Hell's Menagerie by Kelly Gay

“Hell’s Menagerie”
A Charlie Madigan Short Story
Kelly Gay
    W hy did I let her talk me into this? Why, why, why? “Your mother is going to go ape shit. Total ape shit. I’m so dead. And she won’t be swift about it, either. She’ll drag it out, enjoy it with that maniacal gleam she gets in her eyes. She’ll—”
    â€œRex.” Emma turned, stopping Rex in his tracks. “Focus. Mom is in Elysia for the week. She’ll never know.” Her gaze went narrow and suspicious; funny how she could do that—go from big brown-eyed innocence to shrewd and calculating. “Unless you slip up and tell her.”
    â€œYeah. Right. Not going to sign my own death warrant, kid.”
    But he probably already had.
    If Charlie found out he’d allowed her only child to track a kidnapper to hell of all places . . . Christ. He rubbed a hand down his sweaty face. He was in deep, deep shit. This fatherly role was way more complicated than he thought it’d be. Who knew that little piece of work walking in front of him could worm her way inside of him like some adorable little parasite and make his heart go all mushy and weak-willed at the first sign of a lip tremble or tears?
    Weren’t fathers supposed to be stern and solid as rocks? Unmovable as mountains? Sounded way better than being whipped by a twelve-year-old kid.
    Emma was just like her mother, too. Headstrong, brave, powerful. But she had a long way to go before holding her own like Charlie. Charlie was trained, had years of experience dealing with the off-world criminal element in Underground Atlanta, and she knew pain, death, and loss on an intimate level.
    Emma knew loss, too. Her father, Will, was gone for good, his spirit set free to go to the Afterlife while his physical body remained, a true home for Rex’s jinn spirit to take over, to become something more than a simple Revenant who possessed one body after another. Something permanent, in body and in Emma’s life.
    Rex would be damned if he’d ever let Emma experience the things her mother had gone through—what she might be going through even now as she scoured the heavenly world of Elysia to find her partner, Hank. Imagine Charlie coming home to learn he’d allowed Emma to traipse into hell, hell , to recover a bunch of kidnapped hellhound pups.
    Puppy-napped.
    Jesus.
    He hadn’t really let her ‘traipse’, though. Em’s journey was more of a stealthy escape through a bedroom window, unlocking Brimstone’s kennel, then breaking into the League of Mages headquarters and using the portal to Charbydon (aka hell). And he hadn’t exactly let her do that, now, had he?
    He’d been blameless right up until he caught up with her and her hellhound in the capital city of Telmath, where the portal had taken them. Where Emma had cried, completely heartbroken in his arms.
    And he was a world-class sucker.
    In his defense, what the hell was he supposed to do?
    The pregnant hellhound Charlie had found in the warehouse district a couple months ago should have been sent back to Charbydon and set free in the wild. But there were issues with her pregnancy, so it was decided she’d go after the pups were born. The pups arrived, the shelter breached, and Momma and her pups were taken.
    Easy pickin’s for someone looking for a few exotic animals . . .
    Emma had learned that two other kidnappings had occurred in the area, all of exotic animals, all supposedly taken by some traveling circus/menagerie. The things kids learned at school. Little eavesdroppers. In a school full of arcanely gifted children, there was no doubt in Rex’s mind that if they put their minds and talents to it, they’d find the culprits and recover the animals.
    Emma, however, had taken it personal. The rescued hellhound living in their home, Brimstone, meant more to her than anything. The fact that she could communicate with the beast