Spectacle (Menagerie #2)(98)
The minotaur stood before the chimera’s door, stolen ID badge ready.
“Eryx?”
He turned, his heart thumping madly beneath his chest at the familiar voice. Rommily stood near the end of the hall, dwarfed by the high, arched ceiling and exaggerated width of the passage. Swallowed by her own ill-fitting clothes.
Never had the bull so thoroughly hated his mute bovine tongue.
A smile broke over the oracle’s face, and she ran toward him, thin arms outstretched.
Behind her a steel door flew open and crashed against the cinder-block wall. The ammit—a one-ton beast with the hindquarters of a hippo, the front half of a lion and the head of a crocodile—burst from her cell and barreled down the hall, cracking the concrete floor beneath her huge four-toed rear hooves. Content to trample anyone in her path.
Rommily screamed and lurched forward. Eryx raced toward them both. The ammit snorted as it charged toward freedom, blowing Rommily’s hair forward as she ran.
At the last second, Eryx darted into an open cell, reaching out for Rommily. His thick hand wrapped around her arm and he pulled the oracle into the deserted room, shielding her with his own body as the ammit barreled down the hall. Past them both.
When the threat was gone, Eryx stepped back. Rommily looked up at him, dark eyes wide. Then she smiled and took his hand.
And the oracle led the mighty minotaur out of the maze through a service entrance.
Delilah
The synchronized clomp of boots sent my pulse racing. I lurched around the corner of the dormitory building and dropped into the shadows just as an entire squad of armed handlers jogged around the corner from the building that housed cryptids destined for the hunt.
“What the hell happened?” the man in the lead demanded into his radio. “The stable was standing wide-open. Perkins nearly got trampled by three centaurs and a satyr.”
“The collars are disengaged,” the staticky voice over the radio shouted. “Repeat—the collars are disengaged. Approach with caution and shoot to kill. Lethal force is authorized. Don’t take any chances out there, guys.”
“Fuck that.” One of the men stopped jogging, and the others came to a haphazard halt around him. “I didn’t sign up for this.”
The handler in the lead grabbed his man by the edge of his puffy protective vest. “The hell you didn’t. What did you think the hazard pay was for? Now, shut up and keep your eyes open.”
“Do you hear that?” Another handler turned toward the rumble of several engines echoing across the quiet compound. “Backup’s on the way. I think she called in the fucking marines.”
When I realized he was staring toward the parking lot, I gave a silent cheer. Even if Tabitha Vandekamp had called in the marines, that wasn’t what we were hearing.
“The engines are heading away,” one of the other men said. “That’s not backup. It’s deserters!”
Actually, it was the very creatures they’d been sent out to kill, currently stealing their cars in order to escape.
“Let’s go!” the leader shouted, and his men fell back into two lines. When they’d passed me, I stood and peeked around the corner of the building, wishing I’d kept one of the electric batons for myself as I watched the men jog toward the next building.
Shivering in the fall air, I crept behind them into the next unlit patch of grass.
“Stop right where you are!” one of the men shouted, and I went still, terrified for a second that I’d been caught. But the men were all aiming their rifles in the opposite direction—at a satyr and a nymph, frozen in the beam of someone’s flashlight.
Gunfire rang into the night, and I gasped as the defenseless cryptids were shot where they stood. Then the squad of handlers moved on with their mission, heading east across the compound, while I stood shaking in the shadows.
It took at least a minute for me to regain control of my trembling legs and press on, avoiding even a glance at the bodies of my fellow captives as I passed them.
I was a good fifteen feet from the infirmary entrance, still hidden by shadows, when a great, angry screech split the night. The thunder of heavy hooves shook the ground beneath me, and I froze again, my heart pounding.
Human screams rang out from the east, then several were suddenly silenced.
The stampede got louder by the second until a manticore rounded the corner of the arena, its scorpion tail arching ten feet in the air, spiky lion’s mane blowing in the late night breeze. A black-clad human arm was speared on the beast’s stinger, still dripping blood in an arcing pattern as it swayed over the creature’s back.
I backed up until my spine hit the wall of the infirmary, as deep into the shadows as I could get, and I could only watch as beast after beast followed the lion-scorpion hybrid toward the courtyard and the topiary garden.
Three giants and an ogre alternately swapped blows as they fled the arena, and when the ogre got in too good of a punch, one of the giants uprooted a small tree from near the dormitory and swatted him with it.
The ogre flew backward and smashed into the side of the infirmary, on the other side of the entrance. Glass shattered and bricks crumbled down around him, but he was up in a second, brushing chunks of stone from his head and shoulders as he jumped back into the fray.
From near the end of the stampede, a phoenix tried to take flight, holding the corpse of a handler in its claws, but only made it ten feet into the air before its clipped wings brought it crashing to the ground again. It landed on a large lizard of some kind, which opened its mouth as if to screech, but breathed fire instead, singeing the poor bird in a weak imitation of the damage the phoenix would do to itself, at the end of its molting cycle.