Flesh Circus

by Lilith Saintcrow

  The man on the mattresses writhed and gurgled. “He chewed through a gag,” Eva said helpfully. “I was worried until nothing happened.”

  Since Possessors—and loa—can snap curses at an exorcist with a victim’s mouth, I didn’t blame her. “Reasonable of you. How did the mattresses get up here?”

  “I don’t know. The wife said they never used the attic.”

  Curiouser and curiouser.

  Saul lifted himself up from the steps. “Smells like the other one, Jill.”

  I stopped, gave him a quizzical look. “Really?”

  “Cigars. And candy.” He sniffed, inhaling deeply, tasting the air. “An orange-y perfume.”

  “Florida water?” I hazarded. It was a reasonable guess.

  “Could be. But there’s a lot of sugar. Like cookies.”

  Huh. Even with my senses amped up and the scar naked to the open air, I smelled nothing but dust, fiberglass insulation, and the remains of a recent fried chicken. “Well.”

  “Bruuuuuja,” the victim crooned. “Ay, bruuuuja! Come heee-eeere.”

  Eva actually jumped. “What the—”

  I shushed her. Jesus. This can’t be what I think it is.

  “Bruuuuuuja!” A long, drawn-out sigh. The voice was eerie, neither male nor female, a sweet high piping. “We want to talk to you!”

  “Madre de Dios.” Eva crossed herself.

  Amen to that, I thought. “Leave your bag. Go downstairs and start saying Hail Marys. Saul—”

  “Not going anywhere.” Saul folded his arms as Eva brushed past him. She didn’t even argue—another thing I could be thankful for. Sometimes a civilian will try to protest or object or something.

  My mouth was dry. “If he gets loose, keep him from getting downstairs. Got it?”

  He nodded, his eyes lighting up. I liked seeing that, and wished I had time to ask him what was going on with him. A good hour or so to worm out what was bothering him and maybe get somewhere would have been nice.

  But duty always calls. I dug in Eva’s bag until I came up with a taper candle and a mini-bottle of blessed wine. Father Gui blesses these tiny bottles in job lots, having a dispensation from high-up in the Vatican to perform some of the, ahem, older blessings.

  It wasn’t rum or tequila, but it would do. The victim started moaning again, and I uncapped the bottle. It was a moment’s work to stare at the candle wick, the scar prickling with etheric energy bleeding down a vein-map into my fingertips, until the waxed linen sparked and bloomed with orange flame.

  The attic shifted around me, turning darker. The shadows took on a sharper edge, hanging insulation moving slightly, though the air was dead still.

  One of the oldest truths in sympathetic magic: to light a candle is to cast a shadow. If I didn’t believe Hell predated humanity—having it on good authority—I’d think that human beings had created it. As it is, we do our bargain-basement best up here on Earth, don’t we?

  I wonder about that sometimes. Not enough to give myself the blue funks Mikhail used to withdraw into, but enough to make me question this entire line of work.

  It’s a good thing. Without the questioning I’m just another vigilante with a gun.

  The taper’s flame held steady. The liquid in the bottle trembled slightly, but that could have been the tension blooming in my midsection. This wasn’t your ordinary exorcism, and things were beginning to take on a pattern. Find the pattern, find your prey; that’s an old hunter maxim too.

  “You want to talk to me?” I pitched my voice loud enough to carry. “Here I am.”

  The victim flopped against the restraints like a fish. I wondered how Eva had gotten him tied down. He looked to be twice her size.

  But when a girl’s motivated, miracles are possible.

  I chose my footing carefully, my dumb eye on the candleflame and my smart eye soft-focused, scanning the etheric congestion over the mattresses. It still bugged me—the floor was dusty, no drag marks—so what were mattresses doing up here?

  The flooring creaked. Veils of insulation shifted. It was still warm up here after the day’s heat, and a prickle of sweat touched my forehead. It wasn’t because of the temperature, though.

  The candleflame wavered, but I was quick, shifting my weight just a half-step to the side. The strike slid past me, boards groaning, and I heard Saul skip nimbly aside. Son of a bitch. You hit him with a curse and I will tear your face off, goddammit.

  The flame guttered; I let out a soft breath and it straightened. My smart eye watered. The mass over the bed was seething, trying to find a purchase. The safe path I was following twisted to the right just as the victim gave another chilling, childlike chuckle.

  “Come a little closer, said the spider to the fly,” it crooned, out through the man’s mouth. “Come closer, bruja, and look into our eyes. We want you to see us, yes we do—”

  You’re about to get your wish, asshole. I reached the side of the mattress, kept my eyes on the flame, and tipped the wine-bottle up to my mouth. Blue light sparked in the fluid, whether it was the blessing reacting against the mark on my wrist or my intent flooding the alcohol I couldn’t tell.

  The thing inside the man’s body chuckled wetly, smacking its lips, and I heard the groaning of leather as his body erupted into wild motion. But I was just a half-second quicker, and the wine I sprayed across the candleflame blossomed into blue flame just a fraction of a second before he would have smacked into me. I flung the taper too, shaking the flame out, and the sudden curtain of darkness gave me another critical half-second before I grabbed him by the throat and shoved, still dribbling blue-flaming wine from my lips.

  It wasn’t pure theatrics. There’s not really enough alcohol content in cheap blessed wine to ignite, but sorcery helps—and the contact, mouth meeting flame or spit booze, is a symbol understood by the creatures in this man’s body. It’s what their followers do as an offering or a protection.

  And it’s hard for the body’s natural protective reflexes not to trigger when there’s a ball of blue flame coming straight at the vulnerable eyes. That reaction gave me a thin wedge and a chance to drive it home.

  I was on the mattresses over him, my knees on his shoulders, one hand on his forehead, pushing. My aura sparkled and flamed, and the thing inside him exploded out with a shotgun’s cough.

  His screaming took on a harsher tone. I fell, hitting the floor with a thud, various implements in my coat digging into my flesh, and it tried to strangle me before my aura sparked again, sea-urchin spikes driving it away. It tried again, howling obscenities in a sweet, asexual child’s voice, and I shoved at it with a completely nonphysical effort, screaming my own imprecations. The scar was a live coal, pumping sorcerous force up my arm.

  There was a crack, the physical world bowing out in concentric ripples of reaction, and a weird ringing noise. The man on the mattress was still screaming, and Saul’s growl spiraled up. Mixed into the noise, there was splintering wood and a sudden weightlessness.

  I hit hard, narrowly missing clipping my head on a countertop, and little peppering noises resounded all around me. I blinked, chalk dust and splinters hanging weightlessly before descending in lazy swirls. The peppering noises were little bits of wrapped candy, falling out of thin air and smacking down around me with sounds like a hard rain.

  Eva’s face came into view. She was chalk-white, dark bruised rings under her eyes, and she frankly stared for a few moments.

  Saul peered through the huge hole torn in the ceiling, his eyes shining green-gold. The sound of the victim’s rubbery sobbing gradually overwhelmed the rain of candy. There’s nothing like hearing a grown man cry like a three-year-old.

  Especially when that cry is blessedly, completely human. But we weren’t done yet, and I struggled against sudden inertia, my body disobeying the imperatives I was giving it.

  “Well,” Eva said. “That was impressive.”

  I blinked. Twice. It had knocked me right through the ceiling. “Shit,” I muttered, and the world
grayed for a moment before I came back to myself with Eva gasping and Saul suddenly there, his face looming over mine. No, I wanted to say, but I couldn’t make my mouth work for a half-second, gapping soundlessly like a fish. NO, go back up and watch him—

  It was too late. The flexing of the world completed, a hard snap with a thick rubber band. Or maybe it was leather peeling and popping free. The high-pitched, childish laughter came back, ringing, and more candy pelted down like stinging rain. Another rending, splintering noise, and the laughter was receding, along with a wet thudding sound, then light pattering footsteps.

  Our victim, Trevor Watson, was on the lam.

  11

  This is getting seriously weird.” I crouched on the cellar stairs, easily, running my smart eye over the candle-lit walls. “The wife had no idea?”

  “She was adamant.” Eva, behind me, was round-eyed. “I didn’t think to look in the basement.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You did exactly what you should have. There was no indicator the guy was into voodoo.” The candles were arranged on an altar draped with green and gold, novenas flickering, a crudely done painting of the Trinity fastened to the concrete wall. A brass dish of sticky candy, a bottle of rum, and a few other implements, including wilted bunches of chrysanthemums. It was thick down here; the padlock on the outside door leading down to the cellar was new, and this whole thing was beginning to take on a shape I didn’t like at all.

  “Well, there was the chanting. But I didn’t twig to it.” She folded her arms.

  I decided there were no traps lying under the surface of the visible and rose, stepped down another stair, and crouched again, watching. “I said you shouldn’t worry about it. This guy wasn’t anything more than a low-level novice. Any serious practitioner would have some defenses down here.” Though I’m not sure yet. Slow and easy and by the book, Jill.

  Saul was outside smoking a Charvil. If Eva felt bad about not checking the cellar, Saul probably felt just as bad for letting the victim—or whatever was riding him, to be precise—get away.

  To be even more precise, I knew what was riding our victim, but I didn’t know why. I had a sneaking suspicion I’d find a connection to whatever was happening out at the Cirque, though.

  I hate those kinds of suspicions. I moved down another stair, scanning thoroughly, but I found nothing that would tell me our victim was anything more than a secret follower. A complete and utter novice who shouldn’t have been able to fling curses while under a loa’s influence—who shouldn’t have even been able to be ridden.

  It’s called “being ridden.” Like a horse. The loa descends on one of the followers during a ritual, and gains certain things from inhabiting flesh. Having it happen to a solitary practitioner isn’t quite unheard-of, but it only happens where the practitioner has sorcerous or psychic talent to burn.

  This guy had no markers of initiation, intuition, or sorcery. At all.

  I stepped off the last stair, boots clicking and my coat weighing on my tired shoulders. I really wish I wasn’t getting the feeling these things are connected. The cellar was narrow, meant for nothing more than storing a lawnmower or two, and the candles made it hot and close. The guy was lucky his house hadn’t burned down. But if the loa were taking such a particular interest in him, his house was probably safe.

  They do take care of their followers, mostly. If you can get their attention. But the trouble is, once you have their attention, it’s the scrutiny of creatures without a human moral code. Capriciousness might not be cruelty, but when wedded to power it gets awful close sometimes.

  The altar looked pretty standard. Twists of paper and ash half-filled a wide ceramic bowl, used for burning incense for communications, or the names of enemies. The only thing that didn’t fit was a cup.

  It was an enamel camping-cup, a blue speckled metal number that looked easily older than I was. The blue sparkled for a moment, something running under the metal’s surface, and my hand arrived to scoop it up with no real consideration on my part. It was a reflex, and one I was glad of, because one of the candles tipped over and spilled flame onto the altar.

  “Oh goddammit,” I yelled, and yanked the cup back, tossed it into my left hand, and jabbed the right one forward. Eva let out a short blurting cry as the fire ate into dry wood—he had his altar sitting on fruit crates, for God’s sake.

  Smoke billowed. Etheric force pooled in my palm, and the sudden blast of heat against my face stung both smart and dumb eyes. “Fuck!” I yelled, and snapped my right hand back hard, the scar singing a piercing agonized note into the meat of my arm as I yanked.

  The flames died with a whoosh, all available oxygen sucked away. I backed off in a hurry.

  “Jill?” Eva sounded about ten years old, and scared. Of course, producing flame is one of those things that tells a regular exorcist to call me in a hurry, but we weren’t dealing with Hell here.

  Or at least, we weren’t dealing solely with Hell.

  Huh. “Everything’s cool, Eva.” The cup was a big chunk, and my pockets were on the full side already. But I now had a good idea where I could go to find out more about all this. “We’re going to clean up here, then I want you to go check on something for me, and I’m going to do more digging.”

  “More digging? Do I even want to know?”

  Smart girl. “Probably not. I have to go out and visit the bitch of Greenlea.”

  “Great. I’ll just let you do that, then. What am I checking on?”

  “You’re going to call Avery and check on another victim.” One that we’ve got in the bag, thank God.

  Greenlea is just north of downtown, in the shopping district. If you’re really looking, you can sometimes catch a glimpse of the granite Jesus on top of Sisters of Mercy, glowering at the financial district. But Greenlea’s organic froufrou boutiques and pretty little restaurants don’t like seeing it. Sometimes I think it’s an act of will that keeps that particular landmark obscured from certain places in the city, especially around downtown.

  Saul waited until I set the parking brake. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” I peered out the window, scanned the avenue.

  This district is just one street, with two high-end bookstores, vegan eateries, a coffee shop, and a couple of kitchy-klatch places selling overpriced junk. A few antique stores cluster down at one end, and a fancy bakery and two pricey bars at the other. It’s the kind of well-fed, quiet little upwardly mobile granola enclave you can find in pretty much any American city. Sometimes you can find two or three of them in the same metropolis.

  Two blocks off the main avenue—Greenlea itself—the crackerbox houses are pushed together behind their neat little gardens. They’re old houses, on prime property, and people who have an address out here are jealously proud of it.

  On the corner of Eighth and Vine, two and a half blocks away, is Sunshine Samedi. I’m sure some of the trendoid yuppies think it’s a Buddhist term, too.

  “He got away.” Saul’s face was shadowed in the half-light. “I thought—”

  I didn’t want him to keep going with that particular mental train. “Don’t worry about it. He didn’t come downstairs, right? We didn’t have to peel him off Eva, and we’ll find him soon enough.”

  “Still.” He even sounded upset. I glanced at him. He looked haggard in the half-light, and I wished I had time to sit him down for a good talking-to. Only what would I say?

  “Don’t, Saul. You’re my partner, and a good one. You did fine.” Did he really think I was going to yell at him for being concerned because I’d been knocked right through the ceiling?

  But it wasn’t like him. He was my partner, and he knew better. Whatever knocked me sideways wouldn’t put me out of commission; I was just too tough and nasty. He should have stayed where I put him.

  But maybe he wasn’t able to. Like he’s not able to touch you anymore without flinching.

  I looked away and unlocked my door, hoping he couldn’t read my expression. “Come on, let’s
go see if she’s in.”

  Of course she’d be in. She never left the house.

  A little coffee-shop and bakery with carefully watered nasturtiums in the window boxes sat in a brackish well of etheric depression, congested like a bruise. It wasn’t the congestion of Hell, but it was thick and smelled rancid—not truly smelled, but more sensed with that place in the very back of the sinuses where instinct lives. The closest I can figure is that the brain has no other way of decoding the information it’s being handed, so it dredges up smells out of memory and serves them up.

  In any case, it was more than strongly fermented here, just on the edge of turning bad. Etherically speaking.

  The coffee here was horrible and the baked goods substandard, but that wasn’t why people came. It most definitely was not why the place was still open, especially in a neighborhood where people were picky about their shade-grown espresso and organic-flour croissants.

  Chalked signs writhed over cracked concrete, a ribbon of walkway and a naked patio holding only a terra-cotta fire-dish and chimney on three squat legs. To get back here, you had to lift the iron latch on a high board gate and wriggle past some thorny sweet acacia that hadn’t been cut back. The smell cloyed in the nose, curdled and slipped down the throat, and I gapped my mouth a little bit to breathe through it. I’m sure Lorelei left the acacia there deliberately, and coaxed it into growing large enough to pick people’s pockets—or rend their flesh.

  The backyard was cool, holding only a ghost of the day’s heat. There was no moon, and the porch light buzzed a little, illuminating nothing. The garden pressed close, far too humid for the desert.