Eye of Heaven

by Marjorie M. Liu

  An arm curled around her neck, hauling her backward. Iris smelled garlic, mints, whiskey—and she slammed her elbow into a hard gut. Nothing, just a grunt, no loosening of that grip, and she raked her claws across the thick forearm, going so deep she scraped bone.

  Obscenities poured from his mouth, but the man did not let go, taking Iris off her feet and spinning her around until she saw Blue again. Blood ran from his chest; the man across from him had a switchblade. Iris heard shouts, men and women running from the loading bay, shock on their faces. Some of the circus crew was with them—Samuel ran into the fray, pale and huge, his shirt half-unbuttoned with its happy-face tattoo covered in sweat. He tackled Baby Huey, who had finally collected himself enough to get back into the fight, and the two men rolled until Samuel ended up on top, fists making bloody meat of the other’s face.

  “Come on, bitch,” muttered the thug holding Iris. “Stop squirming.”

  “Fuck you,” she said, pouring power into her muscles. She stepped back, bent over in one violent motion, and flipped the man over her shoulder, driving him hard into the cement. She kicked him in the head, his ribs, and suddenly the Mexican tumblers were there and they pushed Iris aside as some of them flipped the groaning man over on his stomach and yanked back his arms.

  “Blue,” Iris shouted, heart in her throat as she watched him block a knife strike to his chest. All the other thugs were down, but the last … the last looked wary, like he wanted to run but knew Blue would catch him before he reached the van. Iris could see a driver through the window; he watched the fight with a grim expression on his face and a cell phone pressed to his ear. He looked at Iris, Iris looked at him, and his window suddenly rolled down. He held the phone out to her.

  Iris hesitated. Daniel appeared from the loading bay; she saw him look at Blue, look hard at the man holding a knife on him—and suddenly that knife was gone, flying, skittering across the pavement a good twenty feet away. And not just a drop or a slip.

  The driver of the van still had the phone extended. Iris moved to take it, but Blue appeared at her side and grabbed her arm, holding her back. The driver looked at him—looked very hard—and his green eyes narrowed.

  “You’re dead,” he said quietly, staring at Blue. Daniel slipped close, standing on Iris’s other side. The driver looked at him, too, and his gaze changed, flickered. Daniel went very still.

  The van’s engine cut out. The driver turned the key, but the vehicle refused to start. The cell phone sparked and he swore, dropping it. Somewhere distant, Iris heard sirens.

  “You should have gotten out of here when you still had the chance,” Blue said to the man.

  “I had my orders,” said the driver grimly, looking at Iris. But then he focused on Daniel and Blue, and his expression turned sly. “Both of you … both of you are so fucked.”

  “You first,” Daniel said, and smiled.

  The police came. Iris answered questions. Blue stayed with her, as did Daniel, listening with grim concentration as she told the entire sordid story. Their previous aversion to the cops seemed to be gone, though Iris smelled a wave of tension when they were asked to give their names. Which they did, with enough reluctance that the cops very nearly arrested them on principle. Iris was not entirely certain what the men were hiding, but she had a very terrible suspicion that it involved them both.

  Strangers, my ass, she thought, though whatever animosity they shared seemed to disappear when they looked at Baby Huey and the rest of her attackers, sitting on the hard concrete awaiting medical attention. Blue and Daniel watched those men with peculiar gravity, giving each other a knowing glance and nod. Iris recalled, with glittering clarity, Pete’s brief discussion with them outside her pavilion walls.

  “Jesus,” she said. “You know those guys, don’t you?”

  Blue hesitated. “We might have seen some of them earlier.”

  “And taken their guns?”

  Daniel frowned. “You heard.”

  “You bet your fire retardant ass I heard. And these bozos have been asking questions about you?”

  “Yes,” Blue said flatly. “That is odd.”

  A paramedic strolled up and clicked her fingers at him. “Sir, come with me. Your chest is bleeding.”

  “It’s nothing,” Blue said, but Iris clicked her own fingers and pointed at the ambulance. Both men stared, though only Blue bit back a laugh. Daniel looked downright disturbed. She couldn’t really blame him.

  Pete appeared some distance away, just inside the doors of the loading bay. He waved at them and Daniel cleared his throat, eyes darting between Blue and Iris. “I’ll … take care of this.” And before Iris could say a word to him, he jogged away. She watched him go, feeling unaccountably guilty.

  “Huh,” Blue said, also watching him. “I don’t think he wants to kill me anymore.”

  “I know,” Iris replied. “That doesn’t seem right.”

  The paramedic beckoned once again; Blue and Iris followed her to the ambulance. Up until that moment she had not gotten too close to him, but as they walked Iris dared to brush up against his arm—and she smelled perfume. The same perfume had doused the hall outside her dressing room. It was faint—she blamed it on his mere passage through that scented cloud—but still, it made her think of her mother all over again.

  “You might need stitches,” said the paramedic, who rather gleefully forced Blue’s shirt from his very nice, very muscular body. She quickly cleaned away the blood and taped a white bandage over his wound.

  “I’ll be fine,” he insisted. He sat down on the back end of the ambulance, his hands balled into fists, knuckles pressed into the hard metal beneath him. “It’s Iris you should be looking at. She’s the one who was attacked.”

  The paramedic made a humming noise and glanced at Baby Huey and his three cohorts, who were finally being loaded onto separate ambulances. Their wounds were not terribly serious, but Iris’s bloody fingers and her very blunt nails had certainly raised eyebrows.

  “I think your friend is fine,” said the paramedic, somewhat snidely. Blue narrowed his eyes and very gently pushed the woman’s hands away from his chest. Iris tried not to smile. Blue reached for his shirt and pulled it over his head. Iris—who, up until then had tried desperately to be polite—sneaked a look at his body.

  Hard chest. Hard, rippling stomach. Smooth golden skin that looked soft and warm and utterly delicious. His head poked through the neck of the shirt; Iris glanced away, right at the paramedic—who gave her an immensely dirty look, ripping off her latex gloves with enough force to tear the material.

  No matter; Blue jumped off the back of the ambulance, immediately reaching for Iris’s hand. She gave it to him without thinking—a shock, a jolt to her sensibilities because it felt so natural and that was wrong, wrong, wrong—but when she tried to pull away, Blue refused to let her go. He just stroked his thumb over the back of her hand and said, “Are you okay, Iris?”

  She did not immediately answer, and instead found herself wishing he would touch more than her hand, that he would wrap his arms around her so she could be recaptured by the warmth and safety she had felt so strongly at his side.

  And maybe her face revealed her heart, because she did not need to ask or wish for long. Blue murmured her name and pulled her close into the curve of his body, holding her so gently she felt tears spring to her eyes. Her throat felt full, her heart dull with a soft ache that spread through her entire body.

  “No,” she whispered, her face pressed against his bristly neck. “I’m not okay, Blue.”

  “Then we’ll make you okay,” he rumbled. “I promise.”

  Can you promise not to break my heart? Iris wanted to ask. I can handle the rest of this if you just don’t break my heart.

  And if she could forget the last man she had loved—the last boy—and the horror in his eyes and the blood on his body, and oh—oh—his screams as he had seen her true face …

  Iris pulled away. Blue let go, his fingers trailing along the
edge of her jaw.

  Behind, footsteps. She glanced over her shoulder and found Pete approaching. Samuel loomed over his shoulder, mouth turned down into a frown that was the perfect antithesis to the happy-face tattooed on his chest. Daniel walked with them, his expression troubled as he looked at Iris and Blue.

  She expected questions from Pete, a hug, some outburst of concern. Instead, the old man rubbed a hand over his sweaty scalp and said, “You need to get out of here, Iris. Right now. News crews are coming. Hotel management is planning on milking this attack for all it’s worth.”

  “Shit. How much advance warning did you have?”

  “One of the crew saw the vans pull up outside the Miracle’s front doors and overheard your name. We put two and two together.”

  “Bastards. They weren’t even going to warn me.” Iris cracked her knuckles. “And the cats?”

  “The transport truck is here. You shouldn’t wait, though. Not unless you really do want to talk to the press.”

  “Funny. And no, I’m not leaving without the cats. I won’t take any chances with their safety, not after today.” She glanced over her shoulder as she walked back to the loading bay; Blue and Daniel were following, trailed by Samuel, who kept studying both their backs with a very confused expression on his face.

  “Hey,” he called out to the men. “Nanu! Did you know that from behind you both look like eineiige Zwillinge?”

  Daniel stumbled. Blue said, “What?”

  “Twins,” Daniel muttered.

  Blue grimaced. “Fuck.”

  Whatever, Iris thought. Those two had way more problems with each other than she had time for.

  Pete shooed her with his hands. “Go, Iris. Run ahead.”

  And she did, no questions asked. The transport truck, on loan from the MGM’s lion exhibit, was already in place. The driver had pulled aside the pavilion curtains and was angling the ramp against the mouth of the holding pen. The ramp itself had its own collapsible chain-link walls attached to its sides—forming a tunnel from truck to pen—but Iris didn’t need that, and the driver knew it. She waved at him, he stood back, and she opened the holding pen door.

  The cats, however, did not immediately run up the ramp. They swarmed her, smelling her clothing, rubbing close, and Iris dropped to her knees, letting them have at her.

  “Ms. McGillis,” said the driver. Barry, she remembered. Blond, in his mid-twenties. “Mr. Reilly warned me about the time constraints. I think we ought to go.”

  “Yeah,” she murmured, but it wasn’t easy finding her feet. She swayed, sinking her hand into the ruff of Petro’s neck, and glanced left. The note was gone. One of the police officers had mentioned that a crime-scene investigator would be stopping by to collect it. She hoped they had. Hoped that no one else had taken it.

  “Go on,” she murmured to Petro, shoving him toward the ramp. There was another cage in the interior, which was climate-controlled and filled with hay. The lion moved without hesitation, and Lila, Con, and Boudicca quickly followed. Barry shook his head.

  “I see it every time and I still can’t believe it. I’m sure you already know this, Ms. McGillis, but cats like this—different species, I mean—just don’t get along the way these do. And I’ve seen your show….” He stopped, smiling shyly. “I like it a lot.”

  “That’s sweet of you,” Iris said. “Thank you, Barry.”

  Thank you for being normal and nice, the perfect fan, and not in the slightest bit psycho.

  Psycho like what, though? Because the man who had threatened her was not just crazy. How many people, after all, had their own goons for hire? And how many people could get those goons to stick around, even when they were losing the fight? That kind of thing took money, power … or fear.

  “Ms. McGillis,” Barry whispered urgently.

  Iris peered around the truck. She saw suits, bright lights, cameras—all moving fast in her direction. She did not think any of them had seen her yet, but they were definitely eyeing the pavilion.

  “Lock me in,” she told Barry, and jumped into the truck with the cats. He nodded, began closing the door—but before he shut it completely she heard a scuffle, a low argument. Blue climbed in after her.

  “Hey,” he said, smiling.

  “Ma’am?” Barry asked.

  “We’re cool,” she told him.

  The young man locked the doors. Darkness swallowed them. Outside the van Iris heard chatter, fast questions about her whereabouts, about the attack—why and how and who was hurt, whether or not it was true that she had been visited by a man who wanted to pay her for sex, whether she had been paid for sex, whether she was being kidnapped for sex, who the men in suits were, if it was a sex deal gone wrong—Mafia, extortion—and would the hotel condone such a thing, was the hotel getting a cut, was it running a brothel?

  Iris pushed her nails into her palms, using the pain to keep tight rein on her anger. What a bunch of assholes.

  A roar surrounded them as Barry started the engine; the walls and floor vibrated. Blue began crawling across the hay-strewn truck bed to sit by her. Some light crept in from beneath the large doors; not enough for him to see by, but plenty for her night vision to kick in. She saw Blue on his hands and knees, watched how he bumped into Lila’s hindquarters and froze.

  “Move to your right a couple inches,” Iris murmured, not thinking until it was too late how odd it might seem that she could see so well in the dark.

  But all Blue did was whisper his thanks, and in moments he hit the wall and slouched at her side.

  “So,” he said quietly, as the van bumped and rumbled.

  “Yeah,” Iris replied, just as quietly. She felt greasy, sweaty, and for a moment all the lingering adrenaline seemed to rush away, flush down to her gut She fought for control over her body, though she was too far gone to stop the tremor that pulsed through her. Con pushed close and she slung her arm over his thick neck, savoring his musky scent, the clean sweetness of hay. Blue pulled her against him. She sighed, unable to bring herself to protest. It just felt too good. Too right.

  “I don’t like to be touched,” she confessed. “But with you, I seem to keep making exceptions.”

  “Forgive me if I totally don’t complain.”

  “So you like this, huh? Riding in old semis with wild animals and a girl who just keeps drawing crazy?”

  “No better way to live.” Blue shifted, unbending his right leg with the slow careful movements of a man in pain.

  “Did they hurt you?”

  “Just my chest. The leg is part of an older injury. If that hadn’t been sore, I might not have gotten cut”

  “Used to fighting?”

  “A bit. You?”

  “No, but I’ve picked things up over the years. Circus folk are always good in a brawl, and my mother taught me some tricks.”

  “I can only imagine.” Blue fell silent for a moment, and then, quiet: “Tell me about the man who visited you.”

  Sickness curled through her stomach. “I already told the police. You heard the whole thing.”

  “You gave them the dry version. I want to know how the bastard made you feel. What your instincts told you. Please, Iris.”

  It was the please that made his request impossible to ignore. He said it gently, without any pretense or arrogance, as though he really, truly cared.

  “He terrified me,” she said. “Scared me shitless. He acted like he owned me, said I was already his. And he smelled like death.”

  The last detail was something Iris knew she should not say, but the desire to tell was so strong she could not help herself. Blue’s arm tightened. “What else?”

  Iris thought for a moment. “He called me something. A word I didn’t recognize. Layak, I think. Do you know what that means?”

  “No,” Blue said, his scent spiking with tension. “But it sounds … Indonesian. I … had to spend some time there not long ago.”

  “Really. You travel a lot?”

  “It’s part of the job. Doesn’
t give me much of a life, though. I broke up with my last girlfriend because of it, although in all fairness, she traveled a lot, too.”

  Iris’s heart sank a little. “Business-type?”

  “No. Musician. I always seem to end up with the artists.” His lips brushed the crown of her head, sending sparks through her body. “You were remarkable tonight, Iris. Not just the way you handled yourself with those men, but your performance on stage. It was nothing like what I expected.”

  She smiled, scratching behind Con’s ears. “I don’t do parlor tricks or gimmicks.”

  “No,” Blue said quietly. “You tell stories. You take people to other places. You make magic, Iris.”

  She bit back laughter, knowing it would sound bitter. She did not want to feel bitter. She appreciated the compliment—chose to believe it was sincere. But to show him that would be too much.

  “All I do is get myself attention I don’t want, Blue. Psychos and love letters, thugs who cut you and want to drag me off to God knows where. Animal activists who want to take my cats and … and give them to some pseudo-sanctuary where everyone will pretend they’re fat and happy and loved.” Iris shook her head. “And I can’t stop. I can’t stop because this is all I have, and even if I didn’t need the money I would still be here. For Pete, the cats, everyone. The old place, the ranch, wouldn’t be home anymore. And I’m not made for a nine-to-five job.”

  “Is anyone?”

  “Not you,” she said without thinking. “I can’t imagine you sitting at a desk, or working customer service.”

  He laughed, low. “I cleaned toilets when I was thirteen, Iris. Bagged groceries, stocked cans, swept floors. I was washing dishes in a restaurant by the time I was sixteen, moved up to busboy not long after, and at nineteen I joined the military so I could finish paying for college, get some life experience. But you’re right. Never a desk job.”