But instead of removing me from the box, Pagano took me closer to the glass, his gloved hand on my arm, careful to keep himself positioned between me and the guests I was no longer serving. He seemed to think that if they removed me from the box, Gallagher would refuse to fight.
He also seemed to think I posed no real threat to the customers. How much had they figured out about me during my missing time? Did they know I couldn’t hurt the customers unless thefuriaesaw them get away with committing an injustice?
I hardly saw the match, not because I couldn’t bear to watch—which was true—but because I couldn’t make sense of my loss. Where had the time gone? How was it taken?Whywas it taken?
How many times had Gallagher been in the ring? How many creatures had he been forced to kill? Had I seen it all?
Why couldn’t I remember?
On the sand, the behemoth gored Gallagher’s arm, and blood arced across the sand. He pivoted and regrouped as the two-ton beast slowed to a thundering stop, then turned to charge again. But the only part that sank in through my shock was that Gallagher was alive.
Which meant that his death could not have caused my memory loss.
Minutes later, he stood on the sand over the body of the felled beast, and in the roar everyone else assumed to be a proclamation of his victory, I heard a bellow of anguish. Unlike with Argos, he hadn’t been able to kill such a huge creature without spilling its blood, and this time I knew that would not be the end. It couldn’t be.
His cap was too pale. Too dry. He might not make it until the next match if he didn’t use the blood he’d spilled, even if his victim hadn’t deserved death.
The spectators watched, mystified, as he knelt beside the body of the beast and took off his cap. For a moment, he appeared to be praying. Then he carefully, almost reverently, set his cap in the pool of blood still pouring from the massive tear in the behemoth’s stomach, inches from its spilled intestines.
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 thefuriaecould 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.
