Flesh Circus

by Lilith Saintcrow

  And hearing the tapping skritches of thousands of little insect feet flooding up the stairs. The darkness came alive with tiny red dots blanketing the soaked carpet, and I was suddenly very sure that whether or not Zamba was involved, I’d find nothing living in this happy little split-level.

  I was pretty sure I’d find plenty dead and moving around, though.

  15

  Fighting in the dark, especially when every footstep crunches with little moving bodies underneath, is no picnic. I couldn’t tell how many there were—a lot was about all I could think, hearing them shuffle and close in on me. The roaches made little creaking sounds, a dry insect thrumming. My fist crunched through slippery flesh, I hooked my fingers and pulled, a gelatinous eyeball popping and running. Wet splorching hands fumbled at my waist—I kicked back, heard the splutter of contact and the crash as it flew back, hitting whatever was left of Zamba’s altar.

  And still they crowded me. What a welcoming committee. Either they had orders to kill whoever entered the house, or Zamba had fallen prey to something, or—

  My aura flamed, sea-urchin spikes boiling with blue sparks. That was better and worse. Better because the shifting illumination gave me visuals to work on, instead of straining my other senses to place the opposition. Which meant I could afford to unlimber the whip.

  But it was worse because it meant the atmosphere in here was boiling, and not about to calm down anytime soon. And the gloom only got more intense, clotting and thickening. A spiritual hematoma.

  Bug guts slimed underneath, ground into the carpet. The roaches clattered and chattered, and the sound of dry tendons stropping each other as the zombies lurched around me.

  The fighting art of hunters is a hodgepodge. Almost any martial art you can name, from savate to esoteric t’ai chi, is in there somewhere. You can never tell what move will save your ass, and every once in a while you have to run through everything you know just to keep it fresh. Of course we all have our favorite moves, but pulling something out of your ass in a fight is a good way to put your enemy down.

  But for this—close combat in a dark space, with things pressing in on every side, more than I could comfortably count because I was too goddamn busy—I fell back on the fighting style Weres teach their young, relying on evasion, quickness, and grace. Whether or not I’m graceful is an open question, but evasion and quickness?

  Yeah. Especially with the scar on my wrist whining a subvocal grumble as it spiked etheric energy through me, granting me a measure of inhuman speed.

  Hellbreed speed.

  These were new, juicy zombies dripping with roaches. Their reek clogged the throat, and if I hadn’t had it drilled into me to breathe, goddammit, breathe by Mikhail endlessly I might have held my breath and passed out.

  That wouldn’t have been good. I splat zombies when I’m going fast enough, but a helpless body on the floor wouldn’t be so lucky. It would be pulled to pieces.

  Step back, swing, fist blurring out to crunch through a rotted leering face, roaches dripping, a high tinkling childish laugh bouncing off the walls as the air thickened to paste, darkness pressing down as if I were the thing to be exorcised from this house, boots slipping and skidding in muck—

  One leapt on my back and I got free, my legs tangling together. Goddammit, too many of them, Jesus—The scar chuckled wetly, pinging the nerves in my arm, sawing them like dry violin strings. The thing on my back exploded away with a wet popping sound, and right before I went down under a crushing weight of bodies I heard a coughing roar and the mechanical popping of a handgun. Sounded like a .22.

  What the fuck—

  Teeth crunched against my elbow, worrying at the tough leather. I struck out with fists and feet, something hit me behind the knees, and I starfished again, trying to get them off me, roaches skittering, little insect feet probing at my eyes and mouth—

  Crunch! The weight suddenly lessened, and the roar became a steady snarl. I knew that voice, even though it held no relation to humanity. The world whirled into chaos, ripping and wet splorching noises, foulness gushing out. I was spattered with hot fluids, and the density in the air fled before the clean sound of my Were’s battlecry.

  I thought I told him to go home! I surged up, fighting for air and life, and they exploded off me.

  It was Saul. He blurred between man and cougar, the roar changing as his chest shifted dimensions. He didn’t pause, either, sliding into cougarform and stretching as his claws took out an abdomen; he blurred up into humanshape, collided into another zombie with ribsnapping force and dropped gracefully back into catform again to avoid a strike. Seeing a Were fight is like seeing a tree bend itself to the wind, leaves fluttering. Every motion is thoughtlessly deliberate, beautifully precise. They never pause between humanshape and animal form, but the glimpses of unhuman geometry between the two are heartstopping in their beauty.

  The popping of a handgun sounded again, and a high boy’s voice, breaking as he cursed.

  I launched myself, my hand sliding greasily against the balustrade, and hit the landing. Broke one zombie’s neck, put it down, and ripped the other one off a supine human form. Goddammit! Civilian. The priorities of the situation shifted—I reached down with my hellbreed-strong right hand, grabbed a handful of flannel shirt, and tossed him unceremoniously out the door, not hard enough to bruise.

  Or so I hoped.

  Who the hell is that? I had no time to figure it out, because I heard Saul roar again and bolted up the stairs. A living carpet of roaches was trickling down the first two steep drops, the dots on their backs glaring at me.

  Saul feinted, then reversed with sweet and natural speed. Another zombie exploded, foulness spattering both of us, and I leapt, meeting the next one with a crunch that rattled my teeth.

  From there it was sheer instinct, fighting, with Saul at my side. We’ve done this so often—and I knew better than to ask him what the hell he was doing here until after things were under control.

  There was a popping sound and the smell of wet salt and natron again. The roaches began to puff up into green smoke, and the zombies milled, losing their mass mind for a few crucial seconds. We waded into them, porous bones snapping like greenwood sticks and noisome fluids spraying and spattering.

  Forensics was going to have a hell of a time with this place.

  The roaches were popping out of existence, green fog knee-deep, and I hoped like hell there weren’t more zombies downstairs. Whoever I’d dumped on the porch would be a prime target.

  Saul’s claws reached out, his fingers blurring between paw and hand, and sheared the last zombie’s face clean off at the same moment that I hit it, double-fisted, and snapped ribs like matches. A few more moments’ worth of work, and we were done here.

  “Hey, sweetheart,” he said as I stood panting and collecting myself.

  Wouldn’t you know it, even spattered with zombie goo he looked too good to be real. And now that the air was no longer paste-thick, ambient light was creeping around. It was no longer darker than midnight in a mine shaft.

  I got my breath, ribs flickering. “Hey yourself.” I turned on my heel and headed back down the stairs. My glutes were sure getting a workout from this case. “Civilian?”

  “Kid,” Saul said behind me, understanding immediately. “Gilberto. Says he heard you were coming out Chesko way on the police scanner, figured you were heading for this place.”

  Oh, great. “For Christ’s sake.” But it showed promise, and intuition. Neither of which were going to help him once I got my hands on him.

  After I secured the scene.

  “Seems like an okay kid.” That was as far as he would go. “You okay?”

  “Fine. Just ducky.” I thought you were at home. I glanced out onto the front porch.

  Gilberto crouched, his eyes huge in his thin, sallow face. His hair was mussed, free of a hairnet for the first time and falling lank across his pimpled forehead. He held the .22 like it was his personal holy grail.

  “Happy
now?” I didn’t have time to say much else. There was half a house that could be crawling with more zombies. “Watch him,” I tossed over my shoulder, and plunged down the stairs.

  The basement smelled bad but not overwhelmingly so. This used to be where Zamba kept a couple pit bulls all year, and a few goats inside during the autumn rains. The chickens had their own coop in the back yard, but as soon as my eyes adjusted I saw ragged bundles of feathers scattered over the concrete floor.

  I hit the light switch. There was nothing living down here.

  The dogs were shapeless lumps of fur. The feathers were chicken corpses, strewn around as if there had been some sort of explosion. In the middle of the basement, a chalk-and-cornmeal circle writhed. The lines were moving sluggishly as the sorcery in the air bled out, whispering with a sound like a kid drawing on pavement, a dry hollow whisper. The meal was scattering, bleeding away from the thin lines.

  Inside the circle, the three goats were twisted together, their legs stiff with rigor mortis and their bellies bloated. The floor was awash with sticky, almost-dry blood.

  This isn’t real voodoo. Nobody even made an attempt to cook these, or to kill them kindly. My gorge rose, I pushed it down. Why was it that zombie-smell didn’t make me puke, but the dead helpless bodies could?

  No, the animals had been killed with sorcery. They lay twisted in agony, their throats ripped open. No self-respecting practitioner would do this. Not even a bocor would waste lives this flagrantly.

  I examined every part of the scene I could see, gun in one hand, whip in the other. There were no teensy-tiny track marks in the blood here. My blue eye caught the fading marks of etheric violence, souls ripped from bodies.

  The explosion of energy when something is killed is one form of food for the loa; it is the offering the practitioners use to make bargains or payments. Cooking and eating the animal afterward is a sacrament. Even a bocor won’t waste good meat that often. But this kind of wanton death bore no relation to voodoo. It was destruction for its own sake—the destruction of souls, which carries its own price and its own charge of dark energy, like jet fuel. This was more like the work of the Sorrows, those soul-eating carrion.

  The Church holds it as a point of doctrine that animals don’t have souls. I know better. I’ve seen better. It’s only one place where we differ, the Holy Mother Church and I.

  There are plenty of others.

  Oh, God. The basement was clear. I headed back up the stairs. Saul met me on the landing. “No more of them. Some bodies in the bedrooms, though.”

  In a minute. I nodded. Half-turned. Gilberto was still crouching on the porch, the wreck of the shattered door creaking as I stepped on it. He looked up at me, and before the walls behind his eyes could go up I caught a glimpse of what he must have looked like before whatever had made him into what he was.

  The first time I’d met this kid, I’d known he was a killer. Strength, size, and speed are all useless without the willingness to do serious harm; someone smaller with the ruthlessness to hurt can take on a giant and come away a limping winner. The dead-eyed gangbanger had that willingness in spades. We recognize each other, those of us who have come out the other side of decency and settled for survival.

  And sometimes, something just gets left out of people, and they don’t see anything wrong with killing. That’s one of the tests of taking on an apprentice—finding out if they’re willing to hurt someone if they have to, or if they’re just sociopaths.

  You have to be sure. A hunter is a deadly thing, and that deadliness has to be disciplined. Otherwise you’re no better than the things you put down. You’re worse than a Trader, even.

  “I told you to go home.” I didn’t have to work to sound unwelcoming. “Did you not hear me? I said go home, and leave the night alone.”

  “What was those?” He rose slowly, the gun dangling in his right hand. “Right out of a fucking horror movie, eh, bruja? And him, he’s el gato. Lobo hombre, gato hombre.” He was breathing so fast his narrow ribs flickered. That smell was on him—desperation, wanting so hard the teeth ache as if under a bad load of sugar.

  “You’re not listening.” I glanced at Saul. “He was already here?”

  “Yup.” Saul’s eyes glowed orange for a moment. He stood easily on the stairs, his back to the entire upper portion of the house, and I suddenly wanted to check every single room and cupboard.

  It was ridiculous. He said he’d checked, and I trusted him to tell me when part of a scene was cleared. That was the whole idea behind having a partner, wasn’t it?

  I trusted his judgment, didn’t I?

  Of course I did. I swallowed hard, prioritized. “And you came out here because…”

  “Galina called. She got no answer when she dialed Zamba. Figured you might run into some trouble.” One corner of his mouth curled up. “Besides, I like seeing you.”

  My own lips stretched into a grudging smile. How did he do that, make me feel good with five little words? “Flatterer.”

  “Hey, whatever works.” In this light he didn’t look nearly as tired. And no doubt about it, he’d pretty much saved my bacon. I would’ve survived, but still. “Where’s Zamba?”

  “Don’t know. Any blondes in the wreckage?”

  “Not that I saw, but the bodies are a little… well, you’ll see.”

  I looked back out onto the porch. Gilberto was following our exchange. He wasn’t pale or in shock. He was just as he’d always been—sallow and dirty-looking. His eyes were a bit wide, but that was all. He seemed to be handling this well.

  It could’ve been an act. Gangs are big on face, and he probably had a lot of practice in not looking scared. But usually, when someone encounters the nightside for the first time, there’s more trouble. Screaming, fainting, puking, rage—I’ve seen it all. The initial reaction doesn’t mean much. It’s how people deal with having the rationality of the world whopped away from under them over the long term that matters. After a brush with the nightside some retreat into rigid logic, a bulwark against something their upbringing tells them shouldn’t exist. Others get increasingly loud and nervous, ending up wearing tinfoil hats and screeching about conspiracy aliens.

  Some of them get really, really quiet, go home, and eat a bullet or some pills. It all depends.

  On the other hand, in the barrio they know about Weres. Enough not to mess with them, at least.

  Gilberto just looked at me, his chin coming up a little. Stubbornness made him look mulish, especially when he hunched his thin shoulders and peered out under strings of hair. What’s it gonna be, that look asked. What you gonna do with me? Because I ain’t going home.

  I stared at him, trying to make a decision. It’s not like snap decisions aren’t a part of the job—some days, it’s nothing but, and you have to make the right one in under a hundredth of a second. But this wasn’t a decision that would or could be made without a lot of thought.

  Then again, the students come along whether a teacher is ready or not. The world was just full of on-the-other-hand answers today. “You got a car, Gil?”

  He shrugged. Even the shrug was right—equal parts stray-cat insouciance and hesitation.

  “All right. Here’s the first thing: don’t steal any fucking cars. From now on you don’t break or even bend the law. Go back to my house. There’s a key under one of the empty flowerpots stacked on the east side. Go inside and don’t touch anything, unless you’re getting yourself a snack. We’ll talk when I get home, and I don’t know when that will be. You got me?”

  He nodded. The hunted look didn’t go away, but at least he straightened a little.

  “I mean it,” I persisted. “Don’t steal a car. Don’t break the speed limit. If you have a gun, clean or not, ditch it before you step in my door. You come in clean, or I won’t have anything to do with you.”

  “I’m not stupid.” The sullenness returned.

  “Prove it by being clean when you step in my door. Stay inside, don’t leave until I talk to you. Go o
n, now.”

  He shrugged. His slim brown fingers loosened, and he dropped the .22. It made a heavy sound when it hit the porch, and I winced internally. He’s going to be a live one.

  I watched him go down the sobbing, squeaking steps. He headed across the street and vanished into the darkness. I hoped he made it, and I hoped he listened to me.

  Then I shelved that hope, scooped up his .22, and got back to the problem at hand.

  This was not looking good at all.

  “What just happened?” Saul still stood on the stairs, watching. Bits of zombie glop still clung to him, dripping off the fringe of his jacket. It was going to be a job and a half cleaning the suede up. Thank God he believes in Scotchgarding everything. It doesn’t do much good with the rags my clothes end up as, but it works wonders for his.

  “I don’t know yet.” I might have an apprentice, that’s all. We’ll see. “Best to keep him out of the way until I do.” I checked the pistol, made sure the safety was on, and wondered if it was one I’d seen him use before.

  The thought of that case was uncomfortable, to say the least. And Saul still hadn’t asked any questions about it. And there was a grave up on Mount Hope, with a good cop sleeping under a green blanket. The people responsible had been mostly cleaned up—but not all of them.

  Prioritize, Jill. Get back up on the horse. “When did Galina call?”

  “Just as I got in the door. I came out here. Was wondering what the hell the kid was doing here when I heard the fight.” He shrugged, stuck his hands in his pockets. “Any idea what’s going on yet?”

  “Not much. Other than these cases are connected somehow. And if Zamba’s not a body here, she might be involved.”

  “Great.” He sounded as thrilled as I felt about that. “What does she look like again?” As if he wouldn’t remember her, but he was being sure. Checking. It was a partner’s responsibility to check.

  “Blond dreadlocks. Tall. Bad legs, but a good smile.” I tried a smile on my own face, but it felt like plastic. This was going south fast. “Show me the bodies. Let’s get this wrapped.”