Flesh Circus Read online

  I couldn’t worry about the inside of the trailer just at the moment. There was something behind me, and Saul barely managed to get the warning out in time.

  I threw myself back and down, landing hard on the two portable wooden steps leading up to the crumpled door. I’d blown a hole in the side of the trailer, and I shot the Ringmaster four times as he hung in the air over me, the crystal knob atop his cane ringing a high piercing note as a silverjacket bullet bounced off or past it, whining until it smashed into the side of his leering, screaming face. It even knocked his hat off.

  He dropped straight down. My knees jerked up, I rolled backward down the steps. My shoulder grated hard and popped against straining wood, the edge of a step biting the back of my neck before I made a lunging, fishlike twist and was suddenly, irrationally on my feet but facing the wrong way, whirling and dropping to one knee as the whip flicked out. The silver flechettes tied to the end of its length jingled sweetly before they flayed flesh from the Ringmaster’s wrist, and his cane clattered away, the crystal bouncing down first as if it was too heavy for the laws of physics.

  The ’breed was bleeding, gushes of thin black ichor flooding out from every hole I’d blown in his tough shell. The roaches swarmed him, the pinpricks of red on their back dividing as they multiplied, and he screamed in Helletöng, a sound like the rusted sinews of the world groaning. The fabric of reality bowed around him in concentric circles, and the little insects burst, clattering shells puffing into sick green smoke as they hit the dust. The Ringmaster shouldered his way up out of the curls of vapor, his eyes dripping pumpkin hellfire, and snarled. The stairs splintered and groaned.

  When you get to see under the carapace of beauty, the brain shudders aside from their alienness. A hunter who’s been to Hell has seen this before, and it gives you a slight edge. You don’t run screaming-insane every time they shed their human seeming and show the twisted thing underneath.

  But it’s awful close.

  I remained on one knee, instinct fighting with cold logic. If he leapt for me, my chances were better here, where I was centered and had some clear space, than if I tried to get to my feet now. Training won out, and I stayed where I was, gun in my right hand and whip in the other, shaken free with a jingling sound. Saul was to one side, still growling but staying out of the way—just where he should have been.

  A choked rattle echoed inside the gaunt silver trailer. My apprentice-ring cooled, a band of ice on my third left finger. The Ringmaster snarled and doubled over, falling to the ground with a wet writhing thump. Black ichor splashed, and the entire Cirque stilled, the faint ever-present calliope music skipping a beat. It limped and wheezed, gaps opening between the notes.

  What the hell?

  The Ringmaster screamed, and his cane quivered. The thin cry was echoed from inside the trailer, and I was suddenly sure that something else was happening I’d better take a look at.

  I uncoiled, force pulled through the scar, and cleared the busted stairs and the Ringmaster in one leap. Landed on my toes, my center of gravity pulled up high and tight, and plunged into the trailer.

  A pale shape lay, seizure bowing it up into a hoop, on the frowsty shelf-bed. It was the hostage, and just as I reached the side of the bed, wading through a drift of empty clicking shells and candy bar wrappers, the Trader began to rattle deep down in his chest.

  Oh, fuck.

  The hostage was dying. And if he shuffled off the mortal coil now, we were looking at a seriously fucked-up situation.

  I dropped the whip, shoved the gun back in its holster, and leapt for the bed.

  8

  My hellbreed-strong right hand closed around Ikaros’s throat, and I braced myself, knees on either side of his narrow rib cage. “Oh, no you don’t,” I snarled, and ripped the leather wristcuff free, one of the buckles breaking and hitting the side of the trailer with a sweet tinkle.

  A razor-barbed mass of etheric energy pooled in my palm, slammed through the Trader’s body. The ratcheting sound from his narrow chest peaked, and I heard the Ringmaster howl like a damned soul outside.

  Get it, Jill? Like a damned soul? Arf, arf.

  The air turned hard and dark, something alien pressing through the fabric of reality, hovering over the twisting body on the bed. I took in a harsh breath and pushed, the sea-urchin spikes of my aura dappling the inside of the trailer with aqueous light. The sudden welter of sensory overload from the scar’s unveiling crested over me, my skin suddenly alive and my nose full of a complicated tangle of scents. Tears welled up hot and hard, my eyes coping with a sudden onslaught, every crack and wrinkle in the world visible.

  The Trader hostage twitched and convulsed again, his teeth actually grinding. The collar’s spikes bit my skin, blessed metal burning. I let out a short hawk’s cry, the force of whatever was torturing the Trader giving me a short, hard punch in the solar plexus. It tasted like lit-up liquor fumes and hit the back of my throat, roared past me like a barreling freight train.

  My free left hand jabbed up, two fingers snapping out, lined with twisting sorcerous flame. Banefire burned blue, hissing, but there was no helltaint for it to catch hold of.

  The thing struggling to come through hit me hard in the face, my head snapping aside, and blood exploded from my mouth and nose in a bright gush, droplets hanging in a perfect arc for a long timeless second before splashing against the trailer wall.

  So banefire wasn’t going to work. Ikaros surged underneath me again, his body moving in weird angled jumps, like his bones were trying to turn themselves into rubbery corkscrews.

  Goddammit, what the hell is going on here?

  Fortunately, banefire wasn’t the only trick up my sleeve. Intuition meshed with recent memory, and as he screamed so did I, our twinned voices rising in harmony again as my fingers tightened, the collar’s spikes dragged at the meat of my wrist and forearm again, and I pushed with every ounce of sorcerous strength I could dredge up in an entirely different direction.

  As if I was exorcising him.

  The pressure built, excruciating heat behind my bulging eyeballs and under my stomach, the last bit of air escaping me in a huuuungh! of effort. Ikaros rattled again, but this time it wasn’t the hideous I’m-dying type of rattle. No, this time it was the inhale of blessed sweet air, and my apprentice-ring gave another twinging pull. He began to thrash with inhuman strength, but without the corkscrewing weirdness.

  The thing hovering over him snapped with a sound like thick elastic breaking, a high, hard pop! that might have been funny if there hadn’t been a sudden gush of green smoke and chittering legs. The roaches swarmed, falling out of a point in thin air directly above us, and both of us yelled in miserable surprise. The roaches vanished as they peppered us, more sickly pea-soup smoke eddied and billowed, and the Trader surged up.

  He had a lot of pep for someone who was just being sorcerously strangled a few seconds ago. But I had the upper hand and my booted foot on one of his wrists in a trice, and I ground down with the steelshod heel, a simple flexing movement. The collar slashed even more cruelly at my wrist, but I ignored the pain rolling up my arm, hot blood slicking my grip on the hostage’s throat. “Settle the fuck down!” I yelled. “Settle down, I’m trying to help!”

  The irony of the situation—I was yelling that I was trying to help a Trader—didn’t escape me. He subsided just a little, blue eyes rolling like a terrified horse’s. I waited until I was sure he wasn’t going to thrash again and eased up just slightly on his throat. He kept breathing in high harsh whistles.

  I kept watching, loosening my fingers by increments. They actually creaked, I moved so slowly. Harsh voices babbled outside, a whirlpool of surprise, and I heard a werecougar’s low thrumming growl.

  That managed to get me off the bed, shaking out my right hand. Blood flew, dripping down from my scored wrist, and I was suddenly glad none of the blessed silver spikes had touched the scar. I’d had silver against the hellbreed kiss once before, and had no desire to repeat the expe
rience.

  Ikaros lay, his ribs flickering with deep heaving breaths, on the tangled bed. His eyes closed, heavily, and he curled into a ball as I backed away. I realized he was naked, light dancing and dappling his haunches. Old burn scars traveled up both legs, clasping his buttocks with angry rope fingers. I scooped up my whip without pausing, two strides kicking up a tide of candy bar wrappers. The green smoke began to thin, and the empty cockroach shells were vanishing with little crackling popcorn sounds.

  The stairs were indeed shattered, and Saul crouched in front of them, one hand braced on the dusty earth. The trembling in his aura told me he was just on the edge of shifting, and his snarl rose steadily.

  I didn’t blame him. Because gathered in a loose semicircle, pressing close in an arc of sharp teeth and hellfire-glowing eyes, were hellbreed and Traders. The Ringmaster hooked his cane up with one clawed hand, the crystal spitting spark after agonized green spark and his entire tattered costume swimming and dripping black ichor.

  It was going to hurt as he healed, the silver residue poisoning him. Let’s hope it doesn’t make him crazier than he already is. Control the situation, Jill. I cleared leather, pointed the gun up, and squeezed off a shot. The sound crackled through both Saul’s growl and the rising noise coming from the hellbreed, a deep thrum of Helletöng like iron balloons rubbing together.

  “Good evening, everyone.” I paused for a breath. All eyes turned to me except Saul’s, and the crowd of ’breed and Traders took in a collective breath. Silver hissed in my hair, the charms moving angrily. “Seems someone has a bit of a grudge against your hostage. I just saved his life.” Another pause, this one taking a different tenor as the gun came down and swept slowly, leisurely, along the front of the crowd. “Anyone have a problem with that?”

  There’s a definite proportion of this job that is just plain theater. The little bitches don’t take you seriously unless you act the part. I used to think Mikhail enjoyed the acting, but then I figured out he was really a fan of getting the job done in the shortest amount of time so he could move on to the next. It just goes more efficiently with the right proportion of fuck-you posturing.

  The gun swept the front of their ranks again. Saul had stopped growling, but he still quivered with readiness. The Ringmaster straightened slowly, shook himself like a cat shedding water. Half his face was peppered with threads of damage. The black spikes of hair covering his head were plastered down, and thin foul-smelling ichor splashed free of his quick little movements. Little threads of white smoke curled up when the droplets hit the dust.

  Silence stretched. Even the calliope was silent, the entire glass bowl of the Cirque holding its breath. If this went on much longer I’d probably have to actually kill someone to keep the peace.

  My only trouble was figuring out where to start.

  The Ringmaster hobbled forward. “Our hostage still lives,” he rasped, and I tried not to feel relieved.

  Watch him, Jill. He’s a tricky little bastard. I hopped down, avoiding the broken steps. “Of course he does. He ends up dead and I have to kill every motherfucking last one of you. What the fuck are you up to out here?” And where’s Perry?

  “I do not,” the Ringmaster husked, slowly, “answer to you.”

  I made a small beeping noise. The gun settled on him, my pulse cooling immediately. “Wrong answer, hellspawn. This is my town, you do answer to me. I am not having my city fucked up because you guys brought bad business with you.”

  “You blame this on us?” He actually bristled.

  Yes, bristled, his hair standing up in ichor-stiffened spikes, his skin turning mottled and pinpricks of the shape underneath poking out through the skin. Each hole I’d blown in his shell ran with diseased orange foxfire.

  An elegantly manicured hand closed around his shoulder and squeezed, grinding. Perry pushed the Ringmaster down, the thin ’breed’s knees folding until they hit the dirt.

  “Of course she blames you,” he said conversationally, his eyes glowing gasflame-blue, a deep indigo inkstain threading through the whites. “I must confess I am halfway to blaming you myself, brother.”

  The assembled ’breed and Traders drew away in a single coordinated movement. Perry twisted his wrist slightly, and ground his fingers in. It was a slight movement, and didn’t look like much unless you know how horribly, hurtfully strong hellbreed are. A meaty popping sound—like bones crunching in a side of beef—cut through the breezy silence, and I heard another short cry from somewhere in the Cirque’s depths. It was either a peacock’s scream, someone dying, or a woman in full-throated orgasm.

  Take your pick. The show must go on, I guess.

  “Let me be exquisitely clear,” Perry continued. Another one of those meaty sounds, and the Ringmaster turned the cheesy-pale shade of a mushroom in a wet cellar. I’d shot him in that shoulder, and I was suddenly sure Perry was grinding the silverjacket bullet—or whatever was left of it after it mushroomed in hellbreed flesh—in deeper. “Our hunter will follow this attack to its source. If that source connects with you in any way, if this is a bid for domination or spoliation of my territory, I will be exceedingly displeased. Do you understand me, carrion?” His tongue flickered out as he grinned, the cherry-wet redness of it gleaming. A low buzzing, like chrome flies in chlorinated bottles, filled the space behind and between each word. The popping of vanishing cockroach shells finally petered out.

  The scar had turned to a hot pucker of acid. I swallowed, kept the gun steady. Saul’s shoulders were rigidly straight, and I suddenly wished I was in front of him. He was between me and a whole fuckload of ’breed and Traders, and some of them were eyeing him instead of watching Perry and their boss.

  Just be cool, Jill. No need to sweat anything. I eased forward two steps, my coat whispering as warm redolent air caressed it.

  “Understood.” Great pearls of watery ichor beaded up on the Ringmaster’s narrow face. He wasn’t nearly as pretty now. The prickling hadn’t gone away either. The thing that lived under his mask of humanity snarled and cringed.

  “That’s very good.” Perry’s gaze flicked across me. The urge to freeze warred with iron training; training, as always, won out. I took another single step, the scar twisting and burrowing, my pulse ratcheting up before I could force it back down. “Kiss?”

  Don’t call me that, goddammit. God, I wanted to say that to him just once and wipe that smirk off his face. But if I did, it would be blood in the water. Who could guess what he would come up with if he knew something so simple bugged the shit out of me?

  It took an effort of will to lower the gun. “Something was definitely attacking the hostage.”

  “So I gathered.” He simply stood there, as if he wasn’t holding a cringing hellbreed like a mama cat will hold an offending, writhing kitten. “Who is the offender, avenging one?”

  “Don’t know yet.” I paused, weighing the next sentence. “I’m fairly sure it wasn’t ’breed, though.”

  It had the intended effect. Everyone, including Saul—and he had to twist halfway around in his lean easy crouch—stared at me.

  All eyes on you, Jill.

  “You are certain of this?” Perry didn’t drop the Ringmaster, but his eyes narrowed slightly. His fingers still held the other ’breed immobilized, but some of the hurtful tension drained out of him.

  “Fairly certain. Last time I checked, hellspawn don’t use voodoo. Any reason why someone on the side of the loa would have a hard-on for a Cirque de Charnu hostage?”

  If the silence before was glassy, the silence that followed was molasses-thick. It was broken only by the soundless buzz of my pager in its padded pocket. Bright eyes sparked in the gloom, the hellbreeds’ with varying red and orange tones, an occasional yellow speckle; and the Traders’ with their flat dusty shine.

  Nobody said a fucking word. The trailer behind me rocked a little on its springs, and a faint groan slid from its depths. Ikaros was probably feeling a little better.

  Saving a Trader’s life was a
novelty, and not one I liked.

  “Someone had better start explaining things to me.” I took perverse joy in using the same tone a teacher would with a class of young imbeciles.

  Perry’s fingers tightened again. The Ringmaster’s pale face contorted, but he didn’t make a sound. If this kept up we were going to have yet another Bad Situation.

  “Ease up on him, Pericles.” I dug for my pager, every nerve alert. It would take very little to turn this entire mob into a melee, especially with the way most of them were now shifting their attention, ever so slowly, toward Perry. And while I didn’t particularly mind the thought of them tearing him apart in little quivering pieces, I minded the thought of dealing with the Cirque and a scramble for power among the hellbreed who jostled in Perry’s long deep shadow. “He’s got the most to lose if the hostage bites it.”

  The number on the pager was familiar, and my intuition tingled. Huh.

  “Voodoo?” Perry pronounced the word like he didn’t know what it meant. Saul rose as soon as I took another step forward, gravel shifting under his booted feet. His was the only warmth in this place that didn’t make me feel like slime was trickling over my skin.

  “Yeah, voodoo. As in, the loa taking an interest in this, or someone who has enough credit with them to make a Trader uncomfortable. Nobody wants to tell me why anyone would have a grudge against the Cirque?” I don’t think I could have sounded any more sarcastic. “Or why there were roaches crawling all over your sorcerously-being-strangled hostage not five minutes ago? Or something about this murder I’m supposed to be looking into?”

  The bitter, rancid grumbling of Helletöng rose. It cut short when I swept my gaze over them and tapped at a gun butt with one bitten-down fingernail. “English,” I said softly. “Good old-fashioned American English. None of this töng shit.”

  I couldn’t even feel good about glaring a bunch of ’breed into silence.