Lilith Saintcrow: Fresh Circus

The collar jangled in my fist. I took an experimental step forward. My knee buckled, but I stayed upright. Perry made a low spitting sound, as if to chide me for swaying.

Arthur’s blind eyes passed across me for a moment, and I opened my mouth again to protest. To say something, anything.

But the Ringmaster bent down and exhaled across Arthur’s wide, now definitely male face. Which turned slack and grinning, vacant.

“It is ever so,” Perry intoned behind me. “A life for a life.”

“Life for a life,” the assembled Cirque chorused. Even the calliope, weaving notes that sounded like words between the frantic strains of a song I didn’t want to identify.

The new Ringmaster twitched, and pulled Arthur Gregory to his feet. “There,” he said brightly. “Isn’t that nice?” Foulness dripped down his chin. “Tell the nice lady your new name, my dear.”

Arthur Gregory smiled under a mask of tears, snot, and blackened sawdust. He mumbled something, his lips moving loosely.

“She didn’t hear you.” The plague-carrier glanced at me. His shoulders were tense, and I had a sudden insane vision of shooting his ass, too.

But I was so tired.

“Samuel,” he said, louder, his mouth working oddly over the word. “I am Samuel. Now. I’m Sam.” By the third time he repeated it, he sounded like he believed it.

The flat shine of the dusted lay over his irises, and I knew what he had bargained away. Who wouldn’t want to get rid of the memories he must have been carrying? The guilt, and the shame, and the murder?

The new Ringmaster watched me avidly. I’m sure something of what I was feeling showed on my face. The biggest thing, though, was weary disgust. And relief that this was finally over.

“You have one more day,” I croaked. “By dusk tomorrow I want you out of my city.”

He swept a simulacrum of a bow, grinned his death’s-head grin under the old top hat. The cane whirled, cleaving the air with a low sweet sound. “Of course.”

I clipped the collar on Arthur Gregory and left him to his new demons.

I t was a relief to take the heavy weight of ammo off. I stowed the grenades carefully, tossed the black canvas bag into the trunk, and slammed it to find Perry leaning against my car, his pale hair and linen suit immaculate. The night was young, and as I stood there watching him, the first few shufflers arrived. A quick flicker of movement was a new Trader in the admissions booth—a round little dumpling of a male in a bowler hat and pencil moustache. His eyes glittered as a tall heavyset man in jeans and a stained Friends Don’t Let Friends Vote Democrat T-shirt eased up to the booth and handed over a snub-nosed.38. The man’s mouth worked wetly, his hair was uncombed, and he looked like a dreamer caught in a nightmare.

The Trader stamped his hand and motioned him past. The man stumbled through the turnstile, his hands plucking at the hem of his shirt. The big stain on the front, right over his belly, was very dark against his white fingers.

“Nothing ever really changes, you know.” Perry’s grin was wide and stainless, his bland blond mask firmly in place.

“You knew.” I meant to sound accusing. I only managed “tired.” I pulled the key out of the trunk’s keyhole and clenched it in one nerveless fist. The scar had gone quiescent, humming slightly as etheric force pooled in it and spooled through my body, encouraging and compressing the natural processes of healing.

I was going to be hungry, to fuel the healing. In a little while.

Perry shrugged. “Not the specifics. But this is how the Cirque gains its new hostage.” His face lengthened into mock-concern, and his eyes burned blue. “You didn’t know?”

God, just go away. I’m tired. I lifted my chin slightly, drying blood crusting on my face. Thunder rumbled in the distance again, a sweet cool wind touching my hair. Silver jangled, and my scalp crawled. “I’m done here, Perry. Get off my car.”

He didn’t move. “Where is your cat? Have you lost your taste for bestiality at last? Though that was a lovely touch, with the chickens.”

That wasn’t me, Perry. That was a loa, and it was payment. “Leave Saul out of this.” God, I was so heavy. It was an effort to focus on him, to force my weary body past another iron barrier of exhaustion. My eyes were crusty and hot, and adrenaline was fast losing its usefulness as a spur.

Too bad, Jill. Deal.

“He’s been looking weary lately, my dear. And you look weary too.” A pause, and then the silken trap. “I saved your life. You owe me.”

So that’s your game. I made a small beeping noise. “Nope, no deal. You helped out because you didn’t want the Cirque loosening your grip on the city. I don’t owe you a goddamn thing.”

His grin widened, became sharklike. The essential inhumanity under his shell gaped and yawned. “You belong to me, hunter. It’s only a matter of time.”

It was a relief to find out he was lying. No matter how many times I feel that relief, it’s always profound. “I’ll tell you again: hold your breath until I call. Fuck off, Perry. I’m going home.”

“You owe me,” he insisted.

“I don’t owe you jackshit.” My fingers rested on a gun butt. If he attacked me now, I would probably lose—and lose badly. I was just too fucking tired.

But I would still inflict a lot of damage before I went down. And here outside the barriers of the Cirque he couldn’t count on their help— or on them not running riot once I was out of the picture. It was the same basic situation, me playing them off against each other again.

It was necessary. But it still made me feel dirty, in the worst way. Like I might never get clean again.

The indigo threading through the whites of his blue-glowing eyes retreated a little. “Such a righteous soul you have, Kiss. I only ask an inch of it.”

That’s more than enough room to damn someone. “Not this time, Perry. Go home and suck eggs.”

He bared his teeth, a swift snarl. I cleared leather and had both guns on him, back leg braced, arms straight. The scar woke, a blinding jolt of pain pouring salt on every recent injury. We faced each other, and the only sound was the shuffling of the doomed circling before they slid through the ramheaded turnstile into the Cirque’s poisonous glow. With a click, click, click.

That and the calliope, singing softly. A well-satisfied, cheery little song threading just under the subliminal noise of my pulse. My coat flapped slightly, and the thunder drew closer. It smelled like rain.

Even the rain isn’t enough to wash this off. I didn’t blink. I barely even breathed. The world narrowed to Perry and me, facing each other over a chasm the width of a hair.

He bared his teeth again, another snarl. This one poured through the subaudible register, I could barely hear it even with the scar amping my senses into the superhuman. My pulse slowed, skin chilling under its mask of drying blood, sweat, spatters of rum and other fluids I didn’t remember getting splashed with.

“Someday,” he said, finally. “Some fine day, Kiss.”

Maybe. But not tonight. “Not tonight, Perry. Get out of my sight.”

He moved. I threw myself back and down, but he just went over me with the spooky stuttering speed of the damned. Hit the ground, and heard the fast light patter of his footsteps retreating toward the meatpacking district and the Monde Nuit. A chilling little laugh, fraying in the distance, and the calliope sighed.

I pushed myself wearily to my feet. Didn’t look at the shuffling victims in front of the Cirque. Not one more fucking thing tonight, please. Not one. Okay, God?