Lilith Saintcrow: Fresh Circus

It was routine. People have no idea how close the world skates to the edge of apocalypse every week. If they did know, would it make them stop killing each other?

I used to think maybe there was a vanishing chance it would. But I’m getting to be a cynic. “Calzones sound good.” I was already wondering what Avery needed, and the pager finished its buzzing as I walked. “Let’s get a move on.”

T he apartment was on Silverado, in a slumping, tired-looking concrete building—the old kind with incinerators in the basement and metal chickenwire in front of the elevator doors. The wallpaper had once been expensive, but was now faded, torn, and a haven for creeping mold. If the elevator worked the place could probably have gotten on a historical register.

As it was, the whole building smelled of fried food, beer, and desperation. We took the stairs, found the right hall, and the door was cracked open.

I don’t usually show up for exorcisms covered in gunk and stinking to high heaven. The victim doesn’t give a rat’s ass by the time I’m called in, but my fellow exorcists probably do.

This time, however, Avery didn’t even seem to notice. His brown eyes sparked with feverish intensity, his mournful-handsome face animated and sharp despite the bruising spreading up his left cheek. A gurgling noise scraped across my nerves, and we came to a halt at the foot of the bed.

I studied the body thrashing against restraints for a few moments. Don’t ever, ever rush an exorcism in the beginning stages, no matter how pressed for time you think you are. That was the first thing Mikhail said when he began training me to rip Possessors out of people.

“Guy’s name is Emilio Ricardo. Thirty. Dishwasher. Not the usual victim.” Avery spoke softly, but his entire body quivered with leashed energy. I folded my arms. The carved ruby on its short silver chain at my throat sparked once, a bloody flash in the dimness. Silver moved uneasily in my hair. Saul stood near the door, leaning against the wall with his eyes half-closed.

The apartment was small, with none of the usual signs of possession. No hint that the victim was a shut-in, nothing covering the windows, no scribbles of demented writing in whatever substance was on hand on the walls or mirrors. No smell of rotting food. No foul slick of etheric bruising over every surface.

And Possessors aren’t that fond of poverty. They like to get their flabby little mental fingers in the middle and upper class. It’s almost enough to make you feel charitable, finding at least one thing that doesn’t prey on the poor.

There was a metal bed the victim was tied to, a chair and a table in the greasy kitchen, and an old heavy television balanced on a TV cart. The floor was linoleum, and the whole place was the size of a crackerbox.

No, definitely not the usual victim. But they are creatures of opportunity too, the Possessors.

The victim was male, another almost-oddity. Women get possessed more often, between the higher incidence of psychic talent and the constant cultural training to be a victim. But a man wasn’t unheard of. It’s about sixty-forty.

Still…. Male, dark-haired, babbling while he strained against the restraints, leather creaking. “How did you get him tied down?”

“Cold-cocked him. He’ll have a headache for a while.” Avery didn’t sound sorry in the slightest. He rubbed at his jaw, gingerly. “Assuming he ever wakes up.”

I kept my arms folded. Ave had done a good job strapping the man down. He looked thin but wiry-strong, fighting against the restraints, his skin rippling. The candy-sick scent of corruption was missing.

That was what bothered me. “He doesn’t smell right.”

“Smells like BO and fish.” Ave’s nose wrinkled. “But it just seems off. That’s why I called you. Didn’t feel right, and you’re always bitching about trusting those instincts.”

“Because when you don’t, you end up getting your ass handed to you.” I paused. “And then you get all embarrassed when I do show up to bail you out.”

“Humility’s a virtue, Kismet.”

“So’s discretion. I suck at both. Didn’t you notice?”

The banter wasn’t easing our nerves, but he gave me a tight, game smile. The bruise was coloring up quite nicely. “I was too bowled over by your witty repartee. Not to mention your leather pants. What do you think?”

“I think he’s possessed, but I don’t know by what yet. Grab a mirror.”

He backed up two steps and bent to dig in his little black exorcist’s bag on the greasy linoleum floor, metal and glass clinking. I approached the end of the bed and considered the thin man, who was still ranting and raving in glottal stops and harsh sibilants. It didn’t sound Chaldean. It had a lilt to it unlike Helletöng, and it was vaguely familiar.

“Here.” Avery had a small round hand mirror, the type exorcists buy by the case. I took it and hopped over the end of the bed, which squeaked and shuddered as my feet landed on either side of the victim’s hips. I crouched easily and kept the mirror out of sight, tucked against my leg.

My trench coat settled over the victim’s legs, and I could see his eyes were blind—filmed with gray. A fine tracery of overloaded veins crawled away from the corners of his eyes, right where laugh lines should be. They were gray as well, pulsing as if thin threads of mercury were running under his skin.

Now that was interesting.

Let’s see what we’re dealing with here, shall we? I leaned down, examining him closely, my gaze avoiding his blindness. My aura quivered, sea-urchin spikes almost visible, my blue eye turning hot and dry.

The victim kept twisting against the restraints. I shifted my weight, the cot groaning. Waited. The blind eyes wandered, back and forth in random arcs. He didn’t respond to my nearness, which could have meant anything.

Seconds ticked by. Avery was breathing high and hard, tension spreading out from him in waves. Saul was a quietness by the door, watching. I settled, my heartbeat picking up just a little. I forgot what I smelled like, crouching there, my attention narrowing to stillness.

The mirror jabbed forward just as his gray-filmed eyes wandered across the precise, unavoidable point in space that would force him to look at himself. The reflection caught and held, my blue eye straining to pierce layers of etheric interference—like fine-tuning a radio dial to catch the familiar bars of an old song—and I caught a glimpse of it before the mirror’s surface disintegrated with a sharp horrified sound and the bed itself heaved and bucked three different ways at once.

The mirror went flying, jerked from my grip; restraints creaked and the bed jolted. I moved quick as a striking snake, my hellbreed-strong right hand flashing to close around the victim’s throat as leather groaned, restraining a force it was never meant to bear. The chanting rose, the victim’s mouth loose and sloppy, and I knew what I had hold of.

Oh, goddammit.

I bore down hard, a nonphysical movement accompanied by a hardening of physical muscles. The sea-urchin shape of my aura trembled on the surface of the visible, spikes starring out hard against the air, light popping on the points. My aura, like any exorcist’s, has grown hard and thick over the course of hundreds of exorcisms, each of them unique—the only commonality is the undeniable will needed to press something inimical out of its unwilling host.

But this case needed something a little different. Silver rattled in my hair, and I heard my own voice.

“Begone, in nomine Patrii, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti! I command you, I abjure you, I demand you release this—”