Flesh Circus

The rum burned in my mouth. I held it, my gag reflex quivering on the edge of kicking in, the alcohol fuming until my eyes watered and spilled over. The cornmeal, a fine thin line of it in a circle around me, shifted. Little grains of it rose, touched down again with slight whispering sounds.

They didn’t scatter. They just lifted and plopped down again.

When physical material has already been sensitized to a load of etheric energy, it’s easier to pump more force through it. My arms burned. My throat was on fire. Tears rolled down my cheeks.

I ignored it all. Fierce, relaxed concentration filled my skull. The cup leapt and rattled like a live thing, jerking so hard it would have dislocated my shoulder if hellbreed strength wasn’t pouring through my right fist, scorching sliding down my wrist and pooling in my palm. My bones creaked. I dug my heels in, concentrating.

The pool of filth that used to be the fortuneteller bubbled. Her wig sent up curls of smoke. My blue eye narrowed, eyelid twitching madly as if I had some sort of tic. The strings under the surface of the visible snarled, ran together in a complex patterned knot.

Sometimes the best way to go about it is to unpick the knot, strand by strand. Then there’s other times, when you just slice the goddamn thing in half and let the resulting reaction smack someone in the head.

Guess which one’s my favorite.

In this space, half-sideways from myself, I could see the fine dusting over every surface, an etheric imprint like the scales on a butterfly’s wings. Zamba had spent energy recklessly to reach this victim.

She must be getting close to the end, or desperate. The cup rattled, lunged forward.

The great hunter magics are largely sympathetic, as opposed to the controlling sorcery of, say, the Sorrows. Sympathetic magic is intensely personal; you have to know yourself before you can use it. One of the greatest dictums in hunter training: know thyself.

And of course, there are times when brute force instead of subtle knowledge is the best way to get things done.

I sucked in air through my rapidly filling nose, my lungs inflating. The rum was getting hotter and hotter in my mouth. The cornmeal shifted wildly, with a sound like static cling on a pair of really big metallic socks.

I gathered myself. The mental image solidified inside my head, seen with the unsight of my blue eye. Long blond dreadlocks, blue eyes, a narrow waist, a bony face with smallpox scars across the cheeks, a long blue and silver caftan kilted up to her knees. Mama Zamba was crouched, looking wildly around her, fat snakes of hair writhing. She could probably tell something was gathering, but not what.

I spat, a long trailing mist of rum that ignited in a puff of blue flame. The cup leapt again, dragging me a few inches, my heels stapling into the dusty ground. Cornmeal popped into flame too, sizzling. The smell was baking bread for just a moment, then shaded into burning starch.

Potential shifted, might became is, and the force left me in a huge painless gout. The tent flapped wildly, straining against its moorings, and the calliope music rose to a shriek.

Rum-fire and burning cornmeal winked out. The force yanking on the blue enamel cup snapped like a rubber band, and I sat down hard, skidding on my leather-clad ass as my teeth jolted together.

Jesus. Major sorcery always ends up with a pratfall. Reaction hit, like thunder after lightning. The strength went out of all my bones and I sagged, the scar singing one wet little satisfied note against my arm.

I heard my own breathing, harsh stentorian gasps. Blinked several times. Gray smoke billowed, wreathed the entire tent. The bubbling hellbreed ichor gave one or two last pops and settled, spent.

I swallowed, the reek of rum and burning baked goods sliming the back of my throat. “Checkmate,” I said, softly, and wished I could lie down and sleep.

But there is no rest for the wicked, or for a hunter who has just bought a little breathing room. Zamba wouldn’t be fucking with anyone at all until dark fell and the tide of magic turned. I pushed myself up on trembling hands and knees, wished Saul was there.

It was the wrong thought. A sob escaped halfway, I set my teeth and bit, choking it off. Pushed myself upright the rest of the way, every muscle screaming in protest.

Just a little longer, Jill. You’ve got a plan, stick to it.

It was good advice. But I was oh, so tired.

The iron voice of duty had no truck with my complaining. Get moving. Finish the job. I bent wearily, scooping the watch and the straight razor back into the cup.

Time for the next part of the plan.

Chapter Twenty-six

I found the Ringmaster by the simple expedient of collaring a passing Trader and putting a gun to the ski

I went up the wrecked steps carefully as the Trader hissed behind me, set my foot over the threshold, and half-glanced over my shoulder. “Open your mouth again,” I said softly, “and I will break every last one of your hell-trading teeth.”

The hissing cut short as if someone had taken a kettle off the stove, and I edged into the darkness inside the ruined trailer.

Perry sat in a folding chair, leaning back, elbows on the arms and fingers steepled in front of his nose. The frowsty bed held a stick-thin blond figure, collapsed against pillows and breathing softly, with a gleam of silver at its throat.

The Ringmaster crouched easily at the end of the bed, his thin shoulders up and his top hat askew. Frayed red velvet strained at his shoulders and hung down, his jodhpurs stretched over his bony knees. He glanced back at me, his eyes burning orange in the dimness, and his lip lifted silently. I saw the flash of the boneridge that passed for his teeth, but he immediately turned back to the hostage and I let it go.

“Hello, darling.” Perry’s words slid against each other, Helletöng rumbling underneath them. “It has been an interesting morning.”

“How’s he doing?” My throat still burned from the rum. I wondered if he could smell it on me. A colorless fume of sorcery still hung on me too, and no doubt he could smell that.

“Oh, I didn’t know you cared.” Perry snorted slightly. “He suddenly quieted, not ten minutes ago. The magic pulling on him slackened, and he is sleeping.”

“Pulling on him, huh?” Now that’s odd. “What was the collar doing?”

“Sparking like all your curséd metal.” The indigo threading through Perry’s whites was black in the dimness, and the scar chuckled to itself like wet lips rubbing together. “It seemed to help, though.”

I had to turn my back to him to check the hostage, and I was so tired I only felt the slightest ripple of unease up the muscles along my spine. My boots whispered through a drift of candy wrappers and paper trash. Something stuck under my heel, and Perry chuckled softly.

The sweat on me turned to ice. But I just lifted one of the hostage’s eyelids and checked the pupil reaction: none. The dust-shine on the surface of the eyeball had turned thick and mucousy, dry and veined on the surface. His breath was regular and shallow, his ribs rising and dropping. There was no spare flesh on him, and he wore only a pair of stained jockey shorts. His skin was mottled like a night-growing fungus. Lines of spidery writing sank into the stretched, sunken skin, twitching sluggishly with his slow pulse.

The writing flinched away from my touch. My apprentice-ring sparked, and the collar took on a dim foxfire glow. The biggest pocket of my trench coat flapped slightly, as if a small animal nestled inside it.