Flesh Circus (19 page)

This makes no fucking sense.
I think that so often before a case jells, it’s a constant refrain. It just meant I wasn’t seeing the pattern yet.

Between one blink and the next, I leapt forward, body stretching out. The stairs gave one howling groan as I pushed off, concrete
squealing against iron framework, and my boots hit the door. Blue sparks crackled, an etheric strike as surely as a physical
one, and the steel-reinforced door busted off its weakened hinges. I rode it all the way down, hitting with a hollow boom
on the landing.

Up or down?
But the decision had already been made, because something was moving. I leapt up and to the side, catching a banister and
propelling myself over, one boot-toe pushing and my left arm doing most of the work. This swung me neatly around, and I hit
the ground in the living room, rolling. It was
dark;
she had blackout shades on the windows or something, for fuck’s sake.

I hit furniture—felt like the edge of a couch—and something that ground under my coat, sharp edges slicing. One whole wall
of Zamba’s living room was, if I recalled correctly, a multitiered altar to Ifa and several lesser
orisha,
built around a rock-walled fireplace. Drums should have been stacked against one wall, and the rest of the room should have
been lined with furniture—two couches against the window, a long line of cushions for the lower-ranked devotees, and Zamba’s
thronelike recliner with its back to the altar, wheeled in by a couple of strong young men at the beginning of every court-holding
session.

It was there, rolled to a stop on the floor with my eyes straining to pierce absolute blackness, that I remembered Zamba had
a close personal relationship with the Twins. They had a whole quadrant on her main altar, and a private altar in her bedroom.

Don’t ask how I know what’s in her bedroom. Like I said, last time I was here, things got iffy.

My blue eye could get only confused images through a heavy, oppressive screen of etheric bruising. It was thick in here in
more ways than one, a stench I was beginning to find all too familiar painting the back of my throat as I waited, full-length
on the floor, hearing something shamble around in the living room.

And hearing the tapping skritches of thousands of little insect feet flooding up the stairs. The darkness came alive with
tiny red dots blanketing the soaked carpet, and I was suddenly very sure that whether or not Zamba was involved, I’d find
nothing living in this happy little split-level.

I was pretty sure I’d find plenty dead and moving around, though.

F
ighting in the dark, especially when every footstep crunches with little moving bodies underneath, is no picnic. I couldn’t
tell how many there were—
a lot
was about all I could think, hearing them shuffle and close in on me. The roaches made little creaking sounds, a dry insect
thrumming. My fist crunched through slippery flesh, I hooked my fingers and pulled, a gelatinous eyeball popping and running.
Wet splorching hands fumbled at my waist—I kicked back, heard the splutter of contact and the crash as it flew back, hitting
whatever was left of Zamba’s altar.

And still they crowded me. What a welcoming committee. Either they had orders to kill whoever entered the house, or Zamba
had fallen prey to something, or—

My aura flamed, sea-urchin spikes boiling with blue sparks. That was better and worse. Better because the shifting illumination
gave me visuals to work on, instead of straining my other senses to place the opposition. Which meant I could afford to unlimber
the whip.

But it was worse because it meant the atmosphere in here was boiling, and not about to calm down anytime soon. And the gloom
only got more intense, clotting and thickening. A spiritual hematoma.

Bug guts slimed underneath, ground into the carpet. The roaches clattered and chattered, and the sound of dry tendons stropping
each other as the zombies lurched around me.

The fighting art of hunters is a hodgepodge. Almost any martial art you can name, from
savate
to esoteric
t’ai chi,
is in there somewhere. You can never tell what move will save your ass, and every once in a while you have to run through
everything you know just to keep it fresh. Of course we all have our
favorite
moves, but pulling something out of your ass in a fight is a good way to put your enemy down.

But for this—close combat in a dark space, with things pressing in on every side, more than I could comfortably count because
I was too goddamn busy—I fell back on the fighting style Weres teach their young, relying on evasion, quickness, and grace.
Whether or not I’m graceful is an open question, but evasion and quickness?

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 flannel
shirt, and tossed him unceremoniously out the door, not hard enough to bruise.

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
scanner, figured you were heading for this place.”

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.

The Church holds it as a point of doctrine that animals don’t have souls. I know better. I’ve
seen
better. It’s only one place where we differ, the Holy Mother Church and I.