Flesh Circus

The entrance to the bigtop was huge, easily as big as a triple garage door. Oiled canvas rubbed against the ropes; tattered pe

A gangling scarecrow of a male hellbreed lolled in a chair next to a post holding one end of the tattered red velvet rope barring the way. His top hat was pulled down over his eyes, and his spiderlike fingers—six on each hand, and a thumb too, bones and tendons flickering under the mottled skin—twitched as I halted.

I eyed him. Threadbare, skintight burlap pants straining every time a ski

Usually they’re beautiful, and they like to show it. Except Perry. This one could be a surprise too.

I stepped forward, my heels clicking on gravel, and eyed him. The hat lifted a little, and mad silvery eyes gleamed under a hank of silky dirt-dark hair. The fingers twitched again.

I held the ’breed’s gaze for maybe fifteen long seconds, the calliope music drifting up around me in skeins of etheric foulness. The hounds, slinking in the shadows, drew nearer. Saul didn’t make a restless movement, but I could guess maybe he wanted to.

“Cut the act.” Silver jangled, underscoring my words. “Get me the Ringmaster.”

The ’breed tipped his head back further. A pointed chin, hollow cheeks—he was a walking skeleton with mottled skin stretched drum-tight over bones, and I suddenly knew what he was. The knowledge made my hands ache for a weapon again; I controlled the urge.

“Are you sure you want to see him? He’s not in a good mood.” The ’breed smirked, pointed yellow teeth flashing for just a moment. Strings of thick saliva bubbled behind his lips. I was almost sorry I’d eaten.

“Snap inspection, plague-bearer. And the mood you should be worrying about right now is mine. I’m giving you less than two seconds to haul that ski

It was a nice bluff. Technically, a hunter can snap-inspect any part of the Cirque at any time, and serve summary judgment on any ’breed or Trader caught breaking the rules—for example, pressuring a victim into making a bargain, or in my city, playing with anyone under eighteen. That’s pretty much why the Cirque obeys the strictures—first there’s the hostage, and then there’s us, swallowing bile and watching, waiting for them to step out of line.

Of course, people vanish all the time. It’s a goddamn epidemic, and whenever the Cirque finally leaves town there’s a lull in exorcisms, disappearances, and other nastiness. They eat all they can hold in each town, I guess. And with the pickings so easy once the calliope starts singing, they would be foolish to take any unwilling meat.

Hellbreed aren’t fools.

He jolted to his feet, elbows and knees moving in ways human joints weren’t designed to, and I almost twitched toward a gun. But he just capered over the red velvet rope and into the bigtop, leaving his chair rocking back and forth, a bloom of powdery yellow dust left behind, eating little holes in the painted wood.

“Plague-bearer?” Saul murmured.

“You don’t want to touch that stuff.” My nerves were scraped raw, my back crawling with the thought of so many of Hell’s citizens in one place, a cancer in the middle of my vulnerable city.

My apprentice-ring cooled, turning to ice on my finger. It twitched, sharply, twice. It was the first time since I’d met the Cirque outside town that it had made any sort of motion at all.

I tilted my head, listening. The calliope music surged, screaming puffs through chrome-throated pipes. I shut it away, despite the plucking underneath the music—come in, come in, lay your troubles down, play a game, become one of us, one of us, just give in, stop struggling.

My attention turned, coasting through the flood of sensory information. Dust, hot frying fat, screams, chewing noises, stamping feet, a horse’s screaming whi

And a long, drawn-out rattling gasp.

I came back to myself with a jolt, spun on my heel, and leapt into a run. Saul’s footsteps were soundless behind me.

The bigtop blurred past on one side, yards and yards of canvas. It drew away like a wave threatening to crest, and I plunged into a network of tents and alleys, half-lit. Here was one of the older parts of the carnival—the air was thick with a reek of spilled sex, and the tent flaps were always half-open. Moans and ghastly shrieks ribboned past, the calliope suddenly crooning. Traders with gem-bright eyes, hellbreed with seashell hips and candied mouths, lounging in the entrances to their tents, seducing and beckoning—

I veered off to the left, my apprentice-ring pulling like a fish on a thin line. The tents gave way to trailers, and I passed the limousine sitting still and polished under a rigged-up canvas canopy. The headlights flickered once, green, as I flashed past.

A huge silver Airstream rocked as I left the ground in a flying kick, etheric force booming through the scar and filling my veins with sick heat. My boot hit the door, which crumpled and exploded in. A terrible, sour-sewer smell puffed past me, and I heard Saul’s surprised half-yell.

The trailer was small, and every surface inside was crawling. Little bits of darkness moved, fluttering chitinous legs and wings twitched as the roaches spilled over every surface. A pinprick of laser-red light glowed on the back of every goddamn insect, and they startled into flight as I let out a half-swallowed, childlike cry of revulsion.

Hey, they were bugs, and they surprised me.

The tide of insect life streamed past me, little hairy legs touching and brushing. Saul’s coughing growl warned me.

I couldn’t worry about the inside of the trailer just at the moment. There was something behind me, and Saul barely managed to get the warning out in time.

I threw myself back and down, landing hard on the two portable wooden steps leading up to the crumpled door. I’d blown a hole in the side of the trailer, and I shot the Ringmaster four times as he hung in the air over me, the crystal knob atop his cane ringing a high piercing note as a silverjacket bullet bounced off or past it, whining until it smashed into the side of his leering, screaming face. It even knocked his hat off.

He dropped straight down. My knees jerked up, I rolled backward down the steps. My shoulder grated hard and popped against straining wood, the edge of a step biting the back of my neck before I made a lunging, fishlike twist and was suddenly, irrationally on my feet but facing the wrong way, whirling and dropping to one knee as the whip flicked out. The silver flechettes tied to the end of its length jingled sweetly before they flayed flesh from the Ringmaster’s wrist, and his cane clattered away, the crystal bouncing down first as if it was too heavy for the laws of physics.

The ’breed was bleeding, gushes of thin black ichor flooding out from every hole I’d blown in his tough shell. The roaches swarmed him, the pinpricks of red on their back dividing as they multiplied, and he screamed in Helletöng, a sound like the rusted sinews of the world groaning. The fabric of reality bowed around him in concentric circles, and the little insects burst, clattering shells puffing into sick green smoke as they hit the dust. The Ringmaster shouldered his way up out of the curls of vapor, his eyes dripping pumpkin hellfire, and snarled. The stairs splintered and groaned.

When you get to see under the carapace of beauty, the brain shudders aside from their alie