Circus of the Damned

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I struggled, but he kept my mouth pressed to the wound. The blood was salty sweet, vaguely metallic. It was only blood.

  "Anita!" Jean-Claude screamed my name. I wasn't sure if it was aloud or in my head.

  "Blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh, the two shall be as one. One flesh, one blood, one soul." Somewhere deep inside me, something broke. I could feel it. A wave of liquid warmth rushed up and over me. My skin danced with it. My fingertips tingled. My spine spasmed, and I jerked upright. Strong arms caught me, held me, rocked me.

  A hand smoothed my hair from my face. I opened my eyes to see Alejandro. I wasn't afraid of him anymore. I was calm and floating.

  "Anita?" It was Edward. I turned towards the sound, slowly.

  "Edward."

  "What did he do to you?"

  I tried to think how to explain it, but my mind wouldn't bring up the words. I sat up, pushing gently away from Alejandro.

  There was a pile of dead vampires around Edward's feet. Maybe silver didn't hurt Alejandro, but it had hurt his people.

  "We will make more," Alejandro said. "Can you not read this in my mind?"

  And I could, now that I thought about it, but it wasn't like telepathy. Not words. I--knew he was thinking about the power I'd just given him. He felt no regret about the vampires that had died.

  The crowd screamed.

  Alejandro looked up. I followed his gaze. Jean-Claude was on his knees, blood pouring down his side. Alejandro envied Oliver the ability to draw blood from a distance. When I became Alejandro's servant, Jean-Claude had been weakened. Oliver had him.

  That had been the plan all along.

  Alejandro held me close, and I didn't try to stop him. He whispered against my cheek, "You are a necromancer, Anita. You have power over the dead. That is why Jean-Claude wanted you as his servant. Oliver thinks to control you through controlling me, but I know that you are a necromancer. Even as a servant, you have free will. You do not have to obey as the others do. As a human servant, you are yourself a weapon. You can strike one of us and draw blood."

  "What are you saying?"

  "They have arranged that the loser be stretched over the altar and staked by you."

  "What . . ."

  "Jean-Claude, as affirmation of his power. Oliver, as a gesture to show how well he controlled what once belonged to Jean-Claude."

  There was a gasp from the crowd. Oliver was levitating ever so slowly. He floated to the ground. Then he raised his arms, and Jean-Claude floated upward.

  "Shit," I said.

  Jean-Claude hung nearly unconscious in empty, shining air. Oliver laid him gently on the ground, and fresh blood splattered the white floor.

  Karl Inger came into sight. He picked Jean-Claude up under the arms.

  Where was everybody? I looked around for some help. The black werewolf was torn apart, parts still twitching. I didn't think even a lycanthrope could heal the mess. The blond werewolf wasn't much better, but Stephen was dragging himself towards the altar. With one leg completely ripped away, he was trying.

  Karl laid Jean-Claude on the marble altar. Blood began to seep down the side. He held him lightly at the shoulder. Jean-Claude could bench press a car. How could Karl hold him down?

  "He shares Oliver's strength."

  "Quit doing that," I said.

  "What?"

  "Answering questions I haven't asked yet."

  He smiled. "It saves so much time."

  Oliver picked up a white, polished stake and a padded hammer. He held them out towards me. "It's time."

  Alejandro tried to help me stand, but I pushed him away. Fourth mark or no fourth mark, I could stand on my own.

  Richard screamed, "No!" He ran past us towards the altar. It all seemed to happen in slow motion. He jumped at Oliver, and the little man grabbed him by the throat and tore his windpipe out.

  "Richard!" I was running, but it was too late. He lay bleeding on the ground, still trying to breathe when he didn't have anything to breathe with.

  I knelt by him, tried to stop the flow of blood. His eyes were wide and panic-filled. Edward was with me. "There's nothing you can do. Nothing any of us can do."

  "No."

  "Anita." He pulled me away from Richard. "It's too late."

  I was crying and hadn't known it.

  "Come, Anita; destroy your old master, as you wanted me to." Oliver was holding the hammer and stake out toward me.

  I shook my head.

  Alejandro helped me stand. I reached for Edward, but it was too late. Edward couldn't help. No one could help me. There was no way to take back the fourth mark, or heal Richard, or save Jean-Claude. But at least I wouldn't put the stake through Jean-Claude. That I could stop. That I would not do.

  Alejandro was leading me towards the altar.

  Marguerite had crawled to one side of the dais. She was kneeling, rocking gently back and fourth. Her face was a bloody mask. She'd clawed her eyes out.

  Oliver held the stake and mallet out to me with his white-gloved hands, still wet with Richard's blood. I shook my head.

  "You will take it. You will do as I say." His little clown face was frowning at me.

  "Fuck you," I said.

  "Alejandro, you control her now."

  "She is my servant, master, yes."

  Oliver held the stake out towards me. "Then have her finish him."

  "I cannot force her, master." Alejandro smiled as he said it.

  "Why not?"

  "She is a necromancer. I told you she would have free will."

  "I will not have my grand gesture spoiled by one stubborn woman."

  He tried to roll my mind. I felt him rush over me like a wind inside my head, but it rolled off and away. I was a full human servant; vampire tricks didn't work on me, not even Oliver's.

  I laughed, and he slapped me. I tasted fresh blood in my mouth. He stood beside me, and I could feel him tremble. He was so angry. I was ruining his moment.

  Alejandro was pleased. I could feel his pleasure like a warm hand in my stomach.

  "Finish him, or I promise you I'll beat you to a bloody pulp. You don't die easily now. I can hurt you worse than you can imagine, and you'll heal. But it will still hurt just as badly. Do you understand me?"

  I stared down at Jean-Claude. He was staring at me. His dark blue eyes were as lovely as ever.

  "I won't do it," I said.

  "You still care about him? After all he has done to you?"

  I nodded.

  "Do him, now, or I will kill him slowly. I will pick pieces of flesh from his bones but never kill him. As long as his heart and head are intact, he won't die, no matter what I do to him."

  I looked at Jean-Claude. I couldn't stand by and let Oliver torture him, not if I could help it. Wasn't a clean death better? Wasn't it?

  I took the stake from Oliver. "I'll do it."

  Oliver smiled. "You've made a wise decision. Jean-Claude would thank you if he could."

  I stared down at Jean-Claude, stake in one hand. I touched his chest just over the burn scar. My hand came away smeared with blood.

  "Do it, now!" Oliver said.

  I turned to Oliver, reaching my left hand out for the hammer. As he handed it to me, I shoved the ash stake through his chest.

  Karl screamed. Blood poured out of Oliver's mouth. He seemed frozen, as if he couldn't move with the stake in his heart, but he wasn't dead, not yet. My fingers tore into the meat of his throat and pulled, pulled great gobbets of flesh, until I saw spine, glistening and wet. I wrapped my hand around his spine and jerked it free. His head lolled to one side, held by a few strips of meat. I jerked his head clear and tossed it across the ring.

  Karl Inger was lying beside the altar. I knelt by him and tried to find a pulse, but there wasn't one. Oliver's death had killed him too.

  Alejandro came to stand by me. "You've done it, Anita. I knew you could kill him. I knew you could."

  I stared up at him. "Now you kill Jean-Claude, and we rule the city together
."

  "Yes."

  I shoved upward before I could think about it, before he could read my mind. I shoved my hands into his chest. Ribs cracked and scraped my skin. I grabbed his beating heart and crushed it.

  I couldn't breathe. My chest was tight, and it hurt. I pulled his heart out of the hole. He fell, eyes wide and surprised. I fell with him.

  I was gasping for air. Couldn't breathe, couldn't breathe. I lay on top of my master and felt my heart beating for both of us. He wouldn't die. I laid my fingers against his throat and started to dig. I put my hands around his throat and squeezed. I felt my hands dig into flesh, but the pain was overwhelming. I was choking on blood, our blood.

  My hands went numb. I couldn't tell if I was still squeezing or not. I couldn't feel anything except the pain. Then even that slipped away, and I was falling, falling into a darkness that had never known light, and never would.

  48

  I WOKE UP STARING into an off-white ceiling. I blinked at it for a minute. Sunlight lay in warm squares across the blanket. There were metal rails on the bed. An IV dripped into my arm.

  A hospital--then I wasn't dead. Surprise, surprise.

  There were flowers and a bunch of shiny balloons on a small bedside table. I lay there a moment, enjoying the fact that I wasn't dead.

  The door opened, and all I could see was a huge bunch of flowers. Then the flowers lowered, and it was Richard.

  I think I stopped breathing. I could feel all the blood rushing through my skin. There was a soft roaring in my head. No. I wasn't going to faint. I never fainted. I finally managed to say, "You're dead."

  His smile faded. "I'm not dead."

  "I saw Oliver tear out your throat." I could see it in front of me like an overlay in my mind. I saw him gasping, dying. I found I could sit up. I braced myself, and the IV needle moved under my skin, the tape pulling. It was real. Nothing else seemed real.

  He raised a hand towards his throat, then stopped himself. He swallowed hard enough for me to hear it. "You saw Oliver tear out my throat, but it didn't kill me."

  I stared at him. There was no bandage on his cheek. The little cut had healed. "No human being could survive that," I said softly.

  "I know." He looked incredibly sad as he said it.

  Panic filled my throat until I could barely breathe. "What are you?"

  "I'm a lycanthrope."

  I shook my head. "I know what a lycanthrope feels like, moves like. You aren't one."

  "Yes, I am."

  I kept shaking my head. "No."

  He came to stand beside the bed. He held the flowers awkwardly, as if he didn't know what to do with them. "I'm next in line to be pack leader. I can pass for human, Anita. I'm good at it."

  "You lied to me."

  He shook his head. "I didn't want to."

  "Then why did you?"

  "Jean-Claude ordered me not to tell you."

  "Why?"

  He shrugged. "I think because he knew you'd hate it. You don't forgive deceit. He knows that."

  Would Jean-Claude deliberately try to ruin a potential relationship between Richard and me? Yep.

  "You asked what hold Jean-Claude had on me. That was it. My pack leader loaned me to Jean-Claude on the condition that no one find out what I was."

  "Why are you a special case?"

  "They won't let lycanthropes teach kids, or anybody else for that matter."

  "You're a werewolf."

  "Isn't that better than being dead?"

  I stared up at him. His eyes were still the same perfect brown. His hair fell forward around his face. I wanted to ask him to sit down, to let me run my fingers through his hair, to keep it from that wonderful face.

  "Yeah, it's better than being dead."

  He let out a breath, as if he'd been holding it. He smiled and held the flowers out to me.

  I took them because I didn't know what else to do. They were red carnations with enough baby's breath to form a white mist over the red. The carnations smelled like sweet cloves. Richard was a werewolf. Next in line for pack leader. He could pass for human. I stared up at him. I held out my hand to him. He took it, and his hand was warm and solid, and alive.

  "Now that we've established why you're not dead, why aren't I dead?"

  "Edward did CPR on you until the ambulances came. The doctors don't know what caused your heart to stop, but there's no permanent damage."

  "What did you tell the police about all the bodies?"

  "What bodies?"

  "Come off it, Richard."

  "By the time the ambulance got there, there were no extra bodies."

  "The audience saw it all."

  "But what was real and what was illusion? The police got a hundred different versions from the audience. They're suspicious, but they can't prove anything. The Circus has been shut down until the authorities can be sure it's safe."

  "Safe?" I laughed.

  He shrugged. "As safe as it ever was."

  I slipped my hand out of Richard's grasp, using both hands to smell the flowers again. "Is Jean-Claude . . . alive?"

  "Yes."

  A great sense of relief washed over me. I didn't want him dead. I didn't want Jean-Claude dead. Shit. "He's still Master of the City, then. And I'm still bound to him."

  "No," Richard said, "Jean-Claude told me to tell you. You're free. Alejandro's marks sort of canceled his out. You can't serve two masters, he said."

  Free? I was free? I stared at Richard. "It can't be that easy."

  Richard laughed. "You call this easy?"

  I looked up. I had to smile. "Alright, it wasn't easy, but I didn't think anything short of death would get Jean-Claude off my back."

  "Are you happy the marks are gone?"

  I started to say, "Of course," then stopped myself. There was something very serious in Richard's face. He knew what it was to be offered power. To be one with the monsters. It could be horrible, and wonderful.

  Finally I said "Yes."

  "Really?"

  I nodded.

  "You don't seem too enthused," he said.

  "I know I should be jumping for joy, or something, but I just feel empty."

  "You've been through a lot the last few days. You're entitled to be a little numb."

  Why wasn't I happier to be rid of Jean-Claude? Why wasn't I relieved to be no one's human servant? Because I'd miss him? Stupid. Ridiculous. True.

  When something gets too hard to think about, think about something else. "So now everyone knows you're a werewolf."

  "No."

  "You were hospitalized, and you've already healed. I think they'll guess."

  "Jean-Claude had me hidden away until I healed. This is my first day up and around."

  "How long have I been out?"

  "A week."

  "You're joking."

  "You were in a coma for three days. The doctors still don't know what made you start breathing on your own."

  I had come that close to the great beyond. I couldn't remember any tunnel of light, or soothing voices. I felt cheated. "I don't remember."

  "You were unconscious; you're not supposed to remember."

  "Sit down, before I get a crick looking up at you."

  He pulled up a chair and sat down by the bed, smiling at me. It was a nice smile.

  "So you're a werewolf."

  He nodded.

  "How did it happen?"

  He stared down at the floor, then up. His face looked so solemn, I was sorry I'd asked. I was expecting some great tale of a savage attack survived. "I got a bad batch of lycanthropy serum."

  "You what?"

  "You heard me." He seemed embarrassed.

  "You got a bad shot?"

  "Yes."

  My smile got wider and wider.

  "It's not funny," he said.

  I shook my head. "Not at all." I knew my eyes were shiny, and it was all I could do not to laugh out loud. "You've got to admit it's nicely ironic."

  He sighed. "You're going to hurt you
rself. Go ahead and laugh."

  I did. I laughed until it hurt, and Richard joined in. Laughter is contagious, too.

  49

  A DOZEN WHITE ROSES came later that day with a note from Jean-Claude. The note read, "You are free of me, if you choose. But I hope you want to see me as much as I want to see you. It is your choice. Jean-Claude."

  I stared at the flowers for a long time. I finally had a nurse give them to someone else, or throw them away, or whatever the hell she wanted to do with them. I just wanted them out of my sight. So I was still attracted to Jean-Claude. I might even, in some dark corner, love him a little. It didn't matter. Loving the monsters always ends badly for the human. It's a rule.

  That brought me to Richard. He was one of the monsters, but he was alive. That was an improvement over Jean-Claude. And was he any less human than I was: zombie queen, vampire slayer, necromancer? Who was I to complain?

  I don't know where they put all the body parts, but no police ever came asking. Whether I'd saved the city or not, it was still murder. Legally, Oliver had done nothing to deserve death.

  I got out of the hospital and went back to work. Larry stayed on. He's learning how to hunt vampires, God save him.

  The lamia was truly immortal. Which I guess means lamias can't have been extinct. They just must always have been rare. Jean-Claude got the lamia a green card and gave her a job at the Circus of the Damned. I don't know if he's letting her breed, or not. I haven't been near the Circus since I got out of the hospital.

  Richard and I finally had that first date. We went for something fairly traditional: dinner and a movie. We're going caving next week. He promised no underwater tunnels. His lips are the softest I've ever kissed. So he gets furry once a month. No one's perfect.

  Jean-Claude hasn't given up. He keeps sending me gifts. I keep refusing them. I have to keep saying no until he gives up, or until hell freezes over, whichever comes first.

  Most women complain that there are no single, straight men left. I'd just like to meet one who's human.

  MOVING THINGS AROUND

  WARNING, THIS AFTERWORD IS a spoiler. If you have not read Circus of the Damned, the book in your hands, then stop reading this. Because I'm about to talk about events in the book, plot points in the mystery, and various other things that will spoil the plot for you. Or it would spoil it for me. Okay, I'm assuming that everyone still reading has read the book. The rest of you have been warned!

  Circus of the Damned is the third book in Anita's adventures. In the first and second books, Guilty Pleasures and The Laughing Corpse, I scouted locations around the city and countryside. I used street maps and I drove everywhere I could. I loved driving around St. Louis and deciding where the bodies would be. But a funny thing happened between the time Guilty Pleasures hit the shelves and The Laughing Corpse was delivered to New York: People began telling me that they'd found the house where the freak party had been in Guilty Pleasures. I thought I'd put in enough detail but left some out so you couldn't find it, because, of course, though in Anita's world the house hosted a scary vampire party, in the real world it was just a cool house with perfectly ordinary people in it. I never dreamed that anyone would be interested enough in my books to try and find everything I wrote about.