Spectacle (Menagerie #2)(71)

I used some of Sarah’s lotion—an expensive, silky formula I couldn’t have afforded in my life before captivity and an unparalleled indulgence under my current circumstances—then put everything back the way I’d found it and headed into the hall. I had one hand on the doorknob to the next room when something thunked from within it. A cry of pain followed, too high-pitched to be drowned out by the low hum of the vacuum.

I pushed the door open, assuming someone had fallen. Inside, I found a child’s bedroom full of toys and small furniture. A large man in a white button-down shirt stood with his fist raised over his head. At his feet sat a little boy clutching his side in pain. Finger-shaped bruises ringed the child’s arm.

The furiae perked up like a cat catching a whiff of food. She stretched inside me, and my fingertips began to tingle as my nails reacted to her touch. She blinked, and my vision sharpened as she took control of it.

The man turned, his face a mask of fury. “Who the fuck are you?” His fist fell to his side but remained clenched. He stomped toward me, each step aggressive and pronounced, like a bull about to charge.

The furiae blinked at him through my eyes and smiled at him with my mouth. She was practically daring him to touch her, and he didn’t see it. He didn’t know...

The father grabbed my arm and hauled me into the hall. His grip hurt, but the furiae felt only righteous anger. The man slammed his son’s door and grabbed my other arm, lifting me onto my toes. He looked down into my eyes, and I could see that he expected to find fear. That he craved it.

What he found instead were the empty, black-veined orbs my eyes became when the furiae took control of them.

The man choked on a startled gasp and let me go. He backed away, but the living anger coiled up inside me wanted much more from him than fear. Much more than remorse.

I grabbed his arm. My needlelike nails sank through his skin, and the man’s mouth fell open as he stared at me. As my rage poured into him. He seemed to be screaming, yet he made no sound.

All you need is a little discipline. The words floated through my head, and I couldn’t tell whether they were his or the furiae’s. You’ll thank me when you’re older.

When the rage abated, I let him go. He blinked once, then gripped the frame of an open door across the hall and slammed his head into it. Wood creaked beneath the force of the blow. The man stood upright, and a trickle of blood ran from the gash in his forehead down his nose, then dripped onto his shirt.

He smashed his head into the wood again. And again. And again.

The furiae purred inside me, then curled up to watch the show as my vision returned to normal and my hair settled around my shoulders.

The father pounded his head against the door frame over and over and over. Blood poured from the ever-widening gash and smeared on the dark wood. When the frame became too slippery to grip, he stood up straight, and a flash of bone peeked through his torn flesh. Then he turned and gripped the other side of the door frame and continued slamming his head into the wood.

“Dad?” a soft voice called from the boy’s room.

Shit.

I opened the door and peeked inside, careful to shield the child’s view of the hall with my body. He stared up at me from the floor, still clutching his side, and my gaze traveled over the cobblestone pattern of bruises climbing his arms and legs, in varying shades of old and new.

“Stay here,” I said. “Your mother will be back for you very soon. Do you understand? Don’t go into the hall.”

The boy nodded. I forced a smile for him, then I turned on the television set up on his dresser and closed the door. I turned my back on the man still beating himself against the door frame and walked down the stairs as calmly as I could, clutching the railing. Trying not to panic.

When Vandekamp found out what I’d done, he’d kill me. Or he’d hurt Gallagher. Or he’d kill me after he made me watch him hurt Gallagher.

Downstairs, I raced for the back door, trying to figure out how to tell Pagano that I’d messed up. That we needed to go. That someone needed to go see about the poor boy crying in his bedroom. Then call an ambulance.

I skidded to a stop in the kitchen when I saw the boy’s mother standing in front of her island, gripping the edge of the dark granite countertop.

“Is it done?” She looked so tense. So hopeful. “Is he...?”

And suddenly I understood.

I hadn’t been sent for the pleasure of some sick man with a cryptid fetish.

His wife had engaged me to save her son—and maybe herself—from an abusive husband, in some manner that wouldn’t involve a messy divorce or the splitting of assets. And though my inner beast had curled up to enjoy the sleep of the righteous, I felt used in a way I’d never thought possible.

Vandekamp had found a way to manipulate and profit from justice.

“Your husband needs immediate medical attention,” I told the woman staring at me from across her kitchen island. “And likely a long-term care facility.”

She frowned. “No. My son. Is he...?”

And that’s when I realized that the hardest part for her wasn’t hiring someone to hurt her husband. It was having to leave her son alone with him, to be sure the furiae saw what she needed to see.

The hardest part for me was knowing that if my child were born into captivity, it would never see such a miraculous end to its suffering.

“Your son is fine. You should go to him. He doesn’t understand what happened.”