Flesh Circus (11 page)

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

M
y 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 experience.

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.