“So whatishappening to you?” I asked as I followed her into the dorm room. “What does Vandekamp do with his collection?”
“Whatever the client wants. It’s different for everyone. For every engagement.”
She tried to turn away from me, but I ducked into her path again. “What is it for you?”
“I can’t tell you that.” Her hand went to her collar and her mouth closed. Her jaw tensed. Then she stepped around me and practically ran to the other ride of the room.
“What was that about?” Lenore’s question floated on a fresh, minty breath as she stopped at my side.
“Vandekamp has his captives convinced that they’re lucky because they’re not lab rats or circus exhibits, yet they’re not allowed to talk about what goes on in these ‘engagements.’”
“They aren’t?”
“Not all of it anyway. The collars won’t let them. And I see no more logical reason for that than for the fact that we can’t talk at night. Vandekamp’s just trying to exert as much control over us as he can. It’s like he gets off on it.”
“Delilah.”
I dragged my focus away from Simra and turned to meet Lenore’s concerned gaze. “What?”
“You can’t help people who don’t want to be helped.”
But thefuriaeinside me disagreed.
“It’s not that they don’t want to be helped. It’s that they truly think this is the best life has to offer.” If I couldn’t help them, why the hell had fate saddled me with the vengeful beast already stirring restlessly inside me? “They just need to see someone stand up to these remote-wielding bastards. Once they know it’s possible, they’ll fight for themselves. For each other. Humanity doesn’t have the market cornered on courage and justice. That’s nothumannature. It’s just nature.”
Gallagher
Gallagher glanced around the police station in disgust. The floor was grimy, but he’d certainly seen worse. The handcuffed detainees on the bench next to him were ill-mannered and angry, but no more so than the handlers and grunts he’d spent the past year working alongside in the menagerie. It wasn’t the people or the building that offended him.
It was the process.
Redcaps—thefear dearg—had never needed handcuffs or records or rooms made of bars. If a man sacrificed his honor, he forfeited his life. Even children understood that. Guilt was never in question, because thefear deargcould not lie.
Humans, though, could build entire kingdoms on a foundation of lies. They spun tall tales for their children, used fibs to avoid their parents and fed falsehoods to their lovers like chocolate and wine.
Human men would move heaven and earth for profit or pleasure or even base cruelty, but they wouldn’t lift a finger for honor.
The police were no exception. The worthless pieces of tin pinned to their chests weren’t badges of honor, they were badges of authority, and in the human world, authority was little better than a high tower built on a small footing.
It was bound to crumble eventually.
Gallagher had understood the moment he’d woken up in a police van with Alyrose, Abraxas and Kevin that Vandekamp’s men had mistaken him for human. He’d spent twelve hours sitting in a holding cell, waiting to be processed with half a dozen other prisoners who lacked the nerve to meet his gaze.
He had let the police take their pictures and restrain him with handcuffs that would hardly close around his wrists. He’d even exchanged his clothes for an orange uniform that rode high above his ankles and gaped at his stomach when he lifted his arms, because the police would speak more freely around him than would anyone at Vandekamp’s specialized cryptid prison.
But the end of the charade was near.
The police had taken his hat, and thefear deargcould not be separated from their traditional red caps for long. The hat would return to Gallagher, no matter how many locks and boxes and doors separated it from its owner. Thefear dearg’s cap was a part of him, like his limbs and his organs, yet though Gallagher could survive the loss of a foot or a spleen, he could not survive the loss of his traditional cap.
And he would not have to, because nothing made by man could destroy it.
His head felt oddly bare, exposed as it was to the world. He could feel the pull of his cap like a magnet drawn to metal, and when that pull became too strong, he would have to call for its return, or die.
Gallagher waited while all the other men handcuffed to a bench in the waiting area were removed one at a time, and he knew that he would be last. Every gaze that fell on him slid away an instant later. Every cop who picked up his file put it down again with a frown. Subconsciously, the police feared him.
While he waited, sweat began to build on his skin. A cramp flared deep in his gut, and in less than an hour, it became a raging headache, of the battle-ax-to-the-brain variety. By the time the pain reached his chest, he was alone on the bench, and he could no longer clearly remember why he was there at all.
Gallagher called for his cap, a silent tug on an invisible thread.
