Алекс Калер - The Immortal Circus (Cirque des Immortels)

When Kingston pulls away, he doesn’t turn back to me to give an apologetic glance. Lilith doesn’t look at me either. She just smiles at him, totally lucid, and puts a hand on his cheek.

“Kingston,” she whispers. “What can I do?”

Now he hesitates. “It’s Vivienne,” he says. “She has visions. But she’s under contract not to use them. We think…we think you can access them. It’s the only way of finding Melody.”

Disappointment battles across her face, but then she drops her hand and looks at me. That lost little girl is gone, and in her place is a creature I can’t even begin to come to grips with.

“What must I do?” she asks.

Kingston motions me over. I go and sit beside him, doing my best to stay composed, to not feel that mixture of rage and shame that are coiling around in my chest. I want to call him every name for bastard, want to run off before it gets any worse. Fuck them, fuck this show, fuck everyone. But I know I can’t leave, not until Mab’s done with me. If they go down, I go down, too. And I’m not going down without a fight.

Someone’s going to pay for all this.

“Repeat after me,” he says. “I call upon the contract of Vivienne Warfield, Line 17A. I summon her powers of Vision. Seek out and relay the location of Melody Bonaparte.”

Lilith nods, and begins to repeat his words, but the moment she speaks there’s a rushing in my head, a fire and wind and fury I can’t control, and I’m falling, falling, the wind screaming through every inch of me, and it’s only white and grey, white and grey, white and grey and screaming.

When I wake up again, I’m alone in the middle of the field. The sky is pink and orange and spread out wide above me, the cornfields alive with the sound of cicadas and wind. I push myself to sitting, try to force the ringing out of my ears. That’s when I realize I’m not actually alone. Lilith’s sitting on the edge of the circle, stroking Poe and watching me. Both of their eyes gleam in the fading light, Lilith’s green, Poe’s a dusty yellow. I feel like a victim in one of those horror movies, just woken up from a chloroform stupor to find myself in some basement-turned-torture-chamber.

“Where is he?” I manage to say. The words make my head throb.

“Kingston is searching for Melody,” she says. Her voice is so calm, so controlled. Poe mewls in her lap and she looks down and smiles. “Your vision told him where she is, and now he is gone. He will not return before sunrise. Melody is far, far away.”

“Why didn’t you go with him?”

“He told me to stay here. Keep you safe.” She looks at me and cocks her head to the side. “Weak, Vivienne. You are very, very weak.”

I struggle to standing and sway on the spot. I ignore her words and scan the field, though I can’t see anything past the edge of the circle.

“Where is he?” I ask again. “I have to find him.”

“You won’t,” she says. Everything in her voice says that this is precisely where she wants me to be. Dread creeps through my veins like ice. Is she teamed up with Penelope? Was this just some elaborate ploy to get me out of the way?

Lilith puts Poe on the ground and stands in one fluid motion. Even though she’s still in her white dress, even though she hasn’t grown and her hair is still tied back with a ribbon, she looks different, looks more in control of something I can’t place. And whatever that is, it’s terrifying. She steps right up to me, staring up into my eyes, pinning me like a serpent. “He told me to keep you here. Keep you safe. Safe with me.” She sings the last bit, the childish tune frighteningly at odds with her somber stare.

Rage boils inside of me, burning away the fear. Anger at him, anger at her, anger at all of them for fucking me over. Everyone’s been playing with me. Everyone. I’m not going to be played like this any longer. Fire burns.

I don’t think. I swing.

My fist connects perfectly with Lilith’s cheek, knocking her backward a couple steps. She staggers and Poe is hissing at her feet, but Lilith flicks a hand down in a shut up sort of gesture, and the cat goes silent. When she looks back at me, she’s actually grinning. The trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth makes her look positively demented.

“There’s the fire,” she says. “Let’s watch it burn.” She lunges forward and tackles me.

She knocks me to the ground and we roll. Stars flash across my vision as she punches me in the face. I gag as her knee connects to my gut. For having a twelve-year-old’s body, she fights like a heavyweight. But the rolling momentum carries and then I’m on top of her, slamming my fist into her face over and over before she flips us over and elbows me in the jaw. In one frighteningly smooth motion, she pins my arms to my chest. There’s more blood on her face, but she’s laughing. There’s a madness inside of her that makes my rage flicker. I know that look. There’s no amount of pain in the world I could inflict on her; she will always, always come back for more. Until one of us is dead.

“Oh, Vivienne,” she says. “This is why he’ll never choose you. You’re nothing. Mortal. Weak.” She sniffs and stretches her neck. “It would be so easy to fake your death, you know. A tragic accident. Wrong place, wrong time. He’d never even suspect.”

I try to swallow the blood in my mouth but the iron makes me want to gag. She leans in close to my ear. “You are very lucky we are currently on the same side. Otherwise it would be so, so simple to dispose of you.”

Poe hisses by our side and Lilith jerks her attention to the field. Something rustles in the undergrowth. Something chuckles. The sun has set, the horizon fading to hues of fiery pink and orange.

Then, something takes flight, a streak of fire that arcs high overhead. We both watch it fly, watch as it curves to the other horizon. There’s a flash of light when it falls out of sight and then another flies a similar path. Then another. Arrows.

Lilith and I look at each other. Her eyes go wide and the fire inside both of us vanishes.

The Summer Fey have arrived. We’re already too late.

We run through the corn, Lilith in the lead, me right behind her, cutting a straight line toward the tent. As we get closer, I can hear the screams. We burst from the field into a scene that makes my blood run cold.

The chapiteau is in flames.

Streaks of arrows are flinging down toward the tent like burning birds, the whistle and howl of arrow and flame growing louder by the moment. The grey and blue canvas is peeling and ripping as flames eat it alive. Lilith and I stop and stare in horror. Arrows are ricocheting off the trailers, sticking into the ground like fiery voodoo pins. Others have found flesh. There are two bodies in flames on the ground, but we aren’t close enough to see who they are. I don’t want to know. I don’t want those memories burned into my head.

Everything is chaos. Everything is fire.

Then I hear a voice, one that roars over the inferno and turns the air to ice.

“WHO DARES?”

Mab appears in front of the tent in a swirl of blue light and smoke. She hovers above the ground, easily three times her normal height, the top of her head level with the flaming pinnacle of the big top. Shadows swarm around her in a serpentine dance and her eyes are emerald coals. She is every nightmare combined. Just the sight of her pulls at the darkest corners of my imagination, makes my skin crawl and fills my blood with the need to flee. I nearly drop to my knees.

“WHO DARES ATTACK THE COURT OF QUEEN MAB?”

A gust of wind answers, the sound of chimes and summer breezes.