"I haven't changed my mind yet." He took another drag. His face settled against itself.

I'm not so sure about that. But I didn't say it. "You realize we can't interfere down there. Once we step through the gate-"

"I know the rules. You repeated 'em twice. I'm not stupid, Jill."

"You're right, you're not stupid. But maybe I am." I eyed the layout again. The alleys between the tents looked regular and even, but they also ran like ink on wet paper in the corner of my vision. I had the idea that if I looked away they would move, and snap back together in a different configuration once my gaze returned.

The music halted as the wind veered, then started again. Calliope music, faint and cheery, with screaming underneath. It sounded like a cartoon. The Ferris wheel shuddered again, and another light blinked out. It restarted, creaking, and the music swallowed any sound that might have made its way out.

I blew out between my teeth. Measured off a space on the steering wheel between two index fingers, tapped them both rapidly, a tattoo of dissatisfaction. Time's wasting, Jill. Get moving.

When I reached for the door-handle he did too. The Pontiac sat in shadows, her paint job glistening dully. It was a cleaner gleam than the cars in the lot below, or the bright winking lures beyond.

The music struggled up to us as we made our way down the hill, my bootheels occasionally ringing against a stone, Saul silent and graceful. Between the rows of cars, windshields already filmed with dust, gravel shifting under our feet. There was no need to be quiet.

There wasn't much of a crowd milling around the ticket booth. The scattered people were mostly normal, and they looked dazed. I kept my mouth shut, watching for a few moments as a round brunette in her mid-thirties tilted her head, listening. The calliope music sharpened, predatory glee running under its surface, and she finally stepped up to the booth and handed over a fistful of something. It looked like wet pennies, and the Trader manning the booth-female, heart-shaped face and short black Bettie Page bangs, big dark eyes, and a pair of needle-sharp fangs dimpling her candy-red lower lip-made a complex gesture, then stamped the woman's hand and waved her past.

Saul let out a short sigh. We strode through the confused, each of them averting their eyes like we were some sort of plague. A couple Traders milled with the normals, uncertainly. Most of them flinched and drew into the shadows when they saw me.

The Trader in the booth studied us. She opened her mouth, and I saw all her teeth were sharp and pointed, not just the fangs.

I beat her to the punch. "I'm here on business, Trader. Where's the Ringmaster?"

She shrugged slim, bare flour-white shoulders, her rhinestone-studded Lycra top moving supple over high, perky breasts. Visibly reconsidered when I didn't respond. "Around and about. Probably in the bigtop. Want your hand stamped?"

I snorted. "Of course not. Come on, Saul." I took two steps to the side, heading for the turnstile.

Her sloe eyes narrowed. "Just what are you-" The words died as I stared at her. The corruption blooming over her was strong, and I'd bet diamonds she had weapons under the sightline of the flimsy booth. She tried again. "You can come in. But I'm not so sure he can." She actually pointed at Saul with one lacquered-yellow fingernail. It was amazing-I wondered how she wiped herself with claws that long.

Oh, yeah? Quit pointing at my Were, bitch. "He's with me. Go back to seducing suicides," I snapped. We strode past, through the clicking turnstile. Each separate bar of the stile ended in a cheap chrome ram's head, lips drawn back and blunt teeth blackened with grime. The Trader didn't say anything else, but the swirl of corruption lying over the entire complex of canvas and wood tightened.

The spider knows the fly's home.

I didn't like that thought. I also didn't like how the air was suddenly close and warm, almost balmy with a slight edge of humidity. It even smelled wrong-no clean tang of dry desert, no metallic ring from the river or any of the hundred other little components that make up a subconscious map of my city. You spend enough time breathing a place and it'll get into your bones-and when it isn't what it should be, that's when the uneasiness starts right below the hackles.

It was also-surprise, surprise-more crowded inside than out. There wasn't a crush, but it was work threading my way through. The flat shine of the dusted on Trader irises, dazed incomprehension on the shuffling normals, rubbing shoulders and shuffling feet. I saw men in pajamas, a woman in filmy lingerie with her hair in pink curlers, a fiftyish man in work clothes carrying a dripping-wet hammer and wandering walleyed and fishmouthed like he was six again.

The midway bloomed around us. Pasteboard and flashing lights, buzzing strings of electric bulbs.

"Throw the ball, win a prize!" This was an actual 'breed, female in a red cotton peasant dress. A sleepy-eyed teenager stopped in front of her; she licked her pale lips and smiled at him. Her white, white hands touched his shoulders in a butterfly's caress, but she saw me watching and pushed him aside. He stumbled and rejoined the flow of the crowd.

"Catch a fish!" A Trader in suspenders, a white wifebeater, and a newsboy hat, his ears coming to high hairy points, motioned at a crystal bowl. The fish inside glittered too sharply to be anything but metallic, globules of clear oil bubbling from their mouths. "Win a dream! Lovely dream, freshly colored! Catch a fish!"

A woman hesitated before putting her hand in the bowl. I silently urged her not to, and turned away before she could make her decision. There was a wet, deep crunch. The fish-catcher's savage cry of triumph rose behind me, and I let out a sharp breath, my stomach turning over.

This was what the Cirque did. It separated the weak and suicidal from the just vaguely disaffected. I caught sight of a young woman, mascara dribbling down her cheeks on a flood of tears, mouthing words that seemed to fit the dim seaweed sound of the calliope. Something like "Camptown Races," married to a more savage beat.

Doo-dah, dooo dah.... She shivered, and walked slowly toward an open tent exhaling a flood of beeps and boops like a video arcade. God alone knew what waited for her in there.

Funny, the music should be louder. I shivered, kept pacing. They parted in front of me like heavy molasses, drawing slowly away.

The normals didn't look at me, lost in whatever the calliope was whispering. But the Traders flinched aside, and the 'breed sometimes bared their teeth, or fangs. One, dolled up like a fortune-teller and outside a tent swathed with fluttering nylon scarves, a chipped crystal ball on the round satin-draped table in front of her, actually snarled.

I stopped and stared at her for a good twenty seconds, unblinking, before she dropped her yellow gaze. Her eyes matched her tongue, a jaundiced, scaled thing that flickered past thin lips and dabbed the point of her chin before reeling back into her mouth.

"There's a lot of them," Saul murmured. He kept close, the comforting heat of him touching my back. The silver in my hair was shifting, and the carved ruby at my throat spat a single, bloody spark just as he spoke.

"There always are." And when the sun rises, maybe a third of them will make it home safe. Those who decide they do want to live after all-or those smart enough to run like hell and make no agreements. Even implicit ones.

And here I thought I was such a cynic. Probably a lot less than a third would get home.

Lean four-legged shapes slunk in the shadows. Their colorless eyes flashed, and they followed us through the midway. The Ferris wheel rocked at one end, another light winked out, and I heard a shapeless scream, like a man waking from a nightmare in a cold bath of sweat. The calliope music surged, swallowing it. Paper ruffled at our feet-wrappers still hot from popcorn or sticky with cotton candy, gnawed sticks still holding traces of corn-dog mustard or clinging caramel. A man's gold Patek Philippe glittered, flung carelessly on the packed, scuffed dirt. Thick electric cables creaked back and forth under the slow warm breeze.

The entrance to the bigtop was huge, easily as big as a triple garage door. Oiled canvas rubbed against the ropes; tattered pennants fluttered and snapped on seven high-peaked poles. Crowd-noise swelled, and for the first time I heard the rumble of Helletong bruising the air.

A gangling scarecrow of a male hellbreed lolled in a chair next to a post holding one end of the tattered red velvet rope barring the way. His top hat was pulled down over his eyes, and his spiderlike fingers-six on each hand, and a thumb too, bones and tendons flickering under the mottled skin-twitched as I halted.

I eyed him. Threadbare, skintight burlap pants straining every time a skinny leg moved. Biceps so thin I could probably have spanned them with thumb and forefinger. For all that, it was a hellbreed, and usually they aren't so flagrantly unhuman.

Usually they're beautiful, and they like to show it. Except Perry. This one could be a surprise too.

I stepped forward, my heels clicking on gravel, and eyed him. The hat lifted a little, and mad silvery eyes gleamed under a hank of silky dirt-dark hair. The fingers twitched again.

I held the 'breed's gaze for maybe fifteen long seconds, the calliope music drifting up around me in skeins of etheric foulness. The hounds, slinking in the shadows, drew nearer. Saul didn't make a restless movement, but I could guess maybe he wanted to.

"Cut the act." Silver jangled, underscoring my words. "Get me the Ringmaster."

The 'breed tipped his head back further. A pointed chin, hollow cheeks-he was a walking skeleton with mottled skin stretched drum-tight over bones, and I suddenly knew what he was. The knowledge made my hands ache for a weapon again; I controlled the urge.

"Are you sure you want to see him? He's not in a good mood." The 'breed smirked, pointed yellow teeth flashing for just a moment. Strings of thick saliva bubbled behind his lips. I was almost sorry I'd eaten.

"Snap inspection, plague-bearer. And the mood you should be worrying about right now is mine. I'm giving you less than two seconds to haul that skinny ass of yours up, and less than ten to bring me the Ringmaster. Or I start shooting 'breed and Traders. Your choice."

It was a nice bluff. Technically, a hunter can snap-inspect any part of the Cirque at any time, and serve summary judgment on any 'breed or Trader caught breaking the rules-for example, pressuring a victim into making a bargain, or in my city, playing with anyone under eighteen. That's pretty much why the Cirque obeys the strictures-first there's the hostage, and then there's us, swallowing bile and watching, waiting for them to step out of line.

Of course, people vanish all the time. It's a goddamn epidemic, and whenever the Cirque finally leaves town there's a lull in exorcisms, disappearances, and other nastiness. They eat all they can hold in each town, I guess. And with the pickings so easy once the calliope starts singing, they would be foolish to take any unwilling meat.

Hellbreed aren't fools.

He jolted to his feet, elbows and knees moving in ways human joints weren't designed to, and I almost twitched toward a gun. But he just capered over the red velvet rope and into the bigtop, leaving his chair rocking back and forth, a bloom of powdery yellow dust left behind, eating little holes in the painted wood.

"Plague-bearer?" Saul murmured.

"You don't want to touch that stuff." My nerves were scraped raw, my back crawling with the thought of so many of Hell's citizens in one place, a cancer in the middle of my vulnerable city.

My apprentice-ring cooled, turning to ice on my finger. It twitched, sharply, twice. It was the first time since I'd met the Cirque outside town that it had made any sort of motion at all.

I tilted my head, listening. The calliope music surged, screaming puffs through chrome-throated pipes. I shut it away, despite the plucking underneath the music-come in, come in, lay your troubles down, play a game, become one of us, one of us, just give in, stop struggling.

My attention turned, coasting through the flood of sensory information. Dust, hot frying fat, screams, chewing noises, stamping feet, a horse's screaming whinny.

And a long, drawn-out rattling gasp.

I came back to myself with a jolt, spun on my heel, and leapt into a run. Saul's footsteps were soundless behind me.

The bigtop blurred past on one side, yards and yards of canvas. It drew away like a wave threatening to crest, and I plunged into a network of tents and alleys, half-lit. Here was one of the older parts of the carnival-the air was thick with a reek of spilled sex, and the tent flaps were always half-open. Moans and ghastly shrieks ribboned past, the calliope suddenly crooning. Traders with gem-bright eyes, hellbreed with seashell hips and candied mouths, lounging in the entrances to their tents, seducing and beckoning- I veered off to the left, my apprentice-ring pulling like a fish on a thin line. The tents gave way to trailers, and I passed the limousine sitting still and polished under a rigged-up canvas canopy. The headlights flickered once, green, as I flashed past.

A huge silver Airstream rocked as I left the ground in a flying kick, etheric force booming through the scar and filling my veins with sick heat. My boot hit the door, which crumpled and exploded in. A terrible, sour-sewer smell puffed past me, and I heard Saul's surprised half-yell.

The trailer was small, and every surface inside was crawling. Little bits of darkness moved, fluttering chitinous legs and wings twitched as the roaches spilled over every surface. A pinprick of laser-red light glowed on the back of every goddamn insect, and they startled into flight as I let out a half-swallowed, childlike cry of revulsion.

Hey, they were bugs, and they surprised me.

The tide of insect life streamed past me, little hairy legs touching and brushing. Saul's coughing growl warned me.

I couldn't worry about the inside of the trailer just at the moment. There was something behind me, and Saul barely managed to get the warning out in time.

I threw myself back and down, landing hard on the two portable wooden steps leading up to the crumpled door. I'd blown a hole in the side of the trailer, and I shot the Ringmaster four times as he hung in the air over me, the crystal knob atop his cane ringing a high piercing note as a silverjacket bullet bounced off or past it, whining until it smashed into the side of his leering, screaming face. It even knocked his hat off.

He dropped straight down. My knees jerked up, I rolled backward down the steps. My shoulder grated hard and popped against straining wood, the edge of a step biting the back of my neck before I made a lunging, fishlike twist and was suddenly, irrationally on my feet but facing the wrong way, whirling and dropping to one knee as the whip flicked out. The silver flechettes tied to the end of its length jingled sweetly before they flayed flesh from the Ringmaster's wrist, and his cane clattered away, the crystal bouncing down first as if it was too heavy for the laws of physics.

The 'breed was bleeding, gushes of thin black ichor flooding out from every hole I'd blown in his tough shell. The roaches swarmed him, the pinpricks of red on their back dividing as they multiplied, and he screamed in Helletong, a sound like the rusted sinews of the world groaning. The fabric of reality bowed around him in concentric circles, and the little insects burst, clattering shells puffing into sick green smoke as they hit the dust. The Ringmaster shouldered his way up out of the curls of vapor, his eyes dripping pumpkin hellfire, and snarled. The stairs splintered and groaned.

When you get to see under the carapace of beauty, the brain shudders aside from their alienness. A hunter who's been to Hell has seen this before, and it gives you a slight edge. You don't run screaming-insane every time they shed their human seeming and show the twisted thing underneath.

But it's awful close.

I remained on one knee, instinct fighting with cold logic. If he leapt for me, my chances were better here, where I was centered and had some clear space, than if I tried to get to my feet now. Training won out, and I stayed where I was, gun in my right hand and whip in the other, shaken free with a jingling sound. Saul was to one side, still growling but staying out of the way-just where he should have been.

A choked rattle echoed inside the gaunt silver trailer. My apprentice-ring cooled, a band of ice on my third left finger. The Ringmaster snarled and doubled over, falling to the ground with a wet writhing thump. Black ichor splashed, and the entire Cirque stilled, the faint ever-present calliope music skipping a beat. It limped and wheezed, gaps opening between the notes.

What the hell?

The Ringmaster screamed, and his cane quivered. The thin cry was echoed from inside the trailer, and I was suddenly sure that something else was happening I'd better take a look at.

I uncoiled, force pulled through the scar, and cleared the busted stairs and the Ringmaster in one leap. Landed on my toes, my center of gravity pulled up high and tight, and plunged into the trailer.

A pale shape lay, seizure bowing it up into a hoop, on the frowsty shelf-bed. It was the hostage, and just as I reached the side of the bed, wading through a drift of empty clicking shells and candy bar wrappers, the Trader began to rattle deep down in his chest.

Oh, fuck.

The hostage was dying. And if he shuffled off the mortal coil now, we were looking at a seriously fucked-up situation.

I dropped the whip, shoved the gun back in its holster, and leapt for the bed.

8.

My hellbreed-strong right hand closed around Ikaros's throat, and I braced myself, knees on either side of his narrow rib cage. "Oh, no you don't," I snarled, and ripped the leather wristcuff free, one of the buckles breaking and hitting the side of the trailer with a sweet tinkle.

A razor-barbed mass of etheric energy pooled in my palm, slammed through the Trader's body. The ratcheting sound from his narrow chest peaked, and I heard the Ringmaster howl like a damned soul outside.

Get it, Jill? Like a damned soul? Arf, arf.

The air turned hard and dark, something alien pressing through the fabric of reality, hovering over the twisting body on the bed. I took in a harsh breath and pushed, the sea-urchin spikes of my aura dappling the inside of the trailer with aqueous light. The sudden welter of sensory overload from the scar's unveiling crested over me, my skin suddenly alive and my nose full of a complicated tangle of scents. Tears welled up hot and hard, my eyes coping with a sudden onslaught, every crack and wrinkle in the world visible.

The Trader hostage twitched and convulsed again, his teeth actually grinding. The collar's spikes bit my skin, blessed metal burning. I let out a short hawk's cry, the force of whatever was torturing the Trader giving me a short, hard punch in the solar plexus. It tasted like lit-up liquor fumes and hit the back of my throat, roared past me like a barreling freight train.

My free left hand jabbed up, two fingers snapping out, lined with twisting sorcerous flame. Banefire burned blue, hissing, but there was no helltaint for it to catch hold of.

The thing struggling to come through hit me hard in the face, my head snapping aside, and blood exploded from my mouth and nose in a bright gush, droplets hanging in a perfect arc for a long timeless second before splashing against the trailer wall.

So banefire wasn't going to work. Ikaros surged underneath me again, his body moving in weird angled jumps, like his bones were trying to turn themselves into rubbery corkscrews.

Goddammit, what the hell is going on here?

Fortunately, banefire wasn't the only trick up my sleeve. Intuition meshed with recent memory, and as he screamed so did I, our twinned voices rising in harmony again as my fingers tightened, the collar's spikes dragged at the meat of my wrist and forearm again, and I pushed with every ounce of sorcerous strength I could dredge up in an entirely different direction.

As if I was exorcising him.

The pressure built, excruciating heat behind my bulging eyeballs and under my stomach, the last bit of air escaping me in a huuuungh! of effort. Ikaros rattled again, but this time it wasn't the hideous I'm-dying type of rattle. No, this time it was the inhale of blessed sweet air, and my apprentice-ring gave another twinging pull. He began to thrash with inhuman strength, but without the corkscrewing weirdness.

The thing hovering over him snapped with a sound like thick elastic breaking, a high, hard pop! that might have been funny if there hadn't been a sudden gush of green smoke and chittering legs. The roaches swarmed, falling out of a point in thin air directly above us, and both of us yelled in miserable surprise. The roaches vanished as they peppered us, more sickly pea-soup smoke eddied and billowed, and the Trader surged up.

He had a lot of pep for someone who was just being sorcerously strangled a few seconds ago. But I had the upper hand and my booted foot on one of his wrists in a trice, and I ground down with the steelshod heel, a simple flexing movement. The collar slashed even more cruelly at my wrist, but I ignored the pain rolling up my arm, hot blood slicking my grip on the hostage's throat. "Settle the fuck down!" I yelled. "Settle down, I'm trying to help!"

The irony of the situation-I was yelling that I was trying to help a Trader-didn't escape me. He subsided just a little, blue eyes rolling like a terrified horse's. I waited until I was sure he wasn't going to thrash again and eased up just slightly on his throat. He kept breathing in high harsh whistles.

I kept watching, loosening my fingers by increments. They actually creaked, I moved so slowly. Harsh voices babbled outside, a whirlpool of surprise, and I heard a werecougar's low thrumming growl.

That managed to get me off the bed, shaking out my right hand. Blood flew, dripping down from my scored wrist, and I was suddenly glad none of the blessed silver spikes had touched the scar. I'd had silver against the hellbreed kiss once before, and had no desire to repeat the experience.

Ikaros lay, his ribs flickering with deep heaving breaths, on the tangled bed. His eyes closed, heavily, and he curled into a ball as I backed away. I realized he was naked, light dancing and dappling his haunches. Old burn scars traveled up both legs, clasping his buttocks with angry rope fingers. I scooped up my whip without pausing, two strides kicking up a tide of candy bar wrappers. The green smoke began to thin, and the empty cockroach shells were vanishing with little crackling popcorn sounds.

The stairs were indeed shattered, and Saul crouched in front of them, one hand braced on the dusty earth. The trembling in his aura told me he was just on the edge of shifting, and his snarl rose steadily.

I didn't blame him. Because gathered in a loose semicircle, pressing close in an arc of sharp teeth and hellfire-glowing eyes, were hellbreed and Traders. The Ringmaster hooked his cane up with one clawed hand, the crystal spitting spark after agonized green spark and his entire tattered costume swimming and dripping black ichor.

It was going to hurt as he healed, the silver residue poisoning him. Let's hope it doesn't make him crazier than he already is. Control the situation, Jill. I cleared leather, pointed the gun up, and squeezed off a shot. The sound crackled through both Saul's growl and the rising noise coming from the hellbreed, a deep thrum of Helletong like iron balloons rubbing together.

"Good evening, everyone." I paused for a breath. All eyes turned to me except Saul's, and the crowd of 'breed and Traders took in a collective breath. Silver hissed in my hair, the charms moving angrily. "Seems someone has a bit of a grudge against your hostage. I just saved his life." Another pause, this one taking a different tenor as the gun came down and swept slowly, leisurely, along the front of the crowd. "Anyone have a problem with that?"