Flesh Circus

I eased out of cover. Crossed the street, trying not to feel like the house was watching me approach.

Trying not to feel lured.

The last time I’d been out to visit her, Saul had been with me. We were digging to the bottom of a case involving two particular black sorcerers who just happened to be her devotees. Zamba hadn’t been too happy about how that turned out—I got the feeling she’d been invested in their little rape and extortion stable, not to mention a profitable side-trade in the body parts for some of the, shall we say, less wholesome brand of sorcery you can tap as a bocor, the voodoo version of a black magician.

I used to get all twitchy about the less-positive side of voodoo until Mikhail pointed out it wasn’t any different from people double-dealing each other in offices. The ambition of a bocor who sacrifices his friends and family is the same ambition that makes a workaholic cubicle-farmer double-deal his officemates and ignore or abuse his family. They’re the same thing; the only question is one of degree. I just deal with the people who leave broken bodies and souls instead of broken careers in their wake. Lives are ruined just as surely by either brand of troublemaker.

And a good, fast, smart black sorcerer of any type can rise in the hierarchy of such things just like a conscienceless asshole can become a CEO. All it takes is the drive and the luck.

Zamba hadn’t ever overtly gotten her hands dirty, and I hadn’t been able to press the point. But this was an entirely different piece of pie. If someone was operating without her knowledge, it was a threat to her primacy. I was hoping it was that—if she had a vested interest in keeping her position, this would go a lot easier. She was a scumbucket, but she was a useful one, and less dirty than Perry by an order of magnitude.

If, on the other hand, the trouble started with her or one of her followers, we were looking at some serious unpleasantness. Best to get started on making it more unpleasant for her than for me.

The concrete walk unreeled under my gliding feet. The rickety stairs didn’t move when I tested them, remembering the slip-sliding motion necessary to get up them without the rusted metal groaning and rubbing against the concrete slabs.

I did tell Galina to give Zamba a call, tell her I’d be by to see her. So why is the house dark?

I was too uneasy to ignore the way my nerves were twitching, pulled tight against each other. The sudden double sense—of being watched, and of ugliness about to happen—scraped me down to rawness in less than a second. I eased my right-hand gun out of its holster and breathed in, a long shallow inhale, poised on the steps.

Wait a second. The sense of being watched was coming from behind me, not from the dark windows.

I weighed the cost of looking over my shoulder. Was this a fakeout, or was something going on inside Zamba’s house? Since Lorelei had just bit it, Zamba could be next. Or Melendez, or any of the larger fish in the Santa Luz voodoo-or-Santeria pool.

This makes no fucking sense. I think that so often before a case jells, it’s a constant refrain. It just meant I wasn’t seeing the pattern yet.

Between one blink and the next, I leapt forward, body stretching out. The stairs gave one howling groan as I pushed off, concrete squealing against iron framework, and my boots hit the door. Blue sparks crackled, an etheric strike as surely as a physical one, and the steel-reinforced door busted off its weakened hinges. I rode it all the way down, hitting with a hollow boom on the landing.

Up or down? But the decision had already been made, because something was moving. I leapt up and to the side, catching a banister and propelling myself over, one boot-toe pushing and my left arm doing most of the work. This swung me neatly around, and I hit the ground in the living room, rolling. It was dark; she had blackout shades on the windows or something, for fuck’s sake.

I hit furniture—felt like the edge of a couch—and something that ground under my coat, sharp edges slicing. One whole wall of Zamba’s living room was, if I recalled correctly, a multitiered altar to Ifa and several lesser orisha, built around a rock-walled fireplace. Drums should have been stacked against one wall, and the rest of the room should have been lined with furniture—two couches against the window, a long line of cushions for the lower-ranked devotees, and Zamba’s thronelike recliner with its back to the altar, wheeled in by a couple of strong young men at the begi

It was there, rolled to a stop on the floor with my eyes straining to pierce absolute blackness, that I remembered Zamba had a close personal relationship with the Twins. They had a whole quadrant on her main altar, and a private altar in her bedroom.

Don’t ask how I know what’s in her bedroom. Like I said, last time I was here, things got iffy.

My blue eye could get only confused images through a heavy, oppressive screen of etheric bruising. It was thick in here in more ways than one, a stench I was begi

And hearing the tapping skritches of thousands of little insect feet flooding up the stairs. The darkness came alive with tiny red dots blanketing the soaked carpet, and I was suddenly very sure that whether or not Zamba was involved, I’d find nothing living in this happy little split-level.

I was pretty sure I’d find plenty dead and moving around, though.

Chapter Fifteen

Fighting in the dark, especially when every footstep crunches with little moving bodies underneath, is no picnic. I couldn’t tell how many there were—a lot was about all I could think, hearing them shuffle and close in on me. The roaches made little creaking sounds, a dry insect thrumming. My fist crunched through slippery flesh, I hooked my fingers and pulled, a gelatinous eyeball popping and ru

And still they crowded me. What a welcoming committee. Either they had orders to kill whoever entered the house, or Zamba had fallen prey to something, or—

My aura flamed, sea-urchin spikes boiling with blue sparks. That was better and worse. Better because the shifting illumination gave me visuals to work on, instead of straining my other senses to place the opposition. Which meant I could afford to unlimber the whip.

But it was worse because it meant the atmosphere in here was boiling, and not about to calm down anytime soon. And the gloom only got more intense, clotting and thickening. A spiritual hematoma.

Bug guts slimed underneath, ground into the carpet. The roaches clattered and chattered, and the sound of dry tendons stropping each other as the zombies lurched around me.

The fighting art of hunters is a hodgepodge. Almost any martial art you can name, from savate to esoteric t’ai chi, is in there somewhere. You can never tell what move will save your ass, and every once in a while you have to run through everything you know just to keep it fresh. Of course we all have our favorite moves, but pulling something out of your ass in a fight is a good way to put your enemy down.

But for this—close combat in a dark space, with things pressing in on every side, more than I could comfortably count because I was too goddamn busy—I fell back on the fighting style Weres teach their young, relying on evasion, quickness, and grace. Whether or not I’m graceful is an open question, but evasion and quickness?