Flesh Circus - 4

by Lilith Saintcrow

  His eyes glowed. A small flicker between his parted lips was his wet cherry-red tongue, gleaming in the dimness. “Not even if I’m the one keeping you alive? The performers here are restive, and the Ringmaster is recovering from a nasty bout of green smoke and cockroaches.

  Even Traders are so fragile.”

  Even you, he probably meant.

  I am not a Trader. I’m a hunter. Don’t forget that difference, Perry. “Five seconds.” I stared at the air over his head. “And counting.”

  He sighed, spread his hands… and ducked out into the sunlight again, the shiver rippling through his linen suit as well as his skin as the sun, that great enemy of all darkness, touched him.

  I hoped it hurt. I hoped every fucking second he spent out in the daylight hurt him.

  A straight-backed wooden chair lay flung on the floor, soaked in rotting hellbreed ichor. There was something odd—a long hank of dead-black hair, tangled up in the muck. A few moments more of examination proved it to be a wig, with a kerchief tangled in it. The kerchief had once been red, and was now rotting as the acid ate at it. The wig’s fake hair was stronger stuff, bubbling slightly as it was… digested.

  “Ugh.” I glanced up. She was probably at the table when it started.

  Greasy antique playing cards scattered across the table. Five of spades, ace of spades, queen of spades, all spackled with steaming liquid rot and covered in teensy roach tracks. The crystal-ball shards vibrated slightly, and something lay tangled under the knife-sharp splinters. Even the base of twisted dull metal the crystal ball must have rested on was torn up, sharp jagged edges still quivering with distress.

  The violence of this attack was far and away the worst. It looked like the hellbreed had literally exploded in chunks. Even with all the sacrifice Zamba had performed at her house—the killing of her closest followers—this was superlative.

  Which meant Mama Zamba must’ve had some link to Moragh the fortuneteller. Something physical, the last piece of the puzzle.

  Come on. Something has to be here. I was about to start tearing the tent apart when a round silvery glimmer caught my eye.

  I crouched, the balls of my feet slipping slightly in greasy, bubbling gunk. Each piece of silver I wore quivered with blue light, blessing reacting with contamination.

  “Bingo,” I whispered. I shook a piece of fabric out of my pocket—a red bandanna, 51 colors like Gilberto’s, left over from the last big case. I unknotted it, folded it over, and grabbed.

  The pocket watch dangled, gunk dripping off it. Steam curled away from its steel curve. Not silver, and not gold, but still antique. “Blessed Maria.” The words were numb on my lips, but the hellbreed ichor cringed, turning inert and dripping free. “Watch over us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”

  Belief behind words neutralizes evil, one of the oldest tricks in the book.

  I popped the case free. The watch had stopped at 11:59, and there was no way of knowing, but I would bet it was P.M. A plain face, with the Greek letter Omega right under the 12. The crystal wasn’t cracked, and engraved on the outer edge of the front casing were three worn-down letters.

  SRG. Samuel Gregory. I wondered what the “R” stood for.

  There wasn’t much about this case that I could feel good about. But I felt good about this, even with my coat hanging in hellbreed muck and my heart breaking inside my ribs.

  “Gotcha,” I said softly. “Gotcha, you bitch.”

  I closed the watch up and stowed it in my pocket. Stood, my knees creaking, and surveyed the rest of the tent. A shadow fell across the flap and I whirled, hand to a gun.

  It was the stuttering barker, Troy. His face twisted up, hard red flush high on his cheekbones. His mouth was a thin line, and his hair was mussed.

  He held a bottle of Barbancourt rum. “H-h-h-here.” The single syllable strangled itself on the way out of his mouth. “I-it w-was H-H-Helene’s.”

  “Well, it’s going to help catch her killer.” I took the bottle, and he dug in his pocket. Came up with a much-wrinkled paper bag. I pointed. It seemed easier than making him talk. “Cornmeal?” He contented himself with a nod and handed it over. “A-are y-you r-really g-g-g-going to—”

  “I’m really going to fuck up Helene’s killer, Troy.” Jesus. I’m reassuring a Trader. “How’s Ikaros?”

  His thin shoulders came up, dropped. His eyes glittered with the flat shine of the dusted, and he seemed not to notice the stink filling the tent. The red suspenders were even more hopelessly frayed, and his white shirt looked wilted. “Th-th-they s-s-say you’re n-not g-g-g-going to d-do an-ny-nything. Th-that—”

  God, it was like pulling nails out of stubborn wood, listening to him talk. “I don’t care what they say. I’m just interested in getting this over with. Get out of here.” His lip curled for a bare moment before turning into a thin bloodless line again, and he retreated out into the glare. I was left holding the rumpled bag of cornmeal and a half-full bottle of Barbancourt, standing in the middle of a rotting smear of hellbreed and staring at the shards of a crystal ball, clutching a pocket watch that ran with blue light under the surface of its steel casing.

  I set the rum and the bag of cornmeal on one of the few unsullied spots on the table, yanked the cup out of my pocket. The watch fit inside, and when I drew the straight razor out and slid it into the cup the blue light didn’t just lurk below the surface. It fizzed over, falling in a cascade of sparks. A shiver walked down my spine again.

  “Oh yes.” I tilted the cup, watching the blue light paint the fraying velvet of the walls, and the bottle of rum trembled against the tabletop. “I’ve got you now, Zamba.” So much of sorcery is pure will. You don’t really have to do a damn thing except declare, This is the way the world is. People do it every day. The record plays just under the surface of their conscious minds, all those assumptions they make.

  That’s just the way it goes. Some things won’t ever change.

  It’s also the principle that lets hellbreed, Sorrows, Middle Way adepts, and so many others slip through the cracks. People fear muggers or tax audits. They don’t fear the things that crouch in the crevices, staring up with glowing eyes that don’t obey human geometry.

  Oh, sure, people subconsciously cringe away from a full-fledged ’breed or shiver when an arkeus passes close enough to touch. But they won’t really look. They don’t want to see.

  And they will hurry away, if they can. Lock their car doors and forget.

  Whatever weird confluence of genetics and opportunity makes a hunter, one thing is paramount: the ability to look steadily at the weirdness and the filth. The refusal to look away.

  And add to that the stubbornness to refuse to accept that what you see has to stay the way you see it. I can’t explain it any more clearly. It’s the original sin, I suppose—the pride to stand toe to toe with God and say, No, you did something wrong. You fucked up here, and it’s my job to make it better. To fix it, as much as I can. Maybe you’re too busy, maybe you have a great cosmic plan that accounts for all this suffering and hideousness—but I don’t, I’m not you, and I’m going to fucking do something.

  It’s just centimeters away from the pride that hellbreed think gives them the right to murder, rape, pillage, distort, and batten on the helpless.

  But those centimeters count.

  The straight razor rattled in the blue enamel cup. The pocket watch did too, blue sparks popping and fizzing as I held it in front of me, arms extended, knuckles and tendons standing up with the effort of keeping the wildly agitated metal still.

  The rum burned in my mouth. I held it, my gag reflex quivering on the edge of kicking in, the alcohol fuming until my eyes watered and spilled over. The cornmeal, a fine thin line of it in a circle around me, shifted. Little grains of it rose, touched down again with slight whispering sounds.

  They didn’t scatter. They just lifted and plopped down again.

  When physical material has already been sensitized to a load of etheric energy, it�
�s easier to pump more force through it. My arms burned. My throat was on fire. Tears rolled down my cheeks.

  I ignored it all. Fierce, relaxed concentration filled my skull. The cup leapt and rattled like a live thing, jerking so hard it would have dislocated my shoulder if hellbreed strength wasn’t pouring through my right fist, scorching sliding down my wrist and pooling in my palm. My bones creaked. I dug my heels in, concentrating.

  The pool of filth that used to be the fortuneteller bubbled. Her wig sent up curls of smoke. My blue eye narrowed, eyelid twitching madly as if I had some sort of tic. The strings under the surface of the visible snarled, ran together in a complex patterned knot.

  Sometimes the best way to go about it is to unpick the knot, strand by strand. Then there’s other times, when you just slice the goddamn thing in half and let the resulting reaction smack someone in the head.

  Guess which one’s my favorite.

  In this space, half-sideways from myself, I could see the fine dusting over every surface, an etheric imprint like the scales on a butterfly’s wings. Zamba had spent energy recklessly to reach this victim.

  She must be getting close to the end, or desperate. The cup rattled, lunged forward.

  The great hunter magics are largely sympathetic, as opposed to the controlling sorcery of, say, the Sorrows. Sympathetic magic is intensely personal; you have to know yourself before you can use it. One of the greatest dictums in hunter training: know thyself.

  And of course, there are times when brute force instead of subtle knowledge is the best way to get things done.

  I sucked in air through my rapidly filling nose, my lungs inflating. The rum was getting hotter and hotter in my mouth. The cornmeal shifted wildly, with a sound like static cling on a pair of really big metallic socks.

  I gathered myself. The mental image solidified inside my head, seen with the unsight of my blue eye. Long blond dreadlocks, blue eyes, a narrow waist, a bony face with smallpox scars across the cheeks, a long blue and silver caftan kilted up to her knees. Mama Zamba was crouched, looking wildly around her, fat snakes of hair writhing. She could probably tell something was gathering, but not what.

  I spat, a long trailing mist of rum that ignited in a puff of blue flame. The cup leapt again, dragging me a few inches, my heels stapling into the dusty ground. Cornmeal popped into flame too, sizzling. The smell was baking bread for just a moment, then shaded into burning starch.

  Potential shifted, might became is, and the force left me in a huge painless gout. The tent flapped wildly, straining against its moorings, and the calliope music rose to a shriek.

  Rum-fire and burning cornmeal winked out. The force yanking on the blue enamel cup snapped like a rubber band, and I sat down hard, skidding on my leather-clad ass as my teeth jolted together.

  Jesus. Major sorcery always ends up with a pratfall. Reaction hit, like thunder after lightning.

  The strength went out of all my bones and I sagged, the scar singing one wet little satisfied note against my arm.

  I heard my own breathing, harsh stentorian gasps. Blinked several times. Gray smoke billowed, wreathed the entire tent. The bubbling hellbreed ichor gave one or two last pops and settled, spent.

  I swallowed, the reek of rum and burning baked goods sliming the back of my throat.

  “Checkmate,” I said, softly, and wished I could lie down and sleep.

  But there is no rest for the wicked, or for a hunter who has just bought a little breathing room.

  Zamba wouldn’t be fucking with anyone at all until dark fell and the tide of magic turned. I pushed myself up on trembling hands and knees, wished Saul was there.

  It was the wrong thought. A sob escaped halfway, I set my teeth and bit, choking it off. Pushed myself upright the rest of the way, every muscle screaming in protest.

  Just a little longer, Jill. You’ve got a plan, stick to it.

  It was good advice. But I was oh, so tired.

  The iron voice of duty had no truck with my complaining. Get moving. Finish the job. I bent wearily, scooping the watch and the straight razor back into the cup.

  Time for the next part of the plan.

  26

  I found the Ringmaster by the simple expedient of collaring a passing Trader and putting a gun to the skinny, rhinestone-laden asshole’s greasy head. I needn’t have bothered—he just led me to the same broken-down Airstream trailer the hostage had been in before. There was a huge hole busted in the side of it, and a large black spot in the dirt where the Ringmaster had bled.

  I went up the wrecked steps carefully as the Trader hissed behind me, set my foot over the threshold, and half-glanced over my shoulder. “Open your mouth again,” I said softly, “and I will break every last one of your hell-trading teeth.”

  The hissing cut short as if someone had taken a kettle off the stove, and I edged into the darkness inside the ruined trailer.

  Perry sat in a folding chair, leaning back, elbows on the arms and fingers steepled in front of his nose. The frowsty bed held a stick-thin blond figure, collapsed against pillows and breathing softly, with a gleam of silver at its throat.

  The Ringmaster crouched easily at the end of the bed, his thin shoulders up and his top hat askew. Frayed red velvet strained at his shoulders and hung down, his jodhpurs stretched over his bony knees. He glanced back at me, his eyes burning orange in the dimness, and his lip lifted silently. I saw the flash of the boneridge that passed for his teeth, but he immediately turned back to the hostage and I let it go.

  “Hello, darling.” Perry’s words slid against each other, Helletöng rumbling underneath them. “It has been an interesting morning.”

  “How’s he doing?” My throat still burned from the rum. I wondered if he could smell it on me. A colorless fume of sorcery still hung on me too, and no doubt he could smell that.

  “Oh, I didn’t know you cared. ” Perry snorted slightly. “He suddenly quieted, not ten minutes ago. The magic pulling on him slackened, and he is sleeping.”

  “Pulling on him, huh?” Now that’s odd. “What was the collar doing?”

  “Sparking like all your curséd metal.” The indigo threading through Perry’s whites was black in the dimness, and the scar chuckled to itself like wet lips rubbing together. “It seemed to help, though.”

  I had to turn my back to him to check the hostage, and I was so tired I only felt the slightest ripple of unease up the muscles along my spine. My boots whispered through a drift of candy wrappers and paper trash. Something stuck under my heel, and Perry chuckled softly.

  The sweat on me turned to ice. But I just lifted one of the hostage’s eyelids and checked the pupil reaction: none. The dust-shine on the surface of the eyeball had turned thick and mucousy, dry and veined on the surface. His breath was regular and shallow, his ribs rising and dropping.

  There was no spare flesh on him, and he wore only a pair of stained jockey shorts. His skin was mottled like a night-growing fungus. Lines of spidery writing sank into the stretched, sunken skin, twitching sluggishly with his slow pulse.

  The writing flinched away from my touch. My apprentice-ring sparked, and the collar took on a dim foxfire glow. The biggest pocket of my trench coat flapped slightly, as if a small animal nestled inside it.

  Huh. Curiouser and curiouser.

  I passed my palm down Ikaros’s torso, the hellish scribbles fleeing my touch. The mottling also fled a little, but it still took two or three passes before Perry made a small spitting sound of annoyance.

  “Do you mind? ”

  “Actually, I really don’t. Sounds like you do, though.” I kept looking. I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking for, but the way the cup, razor, and watch trio was shaking in my pocket was an odd sign.

  I glanced at the foot of the bed. The Ringmaster hissed softly, the bone ridge’s crevices grimed with something dark and dripping. Faint shadows crawled across his face, the traces of poisoning from blessed silver.

  I stepped toward him. The hostage’s breathing
evened out, became deeper. The scar tingled, expectant.

  “Jill.” Perry’s tone was a warning.

  I’m in a trailer with two hellbreed I’m not killing and a Trader I’m trying to save. Jeez. “Just a second, Pericles.” I eased forward another step, leather-clad shins whispering along the side of the foam mattress.

  The rattling in my pocket decreased.

  That isn’t right. She’s after the Ringmaster, isn’t she? It’s the only thing that makes sense. I looked back at the hostage, who stirred restlessly and curled up on his side, unconsciously making a lizardlike movement with his head to make the collar’s spikes fold down on one side.

  I wondered how long he’d been doing this, to be so easy with the thing.

  The thought of what Ikaros might have paid for that might have made me shudder, if I hadn’t been so tired.

  “What did he Trade for?” The words fell into a sudden dangerous silence, filling the dark, trash-strewn interior. The jagged edge of sunlight falling over the door wasn’t a beacon of hope—it was a sterile blanket. In the distance, the calliope rollicked on, and I suddenly wanted to find out where the music was coming from and fucking shoot the goddamn thing so I didn’t have to listen to it.

  “None of your business,” the Ringmaster finally said, each sibilant laden with menace.

  I turned my head, met his pumpkin-hellfire gaze. “You brought trouble to my town. There’s people dead in the streets, and I’ve been attacked.” Besides, this is an old unfinished case, and I’m going to see it carried through. “Any question I care to ask about, any dirty laundry I take an interest in, is my business. What did he Trade for?”

  The Ringmaster did his best to stare me down. But Perry shifted slightly, the folding chair creaking, and the thin, crow-haired ’breed actually cowered, perched on the end of the bed like a vulture.

  If this keeps up, Perry, I might just even get to like you. Or at least, hate you a very little bit less.

  “Henri, this is excessively wearying.” Perry sounded bored, but the Ringmaster flinched again. I took another half-step toward him, and the buzzing rattle in my pocket diminished again.