Flesh Circus jk-4

by Lilith Saintcrow

“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.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  I found the Ringmaster by the simple expedie
nt 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.

  Another little piece of the puzzle fell into place. Not a big one, but one that stopped me and made me examine the hostage’s face again in the dimness.

  “For the same thing every hostage Trades for,” the Ringmaster finally said. “For peace. Forgetting. An end to pain.”

  Why do I not believe that for a minute? “He had something he didn’t want to remember?”

  “Doesn’t everyone? Even our kind has regrets.” He shifted, and I saw his feet were bare, horny calloused toes gripping like fingers. The muscle under the skin flickered in ways no human meat would move. “Not many, true. But still.”

  Regrets from a hellbreed? Jesus. “Yeah, like you regret you didn’t kill someone painfully enough? Whatever.” For the hundredth time, I took a firmer hold on my temper. “What did he trade for?”

  “I told you. He traded to forget. And he was valued here among us.”

  Valued, yeah. As a way to keep the hunters off your backs, or a way to allay suspicion? As a mascot? Don’t break my heart. I let out a sigh, my cheeks puffing up and the sensation of Perry’s eyes on my leather-clad back like ice against fevered skin. “I’ve got other business to transact. The attacks won’t start again until dark, and I’ll be back before sunset. Perry, you keep watch. And you.” It was an effort not to jab a finger at the Ringmaster. “Clear out the bigtop. Before it’s dark we’re going to need the hostage in there and people watching the entrances and exits. The rest of your people need to be outside the city limits by the time dusk hits.”

  That got a reaction. The hellbreed stiffened, and the scar burned with sudden hurtful awareness. “You’re throwing us out?” He showed his boneridge again, and a sudden certainty boiled up in me. If he mouthed off just one more goddamn time…

  Calm down, Jill. Get some perspective. The exhaustion both helped and hindered. I was too tired to go on a homicidal rampage, but the chain on my temper was fraying.

  Hard.

  “No. I’m catching your killer and finishing this up. You give me any more flak and you’re going to be auditioning a new Ringmaster instead of a new host
age. Get me?”

  Hey, they’re not the only ones who can threaten.

  “I do not think—”

  “Of course you don’t.” Perry’s tone was smooth as silk. “It is not your strength. Our little hunter doesn’t wish to lose whatever advantage she has. She will keep the identity of our killer secret until the last possible moment, to ensure we do not make alliance with him and to ensure this ends the way she wishes. With the Cirque firmly under control and myself, I suspect, neutralized.”

  It didn’t sound bad when he said it, but I was kind of irritated that he twigged to it. More irritating was how surprised he sounded, as if he didn’t think me capable of realizing my best chance of wrapping this up and making it so the ’breed didn’t get any funny ideas was controlling the dispersal of information.

  “The thing is,” he continued meditatively, “she cannot be sure what I know. And here she is, with her back to me and her throat within reach of your claws. She must be very sure, this canny little wench, of at least one thing—that I want her alive for my own purposes.”

  The only thing I’m sure of right at this moment is that I’m not going to murder you just yet. And that I can’t trust you as far as I could throw you with two broken arms. I said nothing, but the sudden drop in my pulse-rate was warning enough. If either of them moved on me now Zamba might just be a loose end to tie up at my leisure, instead of part of a ticking time bomb of an equation. “Don’t flatter yourself, Perry. You’re occasionally useful, but in the end you’re just one thing.”

  His laugh was as cold and slow as the sudden chilling of the scar, a chunk of dry ice pressed against my skin, eating its way down. “And what is that?”

  “Just another hellspawn.” I swung toward the hole in the side of the trailer. “I’ll be back by dusk. Nothing should pull on the hostage before then.”

  They rumbled at each other in töng, metal rubbing painfully against itself in some deserted trainyard. The Ringmaster’s tone went up at the end, an inquisitive ear-flaying squeal, and Perry’s deeper answering rumble swallowed it whole.