“What can I do to fix it?”
Momma shrugged.
“Maybe there is nothing to fix. My family put their hooks in me, so that even when I died I remembered my father’s stern face.”
Carnival looked at her face, seeing her eyes beneath the Fleetwood Mac mask.
Maybe she was right. Families have long hungry roots.
She kept talking and explaining. “We can’t get anywhere from our past. We build it and hang it and wrap it about ourselves. We drink it and eat it, and it makes us whole.”
Maybe she was truly right. Carnival would never forget her.
“Now finish what you started,” she said. “You must call the Blood God down from his place between the stars.”
She looked at Carnival, and for just an instant he thought he was looking at someone else besides Momma, behind the masquerade of borrowed flesh.
“You must call the Red Shambler.”
Chapter 79
A Bathtub Full of Blood
It was sloppy work.
He ought to have a silver cauldron full of blood but all he had was the bathtub, spray painted with silver auto primer.
Some racing stripes might be nice.
“Be serious, old man,” Momma chided Poppa. “This is serious work.
All right, forget about the stripes. Perhaps just a few lucky numbers, and a stuffed dog with a wobbly head. Something tacky, but tasteful.
Carnival lit some amber incense. Even that had to be a compromise. He could have bought some of the good stuff at the magic shop but Olaf didn’t have enough in his wallet to warrant that. So he settled for burning some dime store fragrance in the same flower pot he’d used to call Momma the first time, along with an amber ring that someone had left behind at a palm reading.
“Amber is as amber does,” Momma said. “The glitter is nothing but a gleam in your eye.”
She was right. Magic was more about spirit than literal translation.
Finally everything was ready.
Carnival sent Momma to the basement where she’d be safe.
Then he climbed into the tubful of blood, making the necessary incantations.
He saw a red glow forming on the left side of the bathroom. Damn. He’s coming straight through the mirror. Carnival caught a deep breath and ducked beneath the blood. The Blood capital-g God was here.
The Red Shambler.
He was huge, way larger than a bathroom ought to hold. He shambled closer. It was a tight fit for something that lived in the spaces between the stars. Carnival held his breath, down beneath the blood. He kept his eyes open. The blood stung like eyecups full of rubbing alcohol, but he kept the God in sight.
Don’t take your eyes off of this one. He’s dangerous.
Carnival didn’t think the Red Shambler saw him. The space between the stars is dark, and his tentacled eyes would probably take a while to adjust to earthly light.
What a mind. A guess and a bullseye, every time.
Then he caught scent of the blood. The bristles about his jowls quivered like a thousand horny micro-penises. Carnival strained concentration into his hands, cold in this tubful of refrigerated blood, trying to hang onto the gift he had for the Red Shambler.
The Red Shambler oozed closer.
He lowered his snout into the offering tub.
And then Carnival rose up and circled the neck of the Blood-God with a golden chain.
“Surprise!”
He’d belled a cat.
Chapter 80
Talking to the Blood God
Be careful son. Owning a god is like owning a large dog. It’s good to have but you never know when you might get bit.
The Red Shambler loomed over Carnival. He didn’t like what the Gypsy had done to him. Carnival couldn’t blame him one bit.
I’d be pissed off too if somebody threw a leash over me, wouldn’t you? Oh wait a minute. Somebody already has.
“Funny, Poppa.”
“Set me free,” the Red Shambler rumbled.
He was big, amorphous and gelatinous like a giant swollen blood cell pumped with protoplasm and red hot lava. The chain looked dainty about the brute’s neck. Carnival had pieced it together out of gold chains he’d bought at three separate pawn shops, verifying the gold content with a jeweler who he’d helped out of a jam with a cursed gemstone once.
Getting the proper purity was very important for chaining a god of this high a caste. Too much alloy in the collar, and you’re guaranteed the same sort of outcome as someone who tries to tame a Bengal tiger with a licorice whip and a milking stool.
“What do you want?” the Red Shambler asked.
Carnival was translating loosely. What the old god had really said was how much he’d like to drag every cell of blood from Carnival’s body and spew them into a whirling maelstrom in the bottom of hell’s outhouse so that each cell felt the shrieking burning kisses of a thousand years of unholy damnation turdlets.
“A favor,” Carnival answered, tightening the leash.
Gods can be awfully stupid sometimes. You have to keep reminding them whose finger was on what trigger.
You’re guessing again.
“Life is one big guess, Poppa.”
It’s true. We make it up as we go. There’s no one in the history of magic who could have been stupid enough to try a stunt like this. This was impossible. A long cold walk down the edge of a one thousand yard slippery razor blade, for sure. There he was – standing knee deep in refrigerated blood, trying to ignore the shiver and the stink, his hands cold and cloying with slow clotting blood, hanging onto the dubious salvation of a long skinny patched-up chain of pawn shop gold.
Carnival felt right at home.
“Don’t fuck with a gypsy. We trained your kind as lap dogs, back before the stars had names.”
He tugged the leash a little tighter.
“What do you want?” the Red Shambler asked.
“I want you to turn a vampire. I want you to make her mortal. Release the chains that bind her to the night.”
The master plan unfolds. You’ll free the vampire, and live happily ever after. Such intellect, such Machiavellian plotting. The cunning wondrous intricacy of a thumbless origami sculptor.
Carnival grinned, allowing Poppa that one well placed dig.
“We Gypsies are a shrewd lot.”
The Red Shambler was unimpressed.
“Release me from my chain,” it ordered.
Carnival almost laughed. It was funny. It was so funny that he felt he had to let go of the chain.
“Release my chain,” the Red Shambler repeated. “You don’t really have a choice.”
Carnival had missed one vital key element. He was standing in a bathtub full of blood, covered in the stuff. Breathing the stuff. He had drunk it and shed it and poured it and lived in it for over a week.
His name might as well have been blood.
You didn’t think this through, did you? Not one bit. You’re in blood up to your asshole. You are wearing his domain.
Carnival did what the Red Shambler asked. He let go of the chain. He let go of the Red Shambler. He had no choice. The Red Shambler forced him to.
Goodbye, boy. This should be over in a heartbeat, give or take an eternity of eternal suffering.
It happened just that quickly.
Momma flew out of the darkness, her Stevie Nick’s bathrobe trailing in the wind behind her like a long blue silk kite tail.
She caught hold of the Red Shambler just as the Shambler caught hold of Carnival.
Chapter 81
Severance Package
The tattooist knelt in the darkness of his room.
He could hear the commotion rioting below him. It sounded like someone was raising up the Battle of Waterloo, both sides at once.
He didn’t care. He was just waiting for what he’d earned. All his work, what he’d sacrificed.
He was waiting for his due.
The figures on his walls sat and watched him as he waited.<
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“Oh Red Shambler,” he chanted. “The one who walks between the stars. God of Blood and Pain and Everlasting Thirst. I call to you, as a servant who has served you well. I call to you reward me for my place in your grand designs.”
But the Red Shambler couldn’t hear him. He was far too busy being ridden downstairs by a she wolf of a Momma Gypsy revenant demon. The tattooist didn’t know that. He kept chanting, kept on calling, kept on praying for what he’d earned.
And then a figure stepped from out of the shadows.
A short dark figure, in a dust tinged white shirt, a woven vest of many colors, and a tall top hat with a pheasant feather.
“The master could not come,” Poppa said. “He is otherwise indisposed. He has sent me to deliver you your reward.”
The tattooist smiled.
Poppa waved his hand, like he was waving goodbye to the wind.
The walls came alive, and swarmed down onto the tattooist.
Chapter 82
The End of the Chain
Momma rode the Red Shambler with the foolhardy tenacity of a six second bronco buster, going for eight. She had a lot of issues that needed working out. She’d been eaten by her husband, and not in a good way. Raised back from the dead, she’d spent the last two days being rage raped by Olaf the living dead john. She figured she ought to be able to hold her own against a blood based demigod, easily.
Carnival felt it all through the connection he’d built between himself, his Momma, and the Red Shambler. Momma was plugged into the Red Shambler and he was plugged into Carnival. So Carnival kept trying to catch hold of the chain. He didn’t know if it would help any, since he’d let go of it. It whipped against his hands like a barbed wire bullwhip.
He grabbed for it again.
The Red Shambler threw Momma off. Then he turned on Carnival.
Carnival caught hold of the chain, and leaned back, trying to garrote the big bastard.
And then suddenly it was easier.
The Red Shambler seemed weaker, like he was draining away.
He seemed to shrink in size and power.
Damn it. He was escaping. Part of Carnival was kind of pleased. He’d made a God run.
Hell. He wasn’t even worth that capital G anymore.
But part of Carnival wondered why the Red Shambler was running from a mere gypsy hedge wizard, demon Momma or not.
He was up to something, Carnival knew it.
The god shrank beneath his grip, shrank in size and shape practically down to nothing.
Shit.
It wasn’t the Red Shambler at all.
“Cantanker,” Carnival cursed.
Who brought in the ringer?
They had been tricked.
Cantanker had come to Carnival’s calling, cloaked in the demi-shape of the Red Shambler. An easy glamour, it wouldn’t have fooled a bush league wizard, but it had tricked Carnival.
He should have been happy. Cantanker was a lot easier to handle than the Red Shambler.
Yet Cantanker was still a handful of big trouble.
Carnival threw himself at the demon but he might as well have been tackling the EmpireStateBuilding with a feather duster.
A wing and an arm came down, catching Carnival atop and back of his skull, and everything turned into a slow red darkness.
Chapter 83
Flip Flop
Carnival awoke in something less than light.
The blood on his skin had dried and cracked. He felt caked in a thick black frosting. The walls were painted with blood. Cantanker lay on the floor, looking like he was dying. Carnival had never seen a dying demon before. He didn’t think such a thing was possible.
In the far corner of the room there was a twisted shape. Tossed and discarded like a puked over Raggedy Ann doll.
Momma.
Carnival ran to her and knelt at her side. Only there was nothing there, just the dead body of that crazy Stevie Nicks lookalike.
Momma was gone.
Dead or destroyed or snuffed out like a candle flame. He couldn’t tell which. She was gone. That’s all he really knew.
He leaned back and shouted her name.
Cantanker laughed weakly.
“Heh.”
Carnival whirled, ready to tear the demon’s skull off and cram it up his metamorphic asshole until his hell-spawned intestines cried uncle.
Cantanker smiled.
“My boy,” he said in a tone that seemed all-too familiar.
“I’m not dead yet,” Carnival weakly warned.
“Is that any way to speak to your own mother, Valentino?”
Carnival shook his head slowly. Blinked. Shook again.
“Momma?”
It was Momma, wrapped inside what was left of Cantanker’s body.
“I traded up,” she said.
Damn. He’d thought it was crazy seeing her inside of Stevie Nicks. This was thirteen times worse.
“Upstairs,” she said. “I heard a voice.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I’m a demon, how could I be hurt? Go see what’s upstairs. It’s important. I know it is.”
She stood up.
“I’ll go with you.”
“How did you do this, Momma? How did you take a demon’s body?”
She smiled a tombstone and picket fence grin.
“It’s easy,” she croaked. “I’m magic.”
Carnival laughed.
“You’re starting to sound like Poppa,” he said.
“So where is the old buzzard?”
Oh hell.
Carnival knew.
“Upstairs,” he guessed. “Poppa’s gone to talk to the puppet master.
Chapter 84
Come Into My Parlor
There was a trail of blood showing Carnival the way. Spattered on the stairs and strewn on the walls. It looked like someone had swallowed a tanker truck full of red Kool Aid and Jello, and then blown chunks.
Carnival followed the blood trail down to the outer door.
He followed it outside and to the stairs leading up to the tattoo parlor. His head wanted sleep. His legs wanted death.
“Hurry up,” Demon Momma said. “You’re burning twilight.”
He climbed up the stairs until he stood outside the door of the tattoo parlor. Demon Momma had to stoop in these tight quarters. Had she truly been Cantanker she could have easily shifted her size down.
Only Momma wasn’t use to metamorphic existence.
Carnival looked at the window glass. He’d never been up here before. He never saw a reason. He wasn’t that big on social amenities.
He touched the door handle. It was warm. He didn’t want to open it, but he did.
In the center of the room he saw what was left of the old tattooist. He recognized him by his glasses. There was nothing left of the old man but his skull, and those glasses. It looked exactly like the skull he’d found downstairs, tattooed down to the bone.
Only these weren’t designs. These looked like tiny footprints; hooves and the tatter tale tracings of a thousand tiny claws. In the eye sockets he saw two rocks. One black, and one white. He recognized them.
“Poppa?”
The skull grinned and then it began to speak. A skull shouldn’t be able to speak. There’s no vocal cords, no breath to pass through the song box of the larynx. No tongue to articulate, but speak it did.
“My son,” the skull said.
Carnival kept waiting for theme music. The whole thing seemed so damn melodramatic. Life was like that, sometimes.
“I didn’t want to stay inside your chest forever.”
“So you struck a bargain.”
The skull rattled in Carnival’s hands like it was trying to nod.
“With the Red Shambler,” the Poppa-skull said. “He offered me freedom if I could get you to do one thing.”
“To kill?”
Was he trying to taint Carnival?
To take his soul?
“Ha. Your soul? Bart
ered long ago. How holy do you think you are?”
“That hurts. Derision, even from a possessed skull, hurts a lot.”
“He wanted you to raise the City Familiar. He wanted The Aggregate. He’s got ambitions, the Red Shambler has.”
Carnival nodded. It was all starting to make sense.
“Is that where he is right now? Is that where he ran to?”
“He didn’t run. He charged. It was an assault. You were just the mud puddle he had to charge through. Nothing more than that.”
Carnival set the skull down on the floor.
“I have to go,” he said.
“Your girl,” Poppa said. “You can help her.”
“How?”
“Her dirt. This old bastard tattooed it onto his skin. Sweep the floor and give it to her.”
Carnival didn’t ask questions. He got a broom from behind the door. It was maybe the only thing in the apartment that hadn’t been broken. He wondered if Poppa planned it that way. He wouldn’t put it past the old Gypsy. He had to get his laughs in.
“Hey, you look good with that broom. You’ll make some man a good wife, you will.”
Carnival let him have that one. He was ahead of the game. He could afford to be generous. He dumped the ashes into a wastepaper basket. He had to bend the basket back into shape first.
He was almost finished but there was something else he needed to know.
“Where’s Momma?” Carnival asked. “Where did you bury her?”
He knew the answer already. He just needed confirmation. He needed to hear it from the bastard’s own mouth.
“I didn’t bury her. I know you know that already. I raised you smarter than you play at. I didn’t bury her, I ate her.”
“Why?”
“For her power, of course. It was always for her power.”
“There had to be something left.”
“What does it matter?” the skull asked. “She’s dead. Dead and gone.”
The skull laughed, clacking its jaws like the clacking of a roulette wheel.
“She made you soft,” he said, through his laughter. “You don’t need to be any softer.”
He laughed all the harder.
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