Lilith Saintcrow - Flesh Circus

There’s something to be said for drowning your sorrows in work.

I parked on the bluff and locked my doors, then took the path down to the parking lot. The cars were hooded with dust, the paint already looking weary and sucked-dry. There were a lot of them, and the empty spots looked like knocked-out teeth. It was barely noon and the calliope was going full-bore, a souped-up version of “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” punctuating the air. The reek of cotton candy, animal shit, and fried fat painted the heavy motionless air. I checked the sky—over the mountains hung a dark smudge.

Rain, finally. Which would mean flash floods and misery, wet boots and cold hanging out on rooftops, steaming mornings and dripping against every surface. It would also mean old-fashioned hot chocolate, Saul’s signature hash browns, and chili.

I pushed the thought away.

There were only two or three shufflers outside the ticket booth. The same Trader was on duty, her rhinestones sending back a vicious glitter, sweat-sheen greasing her pale skin as she kept as far as she could in the shade. I didn’t pause, just strode straight past and jumped the turnstile. She gave a high piercing cry, but I paid no attention.

During the day, the Cirque did look shabby. Holes in signs, tawdry glitter, most of the booths deserted. The murmuring of Helletöng spilled under the surface, plucking at the visible world with flabby fingers. Dust rose in uneasy curls, and the calliope belched, missed a beat, caught itself, and went on.

Where is everyone?

I was cold, despite it being in the high nineties under the sun’s assault. The alien scents of the Cirque swallowed me, teased at the inside of my skull. It was a few degrees cooler inside the Cirque’s borders, but not enough to be a relief. Just enough to pull out some humidity and make every surface cloying and sweaty.

I heard a low wet chuckle and spun, steelshod heel grinding in dirt. My coat flared like a toreador’s cape, the pockets weighted down.

Nothing but the shadow-dogs, crowding close. One slid a smoky paw out into the fall of sunlight and snatched it back, an angular curl of dust rising and dissipating on a breeze I didn’t feel.

Something is very wrong here.

Another eerie cry went up, somewhere else in the Cirque. A thin, chill knife ran through my vitals.

They boiled out of the shadows, the dogs smoking with violet fumes, the hellbreed cringing and flinching, and the Traders hissing as they closed on me. The sun was suddenly my best ally, and my hand flashed for my whip just before the first one reached me.

A drenaline spiked through me, the taste of a new copper penny laid against my palate. The dogs clustered, hissing and smoking in the flat white glare of sunlight. They bled gushing gray smoke, their unskin bubbling. One crouched and sprang, hitting a Trader with a bony crunch. The Trader—long, skinny, walnut skin clustered with tufts of hair—screamed and went down, bleeding bright red tainted with black.

I’d already killed two ’breed and three Traders. The bodies lay twisted, hellbreed flesh stinking and simmering with thin black ichor running from its rents and breaks. The Trader bodies were jerking and twisting, contagion eating at the tissues, foulness simmering. My breath puffed a vapor-cloud as if it was subzero instead of scorching, and the silver in my hair rattled and buzzed.

The dogs pressed close, seeming not to notice the roasting on their surfaces. Blisters popped and oozed, and little black specks crawled over them.

It was a serious what the fuck moment, even for me.

The Cirque performers pulled back. Sharp glittering teeth, body paint, tawdry shimmers from rhinestones and glass paste. The skinny plague-dealer I’d seen at the entrance to the bigtop crouched in front of the dogs, his knees obscenely splayed under burlap breeches. His antique top hat was stove in, and his eyes glittered madly, dripping hellfire.

Daylight scored each flaw in their beauty, burned it deep, and put the twisting on display. The Traders writhed, caught between the desire to fling themselves at me and the snarling of the hounds.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. I tracked the front line of twisted faces, turning in a complete circle, one gun out, the whip jangling in the dust. Do you suppose it’s my cologne?

The scar blazed with sudden acid fire, pulling on every nerve in my right arm, and every single humanoid form circling me, Trader or ’breed, fell face-first.

He picked his way through them, a mincing step and a tight-drawn mouth. The air peaked behind him in two turbulent whirls, and the breeze turned clotted, full of spoiled honey and dry sand. The whites of his eyes ran with trails and vein-traceries of indigo, his white-blond hair was standing up in soft spikes, and Perry looked pissed.

The shadow-dogs whined and cringed, the blisters on their hides smoking furiously.

I straightened, leveled the gun. “That’s close enough.” My ribs heaved with deep hard breaths.

“Oh, not nearly.” His teeth glimmered, sharp and perfect white. Two more mincing steps, his polished wingtips picking delicately between tangled arms and legs. “Here is better.” One more. “Or here.”

The hammer clicked back as I put more pressure on the trigger. “Come on, hellspawn. Test my patience.” I fucking dare you. It was an effort not to add the last four words.

“Now, now.” But he stayed where he was. “It seems I did well, in insuring your life.” A graceful sketch of a motion indicated the dogs. The ’breed and Traders whined, digging themselves into the dirt.

The last time I’d seen Perry in sunlight he’d looked almost transparent, and extraordinarily unhappy. Right now he just looked furious, his eyebrows drawn together and dust swirling into two high peaked points behind him. A ripple passed through all of them, and I had the sudden, not-unwelcome thought that if I could just keep all of them in the sunlight long enough, they might all implode like vampires in bad B movies and save me a lot of trouble.

Sunlight is deadly to a lot of things, but it looked merely uncomfortable to Perry. Just my luck. “Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back. What the fuck is going on here?”

He tilted his head to the side. A ripple ran under the surface of his skin, a quick blemish gone as soon as the seeming reasserted itself. “Oh, my dear. Didn’t you receive my messages?”

“I’ve been a bit busy chasing down whoever has such a hard-on for the Cirque performers since I last talked to you.” But a sinking sensation thudded into my stomach, and I was suddenly not very happy about what he might say next.

There were any number of things that could make the Cirque performers angry or stupid enough to attack me. Perry didn’t let me linger in suspense, though.

“You mean you haven’t heard?” His face twisted up in a facsimile of dismay. Then he went and said the most horrible thing he could have at that point. “My darling Kiss. The hostage was attacked again, and lies near death.”

Oh, shit. I braced myself. “I’ll get to that in a minute.” And here I thought they were pissed because I didn’t pay for a ticket. “What about Moragh?”

“She is dead, eaten by the same monster. What more can concern you about her?” False interest brightened his blue eyes. The rippling under his skin increased, like a pond rippling once a stone’s thrown in.

I gathered myself. All right, Jill. Play this one very carefully. “I should take a look at whatever’s left of her body, Pericles. And if you’re a really good little hellspawn I’ll tell you who killed her.”