Spectacle (Menagerie #2)(57)

The camera zoomed in for a close-up on-screen, and audience members who’d already risen to join the after-party, buzzing with excitement over what they’d seen, sat back down to watch.

At first, nothing seemed to happen, except for the return of its original bright red color to Gallagher’s hat. But then the pool of blood began to shrink, even as the last of it poured from the poor animal’s jagged flesh.

The audience stared at the high-definition screen, transfixed, in near silence. When the large puddle was gone, individual drops of blood began to roll toward Gallagher’s cap from where they’d landed in the initial splatter.

With a spectacular disregard for the laws of physics, blood rolled out of the behemoth one drop at a time, crossing the sand like a line of fat red ants until there was no more to be found. Until both the corpse and the sand were dry and colorless. Until the hat had taken it all.

Gallagher picked up his cap, and the audience gasped. He stood, then placed the hat on his head with deliberate, precise movements which could only be part of a ceremony they would never understand or truly appreciate.

Though he’d been forced to kill, the behemoth’s death had not been in vain. His blood would keep Gallagher alive.

Gallagher, in turn, would keep me alive.

*

His room was empty when I arrived, just like the night before.

No, just like that night eight weeks before.

Again, I was told to shower, but given no clothes or towel. Did I see Gallagher after every fight? Did Vandekamp still misunderstand the nature of our relationship?

As I rinsed the last of the products from my hair, the cell door squealed open, and I went still. What if this wasn’t his cell? There were no personal effects, other than a generic toothbrush. They could have given me to anyone. They could have been doing it for eight weeks straight, if they’d figured out that the furiae could not come to my defense.

My heart pounded in terror. I would have only my own abilities to count on, if someone else walked through that door.

“Gallagher?” I called, forcing confidence and volume into my voice, though I felt neither.

“Delilah?” he said, and his voice brought tears to my eyes. Evidently this had not become routine, because he sounded not just relieved, but stunned. “I’m going to set a shirt on the floor for you, okay?”

“Thank you.” As water poured over my face and hair, his hand appeared around the bathroom wall holding a familiar folded bundle of cloth. He set it down, and his arm disappeared, but not before I saw that it was wrapped in bloodstained gauze.

I finished rinsing and turned off the faucet, then squeezed water from my hair and brushed as much of it down my body toward the drain as I could. When I was as dry as I could get without a towel, I pulled his clean shirt over my head and stepped out of the bathroom.

Gallagher’s gaze studied every inch of my exposed skin, and while that would have made me uncomfortable coming from anyone else, he was just doing his job. Searching for wounds or bruises. For any sign that he’d failed to protect me.

But he didn’t reach out to hug me. In fact, he stayed several steps away, and he looked more worried than my bruise-free skin should have made him.

“I’m fine. Really. But you...” I frowned. He’d already showered, probably so that the infirmary could treat his wounds. Which were plentiful. If the behemoth hadn’t been slow, she could easily have killed him.

“I will heal,” he said as my gaze fell toward the bulge of a bandage puffing beneath his pants, at his calf. “I always do.”

“How many fights have there been?” I reached for him, and he looked surprised, but he let me trace a thick scar curling around his forearm toward his wrist.

“Fifteen. They gave me a break after that one, remember?” he said with a glance at the scar. “It required tears of the phoenix, and even then took a week to heal.”

“What did this?” I couldn’t look away from the scar. That injury might have meant amputation for any human.

Gallagher looked puzzled. “You don’t remember?”

My eyes watered again, and his scars blurred. His injuries and my memory loss were each terrifying on their own, but taken together, with absolutely no context, they were overwhelming. “There’ve been so many. And all because of me.”

“No.” He folded his arms over a broad chest marred by dozens of new marks. He was born into a warrior race, but this was not how he was meant to fight. This was not why he was meant to fight. “Because of Vandekamp,” he insisted. “This is not your fault, Delilah. I put myself here.”

“For me.” I didn’t know what else to say.

I couldn’t absorb it all. I couldn’t think.

“Your hair.” I said the first thing that popped into my mind as I sat down and wiped unspilled tears from my eyes. “It grew back.” Too late, I realized that I shouldn’t have been surprised by that.

Gallagher lifted his cap from his head and ran one hand over his dark hair. “Yes. I suppose you haven’t seen it up close in a while.”

I tried to hide my surprise. “How long has it been?”

“I’m not sure. A couple of months?”

My eyes widened, and he noticed. “Since your first fight?”

“No. Since the night of my second. You don’t remember?” He studied my face, and his concern set off alarms deep inside me. “What’s going on, Delilah?”