Lilith Saintcrow: Fresh Circus

Sudden silence filled the bigtop. My breathing was very loud, but so was theirs, twin gasps through constricted windpipes.

They faced each other, and my hand closed around a gun butt. I was moving through syrup.

Then Ikaros spoke. His face had squinched itself up, and he sounded very young.

“Arthur?” Tentatively. His broad farmboy paws knotted together. “Art?”

Arthur Gregory twitched.

Oh, holy shit. The last piece of the puzzle clicked into place. That’s why the attacks didn’t kill him—they were attacks on the Ringmaster, not on the hostage! And—

“Goddamn you,” Arthur hissed. “God damn you to Hell.”

Samuel Gregory spread his arms. “Already done. I’ve seen things you can’t imagine.” His face was no longer young. Instead, it was ancient and graven.

“You were here. The whole time.” Arthur’s hands dropped to his sides. He took two steps forward. The calliope simmered in its corner, a tremor rising up through the floor as if we were having an earthquake. “You were here! ”

“I came here to forget it. Forget it all. ” Samuel’s hands twisted together, fingers knotting. “Him. And her. Mother. ” The single word was loaded with hatred, and I shivered.

“Even me?” Arthur drew himself up. His dreadlocks rasped against each other.

Samuel shrugged. “Even you. I’m… sorry.”

He didn’t sound sorry.

“I did everything for you,” Arthur whispered. “Everything. All this. I sold my soul.”

Samuel sounded unimpressed. “So did I. And you have to come here and remind me.”

A hand closed over my shoulder. I flinched, but the fingers dug in. “Hush.” Perry’s hot breath touched my bloody cheek. “Be quiet, now. This is meant to be finished.”

I pitched forward, but I was so tired. And his fingers bit down again, steel pins grinding my flesh. “I said be still. ” His whisper floated to my ear, a trickle of moisture that might have been blood or condensation from his breath sliding down toward my jawline. Frantic disgust roiled through me.

They stood staring at each other. The calliope regained its voice and whispered.

“God damn you.” Arthur’s throat had closed down on him. All that came out was a rasp. And too late I saw the knife in his broad, long-fingered hand. It glittered, starlike in the green pondlight. I let out a warning blurt, but Perry’s other hand had clapped over my mouth. Dry skin against the slick of blood on me, and he drew me back.

Arthur Gregory lunged forward. Samuel collided with him, and the knife rammed itself home in his narrow chest. Samuel’s arms were spread, strangler’s hands limp and loose.

He had thrown himself on the blade. He folded down like a clockwork toy run out, and the corruption racing through his tissues distorted his face into an old man’s before finally draining away, his body twitching and jerking as it turned into a bubbling smear.

My eyes rolled like a panicked horse’s. I threw myself forward, but Perry dragged me back down again and I couldn’t get leverage. His other arm was a bar of iron across my midriff. He crouched behind me, and the heat of him was like a boiler. The smell of charring leather rose.

“Quiet!” The rumble of Helletöng scoured my ear, already half-deaf and ringing from the vast and varied noises of the night.

Arthur Gregory went to his knees. The tripartite spinning of the Twins appeared briefly, a pale oval of light. They laughed, a cruel tinkling sound, and he stretched out his arms. Their faces blurred into each other before the slim androgynous figure silhouetted in the light turned its back and danced away.

Abandoning him.

The loa are fickle. Just as much as hellbreed are. And Arthur Gregory had used up all his credit with them.

His wail shattered the stillness. The calliope answered it, shaking the bigtop. Canvas rippled and fluttered, the ropes singing in distress.

Perry dragged me even further back, duckwalking. One of his knees dug briefly into my ribs and I made a small sound in the back of my throat, a red-hot bolt going up my cramping side and exploding in my neck. The scar blazed, agony unstringing my nerves. The collar still tangled in my fist, its spikes buried in my wrist. Hot blood smeared my right hand, and pretty much every other inch of me. My back was hot, and Perry hissed happily to himself as he rose, dragging me upright.

They flowed past us, bright eyes and twisted limbs, a tide of hellbreed. The plague-carrier I’d seen before was first among them, capering and jigging; he had found another red velvet coat somewhere. It was he who picked up the Ringmaster’s cane, stealing it neatly from under another ’breed’s questing fingers, and he twirled it neatly, cracking the other ’breed on the head and snarling. They pulled back a little, and he found the top hat too. It went onto his lank-haired noggin, and I was suddenly aware of hellbreed and Traders packing the entire bigtop, dancing in through the stage entrances, climbing through the stands, cheering and rumbling in töng.

Arthur Gregory was on his knees, sobbing. He bent over, his mouth distorted in a wet “o” of suffering. His eyes had turned dead-dark, and cold. Snot smeared on his upper lip. One of his dreadlocks came loose and fluttered to the churned, wet sawdust. Others followed, plopping free of his skull with odd little sounds.

The plague-carrier capered to Gregory’s side, spinning the cane. The green crystal shivered and crackled, and when the carrier spread his stick-thin arms, the calliope tweeted. He jabbed the cane at it, green vapor cringing away from him, and the first few notes of “Be a Clown” rippled through the air.

The crowd cheered and hissed, arms raised, cheap glass and paste finery twinkling. Their eyes were bright and avid. None of the animals put in an appearance, but I swear I heard an elephant trumpet and the yowls of big cats. Yipping dogs. Perry’s arm loosened. My boots touched the ground, finally. The shadows crawled and leapt with the Cirque’s dogs, their eyes glowing and crackling.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” It was a ringmaster’s voice, an impossible deep baritone coming from the plague-carrier’s narrow little chest. “Welcome to the Cirque Diabolique! We’re all-new and renewed! We’re pedal to the metal and shoulder to the wheel! And welcome our new hostage! What’s your name, sonny?”

The cane whirled again, and the crystal jabbed toward Arthur Gregory. Who screamed, his body buckling. He lifted his face to the bigtop’s fabric roof swimming with sick green light and howled.

Their cries rose with his. Every single one of them, Trader and hellbreed, yowled like cats at the moon. The plague-carrier danced back, whirled, and blinked through space with the eerie speed of hellbreed. Perry’s arm tightened again, but the thing just halted a bare four feet from us and gestured to the collar.

“Clip him and chain him.” Strings of gummy yellow ick crawled over sharp teeth, and the ’breed exhaled foulness. “You have our thanks, hunter.”

I opened my mouth, closed it again. Arthur howled again, the cords on his neck standing out. The plague-carrier danced backward, spinning the cane, and Perry shook me, recently broken bones twinging hard even though my body was doing its best to patch everything up.

“Do as he says, Jill.” Perry’s arms slithered away, I swayed on my feet. “He is theirs now.”

It doesn’t look like he knows it, I almost said. But the new Ringmaster halted next to Arthur, and put down one narrow hand. He smoothed the matted blond head, caressing, and made an odd clicking noise.

The dreadlocks finished falling, and new hair was growing in. Sickly yellow, and oddly feathery.