Gypsy Blood (25 page)

“Throw me her heart.”

Greedy, greedy. You’re a poor host, boy.

“I’ll throw you a bone,” Carnival taunted, grabbing his crotch with his hand. “You don’t have my permission to eat her yet.”

He cut off her big toe.

“How about a toe?” Carnival offered. “There’s lots of eating on that.”

Carnival threw the toe. It bounced like a small rubber ball.

“Suck on the toe jam, I left a chunk in the wound for you. You have my permission.”

Cantanker ran after the toe, like a transient hunting a cigarette butt. Minor demons are anything but proud. He picked it up and tore a chunk out of the ball of the toe. It made a popping, cracking noise beneath his teeth like he was chewing on a crab apple.

“Give her to me. Give me your permission.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

Carnival was enjoying this. After all of the pissiness and despair of the last few days it felt good to have the upper hand, even if that hand could tear his spine out if there were so much as a speck of empty space in the salt circle’s perimeter.

“The bitch is mine. Give her to me.”

You’ve played too long, boy. Don’t fuck with this one or he’ll have you by the throat.

“The bitch is mine,” Carnival retorted, pounding on the hooker’s torso for dramatic effect.

You ham. Your over-acting will get the best of you.

Poppa’s prophecy proved true. As Carnival pounded on the dead woman’s chest, a small gout of uncontrolled blood and seeping rot spurted out of the hooker’s open wounds.

Look boy. You learn something new every day. Cadavers don’t bleed, but they’re messy as all hell.

Before Carnival could catch the blood with his inner weave, the spill oozed a single half an inch across the salt circle. And that’s all it took. The circle was broken just that quickly. Cantanker was in Carnival’s face, his fangs pressed like ripper kisses against the Gypsy’s panicked throat.

“It’s quite all right,” Cantanker whispered. “I give myself permission now.”

Carnival felt Cantanker’s picket fence smile open wide.

Wider.

“This will be good,” Cantanker snarled, like a bear trap that had learned how to speak.

Say goodnight, boy.

The Gypsy fought back as hard as he could, but he might as well have been a dead baby mouse in the mouth of a feral cat. Cantanker could tear Carnival’s throat open and yawn at the same time, without breaking sweat. Carnival didn’t stand a chance but he’d be dry-fucked with a splintery Louisville Slugger before he let the demon know that.

He forced a taunting smile.

“If you get fresh with me I’m going to scream.”

That’s it boy, show him who is the boss.

Carnival brought his left leg up hard, kneeing Cantanker’s nuts. It was worse than kneeing a brass monkey. Carnival nearly broke his kneecap.

Now he’s scared. Broken bones and poorly planned injuries always terrify minor demons.

“Poppa, you could give a little help.”

He doesn’t look like he needs any.

Carnival tried to push the demon away. It was as useless as fighting a cramp. Cantanker clung to Carnival, skin graft close. Carnival was finished. All that needed doing was for the demon to close his teeth and it would be all over. He heard the demon fangs champ and chanter, moving independently from his gumwork like a mouthful of articulated castanets.

It’d be just that easy. Cantanker could take Carnival’s face off, crap it out, and paste it on an all day sucker to treat himself with an eternity later.

“You wouldn’t like my taste,” Carnival warned. “Gypsies tend to constipate.”

Cantanker snarled, a hot blast of teeth and burning spit against the Gypsy’s throat.

It felt like shaving with a really rusty lawn mower.

“It’s our lack of moral fiber,” Carnival added.

For somebody who is meeting death by unholy means, you are doing a pretty good job of hiding your terror. You haven’t messed your pants as far as I can tell.

Cantanker growled. He wasn’t angry. Carnival knew that. He didn’t even hate the Gypsy. It wasn’t revenge or murder. It was just business. Demons are the wise guys of the abyss, the thugs and the strong arms. They deal in brutality and respect. The fact was Hell was just one super large multi-tiered street gang. When Carnival pissed on Cantanker, he’d pissed on his honor. He had to annihilate the Gypsy, given a chance.

“Go on,” Carnival snarled. “Finish it.”

At least Carnival wouldn’t have to kill anyone any more.

Carnival was comforted by that thought. He felt Cantanker’s dank septic breath panting at his throat. The tickle of his teeth. Demon spit burning like lukewarm acid. Then Cantanker leaned back and howled like a banshee banned from the graveyard. He wasn’t angry. He was pissed. He gnashed his teeth, crashing down a half a mole hair from Carnival’s neck.

“God,” Cantanker snarled, spitting the hated name out like a gob of bloody phlegm. He had to be in pain. God was the worst curse a demon could make. “I can’t touch you.”

He doesn’t like your taste, boy. All this time, I cursed your lack of personal hygiene. How foolish of me not to realize your grand master plan.

Carnival stood. Cantanker didn’t try to stop him. Carnival tidied the circle, recovering his weave, his illusion of control. “Why didn’t you kill me?”

Stop asking so many questions. You shouldn’t look a gift demon in the teeth.

“I have to know.” Carnival shouted.

It took Cantanker several tries to muster the words. He was in that much pain.

“Something stronger owns your soul.”

Carnival hid his bewilderment.

You weren’t expecting that, were you poshrat?

Cantanker opened his hand. There was a pool of blood in his hand, red and reflective as a ruby eyed mirror.

“Look,” the demon commanded.

Carnival looked and couldn’t believe what he saw. The reflection of his face and throat. It was bad. His throat looked like it had been worked over with a barbed wire garrote. It wasn’t Cantanker’s work. It was Maya.

“Something’s marked you,” Cantanker said. “Something more powerful than I.”

Carnival was shocked but he wouldn’t show it.

Not to a bush-league bastard like Cantanker.

“You didn’t know who you were fucking with, did you?” he said to the demon.

Cantanker hissed in frustration. He couldn’t hide that pissy ammoniac scent of rank cowardice.

“Don’t think about it. I’ve got friends in lower places than you’ve ever stooped,” Carnival warned him. “I told you that it just doesn’t pay to fuck with a gypsy.”

You have no idea what just happened, do you?

He did and he didn’t but none of that mattered. Right now he was playing the advantage for all it was worth. The lie gave him confidence. It strengthened the weave of his spell, his sense of personal control. He caught hold of Cantanker’s essence like a cold iron noose.

You show him what a Gypsy can do, boy.

“Now, if you don’t want to end up clinging like a will-not on the smallest festering hemorrhoid of hell’s back door, tell me what I want to know.”

The demon snarled and champed his teeth and howled. He changed his shape a half dozen times. A Madonna, with a howling coyote child growing from between her chattering breasts. A fat man with eyes the color of bleeding piss, his lips like two flat worms twisting over a mouth that screamed in other directions. A barbed wire crucifix, burning with the glow of bloodstained glass. Nothing but fear and metamorphosis. He was showing off for the hell of it. A pissed off tantrum artist, kicking his heels against the canvas of inevitability.

Finally, his tantrum finished, Cantanker told Carnival exactly what the Gypsy wanted to hear.

Something in Sandalwood

W
ith the final incantation accomplished, Carnival banished Cantanker. The demon was glad to go. It was nearly daylight.

Not a morning man, eh? Not his time at all, the little mewling night-pussy.

“You’re awfully brave for somebody hiding in somebody else, Poppa.”

Not hiding. Caged. Do you think I stay here because I like the view?

This wasn’t Carnival’s time either. He needed some sleep after he tidied the mess.

It’s over. Right, boy?

It was over for now. Cantanker would stay gone for a while but there wasn’t much Carnival could do to contain him forever. He’d be back soon enough. And then Carnival would have to deal with him. Poppa knew.

That’s the trouble with bargaining with demons. Worse than loan sharks. It leaves you with a heap of long standing debt. The vig will kill you. Watch out, boy. A demon’s memory lingers longer than Cain’s grudge.

Carnival shrugged. “Karma is sticky.”

Ho, listen to him. Mr. Nonchalant. Karma is what you dip your apples in, after you’ve shoved razorblades into them.

Carnival understood how it was. You make your fate, dickering with demons. It’s like barring a drunk from a tavern. Sooner or later he’d come slinking back in and if you need the money you let him drink.

That’s just how it went.

Sooner or later Carnival would have to deal with Cantanker.

He didn’t look forward to it but there wasn’t any sense worrying about what might happen down the road.

A Gypsy has neither a past nor a future. The past is dead, the present is under your feet, and the future a gray unanswerable riddle that only time could tell.

Carnival glanced at the wall clock. It was nearly seven AM..

It was too late in the morning, to have the sun shining on such grisly goings on, but what was he to do with what was left of the hooker? That really wasn’t any riddle at all. He’d put her in the basement with Elija. They could sit around in the dark and sing drinking songs together.

He gathered up the pieces in the milk crate. He wondered about Cantanker. Why hadn’t he taken him? He could have. He’d had all the right. Carnival had messed up the ritual. By all rights he should have been smoking in a hellfire rotisserie by now.

You are marked, boy. Marked by something more powerful than a demon.

Carnival touched his own chest.

He felt the anger burning inside it. The anger and something more. A mark. Someone stronger owned his soul. Maya?

Who else?

The wounds on Carnival’s throat told him that a lot of what he’d believed hadn’t been true. She’d taken him and was probably using him. Maybe forcing him to do murder.

You went right along with it, didn’t you?

Poppa was partly right but that wasn’t all there was to this.

What else could there be?

No self respecting demon would fear a vampire. They’re about equal in power levels. Carnival wouldn’t want to live on the difference in fighting ability but that whole hierarchy caste system that hell lived and died by would allow no hellion to dare step back from the undead. It just wasn’t done. There was somebody larger than Maya behind this; somebody large enough to give a full grown blood demon like Cantanker a reason to turn down a naked throat.

Carnival shook his head clear of doubt and anxiety. He’d thought long enough. There was still the matter of the hooker’s dead body. He still couldn’t believe he’d done this. He hadn’t killed like this before, not unless he had to. Why was he doing it now?

Open your eyes, boy.

“They’re open, Poppa. Someone stronger owns my soul. I can live with that for now. There’s nothing else to do.”

You’ve got a body to get rid of.

“Yes Poppa. I have a body to get rid of.

At least she was in pieces. That made it easier to deal with. Easier on the back. Carnival hated dropping her into the trapdoor. It seemed so damned unladylike. Who was he kidding? She’d passed all limits of dignity a long time ago.

She was still a person. Don’t pretend otherwise.

“You’ve grown scruples since I last knew you, Poppa?”

Carnival slid the drop sheet over to the bedroom. He pulled the cot aside. The trapdoor was there. It hadn’t disappeared again. Or maybe he just saw it clearer. As clearly as he saw the wound on his throat. He dumped the hooker’s remains down the trapdoor. They made a clunky wet sound, like a rain of pot roasts. Meat upon meat. It was a suitable fate for an old hooker.

“You get the shaft one last time, woman.”

She had a name, you know? A name. Not just a hooker. She had her very own name. A sense of history. A life. Shall I tell it to you?

“Shut up, Poppa.”

Carnival’s climbed down the ladder to clear up the mess.