Flesh Circus

FLESH CIRCUS

Jill Kismet Series, Book 4

Lilith Saintcrow

To L.I.

Bonitas non est pessimis esse meliorem.

— Seneca

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks for this book go first and foremost to Mel Sanders, who listened to me talk about it for hours and hours. And next to Maddy, Nicky, and Gates—who listened to me talk about it for hours and hours. Next-to-last, but certainly not least, to Devi and Miriam, who also put up with me when I talked about it… for hours and hours.

And as usual, the biggest thanks to you, the Reader. Step right up, sit on down. And let me tell you a story.

I promise it won’t take long.

Chapter One

Just outside the Santa Luz city limits, the caravan halted. I rolled my shoulders back under heavy leather, my fingers resting on a gun butt. They tapped, once, four times, bitten nails drumming.

Out here in the desert, the two-lane highway was a ribbon reaching to nowhere. The stars glimmered, hard cold points of light. A new moon, already tired, was a nail-paring in the sky, weak compared to the shine of cityglow from the valley. I’d parked on the shoulder, and dust was still settling with little whispering sounds.

They were pulled aside, on a gravel access road, as custom dictated. Or fear demanded.

Their headlights were separate stars, the limousine pointed directly at my city, a long raggletaggle spreading out behind it. Minivans, trucks, trailers, and one old Chevy flatbed still wheezing from the ’60s with bright spatters of glittering tie-dye paint all over its cab. One black limousine, crouched low to the dusty ground. The animals were sprawling or pacing in semi trailers. I could smell them all, dung and sweat and glitter and fried food with the bright sweet corruption of hellbreed laid over the top.

Another pair of headlights pierced the distance. I waited, leaning against a wine-red 1968 Pontiac Bo

Cirque de Charnu was painted on everything except the glossy limo, in baroque lettering highlighted with gold. Under the fierce desert sun it would look washed-out and tawdry. At night it glittered, taunted. Seduced.

They’re good at that. I sometimes wonder if they hold classes for it in Hell. It wouldn’t surprise me. Nothing much would surprise me about that place, or about hellbreed.

Saul lit a Charvil, a brief flare of orange light. He studied each and every car, and the taut silence around him was almost as tense as the way he tilted his chin up, slightly, sniffing the air. Testing the wind.

“I don’t like this,” he murmured, and turned his sleek, new-shorn head slightly to watch the headlights arrowing toward us. A few silver charms were knotted into his hair with red thread. He had a small copper bowl of them in the bathroom, all the ones he’d worn before his mother died, tied back in as his hair got longer.

I contented myself with a shrug. The scar on my right wrist pulsed, the bloom of corruption on the caravan plucking at it. I’d stuffed the leather wristcuff in my pocket, wanting my full measure of helltainted strength tonight.

Just in case.

Baked, sage-touched wind off the cooling desert ruffled my hair, made the silver charms tied into long dark curls tinkle sweetly. I had no reason to draw silence over me like a cloak right now. We’d arrived at the meeting spot first, slightly after dusk. They’d shown up as soon as true dark folded over the desert, a long chain of bright, hungry headlights. The caravan still popped and pinged with cooling metal, its engines shut off one by one. Nobody moved, though I could see a few faint flickers when someone lit a cigarette, and a restive stamping sounded from one of the semis. Their lights were a glare, but not directed at me. Instead, the flood of white speared the desert toward my city, etching sharp, hurtful shadows behind every pebble and scrubby bush.

The other headlights, coming up from the city’s well, came closer. My pulse tried to ratchet up, was strictly controlled.

Anticipation. Fear. Which one was I feeling at the prospect of seeing him?

Faint dips in the road made the sword of light from the approaching car waver. Still it came, smooth and silent like a shark. Mostly, you can see a long way in the flat high desert. But he was speeding, smoothly taking the dips and curves. It took less time than you’d think for the other car’s engine—another limo, sleek and freshly waxed—to become audible, purring away.

“I don’t like it either,” I murmured. A hunter spends so much time holding back the tide of Hell, it feels just-damn-wrong to be inviting hellbreed in. Come into my parlor—only it was the fly saying it this time, while the spider just lolled and gri

And I would much rather put off seeing Perry again. No visits to the Monde to pay for a share of a hellbreed’s power, thundering through the scar on my wrist. And I’d used the mark more or less freely for months now.

I was in the right, of course, and he’d welshed on the deal first, but… it made me more nervous than I liked to admit. Especially since it seemed stronger now than it ever had while I was visiting the Monde every month. Strong enough that I had trouble controlling it every once in a while.

Strong enough that it worried me.

His limousine coasted over the near rises. The wind dropped off, the desert finishing its long slow exhale that starts just after dusk. I marked the position of every vehicle in the caravan again.

There were a lot of them.

I heard it was always a shock to see how big the Cirque was when set up. How many souls they pulled in for their nightly games. How during daylight it always seemed exponentially smaller but still the shadows held secrets and dangers. And eyes.

It wasn’t comforting information. And some of the pictures and old woodcuts Hutch had dug up for me before he went on vacation were thought-provoking and stomach-churning at once.

The black limo coasted to a stop. Sat in its lane, purring away, the gloss of its paint job powder-bloomed with fine crackling threads of bruised etheric energy.

The engine roused again, and for a mad moment I thought it was going to peel some rubber and speed off into the dark. Of course, if it did, I would be able to refuse entry. The Cirque would go on its way, and I’d breathe a huge sigh of relief.

But no, the shark-gleaming car just executed a perfect three-point turnaround, brought to a controlled stop on the other side of the road.

“Show-off,” Saul muttered, and I was hard-pressed not to grin.

The urge died on my face as the door opened and Perry rose from the back of the limo, immaculate as always. Only this time he didn’t wear his usual pale linen suit. It was almost a shock to see him in a tuxedo, his pale hair slicked back and the blandness of his face turned by a trick of light into a sword-sharp handsomeness before settling into its accustomed contours. His eyes lit gasflame-blue, and he didn’t glance at the dingy collection of cars huddling on the access road.

No, first he looked at me for a long, tense-ticking ninety seconds, while the limo idled and he rested his bent arm on the door. There was no bodyguard to open it for him, no gorilla-built Trader or slim beautiful hellbreed to stand attentively beside him.

Another oddity, seeing him without a posse.

Why, Perry, what a nice penguin suit you’re wearing. A nasty snigger rose over a deep well of something too hot and acid to be fear, killed just as surely and swiftly as the smile. The contact of cooler night air on my skin turned unbearably sharp, little prickling needles of sensory acuity.