Flesh Circus
I screamed and leapt, the whip coming free and flicking forward, silver flechettes jingling as it wrapped around one of the
zombie’s legs and almost tore itself out of my hand.
The leather popped hard, once, like a good open-hand shot to the face or a piece of wet laundry shaken in just the right way,
and the zombie went down in a splattering heap.
Then I was on the thing, its foul sponginess running away as I broke its neck with a louder crack than the other ones.
This guy must be pretty fresh, too
. I balled up my right fist, my knees popping foul, slipping skin and sinking through muscle turned to ropy porridge.
I
punched,
pulling it at the last second so my fist didn’t go through the head and straight on into the dying lawn. Newspapers ruffled
in a sudden burst of cold air and the smell of natron. The wet splorching sound was louder than it had any right to be, and
brain oatmeal splattered. The body twitched feebly.
I just wished it wasn’t so messy. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, though.
“Lyrical language and movie-worthy fight scenes are staples in Saintcrow’s novels, and this one is no exception.”
—
midwestbookreview.com
on
Night Shift
BOOKS BY LILITH SAINTCROW
J
ILL
K
ISMET
N
OVELS
Night Shift
Hunter’s Prayer
Redemption Alley
Flesh Circus
D
ANTE
V
ALENTINE
N
OVELS
Working for the Devil
Dead Man Rising
The Devil’s Right Hand
Saint City Sinners
To Hell and Back
Dark Watcher
Storm Watcher
Fire Watcher
Cloud Watcher
The Society
Hunter, Healer
Mindhealer
Steelflower
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Lilith Saintcrow
Excerpt from
Heaven’s Spite
copyright © 2009 by Lilith Saintcrow
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
Orbit
Hachette Book Group
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Visit our website at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
.
Orbit is an imprint of Hachette Book Group. The Orbit name and logo are trademarks of Little, Brown Book Group Limited.
First eBook Edition: December 2009
ISBN: 978-0-316-07224-3
Contents
To L.I.
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.
Bonitas non est pessimis esse meliorem.
—Seneca
J
ust 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 Bonneville. She wasn’t
as sweet as my Impala, or as forgiving on tight corners, but she was a good car.
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 grinned.
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.
The scar turned hard, drawing across the nerves of my right arm like a violin bow.
I kept thinking the memory of him pressing his lips there would fade. Silly me.