He finally stepped away from the limo. The door swung closed, and I tensed, muscle by muscle. Perry strode loosely across
the road, gliding as if on his own personal dancefloor, and the caravan took a deep breath. Another door swung open, I heard
feet hitting the dusty ground. Two pairs, both with the sound of hellbreed or Trader—too light on the toes, or too heavy,
a distribution of weight no human musculature would be capable of—and if my ears were right, from the limo.
Hellbreed like limousines. I’ve heard politicians do too. Oh, and rock stars. Thought-provoking, isn’t it?
I peeled myself away from the Bonneville’s hood. Saul stayed where he was, but I felt his attention. It was like sunlight
against my back as I strode forward, steelshod bootheels cracking down with authority.
If it was a dance, it was one that brought us all together just where the road met the shoulder. I ended up with one foot
on the tarmac and the other on dirt. Perry, to my left, stopped a respectable six feet away on the road, and as he came to
a halt I saw he was wearing mirror-polished wingtips. The crease in his pants was sharp enough to cut.
To my left, the Ringmaster halted. Thin membranous curls of dust rose from his footprints, settling reluctantly with little
flinching sounds.
The Ringmaster. A tall thin hellbreed with a thatch of crow-dark hair over a sweet, innocent face with bladed cheekbones.
They’re all beautiful, the damned. It’s the blush of a tubercular apple, that beauty, and it rots in the gaze if you keep
looking steadily enough. Little things that don’t add up—bones a millimeter too high, a skin-sheen just a degree or two off,
a chin angled in a simulacrum of humanity but with
something else
under the skin—grab the attention, then the attractiveness reasserts itself. It’s the mask they wear to fool their prey,
but a hunter back from Hell can see under it.
We can see the
twisting.
This one wore a thin-lipped smile that was far, far too wide. I looked for his cane and didn’t see it. His black suit was
a shabby, fraying copy of Perry’s, a worn top hat dangling from loose, expressive strangler’s fingers. When his lips parted,
a long ridge of sharp bone with faint shadows that could be tooth demarcations showed. The ridge came down to points where
the canines would be, then swept back into the cavern of his mouth.
In very dim light, human eyes might mistake him for one of their own. A hunter never would. Diamond insect feet walked up
my back, leaving gooseflesh in their wake. A muscle in the Ringmaster’s elegant cheek twitched, but it was Perry who spoke
first.
“Kiss. A delight, as usual.”
Don’t call me that, Perry.
I eyed the second one from the Cirque, a small, soft boyish Trader with huge blue eyes and a fine down on his round apple
cheeks. My stomach turned over, hard. “Let’s just get this over with.” I sounded bored even to myself. “I have work to do
tonight.”
Got a childkilling Trader to catch, and you assholes are wasting my time.
“As do we all.” The Ringmaster’s voice was a surprise—as hearty and jolly as he was thin and waspish. And under that, a buzz
like chrome flies in chlorinated bottles.
The rumble of a different language. Helletöng.
The speech of the damned.
“Always business.” Perry shrugged, a loose easy movement, and I passed my gaze down the small, doe-innocent Trader. He was
thin and birdlike, in a white T-shirt and jeans, and he made me uneasy. Most of the time the bad is right out there where
you can see it. If it’s not, you have to keep watching until it shows itself. “Welcome to Santa Luz, Henri.”
The Trader leaned into the Ringmaster’s side, and the ’breed put one stick-thin arm over him. A flick of the loose fingers
against the T-shirt’s sleeve, probably meant to be soothing, and the parody of parental posture almost made acid crawl up
the back of my throat.
“Thank you, Hyperion. This is Ikaros,” the Ringmaster said. He focused on me. “Do you have the collar?”
I reached into a left-hand pocket, my trench coat rustling slightly. Cool metal resounded under my fingertips, and I had another
serious run of thoughts about stepping back, turning on my heel, and heading for the Pontiac.
But you can’t do that when the Cirque comes to town. The compact they live under is unbreakable, a treaty between dark and
light. They serve a purpose, and any hunter on their worldwide circuit knows as much.
It just goes against every instinct a decent hunter possesses to let the fuckers keep breathing.
Perry rumbled something in Helletöng, the sound of freight trains painfully rubbing against each other at midnight, in some
deserted hopeless trainyard.
I paused. My right hand ached for a gun. “English, Perry.”
None of your goddamn rumblespeak here.
“So rude of me. I was merely remarking on your beauty tonight, my dear.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
I shouldn’t have dignified it with a response. “The next time one of you hellspawn rumbles in töng, I’m going back to work,
the Cirque can go on down the line, and you, Perry, can go suck a few eggs.”
“Charming.” The Ringmaster’s smile had dropped like a bad habit. “Is she always this way?”
“Oh, yes. Always a winsome delight, our Kiss.” Perry’s slight smile hadn’t changed, and the faint blue shine from his irises
didn’t waver either. He looked far too amused, and the scar was quiescent against my skin.
Usually he played with it, waves of pain or sick pleasure pouring up my arm. Fiddling with my internal thermostat, trying
to make me respond. Tonight, he didn’t.
And that was thought-provoking as well. Only I wasn’t sure what thoughts it was supposed to provoke, which was probably the
point.
My fingers curled around the metal and brought it out.
The collar was a serious piece of business, a spiked circle of silver, supple and deadly-looking. Each spike was as long as
my thumb from middle knuckle to fingertip, and wicked sharp. Blue light flowed under the surface of the metal, not quite breaking
free in response to the contamination of two hellbreed and a Trader so close. My silver apprentice-ring, snug against my left
third finger,
did
crack a single spark, and it was gratifying to see the little Trader shiver slightly.
I shook the collar a little, the hinges moving freely. It trembled like a live thing, hypnotic blue swirling. “Rules.” I had
their attention. My right hand wanted to twitch for a knife so bad I almost did it, keeping myself loose with an effort. The
charms in my hair rattled against each other, blessed silver reacting. “Actually, just one rule. Don’t fuck with my town.
You’re here on sufferance.”
“Next she’ll start in about blood atonement,” Perry offered helpfully.
I held the Ringmaster’s gaze. My smart eye—the left one, the blue one—was dry, but I didn’t blink. He did—first one eye, then
the other, slight lizardlike movements.
The Trader slid away from under his hand. Still, their auras swirled together, and I could almost-see the thick spiraled rope
of a blood bond between them. Ikaros took two steps toward me and paused, looking up with those big blue eyes.
The flat shine of the dust lying over his irises was the same as every other Trader’s. It was a reminder that this kid, however
old he really was, had bargained with Hell. Traded away something essential in return for something else.
His lashes quivered. That was his first mistake.
The next was his hands, twisting together as if he was nervous. If the Ringmaster’s hands were flaccid and delicate, the Trader’s
were broad farmboy’s paws, at odds with the rest of his delicate beauty.
I wondered what he’d Traded for to end up here.
“We’ll be good.” His voice was a sweet piping, without the candy-sick corruption of a hellbreed’s. He gave me a tremulous
smile. There was a shadow of something ancient over his face, a wrongness in the expression.
He was no child.
“Save it.” I jingled the collar again and watched him flinch just a little. The hellbreed had gone still. “And get down on
your knees.”
“That isn’t necessary.” The Ringmaster’s tone was a warning.
So was mine. “I’m the hunter here, hellspawn.
I
decide what’s necessary. Get. Down on. Your knees.”
The Trader sank down gracefully, but not before his fingers clenched for the barest second. Big, broad hands, and if they
closed around my neck it might be a job and a half to pry them away.
He might have looked like the sort of tchotchke doll old ladies like to put on their shelves, but he was
Trader.
If he looked innocent and harmless, it was only the lure used to get someone close enough for those strong fingers. And that
tremulous smile would be the last thing a victim ever saw.
I clipped the collar on, tested it. He smelled like sawdust and healthy young male, but the tang of sugared corruption riding
it only made the sweetness of false youth less appetizing. Like a hooker turning her face, and the light picking out damage
under a screen of makeup. The stubble on his neck rasped and my knuckles brushed a different texture—the band of scar tissue
resting just above his collarbone. It was all but invisible in the dimness, and I wondered what he’d look like in daylight.
I don’t want to find out. I’ve had enough of this already, and we’re only ten minutes in.
I stepped back. The collar glinted. My apprentice-ring thrummed with force, and I twitched my hand, experimentally.
The Trader let out a small sound, tipping forward as he was pulled off-center. His knees ground into the dust. Every bit of
silver I wore—apprentice-ring, silver chain holding the blessed carved ruby at my throat, the charms in my hair—made a faint
chiming sound. My stomach turned. It was just like having a dog on a leash.
I nodded. Let my hand drop. “You can get up now.”
“Not just yet.” Perry stepped forward, and little bits of cooling breeze lifted my hair. I didn’t move, but every nerve in
my body pulled itself tight as a drumhead and my pulse gave a nasty leap. They could hear it, of course, and if they took
it for a show of weakness things might get nasty.
Ikaros hunched, thin shoulders coming up.
My left hand touched a gun butt, cool metal under my fingertips. “That’s close enough, Perry.”
“Oh, not nearly.” He shifted his weight, and the breeze freshened again. His aura deepened, like a bruise, and the scar woke
to prickling, stinging life.
A whisper of sound, and I had the gun level, barrel glinting. “That’s close
enough.
”
Give me a reason. Dear God, just give me a reason.
He shrugged and remained where he was. The Ringmaster was smiling faintly, his thin lips closed over the tooth-ridges.
I backed up two steps. Did not holster the gun. Faint starlight silvered its metal. “The chain, Perry. Hurry up.”
He smiled, a good-tempered grin with razor blades underneath. It was the type of smile that said he was contemplating a good
piece of art or ass, something he could pick up with very little trouble. His eyes all but
danced.
A quick flicking motion with his fingers, the scar plucking, and a loop of darkness coiled in his hands, dipping down with
a wrongly musical clashing. His left hand snapped forward, the darkness solidified, and the Trader jerked again, a small cry
wrung out of him.
Ikaros’s eyes rolled up into his head and he collapsed. Spidery lines of darkness crawled up every inch of pale exposed flesh,
spiked writing marching in even rows as if a tattoo had come to life and started colonizing his skin.
Perry’s hands dropped. The Trader lay in the dust, gasping.
“Done, and done.” The Ringmaster sighed, a short sound under the moan of freshening breeze. “He is your hostage.” Now his
cane had appeared, a slim black length with a round faceted crystal the size of a pool ball set atop it. He tapped the ground
twice, paused, tapped a third time with the coppershod bottom. The crystal—it looked like an almighty big glass doorknob except
for the sick greenish light in its depths—made a sound like billiard balls clicking together, underlining his words. “Should
we break the Law he will suffer, and through him, I will suffer; through me, all shall suffer. He is our pledge to the hunter
and to the Power in this city.”
The Trader struggled up to his hands and knees. The collar sparked, once, a single point of blue light etching sharp shadows
behind the pebbles and dirt underneath him. He coughed, dryly. Retched.
“So it is.” Perry grinned. The greenish light from the Ringmaster’s cane etched shadows on his face, exposing a breath of
what lived under the mask of banal humanity. “May your efforts be fruitful, brother.”
“No less than your own.” The Ringmaster glanced at me. “Are you satisfied, hunter? May we pass?”
“Go on in.” The words were bitter ash in my mouth. “Just behave yourselves.”
Ikaros struggled to his feet. He moved slowly, as if it hurt. I finally lowered the gun, watching Perry. Who was grinning
like he’d just discovered gold in his underpants. His face wavered between sharply handsome and bland as usual, and the tip
of his tongue flickered out briefly to touch the corner of his thin lips. Even in the darkness the color—a wet cherry-red,
seen in an instant and then gone—was wrong. I had to clamp down on myself to stop the sweat rising along the curve of my lower
back.
The Ringmaster took the Trader’s elbow and steered him away, back toward the convoy. Their engines roused one by one, and
they pulled out, a creaking train of etheric bruising, tires shushing as they bounced up onto the hardtop from the access
road and gained speed, heading for the well of light that was my city below.
Last of all went the limo. The Trader slumped against a back passenger-side window, and the inside of the vehicle crawled
with green phosphorescence, shining out past the tinting. Its engine made a sound like chattering teeth and laughter, and
its taillights flashed once as it hopped up onto the road and passed the city limits.