Flesh Circus - 4

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “Fine.” I paused for a moment. “Not really.”

  He reeled me in. Closed his arms around my shoulders and we stood for a moment, me staring at his chest where the small vial of blessed water hung on a silver chain. No blue swirled in the vial’s depths.

  He pulled me even closer, slid an arm around my waist, and I could finally lay my head down on his chest. We stood like that, his heartbeat a comforting thunder in my ear, for a long time. The rumble of his purr—a cat Were’s response to a mate’s distress—went straight through me, turning my bones into jelly. It didn’t stop the way I was quivering, though, body amped up into redline and adrenaline dumping through the bloodstream.

  When the shakes finally went down I let out a long breath, and immediately felt bad about smearing gunk on him. He didn’t seem to mind much—he never did—but I felt bad all the same.

  “Want to tell me about it?” He didn’t try to keep me when I eased away from him. He just let go a fraction of a second later than he had to.

  I sighed, shook my head. “It’s over. That’s all.” A flood of sunlight poured over the dusty pavement, the drop-off at the end ending in a gully that meandered behind businesses and the chain-link fence of a car dealership.

  “Good enough.” His hands dropped down to his sides, and he studied me for a long moment before turning away. The manhole was flung to the side—I hadn’t been particularly careful at that point, I just wanted to get at the motherfucker. It was bulky, but he got his fingers under it and hauled it around, and I fished my pager out of its padded pocket, the silver in my hair chiming in a hot draft. “Who’s calling?”

  The number was familiar. “Galina. Probably got another load of silver in.” Christ, I hope it’s not more trouble.

  “Least it’s not Monty.” The manhole cover made a hollow, heavy metallic sound as he flipped it, gauging the force perfectly so it seated itself in its hole like it had never intended to come loose.

  “You’re such an optimist.” The smile tugging at my lips felt unnatural, especially with the stink simmering off my clothes and the sick rage turning in small circles under my heart. The scar twinged, the bloom of corruption on my aura drawing itself smaller and tighter, a live coal.

  He smiled back, crouching easily next to the manhole cover. The light was kind to him, bringing out the red-black burnish in his cropped, charm-sprinkled hair, and the perfect texture of his skin.

  He tanned well, and a fine crinkle of laugh lines fanned out from his eyes when he grinned. They smoothed away as he sobered, looking up at me.

  We regarded each other. He of all people never had any trouble meeting my mismatched gaze.

  And each time he looked at me like this, dark eyes wide open and depthless velvet, I got the same little electric zing of contact. Like he was seeing past every wall I’d ever built to protect myself, seeing me.

  It never got old. Or less scary. Being looked at like that will give you a whole new definition of naked. It’s just one of the things about dating a Were that’ll do it.

  We stood there, oven heat reflecting off the concrete, each yellowed weed laid flat under the assault of sunlight. Finally my shoulders dropped, and I slipped the pager back in its pocket.

  “I’m sorry.” The words came out easily enough. “I just…”

  “No need, Jillybean.” He rose fluidly, soft boots whispering as he took two steps away from the manhole. I was dripping on the concrete, but drying rapidly.

  “I don’t mean to—”

  “I said there was no need.” He glanced at the street over my shoulder. The Pontiac crouched, parked cockeyed to block anyone from coming down here, a looping trail of rubber smeared on the road behind it. I’d been going at least seventy before I stood on the brakes. “You really wanted this guy.”

  I really want them all, sweetheart. The words died on my lips. And each time I kill one, the itch is scratched. But it always comes back. “Kids.” Just one word made it out.

  “Yeah.” He scratched at his ear, his mouth pulling down in a grimace. Weres don’t understand a lot of things about regular humans, but their baffled incomprehension when faced with kid cases is in a league all its own. “You must be hungry. We can stop for a burrito on the way to Galina’s.”

  In other words, you haven’t eaten in a while, shame on you. Come on, Jill. Buck up.

  I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders. “Sounds like a good idea. That shack on Sullivan Street is probably still open.”

  The pager went off again. I fished it out again, my hair stiffening as it dried. Ugh.

  This time it was Avery. It never rains but it pours. “Shit. On second thought, maybe we’d better just go. Avery probably needs an exorcism, and I can call Galina from his office afterward.” I stuffed the pager away and turned on one steelshod heel, headed for the Pontiac.

  “Dinner after that?”

  “Sure. Unless the world’s going to end.” Adrenaline receded, leaving only unsteadiness in its wake. I made sure my stride was long and authoritative, shook out my fingers, wrinkled my nose again at the simmering reek drifting up from my clothes.

  He fell into step beside me. “You know, that sort of thing is depressingly routine. How about calzones, at home? I’ve got that dough left over.”

  It was routine. People have no idea how close the world skates to the edge of apocalypse every week. If they did know, would it make them stop killing each other?

  I used to think maybe there was a vanishing chance it would. But I’m getting to be a cynic.

  “Calzones sound good.” I was already wondering what Avery needed, and the pager finished its buzzing as I walked. “Let’s get a move on.”

  3

  T he apartment was on Silverado, in a slumping, tired-looking concrete building—the old kind with incinerators in the basement and metal chickenwire in front of the elevator doors. The wallpaper had once been expensive, but was now faded, torn, and a haven for creeping mold. If the elevator worked the place could probably have gotten on a historical register.

  As it was, the whole building smelled of fried food, beer, and desperation. We took the stairs, found the right hall, and the door was cracked open.

  I don’t usually show up for exorcisms covered in gunk and stinking to high heaven. The victim doesn’t give a rat’s ass by the time I’m called in, but my fellow exorcists probably do.

  This time, however, Avery didn’t even seem to notice. His brown eyes sparked with feverish intensity, his mournful-handsome face animated and sharp despite the bruising spreading up his left cheek. A gurgling noise scraped across my nerves, and we came to a halt at the foot of the bed.

  I studied the body thrashing against restraints for a few moments. Don’t ever, ever rush an exorcism in the beginning stages, no matter how pressed for time you think you are. That was the first thing Mikhail said when he began training me to rip Possessors out of people.

  “Guy’s name is Emilio Ricardo. Thirty. Dishwasher. Not the usual victim.” Avery spoke softly, but his entire body quivered with leashed energy. I folded my arms. The carved ruby on its short silver chain at my throat sparked once, a bloody flash in the dimness. Silver moved uneasily in my hair. Saul stood near the door, leaning against the wall with his eyes half-closed.

  The apartment was small, with none of the usual signs of possession. No hint that the victim was a shut-in, nothing covering the windows, no scribbles of demented writing in whatever substance was on hand on the walls or mirrors. No smell of rotting food. No foul slick of etheric bruising over every surface.

  And Possessors aren’t that fond of poverty. They like to get their flabby little mental fingers in the middle and upper class. It’s almost enough to make you feel charitable, finding at least one thing that doesn’t prey on the poor.

  There was a metal bed the victim was tied to, a chair and a table in the greasy kitchen, and an old heavy television balanced on a TV cart. The floor was linoleum, and the whole place was the size of a crackerbox.

&nbs
p; No, definitely not the usual victim. But they are creatures of opportunity too, the Possessors.

  The victim was male, another almost-oddity. Women get possessed more often, between the higher incidence of psychic talent and the constant cultural training to be a victim. But a man wasn’t unheard of. It’s about sixty-forty.

  Still…. Male, dark-haired, babbling while he strained against the restraints, leather creaking.

  “How did you get him tied down?”

  “Cold-cocked him. He’ll have a headache for a while.” Avery didn’t sound sorry in the slightest.

  He rubbed at his jaw, gingerly. “Assuming he ever wakes up.”

  I kept my arms folded. Ave had done a good job strapping the man down. He looked thin but wiry-strong, fighting against the restraints, his skin rippling. The candy-sick scent of corruption was missing.

  That was what bothered me. “He doesn’t smell right.”

  “Smells like BO and fish.” Ave’s nose wrinkled. “But it just seems off. That’s why I called you.

  Didn’t feel right, and you’re always bitching about trusting those instincts.”

  “Because when you don’t, you end up getting your ass handed to you.” I paused. “And then you get all embarrassed when I do show up to bail you out.”

  “Humility’s a virtue, Kismet.”

  “So’s discretion. I suck at both. Didn’t you notice?”

  The banter wasn’t easing our nerves, but he gave me a tight, game smile. The bruise was coloring up quite nicely. “I was too bowled over by your witty repartee. Not to mention your leather pants. What do you think?”

  “I think he’s possessed, but I don’t know by what yet. Grab a mirror.” He backed up two steps and bent to dig in his little black exorcist’s bag on the greasy linoleum floor, metal and glass clinking. I approached the end of the bed and considered the thin man, who was still ranting and raving in glottal stops and harsh sibilants. It didn’t sound Chaldean. It had a lilt to it unlike Helletöng, and it was vaguely familiar.

  “Here.” Avery had a small round hand mirror, the type exorcists buy by the case. I took it and hopped over the end of the bed, which squeaked and shuddered as my feet landed on either side of the victim’s hips. I crouched easily and kept the mirror out of sight, tucked against my leg.

  My trench coat settled over the victim’s legs, and I could see his eyes were blind—filmed with gray. A fine tracery of overloaded veins crawled away from the corners of his eyes, right where laugh lines should be. They were gray as well, pulsing as if thin threads of mercury were running under his skin.

  Now that was interesting.

  Let’s see what we’re dealing with here, shall we? I leaned down, examining him closely, my gaze avoiding his blindness. My aura quivered, sea-urchin spikes almost visible, my blue eye turning hot and dry.

  The victim kept twisting against the restraints. I shifted my weight, the cot groaning. Waited.

  The blind eyes wandered, back and forth in random arcs. He didn’t respond to my nearness, which could have meant anything.

  Seconds ticked by. Avery was breathing high and hard, tension spreading out from him in waves.

  Saul was a quietness by the door, watching. I settled, my heartbeat picking up just a little. I forgot what I smelled like, crouching there, my attention narrowing to stillness.

  The mirror jabbed forward just as his gray-filmed eyes wandered across the precise, unavoidable point in space that would force him to look at himself. The reflection caught and held, my blue eye straining to pierce layers of etheric interference—like fine-tuning a radio dial to catch the familiar bars of an old song—and I caught a glimpse of it before the mirror’s surface disintegrated with a sharp horrified sound and the bed itself heaved and bucked three different ways at once.

  The mirror went flying, jerked from my grip; restraints creaked and the bed jolted. I moved quick as a striking snake, my hellbreed-strong right hand flashing to close around the victim’s throat as leather groaned, restraining a force it was never meant to bear. The chanting rose, the victim’s mouth loose and sloppy, and I knew what I had hold of.

  Oh, goddammit.

  I bore down hard, a nonphysical movement accompanied by a hardening of physical muscles.

  The sea-urchin shape of my aura trembled on the surface of the visible, spikes starring out hard against the air, light popping on the points. My aura, like any exorcist’s, has grown hard and thick over the course of hundreds of exorcisms, each of them unique—the only commonality is the undeniable will needed to press something inimical out of its unwilling host.

  But this case needed something a little different. Silver rattled in my hair, and I heard my own voice.

  “Begone, in nomine Patrii, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti! I command you, I abjure you, I demand you release this—”

  That was as far as I got before what was in the man exploded, my fingers slipping free, and threw me ass-over-teakettle. The cot shredded itself, screeching as it tore. The restraints held, just barely—once-living tissue more resilient than brittle metal, for once. Avery yelled, diving, and Saul gave a short sharp bark of surprise.

  I landed hard, skidding on my hip, hit the wall. Drywall crumbled, puffing out chalk dust. I was on my feet again without knowing quite how, moving faster than I had any right to, adrenaline pouring copper through my blood. Two skipping steps across the room, a leap, and I realized just as soon as I was committed to the motion that I was going to miss.

  Crap.

  Avery was still yelling as I twisted in midair. The victim rose from the ruins of the bed, leather restraints squealing as his body strained against them, a sound like the wind rushing from the mouth of a subway tunnel thundering through the apartment and blowing out the windows in a tinkle of glass.

  He was shouting, still in that lyrical tongue, and the curse flew past me as I twisted even further, my coat snapping taut like a flag in a stiff breeze. I touched down, pulling etheric energy recklessly through the scar, a pucker of hurtful acid wetness inside my right wrist humming with power. My foot flashed out, weight shifting back, and I caught him full in the face right before full extension, the precise point where a kick has the most juice. The jolt went all the way up my leg.

  He went flying, Avery yelled something else shapeless, and I coiled myself, getting my feet under me. Now I was prepared.

  The wall disintegrated as the victim hit it, and I had no time to think about the damage that might be done to the host body. I centered myself, drew myself up to my full height, and the charms in my hair rattled and buzzed.

  “Papa Legba!” I had to shout to hear myself through the volume of noise the victim was producing, gabbling and screaming. “Papa Legba! Papa Legba close the door! Papa Legba close the door! PAPA LEGBA CLOSE THE DOOR!”

  Silence fell, sharp as a knife. My blue eye—the left one, the smart one—watered. The ether swirled, the sensitized fabric of the room resounding like a plucked thread. Everything halted, droplets of crystallized water hanging in the air—Avery, chucking a bottle of holy water at the victim, whose mouth was open in a trapped, contorted scream.

  Well, at least Ave was thinking. Holy water’s far from the worst ally in a situation like this.

  The room filled with a colorless cigar-smoke fume. I tasted rum, thrown back hard against the palate, and spat, spraying the air. A silver nail ran through me from crown to soles, and I remembered Mikhail’s pale face after my first introduction to this type of magic.

  Be careful it does not eat you alive, milaya, he’d said. These sorts of things do.

  The victim toppled, a long slow fall to the greasy linoleum floor. Before he hit I was on him, my aura sparking in sudden swirling darkness despite the flood of sunlight rushing through the windows. The shape of the things inhabiting him rose like smoke—three small humanoid forms, weaving in and out of each other. There was a high chilling childish laugh, and a gabble of weirdly accented Spanish.

  “Usted va a pesar de que, bruja.”
For a moment I saw them—little boy and little girl, both with crystalline eyes and bowl-cut black hair, the girl in a shift and the boy in a brown loincloth. The shape between them was androgynous, melting first into the girl’s body, she mutated into the boy, and the third shape whisked them both back out of sight, receding down a long tunnel. The sound of a door closing, sharp and firm, echoed through shocked air.

  I sagged. The victim was unconscious, his face slack and empty. “Ogoun,” I whispered. “Legba, Ogoun, thank you. Muchas gracias. Thank you very much.”

  “What. The. Hell?” Avery didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t have to.

  “It’s bad news.” I glanced at Saul, who hadn’t moved from the door. He leaned forward, though, tense and expectant, his dark eyes not leaving me. He was pale under his coloring, and I found out I was still smelling like rotting goop.

  I couldn’t wait to get home and take a shower.

  “I got that much.” Avery crouched gingerly. I let go of the victim, who slumped to the floor, breathing heavily. “That smelled like cigars. And… rum?”

  “Put him in a holding tank downtown. Get me a file on him, too. I need two headshots.” I straightened. Every muscle in my body cried out in pain, then subsided into a dull howling.

  “Keep the door bolted. Watch him. If you have to, buzz me again.”

  “Great. Okay.” Ave visibly restrained himself from asking me why, and I checked. I get so used to dealing with one thing after another that sometimes letting someone else in on the situation doesn’t occur to me. But Ave would do his job better if he knew what he was dealing with.