Flesh Circus

Yeah. Especially with the scar on my wrist whining a subvocal grumble as it spiked etheric energy through me, granting me a measure of inhuman speed.

Hellbreed speed.

These were new, juicy zombies dripping with roaches. Their reek clogged the throat, and if I hadn’t had it drilled into me to breathe, goddammit, breathe by Mikhail endlessly I might have held my breath and passed out.

That wouldn’t have been good. I splat zombies when I’m going fast enough, but a helpless body on the floor wouldn’t be so lucky. It would be pulled to pieces.

Step back, swing, fist blurring out to crunch through a rotted leering face, roaches dripping, a high tinkling childish laugh bouncing off the walls as the air thickened to paste, darkness pressing down as if I were the thing to be exorcised from this house, boots slipping and skidding in muck—

One leapt on my back and I got free, my legs tangling together. Goddammit, too many of them, Jesus—The scar chuckled wetly, pinging the nerves in my arm, sawing them like dry violin strings. The thing on my back exploded away with a wet popping sound, and right before I went down under a crushing weight of bodies I heard a coughing roar and the mechanical popping of a handgun. Sounded like a.22.

What the fuck—

Teeth crunched against my elbow, worrying at the tough leather. I struck out with fists and feet, something hit me behind the knees, and I starfished again, trying to get them off me, roaches skittering, little insect feet probing at my eyes and mouth—

Crunch! The weight suddenly lessened, and the roar became a steady snarl. I knew that voice, even though it held no relation to humanity. The world whirled into chaos, ripping and wet splorching noises, foulness gushing out. I was spattered with hot fluids, and the density in the air fled before the clean sound of my Were’s battlecry.

I thought I told him to go home! I surged up, fighting for air and life, and they exploded off me.

It was Saul. He blurred between man and cougar, the roar changing as his chest shifted dimensions. He didn’t pause, either, sliding into cougarform and stretching as his claws took out an abdomen; he blurred up into humanshape, collided into another zombie with ribsnapping force and dropped gracefully back into catform again to avoid a strike. Seeing a Were fight is like seeing a tree bend itself to the wind, leaves fluttering. Every motion is thoughtlessly deliberate, beautifully precise. They never pause between humanshape and animal form, but the glimpses of unhuman geometry between the two are heartstopping in their beauty.

The popping of a handgun sounded again, and a high boy’s voice, breaking as he cursed.

I launched myself, my hand sliding greasily against the balustrade, and hit the landing. Broke one zombie’s neck, put it down, and ripped the other one off a supine human form. Goddammit! Civilian. The priorities of the situation shifted—I reached down with my hellbreed-strong right hand, grabbed a handful of fla

Or so I hoped.

Who the hell is that? I had no time to figure it out, because I heard Saul roar again and bolted up the stairs. A living carpet of roaches was trickling down the first two steep drops, the dots on their backs glaring at me.

Saul feinted, then reversed with sweet and natural speed. Another zombie exploded, foulness spattering both of us, and I leapt, meeting the next one with a crunch that rattled my teeth.

From there it was sheer instinct, fighting, with Saul at my side. We’ve done this so often—and I knew better than to ask him what the hell he was doing here until after things were under control.

There was a popping sound and the smell of wet salt and natron again. The roaches began to puff up into green smoke, and the zombies milled, losing their mass mind for a few crucial seconds. We waded into them, porous bones snapping like greenwood sticks and noisome fluids spraying and spattering.

Forensics was going to have a hell of a time with this place.

The roaches were popping out of existence, green fog knee-deep, and I hoped like hell there weren’t more zombies downstairs. Whoever I’d dumped on the porch would be a prime target.

Saul’s claws reached out, his fingers blurring between paw and hand, and sheared the last zombie’s face clean off at the same moment that I hit it, double-fisted, and snapped ribs like matches. A few more moments’ worth of work, and we were done here.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he said as I stood panting and collecting myself.

Wouldn’t you know it, even spattered with zombie goo he looked too good to be real. And now that the air was no longer paste-thick, ambient light was creeping around. It was no longer darker than midnight in a mine shaft.

I got my breath, ribs flickering. “Hey yourself.” I turned on my heel and headed back down the stairs. My glutes were sure getting a workout from this case. “Civilian?”

“Kid,” Saul said behind me, understanding immediately. “Gilberto. Says he heard you were coming out Chesko way on the police sca

Oh, great. “For Christ’s sake.” But it showed promise, and intuition. Neither of which were going to help him once I got my hands on him.

After I secured the scene.

“Seems like an okay kid.” That was as far as he would go. “You okay?”

“Fine. Just ducky.” I thought you were at home. I glanced out onto the front porch.

Gilberto crouched, his eyes huge in his thin, sallow face. His hair was mussed, free of a hairnet for the first time and falling lank across his pimpled forehead. He held the.22 like it was his personal holy grail.

“Happy now?” I didn’t have time to say much else. There was half a house that could be crawling with more zombies. “Watch him,” I tossed over my shoulder, and plunged down the stairs.

The basement smelled bad but not overwhelmingly so. This used to be where Zamba kept a couple pit bulls all year, and a few goats inside during the autumn rains. The chickens had their own coop in the back yard, but as soon as my eyes adjusted I saw ragged bundles of feathers scattered over the concrete floor.

I hit the light switch. There was nothing living down here.

The dogs were shapeless lumps of fur. The feathers were chicken corpses, strewn around as if there had been some sort of explosion. In the middle of the basement, a chalk-and-cornmeal circle writhed. The lines were moving sluggishly as the sorcery in the air bled out, whispering with a sound like a kid drawing on pavement, a dry hollow whisper. The meal was scattering, bleeding away from the thin lines.

Inside the circle, the three goats were twisted together, their legs stiff with rigor mortis and their bellies bloated. The floor was awash with sticky, almost-dry blood.

This isn’t real voodoo. Nobody even made an attempt to cook these, or to kill them kindly. My gorge rose, I pushed it down. Why was it that zombie-smell didn’t make me puke, but the dead helpless bodies could?

No, the animals had been killed with sorcery. They lay twisted in agony, their throats ripped open. No self-respecting practitioner would do this. Not even a bocor would waste lives this flagrantly.

I examined every part of the scene I could see, gun in one hand, whip in the other. There were no teensy-tiny track marks in the blood here. My blue eye caught the fading marks of etheric violence, souls ripped from bodies.

The explosion of energy when something is killed is one form of food for the loa; it is the offering the practitioners use to make bargains or payments. Cooking and eating the animal afterward is a sacrament. Even a bocor won’t waste good meat that often. But this kind of wanton death bore no relation to voodoo. It was destruction for its own sake—the destruction of souls, which carries its own price and its own charge of dark energy, like jet fuel. This was more like the work of the Sorrows, those soul-eating carrion.