“That’s my Maya,” Bell whispered. “Did any of them touch you?”
“I did my own damage,” Maya said. She lowered her eyes.
“And now I intend to do mine,” Bell said, directing his radioactive gaze at Cameron. “Sit down, Maya. I have business to attend to. The anger will dissipate. Fear will make a late entrance.”
She grabbed Bell’s arm before he could pass her. “I’d like to help,” Maya said.
Bell encircled her leather cuffs, raising her hands to kiss her knuckles. Then he turned them over to salute her wrists just below the cuffs. Heat smoother than the heat of anger, like another good swallow of scotch, sluiced down her spine and curled in a wave within her abdomen.
“You have already helped more than I could have ever hoped,” Bell said. “Your mind whispers to me once more. Things have changed. Are you finally open to reward, Maya?”
Maya nodded.
“Then you shall have your reward for protecting my people, pleasure that only jinn can provide to a woman,” Bell promised. “But I am tasked with protecting my people…and doling out retribution if anyone dares to touch them with malice in their hearts. Sit, Maya. It’s the greatest show not just in this life but in the next.”
As soon as Maya lowered herself to a patch of grass, Bell’s prediction came true. The reality of what had almost happened practically knocked her over, and she gasped, clutching at her chest. Her legs, arms and hands twitched with the tail end of adrenaline.
Chiding voices repeated like madness in her head, asking her why she had done it, why she hadn’t run for help and instead engaged with them, knowing she was outweighed, outnumbered, outmatched, and they had almost… What had she hoped to prove?
All she had was a black eye, a sore tongue, a thick neck and a torn costume—which she now pulled together over her bare breasts more out of social habit than modesty, since the cast didn’t care. And she should count herself lucky.
Whatever she had hoped to prove, maybe she’d proved it to herself. Like the fact she was mental.
The clowns trailed Bell, their black and glowing eyes glinting with the same glee as the Ringmaster, who had stepped on the thong of the whip to force John to his hands and knees. Seemed they all loved a good judgment day.
Bell unwrapped the whip from John’s neck with a twirl of his finger. Then he signaled Misha to stand down with an appreciative nod and indicated that Ciarán should let Shawn go as well. Shawn started to run, but Bell backhanded him with a sound like a close lightning crack. Shawn collided with a trailer and collapsed once more.
“None of you are going anywhere,” Bell said, pointing at all four in warning. “You will regret what you have already done. I am sure I or one of my colleagues would dearly love to pay you back for any additional transgressions you commit.”
“You can smell the alcohol on her breath,” Cameron said stridently. “I’m telling you, man, she came on to me and then went apeshit.”
“You,” Bell said, facing Cameron with utter contempt. “You will stay silent until I come to you, pig. I am saving your soul for last. Ridam be haykalet.”
Bell spit on Cameron’s face. Cameron’s lips abruptly sealed, becoming a single fleshy, lumpy line. Cameron went dead white beneath his freckles. He clawed at his monolip, but he only managed to dig additional grooves in his face to join the ones Maya had made.
“Holy shit,” John whispered, suddenly shaking like a terrified puppy. “Holy shit. What are you, you bastard? What did you do?”
“I am no one to trifle with,” Bell said. He crouched down to look John in the eye. “Do you wish to trifle with me?”
John shook his head.
Bell moved in front of the woman, who was still leaking tears and whimpering, but she seemed scared sober.
“You. Coward.” Bell nudged her cheek with his knee. “You did nothing, which is both your sin and your salvation. I’m going to tell you to wish to be of service to the circus to make up for your mistake, and you are going to do so. Now.”
Melanie nodded quickly. Her head looked like it was going to nod right off her shoulders.
“Say it.”
“I’m sorry,” she cried. “I didn’t know what they were going to do. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not interested in your apologies, woman,” Bell said. “I want your wish. This is your last chance. Say it.”
“Yes!” Melanie cried. “Yes, I wish it.”
“Very well,” Bell replied. “I’ve been wanting to add a few new oddities to the line.”
He snapped his fingers. This time it was her boyfriend’s turn to mutter “Oh God” in horror.
Melanie’s short denim shorts ripped to pieces as her hips blossomed out in a series of gleaming scales and a frill. Bare muscle, bone and vessels erupted from the inside of her legs. Melanie flopped to the ground, screaming bloody murder before skin and scales covered the exposed flesh.
Her ankles fused together, and a membrane caul covered her feet. The bones in her toes shot out, the strong membrane stretching to join it and form fins.
Her screaming abruptly stopped. Melanie gouged at her throat in the same way Cameron had scratched at his mouth, but nothing came out except fishlike gasps. Her mouth gaped mutely as six lines ripped themselves through the sides of her neck, like closed vents. She didn’t need the gills in the open air.
There were other little changes that she probably wasn’t aware of, panicked and without a mirror as she was. She blinked twice now, once with her human eyelids and another with a clear lid that presumably would help her see underwater. Her eye sockets shifted and widened for her new, eerily large eyes, with their dull, watery, huge pupils. Her fingers were still dexterous, but the webbing between them was more pronounced, and the nails were pointed and grooved. Her human teeth dropped out of her gaping mouth onto the ground, replaced by sharp, conical piranha teeth poking through, uneven in the gums.
Lennon trilled in delight, bending down to pick up the teeth and admire the terrified aquatic beauty. Bell slapped his wrist and his cheek lightly, and Lennon scurried back again.
“You’ll get your leftovers,” Bell told him, “after I’m finished with the meal.”
“Wow, that’s flattering,” Valorie said.
Bell narrowed his eyes.
Valorie raised her hands defensively. “God, I was just kidding.”
Bell crouched down again and lifted Melanie’s head. “I’m sure you’ll forgive me for taking your speech, at least until I lose the urge to commit graver punishment upon your heads should you utter another wish for a while. I am also at heart a businessman, and it’s just good business to keep you from singing. We already have a pair of sex demons in the cast. We don’t need a siren casting her spell.”
“Fuck, man. You’re crazy. You’re crazy!” John yelled.
“Not crazy. Determined,” Bell replied, rising up to stare down his nose at the three men on their knees. “Remove the girl. You’ll find her aquarium trailer on the other side. Lennon, Valorie, please make sure she feels at home. Ciarán…”
Ciarán picked Melanie up, slow and strong. Lennon played with her tail excitedly as they left.
Valorie sighed and glared with exasperation at Bell, but she went with the two demons anyway.
“What’d you do? That’s impossible. Imposs― What did you do?” Shawn stammered. His jock face was bright red under his crew cut. He trembled like a child.
“For the rest of you, you have a choice. You can try your luck with a wish, although you probably won’t be able to wish again for a good long while. I hold a grudge, my friends, and you have incurred my displeasure. If you do not want to risk a wish, well…” Bell gestured to the clowns behind him. “My clowns are hungry, as you can see. They haven’t had a child in over a week. They’ll take whatever they can get in their mouths.”
The three clowns split their mouths open with knuckle-cracking rips, exposing the rows of needle-lethal dentition within.
All three men jerked a
way. Tragedy grinned wildly, the happiest that Maya had ever seen her. Her long tongue lolled out of her mouth, dripping with saliva. Behind her, the other two clowns panted with the promise of a feast, but they were more restrained.
“Let’s start with you. Shawn.” Bell nudged the jock with his toe. “You’ve seen a lot of terrible things today, many of them perpetrated by you, although a self-absorbed worm such as yourself does not yet understand that. Do you wish for a better understanding? Do you wish to really see what you’ve done?”
“What the fuck are you, man?” John asked.
“Wait your turn, pig,” Bell snarled, whirling around and lifting John off the ground by his neck. “Unless you want me to silence you the same as your friend here.”
John shook his head, unable to move Bell’s hand as he clawed at Bell’s fingers.
Bell threw him against a trailer with a crash. John fell to the ground next to Shawn, coughing.
“You, boy,” Bell snapped at Shawn. “Do you wish for a little illumination, to really see what you’ve done?”
“Wish?” Shawn said. “Fuck, man, I just wish you’d let me go. Please, man, we’ll never come back. We won’t tell anyone what happened. Just let us go.”
“Let you go?” Bell said, smiling coldly. “I can work with that. I can let you go from your previous life. I can set you free from your ignorance, teach you to see the truth of things every time you look in the mirror. Welcome to Arcanium.”
Bellowing, Shawn brought his hands to his face as blood spilled over his cheeks. Bones cracked—such a familiar sound and one that made Maya shudder and her stomach twist.
His nose broke and hooked to make room for the gap that split open on the bridge between his eyes. When Shawn pulled his hands away again, shouting blindly at the sky, his eyes had completely dissolved. The sockets where they had been merged in the center to make a single cavernous opening. A deflated condom of flesh inside suddenly inflated, bulged and became a single eye twice as big as a golf ball.
His screams didn’t end like Melanie’s, because Bell didn’t take his voice box. Instead, Bell cut off half of his tongue.
Maya’s breathing was shallow and fast, her upper lip slick with sweat, but this time, Maya didn’t think she was terrified. Instead, she thought she might actually be…excited.
This time, chaos was working for her.
“Your turn,” Bell said, turning to John. “Do you want things over quick and bloody, or do you want to try your luck with a wish? If you are wise, you will wish for what I tell you. It’s your best chance for mercy…eventually.”
“You’re some kind of wizard or something, aren’t you?” John said.
“Your kind knows nothing of ours anymore,” Bell said. “Do not try to understand what I am. You’ll have lifetimes to observe our ways and recognize the folly of your own.”
“No. No, no, no, you’re crazy,” John said, shaking his head. “This is crazy. I’m drunk. This is a dream, just a dream. None of this is actually happening.”
“Then what do you stand to lose from a wish?” Bell asked. “Make your choice. My patience wears thin, and I am sorely tempted to let Maya and Christina watch as the clowns eat your intestines like sausage links. Not to mention other pieces you’d do better without.”
The clowns tilted their heads, chittering like foxes. Tragedy rocked back and forth like a demented punk doll. Murphy slavered and gave a low, canine growl.
“I’ll wish,” John said, nodding frantically. “Christ, yes, I’ll wish.”
“Let’s make this simple. Wish to do whatever this circus needs, and you might incur some goodwill,” Bell said. “Wish your life to me or feed your death to them.”
“Shit.” John glanced over at Cameron, who had drawn his eyebrows together over his nose, so scared that he was furious. Cameron couldn’t allow himself to admit he was scared, that these damn circus folks had made him scared. Maya couldn’t read minds like Bell, but she knew Derrick, and as far as she was concerned, all the apples from that family tree had worms in them.
“Don’t look at your friend,” Bell said. “He’s the reason you have to make this decision, isn’t he?”
“Shit. Yeah, I’ll wish,” John said.
“Then say it.”
Comedy started forward.
“Fine, fine, I wish to do whatever the circus needs or whatever you just said,” John said, recoiling. “Just please don’t kill me!”
Bell raised his hand to stop Comedy from attacking. Comedy whined, but he obeyed.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Bell said. “It’s been years since we’d had a fire-eater, and that should take care of keeping you quiet.”
“Shit,” John said, wincing away from Bell’s hand as he raised his palm over John.
John fell to the ground near where Shawn was still rolling around trying to understand what had happened to him and recovering from the bone-deep pain. John, however, shook with seizure. Then even Maya could feel the heat emanating from John in waves like sun off desert concrete. As he shouted, first smoke then fire poured out of his mouth. Now the heat coming off him started to smell like a luau.
“It’ll stop burning if you close your mouth,” Bell said quietly, but his voice cut through John’s screaming.
John clamped his mouth shut and covered it with his hands.
“You’ll only be able to manage a liquid diet until I’m satisfied with your repentance,” Bell said. “You and your one-eyed friend can share a trailer for now. I hope you don’t snore. Please show them out, Bale, Misha.”
Bale yanked Shawn to his feet, and John got up when Misha pointed his swords at him.
“Now, time for the dog-fucked pig,” Bell said, turning finally to Cameron. “Misha, before you leave…” Bell summoned a small, curved hunting knife out of Misha’s bag. “Thank you. Remind me to show my gratitude properly in the near future.”
Misha’s slight smile made his sickly face look ten times better. “Sure, boss.”
Bell grabbed Cameron by the hair and yanked his head back. Bell put the knife against his puffy monolip and sank the blade through, splitting the lips once again as Cameron shouted, each shout louder than the last as more of his mouth was torn open. Bell could have opened Cameron’s mouth as easily as he’d closed it, but Maya had no problem with his surgical instrument of choice.
“You!” Cameron screamed. He lunged after Maya, who had stretched out her legs in the grass to lean back and enjoy the view. “You did this! This is your fault!”
The crack of the Ringmaster’s whip made Maya rub her thighs together. She hadn’t even flinched.
The Ringmaster jerked the whip, dragging Cameron back to Bell’s feet.
“Kiram too roohet,” Bell said through clenched teeth, the angriest Maya had ever seen him. Even when he was furious, he rarely showed it, which meant that Cameron had pushed every one of Bell’s buttons, including the big red one no one was ever supposed to push. “Kiram too roohe aval va akharet. You are barely worth the filth on my boot up your ass. Shoot of the same tree as my enemy, the last thing I want is you in my circus for a lifetime or two. I should just throw you to the clowns and forbid you the opportunity to wish, but the prospect of a more inventive end tempts me. Will you make a wish? Shoorbakht beshei.”
“What the fug are you saying, man?” Cameron asked.
“If I wanted you to know, I would speak it in your native tongue, you rotting elephant afterbirth,” Bell said.
“You wan a wish, man?” Cameron said. He bared his teeth as the Ringmaster yanked at him again. “Fine. I wish you and that crazy bish”—Cameron glared at Maya—“would go fug yourselves.”
“Granted. Hardly a challenge,” Bell said, pacing restlessly in front of Cameron’s bloody body. Maya snickered into her hand. “I’d make it fucking ourselves over your bloodied corpse, but Maya’s more squeamish about entrails than I am, even yours. It shall be arranged later this evening. Another wish.”
“How many I get?” Cameron
asked. He spat a thick strand of blood from his mouth.
“Depends on how long you live.”
“You some kind of genie or something?” Cameron asked. He’d already passed the skeptical stage after everything he’d seen. “So I get three wishes from your ass, and you can’t do a fugging thing about it.”
“Something like that,” Bell said, seething behind his hazel eyes. Either Cameron couldn’t see the fire or he foolishly didn’t care.
“Fuggin’ A. So if I wished I was rich…”
“I would make you rich,” Bell said.
Cameron laughed through the blood in his mouth. Maya had never known anyone that functionally stupid. He hadn’t even figured out that Derrick’s freak accident might have had something to do with Bell. She didn’t know what kind of reality Cameron was living in, but it wasn’t everyone else’s reality.
“Then I wish I had a million dollars,” Cameron said. “Right now, not this evening or when I’m eighty.”
“Granted,” Bell said. “How fortuitous that I encountered a true intellectual who knows how to ask for what he wants.”
“Probably burns your yams that you have to just give it to me,” Cameron said. “But I got it figured out. I just—”
Cameron blinked. Then he doubled over, clutching his stomach.
“You failed to request where you wanted your money and in what form,” Bell said darkly.
Cameron retched, coughed then expelled a stream of large silver coins and globs of wet paper money from his mouth. There was a wet tearing sound. More coins and bills spilled from the legs of his board shorts.
Maya looked away and covered her ears. She had no sympathy, none at all. But she hated the sound of it.
“You bastard!” Cameron shouted, as soon as Bell gave him some air so that Cameron wouldn’t die before he was given the full haul.
“Your wish is incomplete,” Bell replied, and the double-ended expulsion continued anew.
The on-and-off flow of coins and bills, which were covered in all manner of goo that Maya didn’t want to touch or even think about, spilled out like a polluted river flow for another few minutes. Maya had to stand up to get out of the way. The clowns paced the edge of the broken circle like a pack of impatient coyotes waiting for the right moment. Some of the cast actually got bored and walked away, but Bell maintained a steely gaze on the young man as he reaped Cameron’s wish. When the filthy flood ceased, the rest appeared in clean, stacked bills above the pile.
Fortune Page 27