Flesh Circus

by Lilith Saintcrow

  They stood staring at each other. The calliope regained its voice and whispered.

  “God damn you.” Arthur’s throat had closed down on him. All that came out was a rasp. And too late I saw the knife in his broad, long-fingered hand. It glittered, starlike in the green pondlight. I let out a warning blurt, but Perry’s other hand had clapped over my mouth. Dry skin against the slick of blood on me, and he drew me back.

  Arthur Gregory lunged forward. Samuel collided with him, and the knife rammed itself home in his narrow chest. Samuel’s arms were spread, strangler’s hands limp and loose.

  He had thrown himself on the blade. He folded down like a clockwork toy run out, and the corruption racing through his tissues distorted his face into an old man’s before finally draining away, his body twitching and jerking as it turned into a bubbling smear.

  My eyes rolled like a panicked horse’s. I threw myself forward, but Perry dragged me back down again and I couldn’t get leverage. His other arm was a bar of iron across my midriff. He crouched behind me, and the heat of him was like a boiler. The smell of charring leather rose.

  “Quiet!” The rumble of Helletöng scoured my ear, already half-deaf and ringing from the vast and varied noises of the night.

  Arthur Gregory went to his knees. The tripartite spinning of the Twins appeared briefly, a pale oval of light. They laughed, a cruel tinkling sound, and he stretched out his arms. Their faces blurred into each other before the slim androgynous figure silhouetted in the light turned its back and danced away.

  Abandoning him.

  The loa are fickle. Just as much as hellbreed are. And Arthur Gregory had used up all his credit with them.

  His wail shattered the stillness. The calliope answered it, shaking the bigtop. Canvas rippled and fluttered, the ropes singing in distress.

  Perry dragged me even further back, duckwalking. One of his knees dug briefly into my ribs and I made a small sound in the back of my throat, a red-hot bolt going up my cramping side and exploding in my neck. The scar blazed, agony unstringing my nerves. The collar still tangled in my fist, its spikes buried in my wrist. Hot blood smeared my right hand, and pretty much every other inch of me. My back was hot, and Perry hissed happily to himself as he rose, dragging me upright.

  They flowed past us, bright eyes and twisted limbs, a tide of hellbreed. The plague-carrier I’d seen before was first among them, capering and jigging; he had found another red velvet coat somewhere. It was he who picked up the Ringmaster’s cane, stealing it neatly from under another ’breed’s questing fingers, and he twirled it neatly, cracking the other ’breed on the head and snarling. They pulled back a little, and he found the top hat too. It went onto his lank-haired noggin, and I was suddenly aware of hellbreed and Traders packing the entire bigtop, dancing in through the stage entrances, climbing through the stands, cheering and rumbling in töng.

  Arthur Gregory was on his knees, sobbing. He bent over, his mouth distorted in a wet “o” of suffering. His eyes had turned dead-dark, and cold. Snot smeared on his upper lip. One of his dreadlocks came loose and fluttered to the churned, wet sawdust. Others followed, plopping free of his skull with odd little sounds.

  The plague-carrier capered to Gregory’s side, spinning the cane. The green crystal shivered and crackled, and when the carrier spread his stick-thin arms, the calliope tweeted. He jabbed the cane at it, green vapor cringing away from him, and the first few notes of “Be a Clown” rippled through the air.

  The crowd cheered and hissed, arms raised, cheap glass and paste finery twinkling. Their eyes were bright and avid. None of the animals put in an appearance, but I swear I heard an elephant trumpet and the yowls of big cats. Yipping dogs. Perry’s arm loosened. My boots touched the ground, finally. The shadows crawled and leapt with the Cirque’s dogs, their eyes glowing and crackling.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” It was a ringmaster’s voice, an impossible deep baritone coming from the plague-carrier’s narrow little chest. “Welcome to the Cirque Diabolique! We’re all-new and renewed! We’re pedal to the metal and shoulder to the wheel! And welcome our new hostage! What’s your name, sonny?”

  The cane whirled again, and the crystal jabbed toward Arthur Gregory. Who screamed, his body buckling. He lifted his face to the bigtop’s fabric roof swimming with sick green light and howled.

  Their cries rose with his. Every single one of them, Trader and hellbreed, yowled like cats at the moon. The plague-carrier danced back, whirled, and blinked through space with the eerie speed of hellbreed. Perry’s arm tightened again, but the thing just halted a bare four feet from us and gestured to the collar.

  “Clip him and chain him.” Strings of gummy yellow ick crawled over sharp teeth, and the ’breed exhaled foulness. “You have our thanks, hunter.”

  I opened my mouth, closed it again. Arthur howled again, the cords on his neck standing out. The plague-carrier danced backward, spinning the cane, and Perry shook me, recently broken bones twinging hard even though my body was doing its best to patch everything up.

  “Do as he says, Jill.” Perry’s arms slithered away, I swayed on my feet. “He is theirs now.”

  It doesn’t look like he knows it, I almost said. But the new Ringmaster halted next to Arthur, and put down one narrow hand. He smoothed the matted blond head, caressing, and made an odd clicking noise.

  The dreadlocks finished falling, and new hair was growing in. Sickly yellow, and oddly feathery.

  The collar jangled in my fist. I took an experimental step forward. My knee buckled, but I stayed upright. Perry made a low spitting sound, as if to chide me for swaying.

  Arthur’s blind eyes passed across me for a moment, and I opened my mouth again to protest. To say something, anything.

  But the Ringmaster bent down and exhaled across Arthur’s wide, now definitely male face. Which turned slack and grinning, vacant.

  “It is ever so,” Perry intoned behind me. “A life for a life.”

  “Life for a life,” the assembled Cirque chorused. Even the calliope, weaving notes that sounded like words between the frantic strains of a song I didn’t want to identify.

  The new Ringmaster twitched, and pulled Arthur Gregory to his feet. “There,” he said brightly. “Isn’t that nice?” Foulness dripped down his chin. “Tell the nice lady your new name, my dear.”

  Arthur Gregory smiled under a mask of tears, snot, and blackened sawdust. He mumbled something, his lips moving loosely.

  “She didn’t hear you.” The plague-carrier glanced at me. His shoulders were tense, and I had a sudden insane vision of shooting his ass, too.

  But I was so tired.

  “Samuel,” he said, louder, his mouth working oddly over the word. “I am Samuel. Now. I’m Sam.” By the third time he repeated it, he sounded like he believed it.

  The flat shine of the dusted lay over his irises, and I knew what he had bargained away. Who wouldn’t want to get rid of the memories he must have been carrying? The guilt, and the shame, and the murder?

  The new Ringmaster watched me avidly. I’m sure something of what I was feeling showed on my face. The biggest thing, though, was weary disgust. And relief that this was finally over.

  “You have one more day,” I croaked. “By dusk tomorrow I want you out of my city.”

  He swept a simulacrum of a bow, grinned his death’s-head grin under the old top hat. The cane whirled, cleaving the air with a low sweet sound. “Of course.”

  I clipped the collar on Arthur Gregory and left him to his new demons.

  30

  It was a relief to take the heavy weight of ammo off. I stowed the grenades carefully, tossed the black canvas bag into the trunk, and slammed it to find Perry leaning against my car, his pale hair and linen suit immaculate. The night was young, and as I stood there watching him, the first few shufflers arrived. A quick flicker of movement was a new Trader in the admissions booth—a round little dumpling of a male in a bowler hat and pencil moustache. His eyes glittered as a tall heavyse
t man in jeans and a stained Friends Don’t Let Friends Vote Democrat T-shirt eased up to the booth and handed over a snub-nosed .38. The man’s mouth worked wetly, his hair was uncombed, and he looked like a dreamer caught in a nightmare.

  The Trader stamped his hand and motioned him past. The man stumbled through the turnstile, his hands plucking at the hem of his shirt. The big stain on the front, right over his belly, was very dark against his white fingers.

  “Nothing ever really changes, you know.” Perry’s grin was wide and stainless, his bland blond mask firmly in place.

  “You knew.” I meant to sound accusing. I only managed “tired.” I pulled the key out of the trunk’s keyhole and clenched it in one nerveless fist. The scar had gone quiescent, humming slightly as etheric force pooled in it and spooled through my body, encouraging and compressing the natural processes of healing.

  I was going to be hungry, to fuel the healing. In a little while.

  Perry shrugged. “Not the specifics. But this is how the Cirque gains its new hostage.” His face lengthened into mock-concern, and his eyes burned blue. “You didn’t know?”

  God, just go away. I’m tired. I lifted my chin slightly, drying blood crusting on my face. Thunder rumbled in the distance again, a sweet cool wind touching my hair. Silver jangled, and my scalp crawled. “I’m done here, Perry. Get off my car.”

  He didn’t move. “Where is your cat? Have you lost your taste for bestiality at last? Though that was a lovely touch, with the chickens.”

  That wasn’t me, Perry. That was a loa, and it was payment. “Leave Saul out of this.” God, I was so heavy. It was an effort to focus on him, to force my weary body past another iron barrier of exhaustion. My eyes were crusty and hot, and adrenaline was fast losing its usefulness as a spur.

  Too bad, Jill. Deal.

  “He’s been looking weary lately, my dear. And you look weary too.” A pause, and then the silken trap. “I saved your life. You owe me.”

  So that’s your game. I made a small beeping noise. “Nope, no deal. You helped out because you didn’t want the Cirque loosening your grip on the city. I don’t owe you a goddamn thing.”

  His grin widened, became sharklike. The essential inhumanity under his shell gaped and yawned. “You belong to me, hunter. It’s only a matter of time.”

  It was a relief to find out he was lying. No matter how many times I feel that relief, it’s always profound. “I’ll tell you again: hold your breath until I call. Fuck off, Perry. I’m going home.”

  “You owe me,” he insisted.

  “I don’t owe you jackshit.” My fingers rested on a gun butt. If he attacked me now, I would probably lose—and lose badly. I was just too fucking tired.

  But I would still inflict a lot of damage before I went down. And here outside the barriers of the Cirque he couldn’t count on their help—or on them not running riot once I was out of the picture. It was the same basic situation, me playing them off against each other again.

  It was necessary. But it still made me feel dirty, in the worst way. Like I might never get clean again.

  The indigo threading through the whites of his blue-glowing eyes retreated a little. “Such a righteous soul you have, Kiss. I only ask an inch of it.”

  That’s more than enough room to damn someone. “Not this time, Perry. Go home and suck eggs.”

  He bared his teeth, a swift snarl. I cleared leather and had both guns on him, back leg braced, arms straight. The scar woke, a blinding jolt of pain pouring salt on every recent injury. We faced each other, and the only sound was the shuffling of the doomed circling before they slid through the ramheaded turnstile into the Cirque’s poisonous glow. With a click, click, click.

  That and the calliope, singing softly. A well-satisfied, cheery little song threading just under the subliminal noise of my pulse. My coat flapped slightly, and the thunder drew closer. It smelled like rain.

  Even the rain isn’t enough to wash this off. I didn’t blink. I barely even breathed. The world narrowed to Perry and me, facing each other over a chasm the width of a hair.

  He bared his teeth again, another snarl. This one poured through the subaudible register, I could barely hear it even with the scar amping my senses into the superhuman. My pulse slowed, skin chilling under its mask of drying blood, sweat, spatters of rum and other fluids I didn’t remember getting splashed with.

  “Someday,” he said, finally. “Some fine day, Kiss.”

  Maybe. But not tonight. “Not tonight, Perry. Get out of my sight.”

  He moved. I threw myself back and down, but he just went over me with the spooky stuttering speed of the damned. Hit the ground, and heard the fast light patter of his footsteps retreating toward the meatpacking district and the Monde Nuit. A chilling little laugh, fraying in the distance, and the calliope sighed.

  I pushed myself wearily to my feet. Didn’t look at the shuffling victims in front of the Cirque. Not one more fucking thing tonight, please. Not one. Okay, God?

  There was no answer. There never is.

  I got into my car, and got the hell out of there.

  Epilogue

  I sat in the car for a while. My garage is narrow, but well-equipped. I considered putting the seat back and sleeping right there. I itched all over and would feel crusty in the morning, as well as dirty inside and out. And I’m accustomed to the weight of my weaponry, but sleeping in my guns was a bad idea.

  Still, the thought had merit. Especially when I thought of the empty house, and—

  The door to the house opened. I blinked as a slice of warm electric light fell across the car. The figure in the door was tall, broad-shouldered, and his shorn hair was starred with silver. He stepped down into the garage and came to the driver’s side, opened the door.

  I shut my eyes. Tears rose.

  Finally, he crouched down. His fingers touched my hair, brushed my cheek. He rubbed a little, dried blood crackling under sensitive fingertips.

  “Jesus,” Saul said quietly.

  “I’m sorry.” The words came out in a rush. “I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t have—”

  “Jill.” Kindly, quietly, calmly. “Shut up.”

  I did.

  His fingers circled my wrist, pulled gently. It was work getting out of the car, but he helped pull me upright. The door slammed, and he folded me in his arms. The sound of his pulse was a balm and blessing.

  Are you staying? I couldn’t make myself say it. Don’t leave me. Dear God, please, don’t leave me.

  “I just want you to do one thing,” he said into my filthy hair. I almost cringed.

  Anything. Just stay with me. I stilled, waited.

  “Just nod or shake your head. That’s all. Now listen, Jill. Do you still need me? Do you want me around?”

  “I—” How could he even ask me that? Didn’t he know? Or was he saying that he felt obligated?

  “Just nod or shake your head. I just want to know if you need me.”

  It took all I had to let my chin dip, come back up in the approximation of a nod.

  “Do you still want me?” God help me, did Saul sound tentative?

  It was too much. “Jesus Christ.” The words exploded out of me. “Yes, Saul. Yes. Do you want me to beg? I will, if you—”

  “Jill.” He interrupted me, something he barely ever did. “I want you to shut up.”

  I shut up. For a few moments he just simply held me, and the clean male smell of him was enough to break down every last barrier. I tried to keep the sobs quiet, but they shook me too hard. The breeze off the desert rattled my garage door, and the last fading roll of thunder retreated.

  He stroked my hair, held me, traced little patterns on my back. Cupped my nape, and purred his rumbling purr. When the sobs retreated a little, he tugged on me, and we made it to the door to the hall, moving in a weird double-stepping dance. He was so graceful, and I was too clumsy.

  He lifted me up the step, got me into the hall, heeled the door closed. My coat flapped. My boo
ts were heavy, the heels clicking against concrete. I probably needed to be hosed off.

  I had to know. I dug in, brought him to a halt, but couldn’t raise my eyes from his chest. “A-are you s-s-still—” I couldn’t get the words out. I was shaking too hard.

  “You’re a fucking idiot,” he informed me. “I’m staying, Jill. As long as you’ll have me. I can’t believe you think I’d leave you.”

  That did it. I broke down completely then, and as he half-carried me down the hall I cried. I couldn’t tell if I was crying for myself or for Arthur Gregory, or for the whole goddamn world.

  Tomorrow night I would have to get up and do this all over again. Make sure the Cirque left town and find out what new mischief was brewing under the night skies. It never ended, this job.

  It never would. And now I owed a loa a bullet, I had an apprentice to train, and Perry was looking to be trouble again. How long could I keep up mortgaging bits of myself?

  As long as you can, Jill. As long as God lets you.

  But for right now, Saul held me. My legs failed me and I went down in a heap. He went down with me, and he held me just inside the door to the living room. The first spatters of rain rang hard on the warehouse roof. I cried without restraint, and he held me.

  We all Trade for something.

  And God help me, it was enough. He was enough.

  I just hoped I would always be enough for him.

  Glossary

  Arkeus: A roaming corruptor escaped from Hell.

  Banefire: A cleansing sorcerous flame.

  Black Mist: A roaming psychic contagion; a symbiotic parasite inhabiting the host’s nervous system and bloodstream.

  Chutsharak: Chaldean obscenity, loosely translated as “oh, fuck.”

  Demon: Term loosely used to designate any nonhuman predator with sorcerous ability or a connection to Hell.