Hell's Menagerie Read Free Page B

was feeling, but she was transfixed by the creature. They stared at each other intensely, as though nothing else existed.
    Then the creature pushed away from the bars, snorting loudly as it went back to its corner and slumped down, ignoring them.
    Em’s hand slid free of the bars. Rex took it. “You okay?”
    She seemed dazed, her wide brown eyes lost for a few moments. “Yeah,” she said, then shook her head and finally focused on him. “Yeah. I’m fine. Let’s keep looking.”
    â€”
    THE PUPS WEREN’T in the menagerie. But they had been. Brim could smell their lingering scent. Emma’s heart hurt as they left the tent. All those animals . . . She knew some were deadly, and poisonous, and would kill as soon as they got the chance, but still she felt for them. They should be free to live in their own habitat, left alone. Not caged. Not spectacles. Not shoved into some arena to fight for their lives.
    If she listened hard enough, she could feel their misery, their anger, their confusion, their heartbreak.
    She wanted to go home, wanted her mom, wanted to forget she had ever seen this. She never wanted to see another off-world carnival as long as she lived. All around her the performers awedthe crowd. Fire whooshed and flashed bright. Music played. Spectators cheered, laughed, and heckled. But Emma had never felt more alone. She didn’t realize she’d stopped until Rex turned and put a hand on her arm.
    â€œAw, hell, kid. You kill me when you cry.” He pulled her into a hug.
    It was her father’s arms, her father’s smell—though somewhat different now that Rex had taken up residence. She missed him. But she loved Rex and knew he loved her, too.
    â€œI’m sorry.” She leaned back and sniffed, wiping away the tears with her hands. “I knew when we found out about the carnival, the menagerie . . . I knew all these animals would be here.” She tipped her wet face up to look at him. “We have to help them.”
    Rex’s expression turned pained and his eyes went glassy, his jaw tight. “I’d give you the world if I could. But not at the expense of your safety. We’ll see if we can locate the pups, and that’s it.”
    She didn’t answer. What could she say to that?
    â€œWe’ll figure it out, Em. Okay? We’ll figure it out.”
    He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and led her to a vendor for some water and fresh bread.
    â€”
    REX AND EMMA were given the best seats in the house for the performance that night, which started off with Baasîl sweeping into the arena in his black suit and top hat. His voice reverberated through the massive tent as he promised a night of heart-pounding spectacle. Goose bumps sped up Rex’s arms as the ringmaster declared the start of the greatest show in all three worlds with a dramatic flourish of his long arms and deep, booming laughter in his voice.
    Baasîl leapt onto the arena wall and then climbed, like some black-clad praying mantis, up the chain-link cage that rose higharound the arena as three large cats with lean bodies, short black fur, and long, curved fangs were set loose in the arena as eerily painted fae clowns dodged and tumbled over them like some hyped-up version of rodeo clowns meets bullfighting. Baasîl clung to the cage, telling the crowd that the goal was to turn the cats into clowns by sticking spikes topped with red pom-poms along their backs, which matched the pom-poms stuck to the clowns’ outfits. Once all three cats had a set of four running down their backs, it was over.
    And when it was, one fae was dead and one seriously injured. The cats were still standing, but they wouldn’t make it through the night.
    The crowd loved it. Fucking bastards.
    It was no place for a twelve-year-old. Sure, there were young Charbydons there, but it was their world, how they’d grown up. Death was as much a part of their