Lilith Saintcrow: Fresh Circus

Another oddity, seeing him without a posse.

Why, Perry, what a nice penguin suit you’re wearing. A nasty snigger rose over a deep well of something too hot and acid to be fear, killed just as surely and swiftly as the smile. The contact of cooler night air on my skin turned unbearably sharp, little prickling needles of sensory acuity.

The scar turned hard, drawing across the nerves of my right arm like a violin bow.

I kept thinking the memory of him pressing his lips there would fade. Silly me.

He finally stepped away from the limo. The door swung closed, and I tensed, muscle by muscle. Perry strode loosely across the road, gliding as if on his own personal dancefloor, and the caravan took a deep breath. Another door swung open, I heard feet hitting the dusty ground. Two pairs, both with the sound of hellbreed or Trader—too light on the toes, or too heavy, a distribution of weight no human musculature would be capable of—and if my ears were right, from the limo.

Hellbreed like limousines. I’ve heard politicians do too. Oh, and rock stars. Thought-provoking, isn’t it?

I peeled myself away from the Bonneville’s hood. Saul stayed where he was, but I felt his attention. It was like sunlight against my back as I strode forward, steelshod bootheels cracking down with authority.

If it was a dance, it was one that brought us all together just where the road met the shoulder. I ended up with one foot on the tarmac and the other on dirt. Perry, to my left, stopped a respectable six feet away on the road, and as he came to a halt I saw he was wearing mirror-polished wingtips. The crease in his pants was sharp enough to cut.

To my left, the Ringmaster halted. Thin membranous curls of dust rose from his footprints, settling reluctantly with little flinching sounds.

The Ringmaster. A tall thin hellbreed with a thatch of crow-dark hair over a sweet, innocent face with bladed cheekbones. They’re all beautiful, the damned. It’s the blush of a tubercular apple, that beauty, and it rots in the gaze if you keep looking steadily enough. Little things that don’t add up—bones a millimeter too high, a skin-sheen just a degree or two off, a chin angled in a simulacrum of humanity but with something else under the skin—grab the attention, then the attractiveness reasserts itself. It’s the mask they wear to fool their prey, but a hunter back from Hell can see under it.

We can see the twisting.

This one wore a thin-lipped smile that was far, far too wide. I looked for his cane and didn’t see it. His black suit was a shabby, fraying copy of Perry’s, a worn top hat dangling from loose, expressive strangler’s fingers. When his lips parted, a long ridge of sharp bone with faint shadows that could be tooth demarcations showed. The ridge came down to points where the canines would be, then swept back into the cavern of his mouth.

In very dim light, human eyes might mistake him for one of their own. A hunter never would. Diamond insect feet walked up my back, leaving gooseflesh in their wake. A muscle in the Ringmaster’s elegant cheek twitched, but it was Perry who spoke first.

“Kiss. A delight, as usual.”

Don’t call me that, Perry. I eyed the second one from the Cirque, a small, soft boyish Trader with huge blue eyes and a fine down on his round apple cheeks. My stomach turned over, hard. “Let’s just get this over with.” I sounded bored even to myself. “I have work to do tonight.” Got a childkilling Trader to catch, and you assholes are wasting my time.

“As do we all.” The Ringmaster’s voice was a surprise—as hearty and jolly as he was thin and waspish. And under that, a buzz like chrome flies in chlorinated bottles.

The rumble of a different language. Helletöng.

The speech of the damned.

“Always business.” Perry shrugged, a loose easy movement, and I passed my gaze down the small, doe-innocent Trader. He was thin and birdlike, in a white T-shirt and jeans, and he made me uneasy. Most of the time the bad is right out there where you can see it. If it’s not, you have to keep watching until it shows itself. “Welcome to Santa Luz, Henri.”

The Trader leaned into the Ringmaster’s side, and the ’breed put one stick-thin arm over him. A flick of the loose fingers against the T-shirt’s sleeve, probably meant to be soothing, and the parody of parental posture almost made acid crawl up the back of my throat.

“Thank you, Hyperion. This is Ikaros,” the Ringmaster said. He focused on me. “Do you have the collar?”

I reached into a left-hand pocket, my trench coat rustling slightly. Cool metal resounded under my fingertips, and I had another serious run of thoughts about stepping back, turning on my heel, and heading for the Pontiac.

But you can’t do that when the Cirque comes to town. The compact they live under is unbreakable, a treaty between dark and light. They serve a purpose, and any hunter on their worldwide circuit knows as much.

It just goes against every instinct a decent hunter possesses to let the fuckers keep breathing.

Perry rumbled something in Helletöng, the sound of freight trains painfully rubbing against each other at midnight, in some deserted hopeless trainyard.

I paused. My right hand ached for a gun. “English, Perry.” None of your goddamn rumblespeak here.

“So rude of me. I was merely remarking on your beauty tonight, my dear.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. I shouldn’t have dignified it with a response. “The next time one of you hellspawn rumbles in töng, I’m going back to work, the Cirque can go on down the line, and you, Perry, can go suck a few eggs.”

“Charming.” The Ringmaster’s smile had dropped like a bad habit. “Is she always this way?”

“Oh, yes. Always a winsome delight, our Kiss.” Perry’s slight smile hadn’t changed, and the faint blue shine from his irises didn’t waver either. He looked far too amused, and the scar was quiescent against my skin.

Usually he played with it, waves of pain or sick pleasure pouring up my arm. Fiddling with my internal thermostat, trying to make me respond. Tonight, he didn’t.

And that was thought-provoking as well. Only I wasn’t sure what thoughts it was supposed to provoke, which was probably the point.

My fingers curled around the metal and brought it out.

The collar was a serious piece of business, a spiked circle of silver, supple and deadly-looking. Each spike was as long as my thumb from middle knuckle to fingertip, and wicked sharp. Blue light flowed under the surface of the metal, not quite breaking free in response to the contamination of two hellbreed and a Trader so close. My silver apprentice-ring, snug against my left third finger, did crack a single spark, and it was gratifying to see the little Trader shiver slightly.

I shook the collar a little, the hinges moving freely. It trembled like a live thing, hypnotic blue swirling. “Rules.” I had their attention. My right hand wanted to twitch for a knife so bad I almost did it, keeping myself loose with an effort. The charms in my hair rattled against each other, blessed silver reacting. “Actually, just one rule. Don’t fuck with my town. You’re here on sufferance.”

“Next she’ll start in about blood atonement,” Perry offered helpfully.

I held the Ringmaster’s gaze. My smart eye—the left one, the blue one—was dry, but I didn’t blink. He did—first one eye, then the other, slight lizardlike movements.

The Trader slid away from under his hand. Still, their auras swirled together, and I could almost-see the thick spiraled rope of a blood bond between them. Ikaros took two steps toward me and paused, looking up with those big blue eyes.

The flat shine of the dust lying over his irises was the same as every other Trader’s. It was a reminder that this kid, however old he really was, had bargained with Hell. Traded away something essential in return for something else.