Flesh Circus

Chapter Two

Mine 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.

I do not like wrestling with a Trader in a filthy storm sewer reeking of the death of small animals. I don’t like being thrown and hitting concrete so hard bones break, and I hate it when they try to drown me.

So many people have tried to drown me. And I live in the desert, for Chrissake.

This close to the river there’s always seepage in the bottom of the tunnels, and the Trader—a long thin grasshopper who had once been a man, filed teeth champing and yellow-green saliva spewing as he screamed—shoved me down further, sludge squirting up and fouling my coat even more.

I clocked him on the side of the head with a knifehilt-braced fist, got a mouthful of usable air, and almost wished I hadn’t breathed. The smell was that bad.

Candlelight splashed the crusted, weeping walls. The Trader had set up an altar down here, bits of rotting flesh and blood-stiffened fur festooning the low concrete shelf. Cats and dogs had gone missing in this area for a while, but the Trader hadn’t bumped above the radar until small children started disappearing.

I had more than a sneaking suspicion where some of those children could be found. Or parts of them, anyway.

The Trader yelped, losing his grip on me in the slime and scudge. The knife spun around my fingers, silver loaded along the flat of the blade hissing blue sparks like the charms in my hair, and I slashed with every ounce of strength my bent-back left arm could come up with.

The blade bit deep across one bulbous compound eye. I’ve long since stopped wondering why a lot of Traders go in for the pairing of hellish beauty and bizarre body modifications. It’s almost as if they want to be Weres, but without the responsibility and decency Weres hold themselves to.

Green stuff splattered, too thick to be slime but too thin to be pudding. The Trader howled. I exploded up from the bottom of shin-deep water, the carved ruby at my throat crackling with a single bloody spark, and shot him twice. The recoil kicked almost too hard for even my helltainted strength—I’d finally gotten around to getting a custom set of guns, like most hunters do after a while, and I’d wondered since why it had taken me so long. Nine-millimeters are nice, but there’s nothing like something bigger to pop a hole in a Trader.

Some male hunters go for guns on the maxim that “bigger is better.” Female hunters generally go for accuracy of fire. I decided to go for both, since I’ve got the strength and have no complex about the size of my dick.

My pager went off in its padded pocket. I hoped it hadn’t gotten wet, ignored the buzzing, shot the Trader a third time, and flung my left hand forward. The knife flew, blue light streaking like oil along its blade, and hit with a solid tchuk! in his ribs. Even that didn’t take the pep out of him.

Kill kids in my town, will you? I blew out a short huff of rancid foulness, clearing my nose and mouth at the same time, wet warmth dribbling down from my forehead, more wet sliminess sliding down from my nostrils. My chin was slick with the stuff. Right hand blurred to holster the gun, other hand already full of knife, my feet moved independently of me and I hurled myself at him.

We collided with ribsnapping force. I feinted with my left hand and he took the bait, grabbing at my arm since the knife was heading for his face again. Stupid fucker.

It was my right hand he should have worried about. No gun meant I was moving in for the kill, since knifework is my forte. I’m on the tall side for a woman, but comparatively small and fast compared to ’breed and Traders.

Even without the hellbreed scar jacking me up past human and closer to the things I kill.

My right hand flicked, sudden drag of resistance against the blade, and we were almost cheek to cheek for a moment. I exhaled, inhaled, almost wished I hadn’t because the smell of a ripped gut exploded out, a foul carrion stench.

Who knew what he’d been eating down here in the drains?

I did. I had an idea, at least.

The scar pulsed wetly against my wrist, feeding hellish strength through my arm. I twisted my wrist, hard, breaking the suction of muscle against the blade. My knee came up, I shoved, and he went down in a tangle of too-thin arms and legs, twisting and jerking as death claimed him and the corruption of Hell raced through his tissues. It devours everything in its path, the bargain they make claiming the flesh and quite possibly the soul, and the body dances like a half-smashed spider.

Some hunters swear they can see the soul streaking out of the body. Even with my blue eye I can’t see it. Sometimes I’ve sensed a person leaving, but I don’t talk about it. It seems so… personal. And once you’ve gone down and seen the shifting forest of suicides bordering Hell, a lot of New Age white-light fluff palls pretty quickly.

The Trader collapsed, his compound eyes falling in, runnels of foulness greasing his cheeks. The stench took on a whole new depth. I watched until I was sure he was dead, noticing for the first time that my ribs were twitching as they healed, the bone painfully fusing itself back together. I was bleeding, and my right leg felt a little unsteady. Liquid sloshed around my shins. I took in sipping breaths, my lungs starved for oxygen but the reek, dear God, it was amazing.

The candles kept burning. Lumpy, misshapen tapers, their thin flames struggling in the noxious air, stuck to any surfaces above the water’s edge. I waded toward the altar, my blue eye smarting and filling with hot water as it untangled the web of etheric bruising hanging over every surface. Little crawling strands, pools of sickness a normal person would feel like a chill draft on the nape or an uncomfortable feeling it seems best to ignore.

The drift of small bones on the altar, some tangled with fur, others with bits of cloth that might have once been clothes, made small clicking sounds as I approached. Random bits of meat quivered, and if I hadn’t already been on the verge of retching from the stench I’d probably have lost my breakfast right there. As it was, it had been a while since I’d eaten, and my stomach was near empty.

My fingers tingled. It took a short while before the thin blue whispering flames of banefire would stay lit along my fingers, a sorcery of cleansing almost drowned by the tenebrous air.

I’m sorry. My lips twitched. I almost said it. It’s my job to protect you. I’m sorry.

Four kids we knew about. Three we suspected, another two I was reasonably sure of. Nine little vulnerable lives, sucked dry by a monster who had bargained with Hell.

Who knew what those kids would have grown up to do? Save lives, find a cure for cancer, bring some joy to the world. But not now. Now there was only this vengeance in a filthy, stinking sewer.

I cast the banefire, my fingers flicking forward and long thin jets of blue flame splitting the dimness. The candles hissed, banefire chuckled, and I stumbled back, blinking the blood out of my watering eyes. The bane would burn clean and leave a blessing in its wake, a thin layer inimical to hellbreed and other contagion.

I’m so, so sorry.

It was getting harder and harder to keep the words to myself.

The banefire had taken hold and was whispering to itself, a sound like children crying. I tried not to think about it as I went through the sodden pockets of whatever was left of the corpse on the floor. Luck was with me, and I found a wallet. It went in my pocket, and I half-dragged, half-floated the squishing, still sluggishly contorting body over to the burning altar. When I dumped him on it, a shower of snapping sparks went up, and I suddenly felt queasy at the thought that he was lying on top of his victims. Nothing to be done about that—I had to burn them all, or the hellbreed he’d Traded with might be able to reach out and get himself or herself a nice fresh-rotten zombie corpse or two.

Now that I had his ID I had a fighting chance of finding whatever ’breed he’d Traded with and serving justice on him, her, or it. I headed back, sliding and slipping, for the tunnels that would take me to the surface. It hadn’t been a long or particularly grueling hunt, physically. No, this one had just hurt inside.

God, I hate the kid cases. The cops agree with me. There’s no case that will drain you drier or turn you cynical faster.

It took me a good twenty minutes to retrace the route I’d tracked him along. When I finally found my entry point—a set of metal rungs leading up to an open manhole, welcome sunlight pouring down and picking out bits of rust on each step—I looked up, and a familiar shadow moved at the top.

“Hello, kitten,” Saul called down. I started climbing, testing each rung—that’s the price of greater strength and endurance, a muscle-heavy ass. And I hadn’t precisely climbed through, just dropped into the manhole after my quarry, hoping I didn’t hit anything on the way down.

I wish that wasn’t so much business as usual.

“Hey,” I called. “How’s everything up in the daylight, catkin?”

“Quiet as a mouse.” He laughed, and it sounded so good I almost hurried up. Exhaustion dragged against my shoulders. “Smells like you had a good time.”

“The fun just never ends.” Crumbling concrete held a spider-map of veins right in front of my nose. I kept climbing. “He’s bagged.”

“Good deal.” Tension under the light bantering tone—he hadn’t wanted to stay topside, but I’d needed him up there watching the manhole in case the Trader doubled back.

Or at least, that’s what I’d told him. He didn’t make any fuss over it, but his tone warned me that he was an unhappy Were, and we were probably going to have a talk about it soon.

There were other things to talk about, too. Big fun.

I reached the top, skipping a rung or two that didn’t look sanguine about holding me, and Saul put a hand out. I grabbed and hung on, and he pulled me easily out of the darkness. He magnanimously didn’t mention how bad I must have smelled. “You okay?”

My boots found solid ground. It was a dead-end street down near Barazada Park, the spire of Santa Esperanza lifting into the heat haze. Blessed sunlight poured hot and heavy over me, just like syrup. In the distance the barrio weltered.

“Fine.” I paused for a moment. “Not really.”

He reeled me in. Closed his arms around my shoulders and we stood for a moment, me staring at his chest where the small vial of blessed water hung on a silver chain. No blue swirled in the vial’s depths.

He pulled me even closer, slid an arm around my waist, and I could finally lay my head down on his chest. We stood like that, his heartbeat a comforting thunder in my ear, for a long time. The rumble of his purr—a cat Were’s response to a mate’s distress—went straight through me, turning my bones into jelly. It didn’t stop the way I was quivering, though, body amped up into redline and adrenaline dumping through the bloodstream.

When the shakes finally went down I let out a long breath, and immediately felt bad about smearing gunk on him. He didn’t seem to mind much—he never did—but I felt bad all the same.

“Want to tell me about it?” He didn’t try to keep me when I eased away from him. He just let go a fraction of a second later than he had to.

I sighed, shook my head. “It’s over. That’s all.” A flood of sunlight poured over the dusty pavement, the drop-off at the end ending in a gully that meandered behind businesses and the chain-link fence of a car dealership.

“Good enough.” His hands dropped down to his sides, and he studied me for a long moment before turning away. The manhole was flung to the side—I hadn’t been particularly careful at that point, I just wanted to get at the motherfucker. It was bulky, but he got his fingers under it and hauled it around, and I fished my pager out of its padded pocket, the silver in my hair chiming in a hot draft. “Who’s calling?”

The number was familiar. “Galina. Probably got another load of silver in.” Christ, I hope it’s not more trouble.

“Least it’s not Monty.” The manhole cover made a hollow, heavy metallic sound as he flipped it, gauging the force perfectly so it seated itself in its hole like it had never intended to come loose.

“You’re such an optimist.” The smile tugging at my lips felt unnatural, especially with the stink simmering off my clothes and the sick rage turning in small circles under my heart. The scar twinged, the bloom of corruption on my aura drawing itself smaller and tighter, a live coal.

He smiled back, crouching easily next to the manhole cover. The light was kind to him, bringing out the red-black burnish in his cropped, charm-sprinkled hair, and the perfect texture of his skin. He tanned well, and a fine crinkle of laugh lines fanned out from his eyes when he grinned. They smoothed away as he sobered, looking up at me.

We regarded each other. He of all people never had any trouble meeting my mismatched gaze. And each time he looked at me like this, dark eyes wide open and depthless velvet, I got the same little electric zing of contact. Like he was seeing past every wall I’d ever built to protect myself, seeing me.

It never got old. Or less scary. Being looked at like that will give you a whole new definition of naked. It’s just one of the things about dating a Were that’ll do it.

We stood there, oven heat reflecting off the concrete, each yellowed weed laid flat under the assault of sunlight. Finally my shoulders dropped, and I slipped the pager back in its pocket. “I’m sorry.” The words came out easily enough. “I just…”

“No need, Jillybean.” He rose fluidly, soft boots whispering as he took two steps away from the manhole. I was dripping on the concrete, but drying rapidly.

“I don’t mean to—”

“I said there was no need.” He glanced at the street over my shoulder. The Pontiac crouched, parked cockeyed to block anyone from coming down here, a looping trail of rubber smeared on the road behind it. I’d been going at least seventy before I stood on the brakes. “You really wanted this guy.”

I really want them all, sweetheart. The words died on my lips. And each time I kill one, the itch is scratched. But it always comes back. “Kids.” Just one word made it out.

“Yeah.” He scratched at his ear, his mouth pulling down in a grimace. Weres don’t understand a lot of things about regular humans, but their baffled incomprehension when faced with kid cases is in a league all its own. “You must be hungry. We can stop for a burrito on the way to Galina’s.”

In other words, you haven’t eaten in a while, shame on you. Come on, Jill. Buck up.

I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders. “Sounds like a good idea. That shack on Sullivan Street is probably still open.”

The pager went off again. I fished it out again, my hair stiffening as it dried. Ugh.

This time it was Avery. It never rains but it pours. “Shit. On second thought, maybe we’d better just go. Avery probably needs an exorcism, and I can call Galina from his office afterward.” I stuffed the pager away and turned on one steelshod heel, headed for the Pontiac.

“Dinner after that?”

“Sure. Unless the world’s going to end.” Adrenaline receded, leaving only unsteadiness in its wake. I made sure my stride was long and authoritative, shook out my fingers, wrinkled my nose again at the simmering reek drifting up from my clothes.

He fell into step beside me. “You know, that sort of thing is depressingly routine. How about calzones, at home? I’ve got that dough left over.”

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.”