Circus of Blood

by James R. Tuck

  The Tilt-A-Whirl pirouetted malevolently, the chairs painted with eyes that spun so they were always watching us.

  The Scrambler rattled lazily in its prescribed figure eight. The cars were molded in the shape of faces, each of them leering as they lurched out toward us, disappointment naked in their eyes that we weren’t quite close enough.

  Nooses hung under the seats on the rickety Ferris wheel, swaying as it rolled in fits and starts like a tuberculosis coughing fit.

  The Wurlitzer played on.

  The hellish tune hammered at my spine.

  The midway channeled us to the main tent at the end of the row. Cows to the slaughterhouse. The rot black and charnel red tent stood silent and imposing, canvas flaps shut tight. My power prickled along my spine, centipede legs trilling up the back of my neck.

  The nerve under my eye began to twitch.

  Stepping up, I wrapped my fists around the edges of the tent flap, canvas oil slippery under my fingers.

  A saying mangled in my head.

  Once more into the breach, my friend, once more. Cry Havoc! And let slip the Hunger Dogs of War.

  I threw back the tent flaps and stepped inside.

  The air hit me like a wet sheet. Stale and muggy, a fog of packed humanity that clung to the skin like other people’s sweat. The fog was gutted by the harsh snakeskin scent of vampire.

  My power jolted inside me, rushing up under my skin. Everything dipped down and sideways as my head swam. Vampire powers were being used, bats beating their wings against the inside of my skull.

  Light crashed against us, ripping away my night vision. A spotlight. My hand was full of gun. I was blind, couldn’t see a thing, but I was ready.

  The spotlight tilted, changing the angle. I was still bathed in light, but my eyes weren’t painted white.

  We were standing in front of three giant rings centered around a tent pole that zoomed up into the dark. Outside of it was a half circle of bleachers packed with people.

  Scared people.

  They all sat silent, clutching each other, fear naked on their faces. Families, teenagers on dates, a Girl Scout troop in their uniforms, and a group of senior citizens. Chains draped off their ankles, trapping them in place on the bleachers.

  Now I knew where all the people were.

  The Wurlitzer filled the tent, music climbing in an epileptic fit. It banged away, speeding up, swirling, a tornado of clashing notes that made my teeth grind together. It crashed into silence as a spotlight scorched across a man in the center ring.

  He was stretched long and thin, all bones and angles. A stovepipe hat perched on lanky hair. It sat crooked, brim wide enough to cast a shadow over the face under it. All I could see were two red eyes and a long, devilish Vandyke goatee.

  And a set of long, curved fangs.

  He wore a topcoat, black velvet tails, and lapels. It was a dirty burgundy brocade, worked through with brass stitching in an intricate design. Filthy lace flopped around his wrists and at his throat, held in place by a ruby that looked like a giant drop of crystallized blood. He stood hipshot, skinny legs encased in black leather peg-leg pants so shredded they were more gone than there. Gaping holes gleamed with pale dead skin underneath. A coiled bullwhip tapped his thigh in one taloned hand.

  He was a vampire cross between heroin addiction and lizard-king cool. Back alley sleazy and python dangerous. He lifted a chunky microphone out of the ’30s to bloodless lips. There was no cord attached to it. His voice carried through the tent on waves of vampiric power. It was a smooth tenor with just a slight rasp that tugged at the ear, whiskey flavoring the blood that soaked his vocal cords.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, welcome to the Cirque du Sangre. Tonight we have a very special guest.” His hand gestured with a flourish, lace fwapping the back of an ivory-pale hand. “Deaaaaconnnnnn CHALK!”

  Why does every fucking bloodsucker know my name?

  10

  My hands tightened on gun grips as I strode forward, Father Mulcahy and Sully just a step or two behind. My fingers rested on the triggers of both guns, one tiny twitch from firing. They were pointed down at the ground.

  Dammit.

  I was going to have to put them away. I couldn’t use them in this tent, not with all the people lining the bleachers. They made a wall of civilian that surrounded us. Bullets don’t stop. Not big ass .45-caliber bullets anyway. Use them to blow apart a vampire’s skull, and out the other side you have a bullet that is still traveling.

  That is a recipe for disaster when you’re surrounded by innocent bystanders.

  Surrounded by targets.

  I flicked the safeties, shoving the pistols back under my arms.

  I hate not using my guns.

  But I did have a hatchet. It had a nice heft as I pulled it out of my belt.

  The Ringmaster twisted, hunching around himself, neck twisting to leer at me. He was loose in his clothes, disjointed like a puppet. “Welcome to our show tonight. It’s gonna be a scream! Tell me, how is our little friend the Were-bat?”

  “I want the cure.”

  “Don’t we all, vampire slayer?”

  “I’m an occult bounty hunter, not a vampire slayer.”

  He tilted his head back, looking down his bladed nose. “You deny it? You killed so many of my kind just months ago.”

  “I’m about to slay one more if you don’t stop wasting my time. I want the cure and I want these people let go.”

  “And then you will let me live?” Sarcasm pushed heavy through thick fangs.

  “Cut the shit, Varney. You are dead. No negotiation. Give me what I want.”

  “You come to my house and threaten me?”

  “You called me a vampire slayer.” I waved behind me, indicating the priest and the Were-weasel. “Me and my boys can take you.”

  The smile was wicked. “Ahhhh, but I am not alone.”

  The shadows moved, breaking apart. The spotlight never wavered, locked on the center ring, bathing the four of us. The shadows fell away as the Ringmaster’s kiss stepped into the light.

  We were facing a freak show of vampires.

  The first shadow stepped over the ring in an expanse of paisley-covered undead flesh. The leg that broke into the light swung slowly, ponderously, to crash on the sawdust. The body that followed was enormous, an avalanche of a woman. Her moon face was fringed in thick locks of hair like a mask. Her fangs were like tusks jutting under a handlebar mustache as wide as my hand.

  The next one was even larger than the bearded lady. Instead of loose jiggly flesh, this one was stacked with slabs of muscle. Grotesque bundles made his upper body, striations showing through marble skin. His chest was almost as wide as the front of the Comet; arms bigger than my thighs hung off titanic shoulders. A leopard-print leotard strained across it, cutting into one side of his neck.

  A neck that tapered up into a pinched skull the size of a child’s.

  His head was tiny, mismatched to his body. The face pulled tight with inbreeding, beady eyes too close, jaw too small, chin too soft. His fangs were dainty and bucked, crowded too close, just like the rest of his features.

  The next two slithered out together. The one on the left dragged his belly on the ground, pulling himself along on arms that were deformed into wide flippers of flesh. His legs were fused, flipper feet spread behind him like a tail. He hissed at me, wrinkled jowls swinging.

  The one on the right came into the ring of light with elbows and knees jutting out. She was twisted, her body wrenched. Chest down, hips up she crab walked, hands thumping on the ground, sending up clouds of sawdust. The fingers were fused together in pronged claws, the knuckles swollen and red. She had been turned young, perpetually pubescent with ratty pigtails and a schoolgirl dress.

  Children turned as vampires always creep me the hell out. This one, with her twisted body, lobster-claw hands, and little-girl face was the worst one I had ever seen.

  Until the clown stepped out.
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br />   He tumbled into the ring, clomping in oversized shoes. His suit was striped black and yellow, bagging around him. The sleeves tattered around hands that stretched into claws. They clicked and clacked against each other. The wide, frilly collar of the jumpsuit framed a grease-painted face. His lips were pulled in a wide, fang-filled grimace, stretched by hooks in the corners attached to wires that ran behind a nap of cotton-candy hair. A round ball was nailed onto the nose between blood-pooled eyes. Hooks sank into the lids, yanking them up, stretching them wide open. The wires from them pulled taut, stapled into a bare dome of skull. Blood trickled over whiteface, running in tracks down his cheeks.

  I hate clowns.

  The Ringmaster doffed his top hat, bowing with a flourish. “Allow me to introduce my family.”

  11

  The vampire freaks fanned out across from us. Father Mulcahy pulled the sword out of the cane with a yank of his wrist.

  Sully bumped me. “Why don’t you two have your guns out? I think it would be a really good idea for you to have your guns out now.”

  I didn’t look at him. “Too many people around. They’d catch the crossfire.”

  The Ringmaster laughed. “Don’t think we didn’t plan it this way. The perfect trap for the vampire slayer.” He shook out his whip, coiling it at his feet. “Surrounded by humans so you can’t use your guns, cut off from your lycanthrope allies by my manipulation, outnumbered and outmatched.”

  “What’s your endgame, Barnum Bailey?”

  “Only to take over everything. You killed so many of us that now there are almost no vampires in this part of the world. Thank you. You are the reason my family can rise up and seize control to own a territory brimming with opportunity to hunt.”

  “And you thought I would just let this happen?”

  “No, Deacon Chalk, that is why I used dark magick to fashion my blood into a weapon to kill your allies. With one move, I have taken away your filthy animals and led you here alone. Tonight I will drink your blood. Tomorrow I will rule.”

  I shook my hand out, metal on metal chiming in my palm. “Nice to know the plan, asshole. Now I can fuck it up.” I looked over at Sully. “Now would be a good time.”

  His eyes were wide, jittering around, trying to watch everything. “A good time to what?”

  “Shift. Turn into your animal form.”

  “Uhhhh, can’t.”

  The vampires were moving, jostling around behind the Ringmaster, who watched us through narrow eyes.

  “The hell do you mean can’t?”

  “It’s not a full moon.”

  “You have got to be kidding me.”

  Just my damn luck to have a lycanthrope backup whose transformation is tied to the moon cycle. I signed up for the Hulk and got Bruce Banner instead.

  “Get out.” He didn’t move. My elbow flashed, driving into his shoulder, making him cry out. “Sully, get the fuck out of here before you get me and Father Mulcahy killed.”

  “I can fight.”

  Father Mulcahy’s voice snapped out. “Go, son. Do as he says.”

  The Ringmaster cracked his whip. “He goes nowhere.”

  “Fuck you, carny.” I stepped forward. “Go and keep going, Sully.” He took a step back toward the tent flap. My voice roared out of me. “NOW!”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw the Were-weasel turn and run. The Ringmaster leaned back, bullwhip slithering behind him, arm stretching back.

  I could see it in my mind: He was going to snap that whip out, wrapping it around Sully and reeling him back in.

  His arm jerked, the whip zipping forward toward Sully’s back.

  My arm whipped up, hand flinging out. My fingers opened around a flash of light.

  Two shuriken whizzed across the ring, sinking into the Ringmaster’s stomach in a splash of cold, dead blood, spoiling his aim. He folded around the shuriken, smoke rising from his guts as the silver burned undead flesh. Sully slipped through the tent flap and was gone.

  Father Mulcahy stepped up, sword held in front of him. His spent cigarette fell from his lip with the flick of his tongue.

  “Well, now you went and did it.”

  12

  The vampires charged haphazardly in a burst of calliope music, the Wurlitzer firing up a banshee howl. I stepped forward, meeting the first vampire across the ring.

  It was the Pinhead. He lumbered, arms outstretched like deadfall traps. His hands matched his skull. Tiny things at the end of pinched-off wrists. They tried to grab me, scrabbling on my shoulders. Someone screamed from the audience, the shrill sound blending with the demonic calliope.

  His arms beat at my upper body, unable to close around me because they kept banging against the knotted slabs of flesh that made his chest. I knocked one away with the sweep of my arm and drove the hatchet into his side. The edge bit deep, tearing out a chunk of undead muscle in a ragged gash that vomited gorelike pudding.

  He cried out and fell to his knees. His pinched little face twisted, bucktooth fangs cutting his lips as his too-small mouth gnashed.

  Stretching up, I chopped down, the hatchet carving through his stump of a neck. It took two whacks, but the tiny skull popped off his neck in a gush of dead blood. The bloodsucker exploded in a rain of ash and dust.

  Stake through the heart or chop off the head. Kills a vampire dead.

  A shrieking crashed through the demented pipe organ soundtrack, and I was knocked to the side as the bearded lady thrashed around, her face sizzling and smoking.

  Father Mulcahy stepped up, an arc of holy water slinging out of the tube in his hand. It splashed across the bearded vampire’s fleshy arms. She yanked her hands away from her face. The beard had singed down to a patchy mess around fist-sized sores of raw, undead flesh. Holy water is like acid to vampires; it was eating away her face, bone showing through the pits. Smoke billowed off her in a fog of scorched-hair, rancid-bacon stink. She had taken a mouthful of holy water, her fangs dissolving like sugar in hot water.

  The priest lunged forward as her hands fell away, the sword licking out in a razored circle of silver light. The edge parted the pouch of flesh under her chins. It was a deep slash. His hand twisted back, slashing again, lopping off her head.

  She made the biggest pile of dust I have ever seen a vampire leave behind.

  The audience cheered, a glimmer of hope that they might be rescued. It sputtered to life like a candle in the wind, growing stronger as it caught hold.

  My shin exploded in a maelstrom of hard, white agony.

  I was standing and then I was face down, choking on sawdust.

  I shoved up, getting my face out of the suffocating mess. A weight landed on my back, slamming me down to the ground. Air rushed out of me, swirling sawdust up into my eyes. The world went stuttery as my eyelids jerked and convulsed, trying to clean out the grit that skritched itself behind my eyeballs. Tears ran as I choked, blind, on the ground.

  My arm wrenched behind me, jerking my shoulder out of its socket. The pain ripped through my chest in a spasm. My head went fuzzy as I was slammed over onto my back.

  Fight back, you sonnuvabitch!

  I dragged a breath into my tortured lungs, the hot tears in my eyes washing them clean enough to see. A shape loomed over me. Narrow shoulders, pigtails, and bows.

  Lobster girl.

  I reached up, trying to shove her off.

  She reared back, lashing out with her heavy-knuckled claw of a hand. It whacked my arm in a rush of white pain. Her other claw rose in front of my face. Flexing wide, scissoring back and forth, the skin raw and red looking. Her shy schoolgirl smile ripped open into a predator snarl. Fangs burst out of her gums, curving out over a lashing tongue. Her claw came down in a lunge, clamping around my throat.

  The skin was rough, calloused, tearing my throat like a band of sandpaper. She flexed, the claw jerking closed. Deep, grinding pain pulsed out from behind my Adam’s apple. I gagged but it was locked deep in my throat, the spasm choked in a rip of fire from sternum to c
hin.

  The vampire on my chest giggled at me.

  My hand scrabbled around me, feeling for any kind of weapon, searching for my lost hatchet. They only found sawdust.

  Black burned holes in my vision, creeping in from the outside. My lungs were an inferno, starving for oxygen. Lightning bolts of agony shot up the sides of my neck, blasting across my brain.

  My vision dimmed as I looked up.

  I looked . . . up.

  Up.

  My hand shook as it pulled the Colt .45 from under my arm and rammed it into the cackling mouth of the Lobster girl.

  Two twitches of my finger blew her brains out the back of her skull.

  Out the back of her skull and toward the roof of the tent.

  Away from people.

  Lobster girl jerked up and fell over beside me. The twisted vampire lay there, jerking and twisting, brains raining back down in a sprinkle of gore.

  She wasn’t dead, but it would take her a long time to regenerate losing a brain.

  I dragged myself to my feet, throat full of glass. My shoulder popped, jamming itself back into its socket.

  That was gonna hurt like a bitch later.

  Father Mulcahy drove the sword down through the top of Sealboy vamp’s head. The sharpened metal punched through, driving the deformed little bloodsucker face-first to the ground. The blade slid between the mutant tusks that Sealboy had for fangs and bit deep into the ground, pinning the vampire like a butterfly on a board.

  The crowd gasped their approval.

  The priest stumbled back, falling on his ass. He sat there, shirt soaked through with sweat. Blood ran freely from a gash on his cheek and a hole that had been punched in his forearm. I stepped toward him and he waved me on. Turning, I looked for the remaining vampires.

  Four down, two to go.

  13

  The Ringmaster had his hand deep inside his stomach. He fished around, face gnarled in pain. One gore-encrusted shuriken lay on the ground at his feet. I assumed the other was still inside him, burning its way through.

  The clown fell from the darkness above my head.