur. “Stay back.”

My legs felt weak half a second before they folded beneath me, and I didn’t even feel my knees slam into the tile. The ceiling spun around me as I fell onto my back. The chair clattered to the floor, and Woodrow’s weathered face leaned over me.

“Gallagher’s going to kill you...” I warned, but my words sounded stretched and distorted.

“Do it now, before the bitch wakes up again,” Woodrow said, as the world faded to black around me. “Looks like she’s going to have to learn everything the hard w—”





    “Culminating in a narrow Senate victory, Congress has passed the      Cryptid Containment Act, which will allow cryptids to be housed and studied in      both public and private labs, for the purpose of scientific advancement.”

    —from the February 4, 1990, edition of       the Boston Herald





Delilah

“Wake up, Delilah.”

The surface beneath me felt hard and rough, but neither cool nor warm. Light glared through my closed eyelids, and something snug was wrapped around my neck.

My eyes flew open, but the world remained hazy. The three women bending over me had blurry faces, and their grayish clothing was shapeless and unfamiliar.

“She’s waking up,” one of the blurry forms said, and I recognized Lenore’s voice even without the mental tug of her siren’s lure. I exhaled slowly. I was among friends.

“What happened?” Blinking to clear my vision, I pushed myself upright on a rough concrete floor and reached for my neck, but someone grabbed my hand.

“No, don’t touch it!” Lala cried.

The faces were finally starting to come into focus.

Lenore. Lala. And Zyanya, the cheetah shifter. A few feet away, Mirela sat next to Rommily, who was curled up asleep on the floor with one thin arm tucked beneath her head. In addition to those stupid gray scrubs, they all wore—

My hands flew to my neck, and my fingers brushed smooth, warm steel that had taken on the temperature of my skin. I felt along the curve of the high-tech collar until I got to the hidden hinge at one side, distinguishable only by a tiny crack where the two sections were joined. “How can they—”

“Don’t!” Lenore cried as I slid my finger beneath the front of the collar. Excruciating pain shot through my entire body, lighting every nerve ending on fire. My jaw spasmed, trapping a terrified cry of pain inside, and the jolt didn’t end until someone knocked my hand away from the collar.