Flesh Circus (23 page)

Prioritize, Jill.

I took it out loud, so I could think it through better. “The attack on the hostage was voodoo. Perry’s supposed to stay and
make sure the hostage doesn’t bite it. In any case, it’ll be nightfall before someone can try again.”
One problem that doesn’t have to be solved immediately.
I stared at the leather-bound books heaped on the table, breathed in deeply. Galina blew across the top of her tea. “I’ve
got voodoo practitioners dropping like flies, spirits in people who shouldn’t have them—though if they’re believers, it changes
the equation a little—and one of them came down with a bad case of zombie.
And
Zamba’s missing in action. She could quite possibly be needing protection, or she’s part of this. Either of which is equally
unprepossessing. I’ve got Forensics collecting evidence, and Sullivan and the Badger doing some digging.”

It took me a couple more seconds to piece everything together.

“What’s up next?” Saul, as usual, gave the right question.

“Going home and getting cleaned up,” I decided. “Figuring out what to do about that kid. Then the next step.”

“Which is? And what kid?” Galina took a gulp of her tea. Maybe she needed it to wash the taste of history and dust out of
her mouth.

“The kid who’s been following me around. And the next step is visiting some
botanicas.
Zamba wasn’t the only game in town, just the biggest one.” I pushed myself up to my feet and almost regretted it. Aches and
pains twinged all over my body.

“An apprentice?” The Sanc looked at me like I’d just expressed a desire to take off my clothes and howl naked in the street.
“When did this happen?”

“It hasn’t happened yet.” I pushed my chair in. The sunlight strengthened. It looked like another beautiful day. “Right now
I just want him kept out of trouble.”

“That’s funny.” Galina’s tone suggested it wasn’t funny at all. “That’s just what Sloane said about Arthur Gregory. I remember
that
much, at least.”

For once, I observed the speed limit. Saul turned the radio’s volume knob and lit a Charvil, and dawn traffic was light. Santa
Luz sometimes looks washed out, the sun bleaching buildings and dirt, the dust haze putting everything in soft focus. The
greens are pale sage, the whites turn taupe and buff, and any dab of brightness gets covered with a thin film before long.

It’s different in the barrio. Bright blocks of primary color are a little more cheerful in the daylight—but a little more
carnivorous at night. Even well-tended lawns look anemic under the first assault of morning light. It isn’t until the richness
of twilight that things take on that mellow gold tinge, like waking up from a siesta with the world scrubbed clean and a little
brighter.

It could just be me. But things seem tired in the morning. The day has risen, wearily, from the bowl of night. It’s when I
get to go home, because the nasty things mostly stick to darkness to do their dirtiness.

They don’t call it the nightside for nothing.

And this morning seemed a little darker than usual. The windows were down and the radio was off, early coolness rising from
the river and a promise of scorching later, but I thought I heard something else under the purring engine and the rushing
air. The scar had been uncovered almost all night, and the sensory acuity was beginning to seem normal. The noise resolved
itself into notes from a steam-driven calliope in the distance.

A bright, cheery tune. That “Camptown Races” thing again, but with a darker edge. And the shadows were wrong this morning.
Just by a millimeter or two, but they were at strange angles, and darker than the usual knife-sharp morning shadows. Gleams
flickered through them—pairs of colorless gleams, low and slinking.

It wasn’t precisely against the rules for the Cirque’s dogs to be out running—but it was strange.

Stranger than someone with a grudge against both voodoo practitioners and hellbreed? Or stranger than Zamba disappearing and
her entire household laid waste?

Stranger than Perry doing exactly what I tell him to?

The more I thought about it, the more my brain just went in circles. Even intuition wasn’t any help; it just flailed and threw
up its hands. I was too tired, and getting dull-witted. Fatigue is a risk during cases like this.

“Goddammit,” I sighed, and Saul exhaled a long tobacco-scented sigh as well.

“Jill.” He sounded serious.

“Huh?”
The thing that troubles me most,
I decided,
is not finding Zamba’s body. That slippery little bitch wouldn’t have let anyone kill her closest followers. That was her
power base, the ones that ran herd on all the others.

Always assuming someone
else
had killed them.

“We need to talk.”

Oh, Christ. Not now.
“What’s up?”

Seconds ticked by. I braked to a stop on Chesko. We’d turn and go up Lluvia Avenue. The engine hummed to itself, a familiar
song.

The light turned green. Saul still said nothing. “What is it?” I prompted again, touching the accelerator. We moved smoothly
forward, and no, it wasn’t my imagination. The colorless eyes in the shadows were following us.

Great.

“I love you.” He tossed the half-smoked Charvil away. It somersaulted in the slipstream and was gone. I checked the rearview.
Just wonderful. Jesus.
“You know that, right?”

“I do.”
That’s not the problem. The problem is that you can’t stand to touch me now. And there’s a bigger problem right now, too.
It has to do with those eyes in the shadows. The ones watching us right now.

Why now? Nighttime was their time.

There was another long pause, like he was waiting for me to say something. I kept checking the mirrors.
Is this trouble? Why would they wait for daylight?

“Are you—” He tapped another Charvil up out of the pack. Held it in his long expressive fingers. I checked to make sure his
seat belt was on. Of course it was. I pressed the accelerator a little harder. “Are you listening to me?”

“Of course I am.” The needle climbed, slowly but surely. The shadows were thickening, and I got a very bad feeling. “You said
you love me. I said I know. You asked—”

“Jill. There’s something…” He twitched, looked out the window. “Is something following us?”

“Hang on.” My fingers caressed the gearshift. “Half a second.”

“Goddammit. There’s never a minute alone with you.”

“You’re alone with me right now.” The shadows were growing blacker, their crystalline eyes reflecting daylight stripped of
all its warmth.

I mashed the accelerator. Tires chirped, and the Pontiac leapt forward obediently.

We roared down Lluvia, the shadows keeping pace. They circled as we bounced over the railroad tracks and down a long sun-drenched
stretch of road. Here the sun hit a wall of warehouses dead-on to my left, and there wasn’t a shadow to be found—except the
shadow of the Pontiac, running next to us with its own loping stride. The tires made low sounds of disapproval, I skidded
into a turn and jagged right on Sarvedo Street, working the turn like threading a needle in one motion. Saul grabbed at the
dash, breaking his Charvil and giving me a single reproachful look.

My warehouse was about ten blocks down, and even from here my smart eye could see the layers of protection on my walls waking
in bursts of blue etheric flame.

Oh, holy shit. There’s a civilian in there. I sent him in myself.

I jammed the accelerator to the floor and prayed I wasn’t too late.

I
bailed out in a blur, Saul right behind me, and I didn’t have to break my own door down. The entire warehouse was tolling
like a bell in a windstorm, and there was a gaping hole where the front door used to be. Green smoke billowed out, thinning
in the morning breeze, and there wasn’t a shadow to be found.

The fume was acrid, tasting of rotten pumpkins and stale cigar smoke. Down the short hall, bursting into the living room—couch
overturned, floors awash with greasy knee-deep smoke—I flashed through, boots pounding, into the long, wood-floored sparring
room.

The mirrors along one wall were all cracked, the ballet barre splintered, the weapons hanging on the walls scattered except
for one long quivering shape under a fall of amber silk. Gilberto Rosario Gonzalez-Ayala was in a crouch, a Bowie knife flat
against one forearm, feinting at a shape made of smoke and nightmare. He was bleeding—a scalp wound, I thought, since his
face was covered with blood. His left arm hung, flopping queerly, at his side, but his face was alive.

His eyes damn near
shone.

I’d never seen Gilberto light up before, and now wasn’t the time to pay attention. Still, the computer in my head took note.
I hurled myself forward, heard Saul’s coughing roar right behind me as he changed, and hit the shape of green smoke with both
physical and etheric force. The scar blazed under my skin, vibrating wetly, and my right fist pistoned forward, smashing into
the lattice of evil intent.

A ringing sound hit the pitch just under “puncture-an-eardrum,” then broke in a cascade of splinters. Just like the smoke,
which solidified into breaking crystal shards, raining for the floor. I hit the ground and whirled, boots grinding in the
wreckage, and saw Saul, dodging the shambling fingers of a zombie. Four more crowded behind it, all with their jaws working,
and just as his claws sheared the face off the one he was dancing with I lurched forward again, fingers unlimbering the whip.

“Six!”
Gilberto yelled. “
Seis!
Six!”

What the hell?
But then I realized he was telling me how many enemies we had loose inside the warehouse, or at least how many he’d seen.

Well, at least he’s got his wits about him. How long has he been in here with them?
The whip cracked, silver flechettes thudding home in rotting flesh, and the smell exploded.
Goddammit, and I was looking forward to getting clean, too.

It was short work putting the zombies down. These ones were old and fragile, porous bones and worm-eaten flesh. Five of them,
and I was looking for the sixth when it blundered around the corner, arms outstretched like a bad B-movie villain, and snarled.

The whip hit, my fist arrived a few moments later, and I was struck by just how
satisfying
making a zombie’s head explode can be. If only all problems are as simple as setting your feet, uncoiling from your hip,
and smashing a hellbreed-strong fist right through something’s head, then shaking the gobbets of flesh from your fingers.

But, of course, I have to spoil all that enjoyment by thinking about who the hell would send zombies
into my fucking house.
Just when I was looking forward to a shower and a little bit of rest.

I stood still for a moment, panting, head down. Saul’s growl petered out. He cocked his head, still in cougarform, tail lashing.
Then the blurring enveloped him, his form running like clay under water, and when it receded he was there again. It’s an amazing
thing to see, and the fact that I can
see
the strings under the surface of the real world responding with my smart eye, see the quivers of energy as thermodynamic
laws are violated, doesn’t make it any less amazing.

The human mind can compass an awful lot, but it isn’t comfortable even when you’re used to it.

“Dios mio.”
Gilberto coughed behind me. It was the first time I heard him sound anything other than bored.
“Madre de Dios.”

Yeah, kid, calling on God is a good thing to do in a situation like this.
I let out a long slow breath. “Jesus Christ. What the hell?”

Saul glanced at me, then turned on his heel and strode back to Gilberto. “What happened?”

“Doorbell rang.” The kid winced as Saul touched his left arm, but he didn’t let go of the knife. I recognized it—an antique
Bowie, with a plain hilt and a blessing running under the metal’s surface.

It had belonged to the first Jack Karma, one of the hunters in my lineage.
Why am I even surprised?

“His arm’s broken,” Saul said over his shoulder. “Jill?”

“Get it set and find out what happened. I’m going to sweep the house.”

“I don’t hear any more.” But he nodded, and crouched easily next to the kid. “This is going to hurt a bit.”

“
Chingada,
man, just get it over with.” Gilberto sounded very young. “There was a blond bitch at the door, but I think she left.”

Wait a second.
“Blond?”

“Dreadlocks,
bruja.
” He was sweating as Saul probed his arm more. “Right down to her ass. Tall, too. Dressed like
mi abuela,
for fucksake. Flower muumuu and everything.”

“Greenstick. Humerus.” Saul looked up at him. “Brace yourself.”

“
Ay de mi,
just fucking—”

Saul made a swift motion, Gilberto spluttered and sucked in a breath. He turned the color of cottage cheese under his brown
skin. It was amazing—he actually looked yellow. The acne scars stood out, like the cratered surface of the moon.