Lilith Saintcrow - Flesh Circus

There was no address. Of course, the people who wanted to would find it. That’s the way it works.

My mouth went dry. “Jeez.”

Saul barely gave it a glance. “Trashy.” He opened his door, flicking his Charvil into the gutter.

A shadow moved in the plate-glass front of the shop across the street. I eyed it for a few moments, took my time opening my door. Blue fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror rocked slowly to a halt—Galina’s gift, a replacement for the red ones that had gone up in flames with my Impala.

The thought still pissed me off. I’d nursed that car back into shape from a rusted hulk in a wrecking yard. All that work and effort gone in a few heartbeats, dying in the barrio.

Saul hadn’t asked any questions when I picked him up from the train station in the Pontiac. I was glad about that.

The shadow in Galina’s window moved again. I slid out of the car, slammed my door, and eased a gun free of the holster. Saul had paused at the rear of the car, his head up, hot wind touching his hip-length leather jacket and making the fringe move a little. His dark eyes flicked to the gun in my hand, and he straightened infinitesimally before stepping out into the road.

He followed two steps behind and to my left, carefully out of the way but close enough if I should need him. The skin between my shoulder blades twitched a little when I crossed the centerline—it hadn’t been so long ago that I’d been right in the middle of the street and got chewed up by an assault rifle. They’d used copper-jacketed lead, the dumb bunnies, instead of silver to hurt a helltainted hunter.

Everyone skipping and scrambling to kill me, when if they’d just left me alone they could have quietly had their bioweapon and their higher-up from Hell stepping through to make my entire city—hell, probably the entire country —a wasteland before I could stop them. There wouldn’t have been a damn thing I could do about it. I’d only been poking around the suicide of Monty’s old partner, not looking for a serious dose of lead poisoning or a firebombed car.

I wasn’t far enough away from that case yet for my body to forget. A prickle of chill touched the curve of my lower back.

The body remembers, and the body knows. You can override that knowing with enough training, but it’s still never pleasant.

The blinds twitched and one moved aside slightly. The shape in the window was Galina, her marcel-waved hair an immaculate cap as always. Her green eyes sparked as the sheet of etheric energy folding over her shop changed slightly, like light refracting through a waterfall. Even my dumb eye could sense the reverberations, watering and tingling. The scar prickled.

“She looks worried,” Saul murmured.

“No shit,” I muttered back. Inside her shop, Galina’s will is law—she is, after all, a Sanctuary. But anything could happen on the way up to her doorstep.

And who knew what was waiting for us around here? It wasn’t like her to call more than once. They all know the drill, everyone who dials me—I’ll get around to you sooner or later, unless I’m being shot, strangled, knifed, electrocuted, thrown off a building, or doing anything else fun and interesting.

I opened the door cautiously. The bell jingled. I stepped carefully through the curtain of Sanc warding.

“Thank God.” She was in her robes, the pigeon-throat gray shifting and the mark of the Order—a silver medallion, the quartered circle inside a serpent’s hoop, snake eating its own tail—at her throat. I gave the shop a quick glance—nothing visible. I relaxed fractionally, didn’t reholster the gun. Something was off here. “You won’t need that, Jill, I’ve got everything—”

“Is it her?” A rumble of Helletöng slid under the words, and the windows chattered, both with Galina’s wordless shout and the lash of a hellbreed’s voice.

Coming from inside.

Usually, my instinct would be to dive away from something like that. This time, though, I pitched forward, my shoulder smacking hard against the bottom of a display case running along the right side of the store. Glass shivered and whickered loose. Saul let out a short sharp yell, I finished rolling, gaining my feet in a single convulsive movement and ending up with both guns pointed straight at a very familiar-looking ’breed.

The Ringmaster held his cane like a staff, the crystal at its head spitting with venomous green as he stood next to the cash register. His eyes ran with wet orange hellfire. His hair was lifting on a slight screaming breeze from nowhere, standing up in wet black spikes. This time he was in a battered red velvet coat and actual jodhpurs, but it didn’t make him look ridiculous.

No, he looked like he belonged on a carton of animal crackers. A really twisted, ugly carton sopping with blood and other nasty liquids.

“We came to this town in good faith, hunter.” The faint lines on the ridge of bone masquerading as teeth were grimed with something dark. “We came to cleanse and to—”

“Stand down.” My voice sliced through his. Behind me, Saul’s warning growl rose, rattling the entire place no less than Galina’s anger or the wave of hellbreed agitation. “This is a Sanctuary. Calm the fuck down. ”

“ Both of you.” The air hardened under Galina’s words. “You. Stand over there, or I will send you back to Hell. I’m not joking.”

“She isn’t, you know.” This was Perry, who stood with his back to the rest of us, bending down to peer inside a glass display case that held several crystal balls, mummified alligators, and a stacked display of Etteila tarot cards. Something rippled on his back, under the white linen suit jacket. “I suggest you calm yourself.”

“What the hell’s going on?” I didn’t lower the gun, and Galina’s walls ran with rivulets of etheric force, cascading in sheets. The lightshow was amazing, but it could just as easily turn on me as on the hellbreed. “Galina?”

“Stand over there. ” Her voice rang like a gong, and the Ringmaster grudgingly paced to the exact spot she pointed to on the hardwood floor, his thin body twitching with mutiny. His hair actually writhed, the spikes touching each other with little balloon-squealing sounds. The fraying nap of his red velvet coat crawled with corruption-dust, and his fingers twisted and twitched.

Galina gave me a meaningful look, and I slowly, slowly lowered my guns. The glass shards on the floor stirred, quivering. “Someone give me a vowel.”

“We are in a very special place right now, Kismet.” Perry still didn’t turn to face any of us. “Let us absorb the full implications.”

“Where have you been, hunter?” The Ringmaster jabbed his cane at me, the crystal popping off one diseased-green spark. “We came here in good faith! ”

“I’ve been chasing a child-killer and doing exorcisms.” Every nerve in my body cried out in protest when I holstered the guns. “More than enough fun and games to keep me busy. Whatever’s happened to you, I’m not involved with it.” I licked my dry lips. Saul straightened from his crouch behind me. It was good to feel him there, even while I was worrying about two hellbreed in front of me and the look on Galina’s face. “Yet.”

“There has been an attack.” Perry finally turned, slowly, and it was almost a relief to see him still wearing his blond, bland face. He was also grinning, lips pulled back in a rictus and his eyes burning gasflame-blue. There was no indigo spreading and scarring the whites, though.

That was good news. How good remained to be seen. “Attack?” That was the bad news. “What kind of attack?”

“A Cirque performer, my dear.” Perry stuffed his hands in his pockets and tilted his blond head. It ruined the lines of his suit, but I suppose he thought it made him look less dangerous. Or something. “A certain fortune-teller appears to have gone to collect her eternal reward. With some help, I might add.”