Lilith Saintcrow: Fresh Circus

His lashes quivered. That was his first mistake.

The next was his hands, twisting together as if he was nervous. If the Ringmaster’s hands were flaccid and delicate, the Trader’s were broad farmboy’s paws, at odds with the rest of his delicate beauty.

I wondered what he’d Traded for to end up here.

“We’ll be good.” His voice was a sweet piping, without the candy-sick corruption of a hellbreed’s. He gave me a tremulous smile. There was a shadow of something ancient over his face, a wrongness in the expression.

He was no child.

“Save it.” I jingled the collar again and watched him flinch just a little. The hellbreed had gone still. “And get down on your knees.”

“That isn’t necessary.” The Ringmaster’s tone was a warning.

So was mine. “I’m the hunter here, hellspawn. I decide what’s necessary. Get. Down on. Your knees.”

The Trader sank down gracefully, but not before his fingers clenched for the barest second. Big, broad hands, and if they closed around my neck it might be a job and a half to pry them away.

He might have looked like the sort of tchotchke doll old ladies like to put on their shelves, but he was Trader. If he looked innocent and harmless, it was only the lure used to get someone close enough for those strong fingers. And that tremulous smile would be the last thing a victim ever saw.

I clipped the collar on, tested it. He smelled like sawdust and healthy young male, but the tang of sugared corruption riding it only made the sweetness of false youth less appetizing. Like a hooker turning her face, and the light picking out damage under a screen of makeup. The stubble on his neck rasped and my knuckles brushed a different texture—the band of scar tissue resting just above his collarbone. It was all but invisible in the dimness, and I wondered what he’d look like in daylight.

I don’t want to find out. I’ve had enough of this already, and we’re only ten minutes in.

I stepped back. The collar glinted. My apprentice-ring thrummed with force, and I twitched my hand, experimentally.

The Trader let out a small sound, tipping forward as he was pulled off-center. His knees ground into the dust. Every bit of silver I wore—apprentice-ring, silver chain holding the blessed carved ruby at my throat, the charms in my hair—made a faint chiming sound. My stomach turned. It was just like having a dog on a leash.

I nodded. Let my hand drop. “You can get up now.”

“Not just yet.” Perry stepped forward, and little bits of cooling breeze lifted my hair. I didn’t move, but every nerve in my body pulled itself tight as a drumhead and my pulse gave a nasty leap. They could hear it, of course, and if they took it for a show of weakness things might get nasty.

Ikaros hunched, thin shoulders coming up.

My left hand touched a gun butt, cool metal under my fingertips. “That’s close enough, Perry.”

“Oh, not nearly.” He shifted his weight, and the breeze freshened again. His aura deepened, like a bruise, and the scar woke to prickling, stinging life.

A whisper of sound, and I had the gun level, barrel glinting. “That’s close enough. ” Give me a reason. Dear God, just give me a reason.

He shrugged and remained where he was. The Ringmaster was smiling faintly, his thin lips closed over the tooth-ridges.

I backed up two steps. Did not holster the gun. Faint starlight silvered its metal. “The chain, Perry. Hurry up.”

He smiled, a good-tempered grin with razor blades underneath. It was the type of smile that said he was contemplating a good piece of art or ass, something he could pick up with very little trouble. His eyes all but danced. A quick flicking motion with his fingers, the scar plucking, and a loop of darkness coiled in his hands, dipping down with a wrongly musical clashing. His left hand snapped forward, the darkness solidified, and the Trader jerked again, a small cry wrung out of him.

Ikaros’s eyes rolled up into his head and he collapsed. Spidery lines of darkness crawled up every inch of pale exposed flesh, spiked writing marching in even rows as if a tattoo had come to life and started colonizing his skin.

Perry’s hands dropped. The Trader lay in the dust, gasping.

“Done, and done.” The Ringmaster sighed, a short sound under the moan of freshening breeze. “He is your hostage.” Now his cane had appeared, a slim black length with a round faceted crystal the size of a pool ball set atop it. He tapped the ground twice, paused, tapped a third time with the coppershod bottom. The crystal—it looked like an almighty big glass doorknob except for the sick greenish light in its depths—made a sound like billiard balls clicking together, underlining his words. “Should we break the Law he will suffer, and through him, I will suffer; through me, all shall suffer. He is our pledge to the hunter and to the Power in this city.”

The Trader struggled up to his hands and knees. The collar sparked, once, a single point of blue light etching sharp shadows behind the pebbles and dirt underneath him. He coughed, dryly. Retched.

“So it is.” Perry grinned. The greenish light from the Ringmaster’s cane etched shadows on his face, exposing a breath of what lived under the mask of banal humanity. “May your efforts be fruitful, brother.”

“No less than your own.” The Ringmaster glanced at me. “Are you satisfied, hunter? May we pass?”

“Go on in.” The words were bitter ash in my mouth. “Just behave yourselves.”

Ikaros struggled to his feet. He moved slowly, as if it hurt. I finally lowered the gun, watching Perry. Who was grinning like he’d just discovered gold in his underpants. His face wavered between sharply handsome and bland as usual, and the tip of his tongue flickered out briefly to touch the corner of his thin lips. Even in the darkness the color—a wet cherry-red, seen in an instant and then gone—was wrong. I had to clamp down on myself to stop the sweat rising along the curve of my lower back.

The Ringmaster took the Trader’s elbow and steered him away, back toward the convoy. Their engines roused one by one, and they pulled out, a creaking train of etheric bruising, tires shushing as they bounced up onto the hardtop from the access road and gained speed, heading for the well of light that was my city below.

Last of all went the limo. The Trader slumped against a back passenger-side window, and the inside of the vehicle crawled with green phosphorescence, shining out past the tinting. Its engine made a sound like chattering teeth and laughter, and its taillights flashed once as it hopped up onto the road and passed the city limits.

As they wound down the highway, they started to glitter. Each car, even the ancient Chevy, dewed with hard candy of false sparkling. They wasted no time in starting the seduction.

Jesus.

Perry stood, watching. I swallowed. Took another two steps back. The scar was still hard and hot against my wrist, like almost-burning metal clapped against cool skin.

I waited for him to do something. A conversational gambit, or a physical one, to make me react.

“Good night, sweetheart.” He finally moved, turning on his heel and striding for the limousine.

It was amazing. It was probably the first time in years he hadn’t fucked with me.

It rattled me more than it should. But then again, when the Cirque de Charnu comes to town, a hunter is right to feel a little rattled.

M ine is definitely not a day job. The day is for sleeping. A long golden time of sunny safety hits about noon and peters out at about five in the winter, somewhere around eight in the summer. I like to be home, curled up in bed with Saul’s arms around me.