Flesh Circus

Chapter Twenty-four

Adrenaline spiked through me, the taste of a new copper penny laid against my palate. The dogs clustered, hissing and smoking in the flat white glare of sunlight. They bled gushing gray smoke, their unskin bubbling. One crouched and sprang, hitting a Trader with a bony crunch. The Trader—long, skinny, walnut skin clustered with tufts of hair—screamed and went down, bleeding bright red tainted with black.

I’d already killed two ’breed and three Traders. The bodies lay twisted, hellbreed flesh stinking and simmering with thin black ichor running from its rents and breaks. The Trader bodies were jerking and twisting, contagion eating at the tissues, foulness simmering. My breath puffed a vapor-cloud as if it was subzero instead of scorching, and the silver in my hair rattled and buzzed.

The dogs pressed close, seeming not to notice the roasting on their surfaces. Blisters popped and oozed, and little black specks crawled over them.

It was a serious what the fuck moment, even for me.

The Cirque performers pulled back. Sharp glittering teeth, body paint, tawdry shimmers from rhinestones and glass paste. The skinny plague-dealer I’d seen at the entrance to the bigtop crouched in front of the dogs, his knees obscenely splayed under burlap breeches. His antique top hat was stove in, and his eyes glittered madly, dripping hellfire.

Daylight scored each flaw in their beauty, burned it deep, and put the twisting on display. The Traders writhed, caught between the desire to fling themselves at me and the snarling of the hounds.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. I tracked the front line of twisted faces, turning in a complete circle, one gun out, the whip jangling in the dust. Do you suppose it’s my cologne?

The scar blazed with sudden acid fire, pulling on every nerve in my right arm, and every single humanoid form circling me, Trader or ’breed, fell face-first.

He picked his way through them, a mincing step and a tight-drawn mouth. The air peaked behind him in two turbulent whirls, and the breeze turned clotted, full of spoiled honey and dry sand. The whites of his eyes ran with trails and vein-traceries of indigo, his white-blond hair was standing up in soft spikes, and Perry looked pissed.

The shadow-dogs whined and cringed, the blisters on their hides smoking furiously.

I straightened, leveled the gun. “That’s close enough.” My ribs heaved with deep hard breaths.

“Oh, not nearly.” His teeth glimmered, sharp and perfect white. Two more mincing steps, his polished wingtips picking delicately between tangled arms and legs. “Here is better.” One more. “Or here.”

The hammer clicked back as I put more pressure on the trigger. “Come on, hellspawn. Test my patience.” I fucking dare you. It was an effort not to add the last four words.

“Now, now.” But he stayed where he was. “It seems I did well, in insuring your life.” A graceful sketch of a motion indicated the dogs. The ’breed and Traders whined, digging themselves into the dirt.

The last time I’d seen Perry in sunlight he’d looked almost transparent, and extraordinarily unhappy. Right now he just looked furious, his eyebrows drawn together and dust swirling into two high peaked points behind him. A ripple passed through all of them, and I had the sudden, not-unwelcome thought that if I could just keep all of them in the sunlight long enough, they might all implode like vampires in bad B movies and save me a lot of trouble.

Sunlight is deadly to a lot of things, but it looked merely uncomfortable to Perry. Just my luck. “Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back. What the fuck is going on here?”

He tilted his head to the side. A ripple ran under the surface of his skin, a quick blemish gone as soon as the seeming reasserted itself. “Oh, my dear. Didn’t you receive my messages?”

“I’ve been a bit busy chasing down whoever has such a hard-on for the Cirque performers since I last talked to you.” But a sinking sensation thudded into my stomach, and I was suddenly not very happy about what he might say next.

There were any number of things that could make the Cirque performers angry or stupid enough to attack me. Perry didn’t let me linger in suspense, though.

“You mean you haven’t heard?” His face twisted up in a facsimile of dismay. Then he went and said the most horrible thing he could have at that point. “My darling Kiss. The hostage was attacked again, and lies near death.”

Oh, shit. I braced myself. “I’ll get to that in a minute.” And here I thought they were pissed because I didn’t pay for a ticket. “What about Moragh?”

“She is dead, eaten by the same monster. What more can concern you about her?” False interest brightened his blue eyes. The rippling under his skin increased, like a pond rippling once a stone’s thrown in.

I gathered myself. All right, Jill. Play this one very carefully. “I should take a look at whatever’s left of her body, Pericles. And if you’re a really good little hellspawn I’ll tell you who killed her.”

I swear to God, he looked disappointed. Perry eyed me for a long few moments, his fingers dangling at his sides, the dogs whining and a low rumble of Helletöng rising like steam from the ’breed plastered to the dusty ground. The Traders twitched in ways no human body should as his will passed over them, a tightening of corruption my blue eye could see all too well.

“Are there likely to be more deaths?” He cocked his head, buttery sunlight turning cold and cringing when it touched his pale hair and his linen-clad shoulders. The dogs growled, a rising note of unhappiness.

Four or five different things slid together in my head all at once. “Of course there are. Unless you get off your hellbreed ass and start helping me control the situation instead of trying to play it like a harmonica. It would be very upsetting to be second fiddle to the Ringmaster in my town, wouldn’t it?” Even temporarily.

There. Not bad for a toss of the dice. I stared right at the bridge of his hellbreed nose, the naked scar on my arm running with soft wet fire, and wondered if I was going to have to kill them all. Or at least, take as many of them with me as possible.

That’s the trick to staring down an unblinking hellbreed—just like scaring the shit out of a human being. Focus on the nose and your gaze grows piercing, a lot of their little glamours and fiddles don’t work, and any move they make is generally telegraphed. Peripheral vision is a lot better at picking up that sort of twitchy almost-movement; that’s what it’s for.

Stare or not, though, even I might have some trouble with the entire Cirque and Perry on my ass.

The first consideration was that Perry needed a reason to be on my side—and no reason to let the Cirque run wild to gain some leverage on me. The second consideration was that if he was here, he wasn’t watching the hostage.

The third was that I needed him if I was going to hold off the Cirque. I did not want to let them run riot through my city until someone else got a handle on them. Leon down south in Ridgefield or Anya over in the mountains had their own problems; this one was mine.

Last of all, I had to figure out what Perry knew and what side of the fence he was playing. As usual.

“You know what is causing this?” Did Perry sound, of all things, tentative?

Wonders never ceased.

“I haven’t just been sitting on my fucking thumbs, Perry.” I kept the gun steady, sharp hurtful gleams twinkling off the barrel. The sunlight was still so cold my shoulders were tight as bridge cables, and my head hurt. My eyes were dry and full of brambles. Come on. Can we just have one time without a huge fucking production?

No, of course we couldn’t. These were hellbreed, for Christ’s sake. Nothing was ever simple or easy. It was all a game, and you constantly had to stay a few jumps ahead.

Perry weighed me for a long moment. The dogs slunk back, smoking and bubbling. Their crystal eyes were tinted red now, veined through with cracks of magma. They vanished into the shadows, and the chill lessened a little. The smells of the Cirque didn’t break, but the spoiled-honey-and-flies stink lessened.

The ’breed and Traders still writhed and jerked around us, as if a bomb had hit and we were the only unwounded. The scar sawed away at the nerves in my arm, Perry’s attention moving slow and jelly-cold over me. I wished I’d thought to scoop up a fresh leather wristcuff to cover the goddamn thing.

“Then tell me, my dearest one.” His tone was a numb-razor kindness. “Tell me who is responsible for this. I will kill him, and we will all be happy.”

I almost laughed again, caught the sound before it could reach my throat.

Ha. Nice try. “No, Perry. I’m not telling you a goddamn thing. We’re playing this my way.” Because if you got your claws into this, the next thing I knew I’d be yanked into going to the Monde again every month. And I’m sure you have something special planned for me. Not this time. I lowered the gun, my arm creaking with the urge to shoot him in the head and start killing again.

It would be bad in the long term, but oh, the instant gratification was tempting.

Tension ticked tighter and tighter between us, a humming line. I kept staring at the bridge of his nose, breathing softly. My pulse was a steady river.

He finally hissed, a long steam-escaping sound of dissatisfaction. But my bluff held. “Very well. I warn you, though…”

Leather creaked as the gun slid back into its holster. I flipped the whip once, the flechettes jangling. “Save the threats, Pericles. I need to see the fortuneteller’s body—or whatever’s left of it. And you need to be keeping both baby blues on that goddamn hostage. If he dies, you’re the first hellbreed I’m killing.”

As threats went, it wasn’t a bad one. Especially considering I meant every word.