Flesh Circus

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “Next she’ll start in about blood atonement,” Perry offered helpfully.

  I held the Ringmaster’s gaze. My smart eye—the left one, the blue one—was dry, but I didn’t blink. He did—first one eye, then the other, slight lizardlike movements.

  The Trader slid away from under his hand. Still, their auras swirled together, and I could almost-see the thick spiraled rope of a blood bond between them. Ikaros took two steps toward me and paused, looking up with those big blue eyes.

  The flat shine of the dust lying over his irises was the same as every other Trader’s. It was a reminder that this kid, however old he really was, had bargained with Hell. Traded away something essential in return for something else.

  His lashes quivered. That was his first mistake.

  The next was his hands, twisting together as if he was nervous. If the Ringmaster’s hands were flaccid and delicate, the Trader’s were broad farmboy’s paws, at odds with the rest of his delicate beauty.

  I wondered what he’d Traded for to end up here.

  “We’ll be good.” His voice was a sweet piping, without the candy-sick corruption of a hellbreed’s. He gave me a tremulous smile. There was a shadow of something ancient over his face, a wrongness in the expression.

  He was no child.

  “Save it.” I jingled the collar again and watched him flinch just a little. The hellbreed had gone still. “And get down on your knees.”

  “That isn’t necessary.” The Ringmaster’s tone was a warning.

  So was mine. “I’m the hunter here, hellspawn. I decide what’s necessary. Get. Down on. Your knees.”

  The Trader sank down gracefully, but not before his fingers clenched for the barest second. Big, broad hands, and if they closed around my neck it might be a job and a half to pry them away.

  He might have looked like the sort of tchotchke doll old ladies like to put on their shelves, but he was Trader. If he looked innocent and harmless, it was only the lure used to get someone close enough for those strong fingers. And that tremulous smile would be the last thing a victim ever saw.

  I clipped the collar on, tested it. He smelled like sawdust and healthy young male, but the tang of sugared corruption riding it only made the sweetness of false youth less appetizing. Like a hooker turning her face, and the light picking out damage under a screen of makeup. The stubble on his neck rasped and my knuckles brushed a different texture—the band of scar tissue resting just above his collarbone. It was all but invisible in the dimness, and I wondered what he’d look like in daylight.

  I don’t want to find out. I’ve had enough of this already, and we’re only ten minutes in.

  I stepped back. The collar glinted. My apprentice-ring thrummed with force, and I twitched my hand, experimentally.

  The Trader let out a small sound, tipping forward as he was pulled off-center. His knees ground into the dust. Every bit of silver I wore—apprentice-ring, silver chain holding the blessed carved ruby at my throat, the charms in my hair—made a faint chiming sound. My stomach turned. It was just like having a dog on a leash.

  I nodded. Let my hand drop. “You can get up now.”

  “Not just yet.” Perry stepped forward, and little bits of cooling breeze lifted my hair. I didn’t move, but every nerve in my body pulled itself tight as a drumhead and my pulse gave a nasty leap. They could hear it, of course, and if they took it for a show of weakness things might get nasty.

  Ikaros hunched, thin shoulders coming up.

  My left hand touched a gun butt, cool metal under my fingertips. “That’s close enough, Perry.”

  “Oh, not nearly.” He shifted his weight, and the breeze freshened again. His aura deepened, like a bruise, and the scar woke to prickling, stinging life.

  A whisper of sound, and I had the gun level, barrel glinting. “That’s close enough.” Give me a reason. Dear God, just give me a reason.

  He shrugged and remained where he was. The Ringmaster was smiling faintly, his thin lips closed over the tooth-ridges.

  I backed up two steps. Did not holster the gun. Faint starlight silvered its metal. “The chain, Perry. Hurry up.”

  He smiled, a good-tempered grin with razor blades underneath. It was the type of smile that said he was contemplating a good piece of art or ass, something he could pick up with very little trouble. His eyes all but danced. A quick flicking motion with his fingers, the scar plucking, and a loop of darkness coiled in his hands, dipping down with a wrongly musical clashing. His left hand snapped forward, the darkness solidified, and the Trader jerked again, a small cry wrung out of him.

  Ikaros’s eyes rolled up into his head and he collapsed. Spidery lines of darkness crawled up every inch of pale exposed flesh, spiked writing marching in even rows as if a tattoo had come to life and started colonizing his skin.

  Perry’s hands dropped. The Trader lay in the dust, gasping.

  “Done, and done.” The Ringmaster sighed, a short sound under the moan of freshening breeze. “He is your hostage.” Now his cane had appeared, a slim black length with a round faceted crystal the size of a pool ball set atop it. He tapped the ground twice, paused, tapped a third time with the coppershod bottom. The crystal—it looked like an almighty big glass doorknob except for the sick greenish light in its depths—made a sound like billiard balls clicking together, underlining his words. “Should we break the Law he will suffer, and through him, I will suffer; through me, all shall suffer. He is our pledge to the hunter and to the Power in this city.”

  The Trader struggled up to his hands and knees. The collar sparked, once, a single point of blue light etching sharp shadows behind the pebbles and dirt underneath him. He coughed, dryly. Retched.

  “So it is.” Perry grinned. The greenish light from the Ringmaster’s cane etched shadows on his face, exposing a breath of what lived under the mask of banal humanity. “May your efforts be fruitful, brother.”

  “No less than your own.” The Ringmaster glanced at me. “Are you satisfied, hunter? May we pass?”

  “Go on in.” The words were bitter ash in my mouth. “Just behave yourselves.”

  Ikaros struggled to his feet. He moved slowly, as if it hurt. I finally lowered the gun, watching Perry. Who was grinning like he’d just discovered gold in his underpants. His face wavered between sharply handsome and bland as usual, and the tip of his tongue flickered out briefly to touch the corner of his thin lips. Even in the darkness the color—a wet cherry-red, seen in an instant and then gone—was wrong. I had to clamp down on myself to stop the sweat rising along the curve of my lower back.

  The Ringmaster took the Trader’s elbow and steered him away, back toward the convoy. Their engines roused one by one, and they pulled out, a creaking train of etheric bruising, tires shushing as they bounced up onto the hardtop from the access road and gained speed, heading for the well of light that was my city below.

  Last of all went the limo. The Trader slumped against a back passenger-side window, and the inside of the vehicle crawled with green phosphorescence, shining out past the tinting. Its engine made a sound like chattering teeth and laughter, and its taillights flashed once as it hopped up onto the road and passed the city limits.

  As they wound down the highway, they started to glitter. Each car, even the ancient Chevy, dewed with hard candy of false sparkling. They wasted no time in starting the seduction.

  Jesus.

  Perry stood, watching. I swallowed. Took another two steps back. The scar was still hard and hot against my wrist, like almost-burning metal clapped against cool skin.

  I waited for him to do something. A conversational gambit, or a physical one, to make me react.

  “Good night, sweetheart.” He finally moved, turning on his heel and striding for the limousine.

  It was amazing. It was probably the first time in years he hadn’t fucked with me.

  It rattled me more than it should. But then again, when the Cirque de Charnu comes to town, a hunter is right to feel a little rattled.
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br />   2

  Mine is definitely not a day job. The day is for sleeping. A long golden time of sunny safety hits about noon and peters out at about five in the winter, somewhere around eight in the summer. I like to be home, curled up in bed with Saul’s arms around me.

  I do not like wrestling with a Trader in a filthy storm sewer reeking of the death of small animals. I don’t like being thrown and hitting concrete so hard bones break, and I hate it when they try to drown me.

  So many people have tried to drown me. And I live in the desert, for Chrissake.

  This close to the river there’s always seepage in the bottom of the tunnels, and the Trader—a long thin grasshopper who had once been a man, filed teeth champing and yellow-green saliva spewing as he screamed—shoved me down further, sludge squirting up and fouling my coat even more.

  I clocked him on the side of the head with a knifehilt-braced fist, got a mouthful of usable air, and almost wished I hadn’t breathed. The smell was that bad.

  Candlelight splashed the crusted, weeping walls. The Trader had set up an altar down here, bits of rotting flesh and blood-stiffened fur festooning the low concrete shelf. Cats and dogs had gone missing in this area for a while, but the Trader hadn’t bumped above the radar until small children started disappearing.

  I had more than a sneaking suspicion where some of those children could be found. Or parts of them, anyway.

  The Trader yelped, losing his grip on me in the slime and scudge. The knife spun around my fingers, silver loaded along the flat of the blade hissing blue sparks like the charms in my hair, and I slashed with every ounce of strength my bent-back left arm could come up with.

  The blade bit deep across one bulbous compound eye. I’ve long since stopped wondering why a lot of Traders go in for the pairing of hellish beauty and bizarre body modifications. It’s almost as if they want to be Weres, but without the responsibility and decency Weres hold themselves to.

  Green stuff splattered, too thick to be slime but too thin to be pudding. The Trader howled. I exploded up from the bottom of shin-deep water, the carved ruby at my throat crackling with a single bloody spark, and shot him twice. The recoil kicked almost too hard for even my helltainted strength—I’d finally gotten around to getting a custom set of guns, like most hunters do after a while, and I’d wondered since why it had taken me so long. Nine-millimeters are nice, but there’s nothing like something bigger to pop a hole in a Trader.

  Some male hunters go for guns on the maxim that “bigger is better.” Female hunters generally go for accuracy of fire. I decided to go for both, since I’ve got the strength and have no complex about the size of my dick.

  My pager went off in its padded pocket. I hoped it hadn’t gotten wet, ignored the buzzing, shot the Trader a third time, and flung my left hand forward. The knife flew, blue light streaking like oil along its blade, and hit with a solid tchuk! in his ribs. Even that didn’t take the pep out of him.

  Kill kids in my town, will you? I blew out a short huff of rancid foulness, clearing my nose and mouth at the same time, wet warmth dribbling down from my forehead, more wet sliminess sliding down from my nostrils. My chin was slick with the stuff. Right hand blurred to holster the gun, other hand already full of knife, my feet moved independently of me and I hurled myself at him.

  We collided with ribsnapping force. I feinted with my left hand and he took the bait, grabbing at my arm since the knife was heading for his face again. Stupid fucker.

  It was my right hand he should have worried about. No gun meant I was moving in for the kill, since knifework is my forte. I’m on the tall side for a woman, but comparatively small and fast compared to ’breed and Traders.

  Even without the hellbreed scar jacking me up past human and closer to the things I kill.

  My right hand flicked, sudden drag of resistance against the blade, and we were almost cheek to cheek for a moment. I exhaled, inhaled, almost wished I hadn’t because the smell of a ripped gut exploded out, a foul carrion stench.

  Who knew what he’d been eating down here in the drains?

  I did. I had an idea, at least.

  The scar pulsed wetly against my wrist, feeding hellish strength through my arm. I twisted my wrist, hard, breaking the suction of muscle against the blade. My knee came up, I shoved, and he went down in a tangle of too-thin arms and legs, twisting and jerking as death claimed him and the corruption of Hell raced through his tissues. It devours everything in its path, the bargain they make claiming the flesh and quite possibly the soul, and the body dances like a half-smashed spider.

  Some hunters swear they can see the soul streaking out of the body. Even with my blue eye I can’t see it. Sometimes I’ve sensed a person leaving, but I don’t talk about it. It seems so… personal. And once you’ve gone down and seen the shifting forest of suicides bordering Hell, a lot of New Age white-light fluff palls pretty quickly.

  The Trader collapsed, his compound eyes falling in, runnels of foulness greasing his cheeks. The stench took on a whole new depth. I watched until I was sure he was dead, noticing for the first time that my ribs were twitching as they healed, the bone painfully fusing itself back together. I was bleeding, and my right leg felt a little unsteady. Liquid sloshed around my shins. I took in sipping breaths, my lungs starved for oxygen but the reek, dear God, it was amazing.

  The candles kept burning. Lumpy, misshapen tapers, their thin flames struggling in the noxious air, stuck to any surfaces above the water’s edge. I waded toward the altar, my blue eye smarting and filling with hot water as it untangled the web of etheric bruising hanging over every surface. Little crawling strands, pools of sickness a normal person would feel like a chill draft on the nape or an uncomfortable feeling it seems best to ignore.

  The drift of small bones on the altar, some tangled with fur, others with bits of cloth that might have once been clothes, made small clicking sounds as I approached. Random bits of meat quivered, and if I hadn’t already been on the verge of retching from the stench I’d probably have lost my breakfast right there. As it was, it had been a while since I’d eaten, and my stomach was near empty.

  My fingers tingled. It took a short while before the thin blue whispering flames of banefire would stay lit along my fingers, a sorcery of cleansing almost drowned by the tenebrous air.

  I’m sorry. My lips twitched. I almost said it. It’s my job to protect you. I’m sorry.

  Four kids we knew about. Three we suspected, another two I was reasonably sure of. Nine little vulnerable lives, sucked dry by a monster who had bargained with Hell.

  Who knew what those kids would have grown up to do? Save lives, find a cure for cancer, bring some joy to the world. But not now. Now there was only this vengeance in a filthy, stinking sewer.

  I cast the banefire, my fingers flicking forward and long thin jets of blue flame splitting the dimness. The candles hissed, banefire chuckled, and I stumbled back, blinking the blood out of my watering eyes. The bane would burn clean and leave a blessing in its wake, a thin layer inimical to hellbreed and other contagion.

  I’m so, so sorry.

  It was getting harder and harder to keep the words to myself.

  The banefire had taken hold and was whispering to itself, a sound like children crying. I tried not to think about it as I went through the sodden pockets of whatever was left of the corpse on the floor. Luck was with me, and I found a wallet. It went in my pocket, and I half-dragged, half-floated the squishing, still sluggishly contorting body over to the burning altar. When I dumped him on it, a shower of snapping sparks went up, and I suddenly felt queasy at the thought that he was lying on top of his victims. Nothing to be done about that—I had to burn them all, or the hellbreed he’d Traded with might be able to reach out and get himself or herself a nice fresh-rotten zombie corpse or two.

  Now that I had his ID I had a fighting chance of finding whatever ’breed he’d Traded with and serving justice on him, her, or it. I headed back, sliding and slipping, for the tunnels
that would take me to the surface. It hadn’t been a long or particularly grueling hunt, physically. No, this one had just hurt inside.

  God, I hate the kid cases. The cops agree with me. There’s no case that will drain you drier or turn you cynical faster.

  It took me a good twenty minutes to retrace the route I’d tracked him along. When I finally found my entry point—a set of metal rungs leading up to an open manhole, welcome sunlight pouring down and picking out bits of rust on each step—I looked up, and a familiar shadow moved at the top.

  “Hello, kitten,” Saul called down. I started climbing, testing each rung—that’s the price of greater strength and endurance, a muscle-heavy ass. And I hadn’t precisely climbed through, just dropped into the manhole after my quarry, hoping I didn’t hit anything on the way down.

  I wish that wasn’t so much business as usual.

  “Hey,” I called. “How’s everything up in the daylight, catkin?”

  “Quiet as a mouse.” He laughed, and it sounded so good I almost hurried up. Exhaustion dragged against my shoulders. “Smells like you had a good time.”

  “The fun just never ends.” Crumbling concrete held a spider-map of veins right in front of my nose. I kept climbing. “He’s bagged.”

  “Good deal.” Tension under the light bantering tone—he hadn’t wanted to stay topside, but I’d needed him up there watching the manhole in case the Trader doubled back.

  Or at least, that’s what I’d told him. He didn’t make any fuss over it, but his tone warned me that he was an unhappy Were, and we were probably going to have a talk about it soon.

  There were other things to talk about, too. Big fun.

  I reached the top, skipping a rung or two that didn’t look sanguine about holding me, and Saul put a hand out. I grabbed and hung on, and he pulled me easily out of the darkness. He magnanimously didn’t mention how bad I must have smelled. “You okay?”