What the fuck? But I knew. The Ringmaster must’ve thought I was the one fucking with the hostage. Goddamn hellbreed, they don’t even trust themselves.

Let alone a hunter.

My hand slapped a gun butt, slipped away, and closed around a knifehilt. We hit, a crunch of thunderous pain, and something warm and wet flung itself out between my lips. One of my large knives stabbed forward, blue flame catching hold on the corruption in the air, and sank into his midsection with a tchuk. That took a little pep out of him, especially when I wrenched the blade back and forth, hellbreed strength pumping through my arm and stink exploding around me. Wooden splinters rammed into my back, skritching against leather.

I punched him twice in the face, the scar a white-hot coal burrowing into my arm. His hard crust broke, splitting where I’d poisoned him with silver before, and I lunged up out of the wreckage, getting solid footing and pushing with every ounce of strength I could dredge up.

My fist hit again, the scar squealing in satisfaction as I pulled on etheric energy, and the Ringmaster flew back. His top hat flew the other direction, out of sight. I scrambled up, my side afire with pain and the scar burning as it burrowed in toward the bone. Sick heat spilled through me, bones melding in an instant, and I retched, clear fluid and blood spattering through my mouth and nose before I whooped in a breath and flung myself forward. My abused lungs burned and warm claret trickled down my side, but I had no time to worry about that.

Because on the other side of the central ring, leaning forward as if pushing into a heavy wind, stood Mama Zamba. Her blond dreadlocks writhed behind her, her hands stretched out into claws, and she pushed against the shell of energy holding the cornmeal circle, her blue eyes gone wide and black above her pitted cheeks.

I’ve got you now, you bastard. My feet touched down and I vaulted, both guns coming out of the holsters. Her face tipped up and filled with sick green light, cockroaches spattering behind her and flooding forward, seeking a weakness in the circle, and her haunted eyes met mine.

A tinkling childlike laugh. Sudden cold wetness and smell of salt and candy. And pain so immense it swallowed the world.

I’d hit something, and it had thrown me. Hard. A convulsion ran through me, muscles locking and nerves firing wildly in protest, a mutiny of the body.

I rolled onto my side, every inch of me protesting violently. Heaved and would have thrown up if my jaw hadn’t locked. Silver crackled, the charms in my hair rustling, and my eyes were full of heat and something too sticky and red to be tears.

Thunder, again, not faraway but close and overwhelming. Ozone in the air. The calliope wheezing, limping brokenly through a descant. I pushed myself up and saw the Ringmaster’s broken body trampled into sawdust. Black goop runneled his vanishing flesh. Arms and legs corkscrewed, twisting as death claimed the tissues.

I slid down the broken remains of several chairs. Gained my feet. Vomited a long string of blood. There were probably internal injuries. Where the hell is Perry? I don’t like it when I can’t see him.

It was enough that he was staying out of the way. I didn’t want to deal with him and all this at the same time.

A barrier at ringside was just a three-bar fence, it took me two tries to hop it. And there, beyond the Ringmaster, Mama Zamba lay in the sawdust, writhing. Her dreadlocks were full of grit, and a spume of it jetted up as she convulsed, harsh ratcheting breaths blowing snot out through her nose. Bones crackled, and my smart eye saw the triple-lobed shimmering in the air over her.

The Twins were occupied with their follower. I gathered myself and bolted for the cornmeal circle. Another rattle of thunder shook the air inside the bigtop, a brief flash of acid white light made every detail stand out. Ikaros wasn’t seizing anymore. He lay sprawled on the bed, chest rising and falling, the angular spiked hell-writing climbing over his flesh in fits and starts. His eyes were open, staring at the roof.

“Nooooooooooooooo!” Mama Zamba screamed, and her voice deepened, taking on a male timbre at the end. The bone-crackles took on a deeper, wetter sound, and my feet slipped in ichor-slimed sawdust. I was almost there, almost there—

Another bright-white flash, smell of ozone turned thick and cloying, and a huge warm hand cupped my back and flung me. I landed in a heap inside the cornmeal circle, looked up as I reached my knees.

Mama Zamba hung in the air, but she no longer looked even faintly female. Her face had shifted, cheekbones broadening and the smallpox scars deepening. Her eyes were now Arthur Gregory’s eyes, glowing feverish gasflame-blue and horribly sane. The caftan flapped around her thickening legs, and he hit the edge of the cornmeal circle going full-speed.

Ka-POW! Lightning flashed. The resulting explosion knocked me back into the steel-framed bed, its footboard barking me a good one in the side, where my ribs were already tender from being broken once tonight. I collapsed, trying to get enough air in, my hands came up despite me and clutched at the bedframe. I had enough time to see the tendons standing out under my fishbelly-pale skin, blood sliming the back of my left hand and dulling the shine of my apprentice-ring, before the imperative to get fucking moving! boiled through me again and I hauled myself up.

Noise returned. I realized I’d been temporarily deafened as I landed hard on Ikaros, irrationally afraid the several pounds of ammo I was carrying would crush him. Squirmed, fell to the side, wrapped one hand around a bar in the headboard and braced myself, my right hand jabbing up.

The collar’s spikes sank into my skin again. The pain was tiny compared to the rest of me. I found the release catch.

“Noooooooooooo!” Arthur Gregory yelled again, and I snapped a glance up to see him flying toward the cornmeal circle again. I couldn’t count on a lightning strike this time. Chango and the Twins had probably both interfered as much as they were able to.

The release catch was slimed with blood. I let out a hopeless sound, fingers scrabbling, caught in the spikes coming up from the collar. My apprentice-ring sparked under its mask of blood.

The catch miraculously parted. The collar opened like a flower, and I rolled off the bed, landing hard on my ass, my head hitting the frame. Silver chimed, a small noise lost in the sudden lunging scream of the calliope. Green vapor filled the air, full of the candy-sick corruption of Hell and a darker effluvia.

Ikaros screamed. So did Arthur Gregory.

I scrabbled away on hands and bootheels, muscle pulling loose of bone with hard popping sounds, flaring with pain like nails tearing my flesh. The cornmeal scattered as I plowed through the edge of the circle, and Arthur Gregory landed on the bed. Ikaros was already gone, though, rolling away on the opposite side.

The scar boiled, burrowing in toward bone. It never got any deeper, but I sometimes wondered what would happen if it did. Right now there wasn’t time. I fumbled for a gun, for a knife to fling, anything. The calliope shrieked again, belching more green smoke, its brass pipes blooming with sick ignus fatus light, spinning off fat globes of bobbing will o’ the wisps.

The hostage gained his feet in a spooky-quick lunge. He had a lot of pep for someone who had been writhing and twisting with seizures for a day or two. His eyes lit with the dusted glitter of a very pissed-off Trader. His jockey shorts flapped, scrawny-strong muscle popping out under his skin, where the mad angry runnels of hell-script fizzed, glyphs winking out of existence with tiny puffs of steam.