Gypsy Blood (39 page)

“Release my chain,” the Red Shambler repeated. “You don’t really have a choice.”

Carnival had missed one vital key element. He was standing in a bathtub full of blood, covered in the stuff. Breathing the stuff. He had drunk it and shed it and poured it and lived in it for over a week.

His name might as well have been blood.

You didn’t think this through, did you? Not one bit. You’re in blood up to your asshole. You are wearing
his
domain.

Carnival did what the Red Shambler asked. He let go of the chain. He let go of the Red Shambler. He had no choice. The Red Shambler forced him to.

Goodbye, boy. This should be over in a heartbeat, give or take an eternity of eternal suffering.

It happened just that quickly.

Momma flew out of the darkness, her Stevie Nick’s bathrobe trailing in the wind behind her like a long blue silk kite tail.

She caught hold of the Red Shambler just as the Shambler caught hold of Carnival.

Severance Package

T
he tattooist knelt in the darkness of his room.

He could hear the commotion rioting below him. It sounded like someone was raising up the Battle of Waterloo, both sides at once.

He didn’t care. He was just waiting for what he’d earned. All his work, what he’d sacrificed.

He was waiting for his due.

The figures on his walls sat and watched him as he waited.

“Oh Red Shambler,” he chanted. “The one who walks between the stars. God of Blood and Pain and Everlasting Thirst. I call to you, as a servant who has served you well. I call to you reward me for my place in your grand designs.”

But the Red Shambler couldn’t hear him. He was far too busy being ridden downstairs by a she wolf of a Momma Gypsy revenant demon. The tattooist didn’t know that. He kept chanting, kept on calling, kept on praying for what he’d earned.

And then a figure stepped from out of the shadows.

A short dark figure, in a dust tinged white shirt, a woven vest of many colors, and a tall top hat with a pheasant feather.

“The master could not come,” Poppa said. “He is otherwise indisposed. He has sent me to deliver you your reward.”

The tattooist smiled.

Poppa waved his hand, like he was waving goodbye to the wind.

The walls came alive, and swarmed down onto the tattooist.

The End of the Chain

M
omma rode the Red Shambler with the foolhardy tenacity of a six second bronco buster, going for eight. She had a lot of issues that needed working out. She’d been eaten by her husband, and not in a good way. Raised back from the dead, she’d spent the last two days being rage raped by Olaf the living dead john. She figured she ought to be able to hold her own against a blood based demigod, easily.

Carnival felt it all through the connection he’d built between himself, his Momma, and the Red Shambler. Momma was plugged into the Red Shambler and he was plugged into Carnival. So Carnival kept trying to catch hold of the chain. He didn’t know if it would help any, since he’d let go of it. It whipped against his hands like a barbed wire bullwhip.

He grabbed for it again.

The Red Shambler threw Momma off. Then he turned on Carnival.

Carnival caught hold of the chain, and leaned back, trying to garrote the big bastard.

And then suddenly it was easier.

The Red Shambler seemed weaker, like he was draining away.

He seemed to shrink in size and power.

Damn it. He was escaping. Part of Carnival was kind of pleased. He’d made a God run.

Hell. He wasn’t even worth that capital G anymore.

But part of Carnival wondered why the Red Shambler was running from a mere gypsy hedge wizard, demon Momma or not.

He was up to something, Carnival knew it.

The god shrank beneath his grip, shrank in size and shape practically down to nothing.

Shit.

It wasn’t the Red Shambler at all.

“Cantanker,” Carnival cursed.

Who brought in the ringer?

They had been tricked.

Cantanker had come to Carnival’s calling, cloaked in the demi-shape of the Red Shambler. An easy glamour, it wouldn’t have fooled a bush league wizard, but it had tricked Carnival.

He should have been happy. Cantanker was a lot easier to handle than the Red Shambler.

Yet Cantanker was still a handful of big trouble.

Carnival threw himself at the demon but he might as well have been tackling the
Empire
State
Building
with a feather duster.

A wing and an arm came down, catching Carnival atop and back of his skull, and everything turned into a slow red darkness.

Flip Flop

C
arnival awoke in something less than light.

The blood on his skin had dried and cracked. He felt caked in a thick black frosting. The walls were painted with blood. Cantanker lay on the floor, looking like he was dying. Carnival had never seen a dying demon before. He didn’t think such a thing was possible.

In the far corner of the room there was a twisted shape. Tossed and discarded like a puked over Raggedy Ann doll.

Momma.

Carnival ran to her and knelt at her side. Only there was nothing there, just the dead body of that crazy Stevie Nicks lookalike.

Momma was gone.

Dead or destroyed or snuffed out like a candle flame. He couldn’t tell which. She was gone. That’s all he really knew.

He leaned back and shouted her name.

Cantanker laughed weakly.

“Heh.”

Carnival whirled, ready to tear the demon’s skull off and cram it up his metamorphic asshole until his hell-spawned intestines cried uncle.

Cantanker smiled.

“My boy,” he said in a tone that seemed all-too familiar.

“I’m not dead yet,” Carnival weakly warned.

“Is that any way to speak to your own mother, Valentino?”

Carnival shook his head slowly. Blinked. Shook again.

“Momma?”

It was Momma, wrapped inside what was left of Cantanker’s body.

“I traded up,” she said.

Damn. He’d thought it was crazy seeing her inside of Stevie Nicks. This was thirteen times worse.

“Upstairs,” she said. “I heard a voice.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I’m a demon, how could I be hurt? Go see what’s upstairs. It’s important. I know it is.”

She stood up.

“I’ll go with you.”

“How did you do this, Momma? How did you take a demon’s body?”

She smiled a tombstone and picket fence grin.

“It’s easy,” she croaked. “I’m magic.”

Carnival laughed.

“You’re starting to sound like Poppa,” he said.

“So where is the old buzzard?”

Oh hell.

Carnival knew.

“Upstairs,” he guessed. “Poppa’s gone to talk to the puppet master.

Come Into My Parlor

T
here was a trail of blood showing Carnival the way. Spattered on the stairs and strewn on the walls. It looked like someone had swallowed a tanker truck full of red
Kool Aid
and
Jello
, and then blown chunks.

Carnival followed the blood trail down to the outer door.

He followed it outside and to the stairs leading up to the tattoo parlor. His head wanted sleep. His legs wanted death.

“Hurry up,” Demon Momma said. “You’re burning twilight.”

He climbed up the stairs until he stood outside the door of the tattoo parlor. Demon Momma had to stoop in these tight quarters. Had she truly been Cantanker she could have easily shifted her size down.

Only Momma wasn’t use to metamorphic existence.

Carnival looked at the window glass. He’d never been up here before. He never saw a reason. He wasn’t that big on social amenities.

He touched the door handle. It was warm. He didn’t want to open it, but he did.

In the center of the room he saw what was left of the old tattooist. He recognized him by his glasses. There was nothing left of the old man but his skull, and those glasses. It looked exactly like the skull he’d found downstairs, tattooed down to the bone.

Only these weren’t designs. These looked like tiny footprints; hooves and the tatter tale tracings of a thousand tiny claws. In the eye sockets he saw two rocks. One black, and one white. He recognized them.

“Poppa?”

The skull grinned and then it began to speak. A skull shouldn’t be able to speak. There’s no vocal cords, no breath to pass through the song box of the larynx. No tongue to articulate, but speak it did.

“My son,” the skull said.

Carnival kept waiting for theme music. The whole thing seemed so damn melodramatic. Life was like that, sometimes.

“I didn’t want to stay inside your chest forever.”

“So you struck a bargain.”

The skull rattled in Carnival’s hands like it was trying to nod.

“With the Red Shambler,” the Poppa-skull said. “He offered me freedom if I could get you to do one thing.”

“To kill?”

Was he trying to taint Carnival?

To take his soul?

“Ha. Your soul? Bartered long ago. How holy do you think you are?”

“That hurts. Derision, even from a possessed skull, hurts a lot.”

“He wanted you to raise the City Familiar. He wanted The Aggregate. He’s got ambitions, the Red Shambler has.”

Carnival nodded. It was all starting to make sense.

“Is that where he is right now? Is that where he ran to?”

“He didn’t run. He charged. It was an assault. You were just the mud puddle he had to charge through. Nothing more than that.”

Carnival set the skull down on the floor.

“I have to go,” he said.

“Your girl,” Poppa said. “You can help her.”

“How?”

“Her dirt. This old bastard tattooed it onto his skin. Sweep the floor and give it to her.”

Carnival didn’t ask questions. He got a broom from behind the door. It was maybe the only thing in the apartment that hadn’t been broken. He wondered if Poppa planned it that way. He wouldn’t put it past the old Gypsy. He had to get his laughs in.

“Hey, you look good with that broom. You’ll make some man a good wife, you will.”

Carnival let him have that one. He was ahead of the game. He could afford to be generous. He dumped the ashes into a wastepaper basket. He had to bend the basket back into shape first.

He was almost finished but there was something else he needed to know.

“Where’s Momma?” Carnival asked. “Where did you bury her?”

He knew the answer already. He just needed confirmation. He needed to hear it from the bastard’s own mouth.

“I didn’t bury her. I know you know that already. I raised you smarter than you play at. I didn’t bury her, I ate her.”

“Why?”

“For her power, of course. It was always for her power.”

“There had to be something left.”

“What does it matter?” the skull asked. “She’s dead. Dead and gone.”

The skull laughed, clacking its jaws like the clacking of a roulette wheel.

“She made you soft,” he said, through his laughter. “You don’t need to be any softer.”

He laughed all the harder.

And then Momma stepped out of the shadows and onto the skull.

“Not dead,” she ground the skull into so much powder. “Not hardly.”

Carnival nodded, glad to have her on his side.

“Momma’s not dead, but you are, Poppa. You sure as hell are.”

Carnival waited to feel something breaking in his chest.

Nothing.

Was he gone?

Was he out of Carnival’s life?

Carnival couldn’t be sure.

Maybe he would never be sure.

“Are we going to end this, or not?” Momma asked.

“You bet,” Carnival said. “We’re going to end this. Once and for fucking all.”

City Magic

C
arnival telephoned Chollo.