Dr. Celestine's Carnival of Souls

Everything around Thunk seemed to flicker, and afterward, there was no sky.

He was still standing in the same spot, but the Carnies, the wolf, the women, all were gone. The patrons, milling about in confusion, were gone. The afternoon sky was replaced with an endless black abyss, devoid of stars or clouds. In the distance, there were the sounds of battle, but here it was peaceful and quiet.

He was close. He could feel it.

Todd smiled, and began walking toward the sounds of violence. That's where Todd would be. In the center of it, at the core. Todd would have come here, to the heart of the Carnival itself, and nothing would stand in his way.

And nothing would stop Thunk, either.

He heard a whimper, almost a sob, coming from a rickety trailer. There was no mark on it, no sign. Thunk paused. He was on a mission. How much time did he have? There came a moan, a man's voice. How many choices did he have?

Inside he found a little man in a brown robe, his hair growing in a fringe around a bald spot on the top of his head. His face was lined with age and hardship, and tears had cut runnels in the dust on his face. There was a transparent woman straddling him, her hands sunk into his chest. Even as Thunk watched, the woman grew faintly redder, somewhat more solid-looking. The little monk had a leather-bound book in one hand, and he swung it weakly at her - only to have it pass harmlessly through her head as though she were nothing more than a Shadow.

She saw Thunk, and hissed, her mouth a black void that reminded him of the not-a-sky outside. He stepped into the little trailer, shutting the door behind him. "Let him go." he said.

She hissed again. The little man saw him, and babbled something. It was no language Thunk knew, but it sounded a little like Latin, or German. He sounded afraid. Thunk raised his left arm, and gears turned. Panels slid away, and metal pieces slid into new alignment with machined precision. He felt the fire in his core swell, felt that he was not alone. He was unafraid.

The red phantom woman stood, and raised hands that were twisted talons, each finger of which had tiny mouths that hissed in counterpoint. Thunk could see through her, to the trailer's dingy kitchenette. There were pancakes on the table.

She lunged forward, and with a twist of his wrist he released a series of knives and syringes that plunged solidly into her chest. She gaped in shock and pain, and he clenched his fingers, closing the clamps around her torso like a vise. His left eye clicked as the lens turned, and he could see that she was made entirely of suffering and pain. While she was shaped like a person, this was something that had never been human. He flexed his wrist again, and knives cut, samples were taken in through long needles, analyzed, and obscure toxins were produced in his guts and pumped out through other needles. He watched her energies change colors as they were corrupted, and destabilized. "Accept this gift, and be glad of it. Know Love, and Mercy, for the first time. These are the gifts of Todd. Take them into your heart, and know Peace." The energies he was feeding into her were disrupting her. They broke lines of resonance and connection throughout the red phantom, and she screamed even as she began to unravel.

He released her, and she collapsed to the yellow linoleum, writhing and gasping. Thunk knelt down beside her, and brushed her hair out of her eyes with one hand, while his left reconfigured itself again into something more human-shaped. Steam vented, and hydraulics hissed as he cradled her head in his lap. "It... hurts..." she whispered.

"I know. Todd teaches us that certain things are always true. And one of them is that we hurt the ones we love. I am sorry." The black pits of her eyes cleared, revealing very human looking big brown eyes. They looked afraid. Her hands and feet were already gone, and the rest of her was growing misty, more vapor than solid. She gasped. His left eye clicked again, and he saw her energies settle into a new resonance matrix. A familiar matrix that he had seen in dozens of people. A soul. "I will call you Sheila, after a friend of mine. I'll think of you, now and again. Goodbye, Sheila."

She closed her eyes, and dissolved into a golden mist. Thunk looked up, at where the little monk was now standing against the wall, watching him with eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Your pardon, sirrah, but did you say 'Todd' just now?"

"I did," Thunk replied. "I am his friend. I learned his teachings, and they have given everything meaning."

"You are a disciple?"

"Perhaps. I am Thunk."

"I am Duxtor. Thank you for what you did."

Thunk stood up. His eye clicked and whirred, and the infra-red lens showed him that the pancakes were still hot. "I did not mean to kill her. I showed her another path, and she chose not to continue. It's sad."

"I meant for saving my life. Thank you."

"Oh. Sure. Are... Are you going to eat that?"

"Please. Be my guest. Tell me more of... Todd."


**********************************************************************************


Eva had gone to Stevens' trailer to rant and to scream and to demand answers.

She had found it empty, and unlocked.

And empty.

The trailer contained a bed, neatly made with hospital corners of razor-keen precision. The sheets and blankets and pillows were all white, and they gleamed under the bare lightbulb above. The bathroom contained a toothbrush, floss, and soap in a small plain dish, all white, and all neatly and precisely arranged. There were four white towels folded on a shelf next to the white shower curtain. The white bathmat was aligned precisely in the center of the shower enclosure. Everything was clean, and sterile, and neat. Except the mirror. There was no mirror.

The kitchen contained all the ordinary staples. Milk, eggs, flour and bread. All white. There were large mason jars containing oats, bran cereal, and sugar. In the cabinet, she found smaller jars containing salt and pepper, cinnamon and honey. The jars were neatly labeled, and she wondered if their sole purpose was to remove offensive color by discarding the original packaging. Everything, every surface, was gleamingly clean and pristine, every item neatly arranged by size and position.

Nowhere did she find anything like a picture, a momento, or a decoration. No souvenirs, no photographs, nothing. She had opened his closet, and actually flinched away from the riot of chaos and color within. Suits and shirts in blazing neon colors, most of them in patterns that made her eyes want to bleed. Even the neatly rolled socks arrayed on a small dresser inside were hard to look at. She closed the closet, suddenly comforted by the spartan and monochrome room.

She noticed that there were no mirrors anywhere here. No surfaces that would offer a reflection, even. Maybe Stevens couldn't bear the sight of his own clothes, either? How absurd. There was also no television or computer, no books or radio, not even so much as a skin mag under the bed. It was while she was checking there that Stevens had returned.

They had talked. She was overwhelmed by the revelations she'd had earlier that day. Ania, a vampire. Her boss, some kind of Faustian devil. Celestine was a God, and Kong was, Stevens informed her, actually an ape. He and Simba, Monty and Khan, and others, were beasts made to walk and talk like men by Johnson, the lion-tamer. Stevens had seemed a beacon of sanity in a world gone mad to her, and he seemed to have felt the same about her. Explaining the mess that was the Carnival of Souls to her had seemed to help him gather himself. The longer they talked, the more she had relaxed, and the more he had revealed. He was a man of order, of deliberation and procedure. The Carnival was slowly killing him, he had told her. He'd done something wrong, somewhere. He wasn't sure what, or when. But he knew he was being punished. He had been shackled to this madhouse, and had been remade somehow into something that could not survive here. Like a fish being walked to school on a leash, he was suffocating.

He'd wept. So she'd kissed him.

He'd almost fallen, he was so shocked. She had told him to relax, and that he'd suffered enough. It was time for him to enjoy something. Anything. And then she'd kissed him again.

He'd insisted on throwing his orange-and-lime suit into the closet, but didn't seem to mind the way her red skirt had looked on his white carpet.

Making love to him had been an education. He played her like a fine instrument, coaxing notes and sighs and screams out of her like he was writing a song just for her. At some point, though, she'd noticed the look of concentration on his face. He was utterly intent on his task, and determined to perform it flawlessly. It struck her as a challenge. She reversed the tables, and set about breaking his concentration. She'd used her mouth, her fingers, even her hair, and while she got appreciative noises from him, still he had that look of calculation. It was infuriating. Finally, she'd slapped him. Hard.

He looked up at her in shock, and she squeezed him with her inner muscles, and finally, he gasped. He began to move again, and she caressed his cheek, running her hand down his neck, and then raked her nails down his chest, scratching cruelly over one nipple. He'd shuddered and moaned, and she smiled. From there, she had run the show, doling out pleasure and pain at her whim, leaving him helpless to do anything but enjoy the ride. Stevens couldn't predict, or control, or plan. He could only receive. He surrendered his control with such relief and joy and abandon that it made her want to cry. He dropped all his guards, or at least allowed her to tear them down forcefully, and she connected with him more deeply and personally than she'd even dreamed possible.

When she finally let him finish, he filled her with a white-hot radiance that was unlike anything. It filled her whole body with light, and lit her from within. Literally, her skin shone with a milky radiance that filled the room and made her eyes hurt. The warmth that filled her was like the heat from a fireplace after a day in the snow, and it made her whole body sizzle and tingle. She flung out one hand, seizing a handful of the blankets, and was unsurprised to see them smolder and smoke in her grasp.

"I was Ringmaster, once," he whispered. "But I couldn't control the show. I couldn't let it..."

"You couldn't let it control you."

He wept, and shook his head. "I couldn't just let it... change me. Remake me. And so it destroyed me."

She raised her arm, spreading her fingers wide and watching the shadows shift as her radiance dimmed. "You changed me."

And so he explained, about the power Celestine imbued him with at each stop, and the duties he was to fulfill. He explained how to send the soothing impulse, the "everything is fine" effect, and how the power could be used for other purposes. He explained how in his surrender she had taken it from him, and he flatly refused her offer to give it back. As pillow talk went, it was something new for her.

And then, now, Celestine's voice filled the room. Open the gates," he said. "Get the people out."

They both leaped out of bed, and Stevens began scrambling to get dressed. Eva pulled on her clothes, and as each item fell into place it shifted, and changed. Her skirt became black leather pants, her shoes knee-high boots. Her blouse became a red jacket, and she pulled a top hat out of thin air. Stevens, still in white boxers and tee shirt, gaped at her.

"You're right. This place is a madhouse. It needs some order. Somebody's got to run this show, and it's about time there was a Ringmaster again."

"But you can't," he stammered. "I couldn't control it..."

"I controlled you. We'll see." With a flick of a wrist, she summoned a riding crop, and thwacked it against her palm thoughtfully, eyeing his boxers. He shuffled back against the door. She shook her head, focusing again on the task at hand instead of thoughts best saved for later. "I've got work to do. Step aside." He did, his face pale.

Something tore the door off the hinges. It leaned into the trailer, multifaceted eyes leering above a huge vertical slit of a mouth, bristling with fangs. Several tongues lolled out, dropping spit that sizzled when it hit the floor and sporting black, serrated barbs. Four gigantic hands gripped the door frame, and heaved, warping the metal and tearing until the opening was large enough for its gigantic, misshapen bulk.

"God damn it!" Stevens shouted, stomping his foot like an old woman. "This is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about! Things like that," he pointed at the abomination easing into the small space, "do not belong in a well-ordered Carnival!"

Shocking as it was, there was still the fire burning in her breast, still the sense of duty that comforted her. Eva nodded. "Agreed." She lashed out with the riding crop, slashing the beast right between the eyes. Where she cut, a sudden gout of cool, lavender-scented air burst forth, and the thing was propelled out of the trailer. She followed it out, already ignoring it, and stalked off into the carnival. She was emitting the pulse now, sending waves of "Show's over, time to go." as she went. Stevens peeked out, and watched the monster zipping around in circles in the air, until finally a deflated, empty husk settled to the sawdust. It began to melt.

Hmmm, he thought. She might be good at this...

Then he decided he should probably go find some pants.

MrJames found he was rather enjoying himself.

Half a dozen customers sat around the table, faces shrouded by smoke and half-hidden by the low chandelier over the green felt tabletop. The car salesman, Cliff, was dealing, and the soldier between tours in Iraq was fiddling nervously with his chips. Finding the players had been easy. All it had needed was a sign hung on the Game booth, saying High stakes game in progress - please do not disturb. It drew them in like honey.

"Gentlemen… Lady," he added, as Miss Talm, a speechwriter for some politician or other, sneered. "What do you say we make this game a little more interesting?" There were some hems and haws, as quite a lot of money was already on the table. MrJames pulled a Spanish doubloon out of his vest pocket, and set it dancing over his knuckles. "Tell me; what has more value? Money, for what it can buy, or power, for what it can do? Or time, with which to do whatever you like?" The coin rolled, dancing over his knuckles as the players chattered.

Answers varied. Terry, the dentist, loudly insisted that money was power, so the question was meaningless. Sam, a city bus driver with an incongruous Masters degree in European History declared that with power, money and time could be arranged. Mr. James shook his head in disagreement. "I suggest that the real value, the only real commodity worth seeking, saving, or savoring, is time."

Larry, the out of work something-or-other who mysteriously had plenty of money to bet with, actually raised his hand. His eyes were locked on the dancing doubloon. "Um. Yeah. I can see that. It's why when you get convicted, they take away years of your life. You don't lose money, or like, have your fingers cut off. They lock you up for a length of time. Is that what you're getting at?"

MrJames blinked in surprise. "Yes, Larry, that's a very, very insightful point. Well done. I propose that we play a Game. Five card draw, shall we say a five-year ante?" There was a smell of ozone in the air, and the players gasped when they saw that their chips had become golden coins, each of them engraved with an hourglass motif. Larry reached out, poking the eleven coins before him. "What're these?" he rasped.

Miss Talm, though considerably older than Larry, had thirty coins in her stack. She caressed them, eyes gleaming. "They're years, aren't they?"

The dentist smiled, flashing his brilliant white choppers in an expression of naked hunger. "Oh, yeah. I'm in."

Mr. James dealt the cards, feeling the Game sizzle and pop like it never had before. He'd never played with a group of players like this, never had the Game respond to a game of skill. This was Ania's influence, he was sure. And he liked it! This opened up all sorts of new avenues, new permutations. The potential was staggering, that's what it was. "Why don't I have as many coins as the rest of these assholes?" Larry griped.

Cliff snickered. "Bad habits, I guess. Play for more. Looks like you need it, pal."

"Can I overbet?"

"Yes," Terry answered, eying his cards. Mr. James was interested to note that he had no idea what those cards were. The dentist's tells had all but vanished. He was having trouble reading any of them, which was damned odd, but somewhat invigorating. The sweet pleasure of the challenge hit him like a shot of whiskey. How long had it been? It was the Game, he realized. Equalizing the odds. This was still a game of skill, but it would damn well be a close game. "You'll just have to bet years of your afterlife." Even as the words were spoken, a pile of black-tarnished silver coins appeared. Well. That was unexpected.

Larry examined one of them, dropped it in disgust. "Fifty-to-one? Really? That blows!"

"Then don't lose,” Miss Talm replied. “I'll start with five more years." Clink, came the sound of the coins as she tossed out her opening bet.

The opening ante was five years. She was leading with a whole decade on the table. The other players were unfazed, tossing out coins like they were popcorn. This wasn't right. Where was the hesitation, the struggle between avarice and cowardice? Where was the buildup?

Larry was in trouble. The bet was now up to forty years, and he'd only had eleven. He was still in, but the fifty years of afterlife to one year of life conversion meant he'd bet almost fifteen hundred years. Nobody blinked. Sam was already over his limit, too, two hundred years into his afterlife coins. The bets continued to rise, and the Game began to tremble in his veins. Something was going wrong. Something was interfering.

He glanced under the table, and saw the rat squirming on its back in glee.

The gunshot was very, very loud in the small trailer.


*******************************************************


Becky laughed in glee as the puppy licked her face. "He's wonderful! Oh, Simba, thank you!"

The two ravens watched, oddly solemn. "Hey," Heckle muttered to his brother. "Does that mutt look, I dunno, familiar to you?"

Jeckle didn't look away from the pup, whose tail was wagging in unbridled joy. "I rather think it does, old chap. And yet, there's something..."

"Sumptin not quite right, am I right?"

"You are indeed. I don't like it."

Simba tried to ease the puppy away from the girl, but she was hugging it too tightly. "Child, I think you should exercise some caution," he rumbled. "That's no ordinary puppy. It is a wolf cub."

"Whosha big wolfie? Who's a big, bad, wolf? You are! Yes, you are!"

The lion-man looked down at the ravens, perched on their broken scarecrow. "Perhaps this was a bad idea."

"No kiddin’?"

The sound of footsteps caught their attention, and a woman came sprinting around the corner. Her face was bloodied, and she was clutching at her swollen belly with both hands. She tripped over one of the tent ropes, regained her feet, and ran closer to them, only to stagger and fall again, landing full on her face and groaning in agony. Simba rushed to her side. "Madam, are you hurt?" he asked, immediately feeling a fool. Of course she was hurt. There was blood on her, she reeked of pain and fear and food. She appeared very pregnant, as well, and close to full term. More footsteps. He looked up, and saw a child, perhaps eight years old. There was blood on his hands, and on his mouth. His eyes were vacant, mad. The blood on him smelled of the woman. Simba snarled, extending his claws.

"I say!" Jeckle called, flapping. "That's the lit'le wanker who took a bite out of our dummy!"

The child leapt, fingers extended like claws, intent on his prey. Simba met him halfway, roaring his challenge. Becky clutched the puppy protectively, and ducked halfway behind the corner of the nearest tent for shelter. Simba knocked the boy to the ground so hard she could feel the thud of his jaw hitting the ground in her feet. The boy didn't even blink. He lunged, sinking his teeth into Simba's leg, ripping free a mouthful of denim and calf muscle. He roared again, and struck the boy, this time with his claws. Long thin tendrils extended from the wound, wrapping around Simba’s arms and sinking into the flesh there. The woman whimpered, trying to crawl away, and Becky felt ashamed for hiding. She put the puppy down, and went to help her.

"Come on - I'll get you to the Doctor! He'll help you!"

The woman looked up at Becky, and opened her mouth, but no words came out. Becky saw the whites of her eyes fill with blood, and a stream of it spewed out of her mouth. Becky screamed, and danced back, her white canvas shoes stained a brilliant red. The woman wiggled forward, clutching at one of the tent spikes. Her spine arched, and something long, ropy, and yellow, slick with blood, erupted from her back. It had an eye on the end, which stared unblinkingly at the fight a few feet away. Becky screamed again, and fell on her ass. The puppy was there, suddenly, interposing itself between them, his hackles up, tiny teeth bared in a very serious-looking snarl.

Simba had rent the boy into small pieces by now, but there were a dozen leech-like things clinging to him. He was tearing at them, but even torn in half the smaller pieces seemed to be burrowing into him. He roared in agony and rage and frustration, and fell to his knees.

The woman on the ground was weeping, vomiting blood with every breath, and waving at Becky. Was she trying to beg for help? There were three of the tentacles now, and the woman's belly was churning, as something tried to work its way out of her. Becky heard the poor woman's spine snap as a fourth bloody yellow worm erupted, and to her horror she saw a row of tiny mouths, ringed in dagger teeth, open along its length. She couldn't move. She knew she should help the lady, but she had no idea how! She knew she should run, far away, but she couldn't bring herself to move. The woman pulled herself forward another three inches with her arms, heaved herself upward, and brought her head down, hard, on the tent spike. It emerged from the back of her head, bone and brain and more of the awful yellow tendrils following the steel. The lady's hair was a beautiful blond, almost matching the tentacles. Becky fainted.


********************************************************


Roger was strolling down the midway, whistling. He wanted to be nearer the gates when the paramedics arrived, so he could jam them open. He wondered what sort of mechanism they were using to seal the place. Pocket realm? Spatial inversion? Temporal loop? Whatever it was, it'd be simple to put a metaphysical toe in the door once it was open. And much easier than smashing it open. Besides. He might want to close it himself, later. If Father ever saw this place, he'd be all over it. And Roger didn't much feel like sharing. He felt a tap on his shoulder.

Without turning, he said "Oh, crap. The clown."

Violent Clay grabbed Roger by the ankles, and heaved him up and around. Roger had time to see the approaching electrical pole before his face smashed right through it. The hell-clown giggled, shifting his grip and bringing Roger's face down onto the stump of the pole, again and again, splintering it. "Can't" "we" "talk" "this" "over?"

The clown seized his jaw in his immense left hand, and forced the live end of the electrical wire down his throat. He held him by the shoulders as he kicked Roger in the crotch hard enough to shatter steel. He folded him in half over his knee, backwards, cackling in delight at the sound of popping vertebrae. The clown beat him, and broke him. He was hammered onto things, and heavy objects were pounded onto him. He was ripped, gouged, torn and shattered, over and over and over again.

Roger was getting tired of this.

The clown pulled back his giant fist yet again, relentless as the tide, and Roger told him to die. The clown fell to the earth, an inert corpse.

Roger stood up, checking to make sure all of his bones were more or less in order, and brushing sawdust and splinters off his pants. Shattered bones knit, and torn flesh sealed itself again. He examined his sunglasses, but they were a lost cause. Damn, those had been expensive, too. He spat on the clown, irritated at the loss of the expensive accessory. What was it with the undead, anyway? It was always go, go, go, never a moment to stop and listen and reassess. Really. Some people just wouldn't listen to reason.

The clown twitched, and Roger frowned at it. The hand, the big one, clenched into a fist, and there was a raspy giggle. Roger told it to die again, his words making the very air ripple and shudder. It died. He gave it a kick, but it just lay there, smelling bad. Stubborn thing.

He walked off, getting about six steps when he heard a soft chuckle. "That the best you got?"

"Oh, come on!" he spun around, and incredibly, the damned thing was back on its feet. "Can't you take a fucking hint?"

The clown smiled, even wider than usual and pulled a little bicycle horn out of a pocket. "Nope." He honked it, twice. meep, meep. The ground shuddered, and corpses began pulling themselves out of shallow graves all around them. Rotten meat on grinning skulls, with big red noses and silly wigs. Spinning bow ties and baggy pants worn over rancid, dead flesh emerged all around Roger, and from everywhere came the hideous giggling and laughter. "Can you?"


*****************************************************************


Mr. James ushered everyone out, everyone except Sam and Larry that is. They'd keeled over dead on the spot when Miss Talm had been declared the winner. She'd won almost four hundred years added to her lifespan, with Sam serving most of that as her spiritual valet and Larry already off in Purgatory, putting his time to use expiating her sins the hard way. Greed was twitching on the floor, blown into two pieces but still twitching, still hanging in there.

"That was a very good Game, Greed. Something new, something interesting. And you had to come along and interfere. I will not have it, Greed. I will not." He put the two pieces close to each other, and waited while they knitted back together. "Can you give me a good reason why I shouldn't just end you right now?" He sounded genuinely curious, not mad at all.

The rat grew, swelling into a greasy, smelly man. He glared at the gambler with eyes bloodshot and insane, gray veins pulsing under his skin. He hissed, and sent his talons deep into the mind of the man in the green visor, the one who'd shot him. He found vast reservoirs of greed waiting him there, whole oceans of it, the likes of which he'd never dreamed of. He lashed out, trying to break the dams restraining it...

...and found nothing.

The gambler smiled. "What? Trying to make me salivate over loose change? Should I go through your pockets? Greed, really. I want it all. And I'll get it, too. Wheels are already in motion. I don't need you to help with that. All I need is time." The pearl-handled revolver appeared in his hand again, like magic, and the barrel was suddenly pressed hard up under Greed's jaw. "And I'd have had rather more time to work toward my goals, had you not fucked around in my Game!" Frantically, Greed tried something he'd never tried before. He tried to suppress his vice, to wall up the gambler's vast seas of wanting. Put him at ease, get him to relax… He was too slow. The gun went off, blowing the top of his head into mist.

Mr. James rather enjoyed that. He waited for the wererat to regenerate, and then did it again. And a third time. And then a fourth, this time forcing the gun barrel up the little snot's nose. While that wound healed, he watched thoughtfully. "You know, you're healing that awfully fast. Too fast, really. You've been feeding, haven't you? Feeding deeply." A fifth time. He began to reload, while the Sin twitched helplessly and healed. "I don't think you're entirely responsible for all this. What's with your veins, all bulging and gray like that? And since when were you stupid enough to fuck with what's mine? B.B. taught you better than that. I taught you better than that."

Awareness returned to the ratman's eyes, again. He wished he could put off healing, play possum or something. But he couldn’t. Which meant that this could go on and on and on… "Please!" he whined. "No more! I'm sorry!" Want nothing, you need nothing, you're content.... Mr. James shot him again, in the crotch this time. Greed squealed, clutching at his groin and sobbing.

"Stop fucking with me."

"Okay, okay, please! I beg of you!"

"'I beg of you?' Who actually says that?" This time the bullet hit him in the heart. “I will not tolerate such corny dialogue, am I clear? If you can’t say what’s on your mind without resorting to cliché, then you’re not even communicating at all. You’re just quoting.”

When Greed had regenerated enough to talk, he screamed. "Wrath, stop it! He's killing me!"

The gambler looked around the room. "Sorry, rat man, no Wrath here. Just you, and me." He leaned in, very close, looking over the lenses of his green glasses into the shifter's beady little eyes. "I'm just this mean. Can you stop fucking with me?"

"Yes! Yes, I stopped!" The gambler stood up, the gun vanishing again. Greed writhed on the floor, the overturned card table behind him, blood and poker chips and cards everywhere. His eyes were frantic, terrified... but sane. The odd traceries of his veins were gone, and his complexion, such as it was, was once again normal.

"So you have. You can live." He opened a cabinet, and pulled out a plastic bucket and a handful of rags. "Are all the Sins out on a feeding frenzy?"

"Yeah..." He gagged, coughed. A bullet popped out of his mouth, landing in the blood on the floor with a plop. "It's just... all the reasons not to stopped mattering. It was like, you know, at a dog race? When the fake bunny takes off, and the gates open, and there’s that moment… When the dogs really want to chase it, but can’t quite believe the gates are open? And then they take off after it, and you can tell they’re so happy, like it’s Christmas and sex and money and an all-you-can eat buffet rolled into one! It was like that.”

"Those reasons not to run off like that? They matter."

"Yeah! They do! I see that now!"

"Clean this place up. And don't touch anything you shouldn't." He opened the door, stepped out and looked back at the rat man. "I'll know if you do. And we'll have another talk. A longer talk."

Greed, who'd managed to hold his water through six head shots, peed himself. He had to warn the others! Had to warn B.B.!

But first, he'd better clean this mess up.


********************************************


The big man with the metal arm was helping Simba to his feet. The puppy was licking Becky's face, trying to wake her. Heckle and Jeckle were watching the proceedings from their perch. "Dash cunning, I thought, the way he threw lightning at that wretched creature."

"Oh, yeah, dat was really sumptin. And da way he got dose tings ta drop offa Simba like that. What wuzzit he said?"

"'The power of Todd compels you.'"

"Yeah, dat was it."

"And then they all burst into flame, for no discernable reason."

"Right, right, dat was good, too. I liked dat part."

Simba looked at the boy who'd saved him. He had to be only sixteen or seventeen, but his eyes held the wisdom of ages. He had a mechanical arm, and bits of wire and steel seemed to be extending from the arm into the rest of him. He vented steam sometimes, when he moved. One of his eyes was gone entirely, replaced by a large lens occasionally whirred and clicked, and changed colors. It was blue at the moment, but had been red when he had commanded the creatures to fall and burn. The boy was whispering a prayer, and Simba could feel his wounds closing. Who was this boy? Some creation of Weaver's?

"They call me Thunk."

"Thank you, Thunk. Would you help me with the girl? I should take her to Celestine. She's... delicate."

"I would also like to see Celestine. He can open the Way."

Simba hesitated. People who talked in capital letters like that were dangerous people. "What Way?"

"The way to Todd. Believe in Todd, and Todd shall set you Free. I see now the Truth, and I must spread the Word. It is needed."

Simba didn't question. Thunk lifted Becky, and, after watching the wolf pup yip and leap, picked him up, too. Simba limped over, grabbing the scarecrow. "You two come with me. You're witnesses. The Doctor will want to hear what you saw here."

"Okay, okay. Just go easy on da scarecrow, dere! It's losing stuffin'!" They settled on his shoulders, while he scented the air.

"This way."


***************************************************************


Hank carefully put his hand on Aimee's shoulder. "It's okay, honey, you're safe." She wept, covering her face with her only hand, waving him off with her stump.

Neither of them saw the figure of Frank N. Furter shift, or saw the three other creatures climb silently out of it.

"Aimee, look, I don't care what you look like. I love you!" She froze. Hank kicked himself, mentally. Idiot! Too soon! "I mean, I know you! I like you! We're friends! I knew you when you were dancing for Bloody Mary, all vamping it up for the amputee-fetishists. I knew you when Dante was teaching you to sculpt, and he made you that awful mask. You're not 'the' Masque, Lady of the House of Wax, not to me. You're Aimee. And... I love Aimee."

She was looking up at him, her eye wide and bloodshot. Her glass eye had fallen out somewhere, but he didn't care. God, he wished she'd say something! Anything! But she just looked up at him, silent. Hank decided to go for broke. "Aimee, I knew you before, too. Before the accident. I loved you then, from the moment I saw you on television, at the pageant. But it wasn't just the way you looked. It was the way you spoke, the way you carried yourself. It was you, and... Well... I followed you here. The Carnival of Souls kind of took you in, but me? I practically volunteered! I came here willingly, to be close to you."

Behind them, the three creatures flowed onto one another, oozing and bleeding into each other. Eyes formed, and fixed on the prey, only a few feet away.

Aimee looked down, and picked up her voice box. She stood and hobbled away, toward the vat of hot wax in the corner. Hank stood there, watching her. Why didn't she say anything? Oh, God, he'd ruined everything! This wasn't the way he'd wanted it to happen!

She rested her hand on the edge of the vat, looking at the bubbling wax. Hank approached her, carefully, as if she were a skittish rabbit. "Don't hide from me, Aimee. It's you I love!" he whispered. She shook her head, violently. When he reached out for her, she swatted his hand away. She moaned, a long, drawn-out expression of unspeakable pain, and plunged her head into the hot wax.

"No!" He tried to pull her out, he reached in after her, scalding his hands horribly. She was stronger than him, shockingly, and once again shrugged him off. "Aimee, no! Aimee, don't do this! Please, don't leave me like this!" He sobbed, holding his hands up against his chest as she writhed, half submerged in the bubbling vat. “Don’t die, baby, not now!” They were lobster red, twisted into claws and already swelling, the burns going deep to the bone. Where the wax clung to him there was no pain, and he knew that was a bad sign, but all he could think about was Aimee, with her face in there, burning and suffocating and dying rather than face accepting that someone could love her! That Hank loved her. The pain in his stomach, his breaking heart, throbbed deeper and more painfully than his ruined hands.

The things behind them were a single thing now, and it was working on talons, and teeth. There were a great many examples in the room to inspire it, wax monstrosities of every shape and size. And the prey was busy. It could feel their suffering, and longed for more. It approached them.

Aimee stood, shocking Hank. She turned, and her face was a smooth, perfect mask once more. Even as he watched, the wax flowed down her body, covering her wounds and scars and molding itself into bland, feminine anonymity. Her eyes both appeared empty now, though he knew she could see him, and when she spoke her sculpted rosebud mouth did not move. "Aimee is dead, Hank. I'm sorry. I thought you knew that. I am Masque. I am the House of Wax." The voice box was still in her hand. She crushed it, casually. She didn't need it anymore.

The creature tensed, ready to leap. It had heavy, muscular arms, and heavy armored scales. It bristled with claws and spikes and teeth. It had too many heads, with too many mouths and eyes, and its joints moved in ways things from this earth simply do not. Something grabbed its leg.

Masque looked down at Hank, who had fallen to his knees. He looked up at this empty mannequin that had once been a beautiful flower of a girl, and for the first time, he was afraid of her. "Aimee was a victim, Hank. I think that's what you loved about her, because really, you weren't a very nice man, were you? But Masque?" She pointed over his shoulder. He looked, and saw the creature a few feet away. Saw the horde of mannequins and dummies methodically and silently rending it apart. It thrashed and fought, and wax figures fell, only to reform and rejoin the fray. It gasped for breath, fighting for its life. The figures moved and fought in total silence, their faces serene and calm as they tore and pulled and broke it.

"Masque is no victim, Hank. Masque is one of the monsters."


*************************************************************


Celestine sensed everything in his Carnival. He reeled, fell to one knee, clutching his cane and hissing in horror and pain and surprise and pride.

He felt Dana, speaking in hushed whispers with Ania, surrounded by mirrors, while things searched for them, coming ever closer and closer.

He felt Ambrosia, watching him right back, her face full of compassion and pity, with a hint of a smile in her eyes.

He felt Masque, finally rising into her role and her power, blooming like a plastic rose, and Hank, whose heart was being ripped out with an utter finality that was almost poetry.

He felt Brick, hovering on the razor’s edge between life and death, and wondering which he would prefer. Both options were full of scary things.

He felt Violent Clay, and his overwhelming joy at the prospect of a truly challenging foe. He felt the presence of the clown’s opponent, like a flake of broken glass in between his teeth. It was alien, and dangerous, and it did not belong here in the Carnival.

He felt Dav, torn between loyalty and friendship, and was astonished to recognize the faint presence of Mary, just outside, talking to him. What was she doing here?

He felt Stevens, lost in his abandonment of duty, and blissfully at peace in the arms of a woman. He was in his trailer, with Eva, and the two of them were embraced in sweaty, passionate exertion.

He felt Mr. James, a beacon of cold anger and resolve, and not a little satisfaction. He was approaching, coming closer. Good.

He felt the Sins and B.B., almost entirely awash in utter madness. The insanity had a familiar flavor to it, and it took him a moment to recognize it. Moon. This was the madness Mary had come to the Carnival to purge.

He felt Weaver, knees atremble but heart asoar as he captivated the masses in the big top. Weaver knew that the longer they stayed in the tent, the more of them would live. Danger walked the midway, and if these souls were to survive the day, then the show must go on.

And he felt death. People were dying everywhere he looked. Things were stalking his carnival, and the people had nowhere to run. People died in pain, and of fear, at their own hands and at the hands of loved ones. People were being eaten, body and soul, and people were fading, falling into the lower layers of the Carnival as if seeking safety there, only to find that the chaos above was as nothing compared to what was being wrought down below.

Gods and monsters were dying by the scores, a great wildfire tempest consuming all it touched. What in the name of the first Gods was Todd doing down there? And how much of the clusterfuck up here was because of what was happening below? Or vice versa? He was mowing through the Underside like a combine harvester, and the denizens of that realm were throwing themselves at him, desperate to stop him but powerless to resist the onslaught.

He felt like he needed a drink. "Stand up, boss. People will think you're drunk."

Mr. James helped him to his feet. "I..." Celestine said.

"Yup." the gambler agreed.

"And they..."

"Looks that way." He lit two Nat Shermans, passing one to the Doctor. He arched an eyebrow at the gloveless hand that took it, but said nothing.

"Goddammit."

Mr. James nodded again, smiling a little. "Every fucking time, you bet. Look sharp, here comes the girl."

Celestine looked over his shoulder, and saw the last person he wanted to deal with at the moment. Becky was unsteady on her feet, leaning on a half-clockwork man and carrying a... a puppy? Simba was with them, too, the ravens on his shoulder and a mostly-deflated scarecrow dragging along at his side. Mr. James snickered.

"Doctor, thank God you're all right!" she gushed, running over to embrace him, only to be stopped short by his cane, prodding her in the chest and keeping her at a distance. She put the puppy down, and, of course, it was a wolf cub. Why not? Simba stopped at her side, frowning as only his leonine face could frown.

"Sir," he said. There are creatures..."

"I know." Mr. James chuckled.

The clockwork man stepped up. "If I may, mister Doctor sir? I just need to get to Todd. Would you be so good as to open the Way?" The pup barked up at him, wagging its tail.

"Thunk, right? Nice hardware. Not now." Mr. James coughed, badly concealing a laugh.

Simba dropped the scarecrow in frustration, causing it to spill more of its straw out onto the sawdust. Heckle and Jeckle squawked in protest, and fluttered down, trying to gather what they could. Becky was weeping, confused and hurt and still shaken by the horror of what she'd seen. Mr. James laughed out loud, and had to wipe his eyes.

Celestine turned on him. "What? What the hell is so fucking funny?"

The gambler wheezed, snickering so hard he dropped his cigarette. "Look at them! Won't you just look at them? You'll see it!"

Celestine looked.

Thunk stood there impassively, bits of him clicking and whirring and hissing steam. He seemed as patient as the hills, and as implacable as progress itself. There was something changed about him, since he’d been in Celestine’s trailer with Todd and the hellfire mason jar. He seemed older, somehow. Wiser. Oh, and half robotic.

Simba stood scowling. He was wounded in a dozen places, his clothes a ruin, his fur matted and scabbed. He wanted action, or, failing that, he wanted to see that the people in charge were taking action. He was unhappy.

Heckle and Jeckle were trying to salvage what straw they could, stuffing bits into the scarecrow only to have them plucked right out again by the wolf cub, who thought this was a delightful game. The birds would occasionally peck at him, which would inspire him to snarl at them, an effect largely ruined by his wagging hindquarters.

Becky was looking at him with wide eyes brimming with tears. Her blue gingham blouse was torn and stained, and her shoes were bright red with fresh blood. She wanted him to wave a magic wand and make everything better. Hell, they all wanted that. Didn’t they know that it wasn’t that easy? That things just don’t work like that? How dare they put all their faith in him, when all this was their fault, when they could damn well fix their problems themselves if they’d just stop simpering for one damn minute… Mr. James cackled.

"What?" he repeated, as Mr. James clutched at his shoulder, giggling. "Don't tell me you've lost it, too."

The gambler said something, but was too busy wheezing and gasping in laughter to say it clearly. Celestine scowled, and considered beating the crazy out him. Finally, the gambler rallied, pointed at the others again, and gasped "I'll miss you most of all, scarecrow!" and promptly launched off into laughter again.

Just then, Samson, the midget who worked the candy concessions came running up. "Doctor! Some kind of monster is tearing up the concession stands! I, I, I think it's one of Mr. Wolfe's people!"

"And the lollipop guild won't stand for it!" Mr. James gasped, and laughed so hard he fell on his ass, where the puppy promptly hopped up onto him and started licking at his face. "And your little dog, too!" he cried.

Celestine took in the scene, and laughed so hard he fell down right next to the gambler.

They laughed until their sides were fit to burst, until the tears were soaking their shirts. They laughed until they couldn't laugh anymore, and then Thunk asked if they were all right, and Celestine told him that see, he'd had a heart all along, and that set them both off again. Simba tried to ask Celestine to take this seriously, he'd almost been killed, but Mr. James tossed his handkerchief over Celestine's face and told Simba to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, and the two of them actually had to hug each other to remain semi-upright they were laughing so hard.

A child materialized out of nowhere, radiating white-hot fury. It was a girl, with strawberry-blond locks much like Becky's, wearing desert camo fatigue pants and combat boots, and an olive green tank top. "Will you stop all that laughing, you cocksucking motherfucking bastards! Who do I have to gut to get you fucking angry?" Grey capillary patterns covered her skin, and she was holding a machete that wavered in her trembling grip. Simba snarled and unsheathed his claws, and the puppy growled a threat.

Celestine cocked his head, and wiped at his eyes. "Wrath, right? What are you doing out of your box? And what's wrong with your skin?"

A cream pie came out of nowhere, and hit Wrath smack dab in the face. Celestine roared in laughter, pointing and looking over at the gambler, to see if Mr. James had seen what he had just seen. Wrath wiped the pie out of her eyes, shaking with fury. "Who the fuck threw that?"

A pink blur tackled Wrath from behind, Tiffany, cackling in glee! "Surpriiiise!" She tried to dribble the Sin, but didn't find her bouncy enough. She pummeled her severely while the others watched. Celestine applauded at one point, when Tiffany used the seltzer-bottle-full-of-acid gag. Wrath tried to vanish, only to have Tiffany cry "Oh, no you don't!" and grab her by the nape of the neck, and try to stuff her into the fry vat of a corn dog cart. Mr. James started taking notes when Tiffany made Wrath eat that machete the hard way. The two of them fought bitterly, and loudly, and the battle soon enough took them out of sight.

"Well." Celestine said, getting back to his feet. "Was that Tiffany?"

"Yep." Mr. James was brushing sawdust off the back of Celestine's jacket. "Sure was."

"Was she... helping?"

"Yep."

"Well. You don't see that every day, do you?"

Thunk was looking up. "Mister Doctor sir, you may want to move."

Celestine, by now in less of a mood for comedy, moved. A slender redhead came plummeting out of the sky and slammed into the ground where he'd been standing. Becky shrieked. Sloth was hanging onto the newcomer’s throat with a death grip, and while he didn't seem to be actively hurting her, he refused to let go. Pride came tearing through the wall of the beer tent, bellowing "Still think you're all that? Still think you have even half a chance? Come on, bitch!"

Mr. James watched the iron giant approach, while the redhead kicked Sloth and tried to get to her feet. "Oh, yeah. B.B.'s Sins are on something of a rampage.” Celestine frowned. “All but Greed, that is. I scared the crazy out of him. And Tiffany's working on Wrath. Should work, too. Sometimes you fight fire with fire and you just get a really big fire. Same principles at work."

"Good to know," the Doctor replied.

Alice wrenched herself free of Sloth, and moved so her back was against a lemonade stand. The two Sins were flanking her, preparing for another rush. Celestine was just about to intervene... when suddenly he felt a rumble.

The wolf pup was growling. Loudly. So loudly Celestine could feel the growl as much as he could hear it. The redheaded woman was looking at the wolf cub, her face a blend of horror and glee and resignation. Celestine looked closer. There was darkness in this woman, something unclean and, while not wholly evil, certainly utterly amoral. More, there was some of that same darkness in the wolf pup. The greater darkness was calling to the lesser, and the lesser was responding. As he watched, the cub snarled again, showing a mouth full of cracked, razor-sharp, yellow teeth. It stalked closer to Pride and Sloth, growing larger with every step. It was the size of a full grown wolf. Then it was larger. He thought at first it was a shape shifter, after all, wasn't the Carnival a little low on the werewolf quota at the moment? But it kept getting bigger, and as it did, it got more wolflike, not less. Massive shoulders hunched up, a gaping maw slavered, and when it leapt at Sloth, it was a direwolf the size of a horse that hit him.

The woman was weeping, even as she slapped her hand on Pride's chest. Her bones flared black as Pride jerked under the electrical assault. "No!" she cried. "I didn't want this!" Celestine saw her Shadow rear, flaring wisps of hunger like wings at her back, as she took from Pride everything he'd taken from her, and more. More, he saw the direwolf mauling Sloth, and it, too, fed on his power, channeling it to the redhead.

Pride fell, out cold, and Sloth passed out. The woman fell to her knees, sobbing, and absently gestured at the direwolf, who loped over to her, shrinking as he went, until it was once again a puppy who sat in front of her, looking up at her and whining a little. It hesitantly wagged its tail and yipped a little, checking to see that she was all right. It was her creature now, as sure as the Seven Deadlies were B.B.'s creatures.

Mr. James was looking at the wolf cub curiously. "Hey, boss man. Does that cub look familiar to you?"

The ravens perked up at that. "Yes," Jeckle called out. "We thought the same bloody thing. But it simply can't be a cub of Fenrir's. We left him in Niflheim a long, long time ago. No way out."

"No, I mean its markings. Doesn't it look like Mary to you?"

Celestine went very, very still.

This had officially gone too far. "Open the Gates." he said. "Get the people out." He knelt down next to the redhead. "You must be Black Alice, am I right?" She nodded, unable to look away from the wagging puppy with blood on its muzzle, gazing up at her in slavish adoration. He lifted a lock of her coppery auburn hair, letting it trail through his fingers. "Of course you are." He sighed. "There's someone you should meet."

Thunk raised his hand. "If I could just..."

Mr. James rolled his eyes. "Oh, for pity's sake!" He flipped a coin, caught it, and glared at the clockwork prophet. "Call it."

"Heads?" Thunk vanished.

"You're welcome."

A horn sounded, over near the big top, and Simba perked his ears. "That is the master! I have to go!" He dashed away, and was gone in an instant.

Becky looked around. Pride was smoldering on the sawdust. Sloth was rent and torn until he was almost turned inside out. Despite this, his left hand was sluggishly trying to roll a joint. Her puppy was some kind of monster and had apparently fallen in love with the Energizer Bunny. Celestine looked like he’d just had a child die, and the gambler was still sitting cross-legged in the sawdust, smoking and looking at her like he was waiting for her to say something. So she did. "I'm confused." This made Mr. James laugh again.

Back in black, I hit the sack,
I've been too long, I'm glad to be back
Yes I'm let loose from the noose,
That's kept me hangin' about
-- Back in Black, AC/DC

     Dav knelt in the toothpick rubble of his booth, sifting through the wreckage, salvaging what he could. A roll of Rainbow Brite stickers. First edition manga in plastic sleeves. A signed copy of Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter.
     As he worked, a shadow fell over him. He glanced up, eyebrows coming down as he prepared to snap at whomever was interrupting him at his work. The snippy remark died on his tongue, eyes widening. A woman stood over him, just at the border of the Carnival and the parking lot, tall and strong, flowing black skirt, red tank-top, bare arms carved in muscle and scars. Her face was leaner than Dav remembered, lines at the eyes and around the mouth that hadn't been there before, and her long mane of black hair was shot through with white. The eye patch was new, too, but it was still Mary, grinning her wolfish grin around the butt of a cigar. She was also holding a woman, limp, unconscious, over her shoulder.
     “Mary? Do mine eyes deceive?” Dav asked softly.
     “Hardly. How you been, Dav?” She dropped the woman on the ground, drawing the cigar from her mouth and blowing a smoke ring. “I was in the area, and found this. I think it belongs to you guys.”
     Dav glanced down, recognized Lust, considerably worse for wear. She wore the face of a beauty queen and the body of a porn star, tarted up in a short red dress and heels that would break a mortal woman's ankles. Her dress was torn and stained dark, chest scratched and livid, nails broken, as though she'd been clawing at herself, and her veins were gray under her fair skin, a network tracery. He looked back up, past Mary, to the man behind her. He was tall, lean, long silvery dark hair pulled back, t-shirt and jeans, and he had BB Wolfe firmly by the arm.
     BB's face was marred by four long red scars, and he was grinning, as though he were having a great time.
     Mary followed Dav's gaze back towards the Carny. She heaved a sigh. “You want to let us in? If I have to listen to this asshole for five more seconds, I swear, I'm feeding him to the puppies.”

* * *

     “Hey. Alice.”
     Alice stopped, flicked ashes, more resigned than wary. She turned, finding no one. She glanced around, brows furrowing in confusion.
     “Hey.”
     The voice was reedy, drawling. Alice spun slowly, looking for the owner. There were people all around, but no one looking at her or paying her any mind.
     “Alice.”
     She spotted him, sitting on a bench in the gray shadow of a tent offering vintage pictures in Old West costumes. He was young, twenties, maybe, and thin, emaciated. His hair was the indeterminate color of grease, long, lank curls hanging in his face. His skin was pasty white, shined with a sheen of sweat, and stretched taught over his skeleton frame. His clothes hung on him, shirt like a tent, cargo pants drifting around legs like pencils. His eyes were a dull, washed-out gray.
     He was staring at Alice. After a long moment, he managed to wave her over. It looked like it took an unfathomable amount of effort to complete the gesture.
     Alice stiffened, and now a chill of wariness chased down her spine. It was one of them. She could see it in him. Well, that's what I was looking for, she thought. She approached, eying the thing. He looked pitiful, starved. She flicked her cigarette away and tucked her hands into her pockets, feeling the sharp bones of her hips against her hands. She wasn't as thin as he, but she wasn't far behind, either. Starvation was Alice's choice, though. Made the Shadow easier to control. She wondered what his excuse was. Perhaps he was out of favor with his master?
     “What?” Her tone was terse as she stared down at him, nose wrinkling as his body odor stink wafted up to her. It smelled like he hadn't seen the inside of a shower stall in years.
     “Sit down, man.” He glanced at the spot next to him, back up to Alice.
     “Nah.” She didn't want to get any closer to that stink than she had to.
     “You gotta be tired by now. Sit. I ain't after you.”
     She raised her eyebrows, doubtful. She debated sitting down. She was tired. It had been a long night that wasn't showing any signs of ending any time soon. She examined the tiredness. Was it hers? Something he was doing? She'd certainly run around enough tonight to come by it honest.
     “Sloth.”
     “That's me.” His reedy voice was wan, lifeless, the voice of a stoner completely blasted out of his mind.
     Alice was fascinated despite her better judgment. These creatures of Wolfe's, they were like looking at memories she didn't know she'd had. They were like ghosts, come back to haunt her, ringing bells that echoed through the hollow halls of her mind. And they suffered so, in their forms. She remembered Gluttony's heaving, gusting breath, pained, lumbering walk. This kid here, too.
     “Are you actually too damn lazy to hunt?” She asked, quirking an eyebrow up. She'd met plenty of hunters in her time, starved predators, who wouldn't eat for various reasons. Whining vampires who wouldn't drink because they thought humans were goddamn puppies or something, subsisting on rats and whatever other vermin came their way. A frigid succubus, once. That must be a special kind of hell, she mused. It had never crossed Alice's mind to feel bad about feeding the Shadow. It was just something that had to be done. And, truth be told, it was fun.
     “Lotta effort, hunting.” Sloth finally replied. “Usually they come to me.” He managed a slow smile. It wasn't a very friendly smile. His teeth were black, rotting.
     Alice considered stepping back. How far back would she need to get, to be out of his range? Under the right circumstances, she could feed from yards away. She preferred to be up close and personal, but that wasn't necessary.
     Of course, this thing wasn't like her, was he? He had a soul, for one thing, packed down tight until it was nothing more than a compacted ball of energy swirled through with blackness. He was a human being, remade into this shape. Did he eat anything but the bits of soul his master gave him? Did he use the bathroom? Sleep? Maybe get laid or something? Anything? And, he had no Shadow of his own. The need in him was put there by his master.
     For a split second, Alice remembered it. She remembered the emptiness, the lack of will, the echoing void that was filled only when she was let to use a master's hunger. Then the sensation was gone.
     She shivered.
     “What was it like?” He asked. “When you became?”
     She almost asked, became what?, and realized what he meant before the words got out of her mouth. What had it been like when she'd got the Shadow?
     “I don't know.” Alice said, staring at him. “I don't remember it.”
     “How do you not remember something like that?”
     Alice shrugged. “I guess having your soul eaten is bad for the memory.”
     “So I won't remember any of this shit?”
     Was there something hopeful in his tone? Alice was pretty sure there was. She wondered what these poor bastards had done to be given to Wolfe, to be remade like this. She wondered if they remembered what they used to be. Was this a punishment, or had Wolfe simply taken them? Had this Doctor Celestine given his own people to be made into these creatures, or were they built out of customers?
     “Couldn't tell you.” Alice said, tone clipped off tight, and in between heart beats, she remembered screaming, screaming and holding on tight to a dead woman, green eyes just like her own only sightless, empty, staring back at her. She remembered rough hands on her arms, and she remembered how the screams had felt in her throat, stretching, aching. She remembered being torn away from the woman.
     “Sit for a minute.” He whispered. “Sit and tell me.”
     Alice heard the screaming in the back of her mind, and felt very tired. She sat.

* * *

     Dav blinked, mind spinning. Had he heard that right? Was he seeing this right? Could this actually be Mary, returned? But the Carnies never returned, not in all his time manning the gates had Dav ever seen a Carnie return.
     “Forgive me – did I hear aright? Puppies?”
     Mary flicked ashes from the cigar, a little smile tugging at her lips. “Yeah, you heard it right. Heard you in the area. Thought I'd come by and visit the old home place, bring the kids by to meet everyone. I found him getting into trouble along the way.” She hooked her thumb back at BB.
     Dav struggled to wrap his head around the idea of Bloody Mary, Mistress of the Freak Show, with a litter of puppies. Not even a couple of kids and a husband, which would have been difficult enough, but a litter of puppies, and a – a mate? He glanced at the man behind Mary, who had the same animal grace as Mary, the same feral yellow eyes. He was definitely not Dante, the artist, and hadn't Mary and Dante been a bit of an item?
     “But – what of Dante?” He finally asked, unable to contain his curiosity.
     “Who?” Mary's brows furrowed in a frown. “Oh, him. Whatever happened to him, anyways?”
     “Sooth, I thought he departed with you, Mary.”
     “Jeez, no. He left before me. After the Big Top show, and Mr. James took the creativity back.” Her eyes lit up, smile returning. “How is James, by the way? He still around? He must be. You remember him, Fen, I told you about him? He was the one with the silver dust.” She said this last over her shoulder to the man, and his eyes widened, impressed. “And Aimee? How did Aimee turn out?”
     “Aimee – Masque, she does well, and the House of Wax serves the Carnival fairly.” Dav managed, glancing between Mary and her gentleman friend. If that was the right term to apply.
     “Good, good. I always knew the gal had potential.” She glanced towards the gates, which stood on their own, unsupported by poles or fences. “Say, Dav, you mind?”
     Dav followed her glance to the gates, face falling. “I cannot, for they've been ordered closed.”
     “Um, Dav?” Mary pointed back at BB with her cigar. “Because I'm certainly not standing here all night with this fucker.”
     “What did I ever do to you, Mary?” BB said, mock plaintive. “I mean, besides chase you out of your own attraction with your tail between your legs?” He grinned, sly, as the hit went home and Mary rumbled a growl from deep in her chest.
     She glared, heated, then turned back to Dav. “You have to at least let him back in. If you leave him out here with me, I'm killing him. And Doc will be pissy about that.” She bit her cigar between her sharp, white teeth, drawing in pungent smoke and getting a hold of her temper. “Besides, his whore here isn't doing very well.” She toed the unconscious Lust.
     “What has become of her?” Dav asked, eying the sickly-looking Sin.
     “Bit off more than she could chew, didn't agree with her.” She studied the gate. “I could just toss him over the top. I bet I could get at least twenty feet of air. He's little.” Her man laughed softly, behind them, and BB shot him an aggrieved look.
     “C'mon, Dav, let us in.” BB said, turning his sly grin back on Dav. “It'll be fun. Mary's puppy hunting. She's almost as a good a mother as she was at running the Freak Show. She lost one in there.”
     A frisson of tension ran all through Mary at his words, and she turned, slowly, pitching the cigar away into the darkness. She leaned over close to the Carnie and said, voice low and ominous, “Y'know, I know you can patch yourself back together almost as well as I can, but I'm really curious as to how much I can hurt you before you run out of the energy to do it with.”
     BB's grin hardened, eyes flashing. “It'll be awhile.”
     “I have a lot of time, and a lot of help.” Mary smiled, showing her teeth.
     “Mary, please. Let me speak with the Doctor, and see what may be done. Surely he'll allow you in.” Dav held his hands out, a helpless gesture to forestall the violence he felt building in the air.
     Mary turned from BB, her eye hot and angry. “It's your gate, Dav. Just open the fucking thing.”
     “You've really lost one of thine within?”
     “Yes.” Her jaw was clenched tight, and she snapped an irritated look back at her man. “We lost one while we were dealing with the asshole.”

* * *

     “Just relax.” Sloth said, staring out at the crowd. “No point rushing. Not much to get after, really. Tell me about it. What's it like?”
     “Not much to tell. What do you want to know?” There was a soft buzzing in the back of Alice's mind, like the lazy drone of flies on a hot day, something pestering her. She shouldn't just be sitting here. There had been something she was going to do.
     “Don't worry about it. What's it matter?”
     The crowd seemed to have slowed. She watched the people drift by. Her heart beat felt ponderous, dull.
     “Got to do the job.”
     “Who cares. Not your job.” He pointed out. “Not your territory. Doesn't go to feed you.”
     “I'm getting a paycheck for it.” Alice blinked. It seemed to take a really long time to get her eyes open again. The buzzing was getting more quiet.
     “Yeah, so. Lotta effort, though, old gods. And what's he gonna do, really. Somebody else will get him.” Sloth had a drawl to his speech, as though the words all ran together because enunciation was just too much work. It was like listening to someone speak in their sleep. “Plenty of badasses around here. Let them deal with it.”
     He had a point. She hadn't run across a person yet in this Carnival that didn't qualify as a major power in some way or another. That Stevens, or the Fae up at the gate. The lion tamer guy had been the least of what she'd seen, and even he was formidable. Or hell, Staceybug, for that matter. Alice knew what Owen, back home, was capable of, and Lady Staceybug, for all the damn foolishness of her name, could be no less frightening. With all the energies converging here, was Alice really needed? Probably not. She could just sit here. It wouldn't be any big deal.
     “Must be tough, keeping going all the time like that. Why do you bother?”
     Another good point. Alice kept herself relentlessly busy. There was always a job to take, work to do, money to be made. A project in her work shop, a commission from one of the magi back home, a sloppy hunter stalking her city to take down. And why? For what? Did it matter?
     Yes. It mattered because . . . She couldn't remember. Something. It mattered because . . .
     “But you don't really care.” Sloth's voice was a low drone, monotonous. Easy to listen to, the perfect voice for reading bedtime stories, guaranteed to knock a kid out before the third page.
     Hadn't it been more reedy before? Whinier?
     “Who cares.”
     Well, not Alice, that was certain. About half a damn was all she could manage most days. Well, and she couldn't be blamed for that, could she? It wasn't like she was a lot of use to Detroit, was she? Sure, they kept her around. They liked the idea of having her firepower available, but they didn't trust her. They used her occasionally, a pawn, handy cannon fodder. Even when she was being useful, they were dismissive of her. Disrespectful.
     Disrespectful. Right. Wait . . . didn't that have something to do with it? That didn't sound quite right.
     “Fear's really not the same thing as respect, you know.”
     He was right about that. Most of the preternatural community in Detroit was scared spitless of her, and with good reason. Having Alice around was kind of like having a terrorist with a dirty bomb around. Good, if you could keep them on your side. Lot of work went into keeping her on their side, though. Probably she wasn't worth it. Couldn't be counted on to be there in a pinch, not the same way the other magi could. Because . . .
     Wait, that's not right. Alice blinked again, and it went a little faster this time. There were plenty of times she'd put her ass on the line with the rest of the city, just because it had needed doing, and she was there to do it.
     “And what did it get you? Shiny medals? Even a thank-you?”
     Well, no, but that wasn't supposed to be the point, was it? You were just supposed to do that sort of thing, right?
     “Why?”
     Well, because . . .
     Because . . .
     “What else is there?” Alice asked, and her voice sounded dull, stupid, to her own ears. Otherwise there was nothing, just the mindless apathy, the relentless hunger. The boredom.
     Sloth glanced at her, and there was a trace of uneasiness in his gray eyes. “Feeding is boring?”
     “No . . .” Alice said, with hesitation. You couldn't call it that, by any definition, but if there was nothing but the existence between eating, the long dull spans pressing down on her --
     Pressing down on her, dull, mindless, peaceful, almost --
     “Peaceful, yeah, just like that.” Sloth relaxed a hair, and Alice suddenly realized he'd been tensing as she --
     As she what? Wait, what? She tried to sit up, and felt heavy, lethargic, tired, so tired.
     “Easy, just rest.” His voice was a whisper, a soft brush of air.
     Rest. Right. She didn't rest much, didn't allow it, sleeping was hard, she didn't sleep much. Too much down time, that way, long empty stretches full of nothing but the blackness of sleep, and in that blackness, there was a deplorable lack of Alice.
     Yes. That was right. That was it. If there was nothing but the feeding, the apathy, the boredom, where was the Alice in all that? Where was she? All that was only Shadow. And if there was only Shadow, then what was left?
     Alice sat up, rubbing her face. “What's going on?”

* * *

     Dav's hands twisted around themselves, full of worry. First there was the Alice creature, and then BB getting out, and the fight with Stevens, and BB getting up to trouble, and Mary – Mary! Gone! Faced her trials and left the Carnival, and hence returned, and with BB in tow, no less – and all this spoke of entirely more trouble than was good for the Carnival. Dav was sure of that much. There had been wrong notes in the calliope all day, but here was Mary, already solving a problem by fetching BB back. Well, and that was Mary for you, always good for solving a problem or two. Granted, she had a tendency to solve problems via a liberal application of blunt force trauma, but you couldn't deny that the problem was damn well solved when she was done with it. Solved, and usually bleeding and mewling on the ground, but that was Mary's way. There was that time in Tulsa when she'd eaten the cop who was poking his nose into Carnival business. What? No body, no crime, she had said.
     That was Mary. And she was back. With friends. Maybe just what the Carnival needed. The Carnival had a way of fetching what was needed. Maybe Mary was back to deal with that . . . Alice. Yes. Who else was going to stand up to Black Alice? Celestine, of course, but the Doctor was . . . distracted, Stevens had said, and --
     OPEN THE GATES. GET THE PEOPLE OUT.
     Dav staggered, blood squirting out of his nose as the voice of Celestine ricocheted through his head like a large caliber bullet, loud, hard, angry.
     “Jesus, Dav! You okay?” Mary exclaimed, stepping forward and reaching as though she would catch him. She was stopped by the Carnival's borders.
     “Celestine is wroth.” Dav managed, holding his aching head, feeling the warm trickles of blood running over his lips as he spoke.
     “Shit, I guess so. What's going on?”
     “Mayhem and madness, milady.” Dav got his hands on the gates, watching blood drip into the dirt and sawdust as he dragged them open.
     “The usual shit, then.” Mary scooped Lust up and came in, her man behind her, marching BB along. “You can let him go.” He turned BB loose with a push, and BB staggered a step or two, nearly falling as Mary shoved Lust at him. He caught his balance, Lust's head lolling against his shoulder. She groaned and stirred, then fell silent again.
     “Tsk, so touchy, Mary.” BB grinned, catching a better grip on Lust. “That time of the month, is it?”
     Mary lunged a step, and then her man had her, his arm around her waist and pulling her back tight against him. “Easy, love.” He said in her ear, glaring at BB. “Not worth it.”
     “You sure?” Her voice was half snarl.
     “Pretty sure.” He glanced again at BB, face still alight with the gloating smile. “I might be wrong.”
     “Go, BB.” Dav said, stepping between the Carnie and the wolves. “See to your minion.”
     “See you around, Mary!” BB managed to wave as he walked away. “Good luck with the puppy!”
     “Why do you guys keep that asshole around?” Mary snapped, then relaxed against her alpha's grip.
     “He serves his purpose, else we would not.” Dav shrugged. “And you, Mary, why do you come hence? Is it only your . . . child?”
     “Yeah. I just have to find the little runt, then I'm out.” She glared after BB, then turned her gaze back on Dav, shaking the anger off.
     “You've no purpose with Black Alice?” He wiped the blood off his face, inspected his now-stained sleeve.
     “Alice? The redhead missing the fingers? What would I do with her? I sent her back here.”
     Dav looked up, startled. “You – what?”
     “I saw the search crew coming for her, and had the pack drag her off. I could smell the gold on her. The ticket? I figured she had a right to come in, if she had the ticket, and I didn't recognize the machine crew. You all get someone new?”
     “Mr. Weaver, yes. He was sent forth, to retrieve Ania and the painted woman, Tiffany. He was to collect Alice and her things, as well, to keep them from being . . . troublesome.”
     “She had a ticket, Dav. Thought you had to let her in, with the ticket. She gets her chance, same as everyone else.”
     “Such is the truth, Mary, were it not that the ticket was stolen.”
     Mary snorted. “Stolen? Please. You can't steal those damn things. If she got it, she was meant to have it. Or have you guys been fiddling with how things work since I've been gone?”

* * *

     Alice shoved herself up off the bench, shaking her head. “You little shit. Almost had me.” She staggered a step, pushing the heels of her palms into her eyes, rubbing the lethargy away. Jesus, and his work was so subtle, too, winnowing his way in where he was least expected. She'd been ready for Gluttony, not worried in the least about the ravenous behemoth . . . but some lazy little stoner had almost got her. It was embarrassing.
     Sloth rolled his eyes to look at her, almost working up to a glare, and then made a soft, choked sound. His hands trembled, twitched, then spasmed, clutching at his chest.
     Alice fell back another step, eyes widening. Now what? She blinked and in that time, the veins stood out on his arms, his face, and he gagged, clawing at his skin. The veins darkened silvery gray, a road map over his pale skin, through his eyes.
     “What the hell? Is this some kind of punishment for a failed hunt? Tell him it's not your fault, man. I mean, I admit, I don't give much of a shit about anything, but I'm not lazy. You didn't really think you could take me, did you?”
     Sloth caught his breath, hands dropping, eyes blinking rapidly. He planted his hands on the bench, shoving himself to his feet. “Aw, not really, Alice.” He said, and his voice had taken on a grating quality. He ran his hands over his face, pushing his greasy hair back. “Just softening you up for the old one-two punch.”
     “What?” Hands descended on her shoulders. Steel hands. She squeaked, twisting to look up. Towering over her was an extremely smug-looking man made entirely of steel. His skin had a brushed pattern, and all over it, a fine tracery had risen. Just like Sloth's.
     “I don't need to introduce myself, of course. You know me. Everyone does.” The steel man smiled, oozing smug confidence all over Alice. “I'm sure you're thinking right now that you can beat me, but let me assure you, you cannot. No one ever does.”
     Skeletal hands latched onto her jacket, and Alice turned her head back, finding Sloth with a death grip on her lapels and a maniacal, leering grin.
     “Yeah,” he said, and his breath stank of weed and rotten teeth, “you're a little apathetic, don't really give a lot of shit. But your real problem is the attitude, Alice. You just think you're fucking better than everyone, don't you?”
     “Well, yeah.” Alice said, fighting off the waves of apathy the young man's touch invoked. She brought the heel of her palm up between his arms, driving it into his nose. “That's because I am.” Sloth's head snapped back, nose making a sick crunch, and Alice jerked away from the steel man and lunged after him.

* * *

     The Freak Show had an unpleasantly empty feel to it, quiet and ominous. BB put Lust down on the floor, eying the darkened canvas halls. The main stage was silent, abandoned. To the left a long hall, walls flexing gently with the light breeze, led down to the Sins. It, too, felt empty. Uneasy, BB moved down the hall, passing his office door, coming to the hub. Seven swaying halls led down to the Sins' various dens, and he couldn't hear a sound.
     They were gone.
     He turned in the center room, running his hands through his hair, staring into the shadows. It wasn't unusual for one or two of them to be gone. Gluttony would occasionally be called away to attend to disposal issues, and Pride had an irritating habit of wandering off wherever he damn well pleased. Envy had been dispatched to follow the most intriguing Alice. Lust was indisposed. But Wrath? Greed? And Sloth. Sloth never moved. He usually had to be carried wherever he needed to go.
     The disquieting part was that BB couldn't tell where they had gone. He always knew where the Sins had gone. It was like he suddenly couldn't feel his own hands. He'd told the rest of them to stay here, dammit. Of course, Pride wouldn't listen. Pride never listened, the useless bastard. But the rest were pretty good at following orders.
     Where had they gone?
     Worse, what were they doing?
     BB ground his teeth, feeling his nerves dancing, stomach sinking. This could be very bad, yes it could. Okay, okay, he could talk his way out of leaving without permission. After all, the rock had been his, he was entitled to getting it back. Stevens would be a big stuffy prick about it, but he could be backed into a corner. In fact, that would probably be completely overshadowed by Mary's return. Everyone would be tickled to see the old bitch again, play with the little puppies, whatever, they'd probably forget all about BB's little indiscretion. That wasn't so bad.
     This, though, the Sins wandering off, that wasn't going to be overlooked. Keeping them under control had been a very important part of the terms when Celestine had given him permission to have them. It was bad enough that no one trusted him, and who could blame them, all things considered, but they at least expected him to be able to keep his own toys under control.
     “Turn my back for one damn minute.” He muttered, mind racing, trying to think. All he'd wanted was just what was due to him, just a little extra, just a little more. Mr. James was so damn clever, scooping every little thing up for himself. He had his Game, and that bitch, Ania, and nobody brooked Mr. James lightly. Stevens was in charge, put there by Celestine himself, and nobody ever gave Stevens any garbage when he put his foot down. That clown was an unstoppable force, and Vincente was the immovable object. Ambrosia knew everything, and Staceybug was just goddamn scary. Even Brick and the Ticket Master, the least of the Carnies, never had to take any crap from anyone. Of course not. All the crap was reserved for poor old BB, who just shut his mouth and did his job and never bothered anyone. He deserved just a little more, for putting up with all this – this disrespect. So he took just a few minutes for himself, to gather the power he so richly deserved, and just look at the results.
     Mary shows up, kicked his ass. Lust, out cold, harmed in some fashion, and BB didn't even know where to start with that. And finally, he returned to his attraction, his, and not Mary's, dammit, and all his creatures had wandered off.
     What if they were out there feeding?
     BB broke out in a cold sweat. They couldn't be. He hadn't given them permission for that.
     Kind of like he hadn't been given permission to leave. Right. Shit.
     Something stirred in the hall back to the main stage. He turned. Lust was coming down the hall, pausing to lean against the tent poles, barefoot, head hanging, weaving. She was a shadow in the darkness, hair hanging raggedly in her face.
     “Lust?”
     She lifted her head. Her eyes gleamed in the darkness. Her perfect, Cupid's-bow mouth turned up in a pert smile. “Hey, Boss.” Her voice was warm, husky, sultry, her walk steadying as she moved forward, her hips picking up their usual hypnotizing sway.
     BB's nerves cranked up a notch for no particular reason. “Feeling better, doll?”
     “Oh, no.” She said, moving into the hub, her smiling widening, showing off her perfect white teeth. “I'm starving, Boss.”
     He fought the urge to step back. Something was really wrong, here. “We can find you something, doll, I'm sure.”
     “I'm sure we can.” She said, advancing, slow, languorous, hips twitching back and forth, breasts shifting under her dress as she moved. Her body was memorizing, her perfect smile promising things no man could stand against, and her eyes . . . her eyes --
     -- were stone cold insane.
     BB licked his lips, which had suddenly gone dry as desert sand. He could smell her. She smelled like a musky sweet perfume, the kind of scent that made a man trail stupidly around after pretty girls at the bar. But she couldn't do that to him.
     Right?
     “That's far enough, Lust.”
     She kept on walking. He couldn't look away.
     “I said, that's enough.”
     “Come on, Boss. You've always wanted to. And that's how a girl gets ahead in the world, isn't it? Gives the boss a ride?” She licked her lips, and BB watched her tongue, the slow movement out, over her upper lip, and couldn't help but think of other things her tongue could do. He knew, he knew she was doing this to him, and at the same time, was absolutely certain that she couldn't effect him this way, like she did to the marks. She could not. He was her master.
     And it didn't seem to be slowing her down at all. Nor was it slowing him down at all. He could feel himself responding to her presence, heart beating faster, body going tight and hot, mind conjuring images of the things she would do for him if he just let her a little closer, just let her touch him. She'd do anything. Everything.
     “Get back.” He hissed, falling back himself.
     “I'm so hungry.” She whispered, and her voice was musical, smooth as silk, and BB couldn't help but think what she might whisper in his ear, anything he wanted her to, anything at all. “I just want a little taste. Just a little taste, Boss.”
     “Shit.” His voice was strengthless, gaze caught by the sight of her, even mussed and disheveled, she was breath-taking. Her torn dress only made him think of ripping it the rest of the way off, tangled hair reminding him how much more tangled it would be when they were done, the white skin of her chest marred with scratches that made him think of how his own back might be scratched, raked by her nails. “Shit.”
     She lunged at him with a cat-like growl, and he couldn't move at all.

* * *

     Alice hit Sloth again, a hard, driving strike down into his face. She couldn't take two of them, both acting on her at the same time, she had to get one out of the fight as fast as she could. Oh, who was she kidding? Of course she could take them both. A couple of little pussy echoes of the real thing, hell, she could whip them both blind-folded, and just to prove it, she'd turn on the big one first --
     Alice shook her head, staggering, arming the sweat out of her eyes. Pride. That was the big one. Arrogance, over-confidence, vainglorious, she'd fallen victim to these faults before. She knew better, she'd had her ass handed to her more than enough times to teach her better.
     She hoped.
     Hope what? She didn't need hope, not against these two bitches. She turned on Pride, right into a hook to the jaw. She actually saw the blood fly as she fell, a perfect red arc that glistened in the Carnival lights. Alice hit the ground, sawdust puffing up around her. She sucked it in, coughing, choking, eyes stinging, and rolled, scrambling to her knees.
     A hand twined into her hair, jerking her back up to her feet. “You think think to challenge me? Me? I am indestructible, unstoppable, in perfect fighting trim. You, you smoke two packs a day. You are already winded, Alice! What can you hope to accomplish against me?”
     She dangled by the hair from his fist, reached up to snag his wrist. It felt like her scalp would come right off. Sloth snagged her around the waist, and she felt the strength run out of her in a rush. She groaned, scalp on fire, jaw one big throb of pain, mouth full of blood. She steeled herself, sucked up a mouthful of blood, and spat into Pride's pompous face. The gob splattered across his eyes, sizzling like grease in a hot pan. He let out a cry, releasing her, and she fell back on Sloth, taking the toothpick-sized kid down with her. She dropped an elbow as she landed, planting it firmly in his guts, and all the wind went out of him in a fetid rush that left Alice gagging.
     “Christ, kid! Brush once in a fucking while!” She shoved herself up, fetching him a kick to the ribs and spun on Pride again, who wiped his face and advanced on her, completely unharmed. Okay, that was a problem. The acidic blood was a potent spell, should have left him blind at least for the duration of the fight.
     Nah, it was no problem at all, what was she worried about? She had plenty of goods left, she'd hardly got started. This guy didn't know what he was getting himself into with her. She was Black Alice, feared by more frightening men than him, and --
     “Dammit!” She exclaimed as his fist whistled by her face, lifting her hair with its passing. “I am tired!” She yelled, dancing back to avoid another blow, desperate to remind herself. “Tired! Weak from blood loss! Lost my goddamn gear! I got nothing!”
     She didn't need anything. She had everything under control.
     “Shi --” Her exclamation was cut off by another slap, this one across the side of her head. For a second she stood there, and everything was brilliant and lucid as she felt Pride sink his hooks in, felt the drain of his feeding. For a just a second, everything was cool, clear, obvious, and it was going to be all right. Then her knees went out from under her and she hit the ground in a rush of dark dizziness.

* * *

     It dawned on Dav all of the sudden, a quick burst, the thing that had been pestering at him, and his eyebrows went up, eyes widening as Mary turned to head into the Carnival.
     "Mary, you've not introduced your -- gentleman."
     Mary stopped, a hand to her head. "Oh, Jesus, you're right, I'm sorry. Damn, spend a few years out in the woods, and I forget all my manners. Dav, I'd like you to meet -- well, you might as well call him my husband, I guess." She turned to her alpha. "This is Dav, the ticket master. Dav, meet Fenris."
     Dav offered to shake hands, weakly. "Fenris. My . . . pleasure."
     The big alpha inspected the hand as if unsure what exactly was expected. "Right. Nice to meet you too."

---

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

EARLIER

Becky’s gown was simple but beautiful. There were flowers in her hair and soon there would be a ring on her finger.

The audience in attendance was turning to watch her walk between the chairs set up in the field as her bare feet padded softly in the dew-covered grass. On the groom’s side all the carnies were watching her. They didn’t look friendly, but Becky knew they were just jealous.

The bride’s side was empty.

As she approached her future husband his hair caught in the wind. His shirt was unbuttoned to the mid-chest and as he eyed her his lust and adulation was clear. He stood before the alter beneath an arch of small saplings in front of a large lilac bush in full bloom.

He looked magnificent.

The ceremony was blissfully brief. She couldn’t wait to take him inside her and consummate their wedding.

The faceless priest had them turn to the attendants. She positively radiated victory and beauty as the clergyman announced;

“Doctor and Mrs. Celestine.”

It was a wonderful dream.

*****************************************

Calliope’s face twisted and she struck a minor chord, purposely missing the 3^rd. The result was a dissonant chord that shot out into the carnival.

*****************************************

A tent rope snapped near Celestine and the rope whipped from the tension, striking him in the face.

Doc froze, wincing, and clenched his fists, sucking a long breath between his teeth. He could already feel the welt it was going to leave. He slowly turned toward the big top and looked at it down the midway, seething.

“Wow did that have to sting!” Davey from the guess your age, weight, (and bra size after dark,) came running up to Doc. “Geez, oh man! Are you okay?”

Doc didn’t look at him. He didn’t move at all. He just continued to fume silently, staring at the big top. There was a stark intensity in his gaze that made Davey uncomfortable.

“Doc, you all right?”

Celestine touched the side of Davey’s face. “Here. Hold this for me.”

Davey screamed in pain from the welt appearing on his cheek as Celestine marched to his trailer.

*****************************************

Calliope pulled her hands from the keyboard. It continued to play (it always did) but she was more interested in the emotion that had motivated her to lash out so.

A shingle was one thing, but the rope…

Perhaps it was time to take a walk.

*****************************************

Envy couldn’t have been more pleased.

Before Bloody Mary Black had left and the freak show’s new master had arrived she had enjoyed her existence as an independent; The Dark Maiden., tormentor of Celestine and promoter of his suffering.

What an amateur she had been.

She wondered if Wrath was having as much fun playing with Celestine.

*****************************************

Man? Woman?

As Doc left, Wrath considered staying with Davey to give him a little poke, but following Celestine was just too much fun. Besides, Wrath had yet to determine it’s shape to continue to goad the Master’s Master into a real “Wild Bunch” moment

Man? Woman? Man? Woman?

*****************************************

Celestine shook his head as he marched to his trailer. His display of anger bordered on the cruel. It wasn’t completely out of character, but still, undeserved.

He would need to re-examine the happenings at his carnival, but after he dealt with… distractions.

Throwing open the door, he strode into his trailer, preparing a deliberate yet succinct preamble to facilitate Becky’s leaving via confusion and double talk. Nothing would stop him from brushing her off quickly and firmly.

He underestimated the staggering stopping power of barely 16 year-old breasts.

“Take me,” Becky said, standing naked and moist from her bath. “My love.”

*****************************************

Lust was hacking a lung from laughter.

*****************************************

“I can’t stand it anymore.” Said Becky, pulling Celestine’s coat from him. “You’re holding back. Believe me, I can handle it.”

Doc wasn’t even looking at her. He was staring down and off to the left, at nothing. It looked as if he was mugging for a camera that wasn’t there. His mind was a frantic blur.

Go on, old man, said the Incubus in Celestine’s memory. You’re only as old as the woman you’re feeling. Is not carnality, the goal?  The great desire to be human, no matter how much the god-like creature you seem to be?

*****************************************

Man? Woman?

Wrath’s new mouth formed first, a twisted, savage smile. The rest of the body filled in and innocent yet hateful eyes sparkled with inspiration as Wrath took it’s new shape.

“Child.”

*****************************************

As Becky unbuttoned his shirt, removing it, she kissed his chest, down to his stomach. On her knees, she looked up at Doc, eyes full of desire and submission. Celestine finally snapped out of his stupor and looked down at her.

“It’s okay.” She said. “Daddy made sure I was ready.”

The entire trailer shook as if hit by a bus.

******************************************

Wrath was wracked by an almost orgasmic shudder at Celestine’s rage. The sight was discomforting as it looked as though a ten-year old boy had just achieved a very public climax.

*****************************************

Inside of Celestine’s trailer was a nexus of frustration, confusion and rage made manifest. Becky’s naked form hung before him, suspended by his will, her consciousness shut off blissfully saving her from his existential outcry.

Celestine himself was decaying. His flesh was rotting and falling from him, black, corroded bones peeking through the dismal gore.

How… can they… DO… these things…?

His voice was his will made manifest as his jaw finally dropped to the floor from his rotting face.

Celestine’s opinion of mortal, earthly, fleshy, humanity was making itself apparent. He hated flesh. He hated humanity. He hated.

Suddenly Becky fell to the floor. Celestine rushed into the darkness of his trailer. Reality folded, as it always did, revealing one of the many walls of jars.

This wall, however, was different.

DaVinci’s Design of Man was carved into an oak cabinet face. Upon opening it, he gazed in at the many jars he had collected that he felt most defined humanity.

He quickly grasped the small jar labeled; compassion.

Just then, there was a sense of Stevens, his hand on the door.

Celestine quickly returned to Becky. (And his physical health.) Picking her up from the floor, she regained consciousness. Celestine looked her in the eyes. “You have to go.”

Becky kissed him full on the mouth.

*****************************************

Stevens got to Celestine’s trailer faster than he could have beleieved, and opened the door…

Celestine pulled Becky off him. He stood there, half out of his suit. Shirtless, he was holding the shoulders of a very wet, very naked, very young woman. It was the girl, Becky.

“Um. This… well, shit.”

“You know what,” Stevens growled, “I think I’ll take care of this little catastrophe. You’re obviously busy.”

*****************************************

Wrath watched Stevens storm out of the trailer. “Hey Mister!” He yelled.

Stevens stopped short and looked at the boy. “What?” He blurted rather curtly.

Wrath kicked him soundly in the shin, stuck his tongue out and ran behind the trailer.

Stevens blurted an unintelligible response and continued on his way.

*****************************************

Back inside Celestine’s trailer, Doc was still staring at the newly slammed door and a low, deep rumble started in his belly.

Becky turned his face to her and smiled. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Celestine opened his mouth and in her father’s voice, said to Becky; “Go, Becky. Now.”

She didn’t need to hear it twice.

*****************************************

He didn’t so much have a real name anymore. All he knew is they all thought of him and referred to him by the same name.

Runt.

His legs were long but too skinny, his paws big, but he just didn’t seem to be growing into them. His snout was shorter and his tail scraggly. His coat had a strange frazzled look to it.

He looked beat up, and there was a reason. He was at the bottom of a long list of pack-mates. And they all throated him at least once every couple days to remind him he was exactly what they treated him as.

Runt.

They all followed the alpha but he had a special kinship to the big grey one. There was a word for what he called her, but he just didn’t know it yet.

Right now he was so distracted he could hardly contain himself. The sights, the smells, the sounds… this place was an explosion in his senses.

Runt started looking for something to pee on.

*****************************************

As he watched her leave in a huff, he spat on the floor. Normally, a glib ‘bad taste in my mouth’ remark could be expected but he wasn’t in the mood. He looked down at hi naked chest and spat again.

“This will not do.”

Celestine wanted new clothes on. And so they were.

His jacket, normally a flamboyant red was black and plain. It still came to his knees and the trim was coated in silver studs.  His gloves were missing, revealing his broken hands, bandages long stained with blood. His mock-collar shirt was a deep maroon and the top two buttons were unbuttoned. His vest was leather and seemed to move slightly of its own accord. His pants were leather as well and widened at the base to allow for frighteningly aggressive boots. The right leg was covered mid-thigh to mid calf by a hinged iron harness. His eyes were covered by perfectly round sunglasses. And his top hat was slid slightly forward. His cane had a sharp barbed point at the end, and the dragon figurine on the handle flicked its tongue and slowly moved its tail.

He strode out his trailer and walked o the center of the midway.

No one got in his way.

Planting his cane firmly in the ground, he leaned on it. “Now then…” he said to no one in particular yet all of them at the same time. “What the fuck is going on?”

He opened himself and sensed everything in his carnival.

I won't be, I won't be your hero.
I won't be your superman.
Everything I did was for you, everything you said was a lie.
My pain, your gain, who's your hero today?
-- Hero, Pop Evil

     Down the midway, Shaggy saw the rubes betting more, and betting faster, and at the games of skill the competition between young punks winning prizes for their girlfriends began to take on an ugly edge. When they won, their cheers held the ghosts of screams, and when they lost, their eyes were dark and angry, and Shaggy was starting to get a little nervous of it. Deeper still, the animals in Vincente's cages paced and snarled and lashed their tails, and back by the rides, Dana misted through the House of Mirrors, watching as the patrons bumped into clear glass and mugged faces at the mirrors, and though the reflections were always twisted, now the twists seemed even more surreal.
     Masque stood in her chilled studio, a tall, half-finished mannequin before her. She was working on the eyes, a picture tacked to the cork board next to her. This piece was to be Angelica Huston as Morticia Addams, but the eyes just wouldn't come out right. She was breast to breast with the ghostly white form, peering into its left eye, working a slender scalpel with quick, delicate swipes. Every few moments or so, she would pause, step back, glare at the picture, then glare at her sculpture. She'd been so proud of herself for getting the nose and cheekbones right, too. Damn the woman's eyes! She went back to work, sleeves dragged up to her elbows, oh-so-carefully shaping the under curve of the socket, hissing between her teeth as she glanced from the picture to the sculpture.
     From behind her came a very soft scrape. She paused, turned, scanned the studio. It looked like the red carpet walk at the Oscars. Famous faces and forms filled the room, some finished, some awaiting various touches or costuming. Her breath fogged the air as her gaze swept the brightly-lit room. She turned back to her sculpture, and the scrape came again.
     “Dammit.” She flicked the scalpel at the cork board and it stuck blade in, quivering with impact. She turned her frustrated glare on the room. So help her, if it was rats again, she was borrowing Simba from Vincente and turning him loose in here. She took a few steps, snatching up a broom from a corner, and turned on the wax celebrities. The last time there had been rats, John Wayne had lost half his left foot, and it had taken her two weeks to fix it.
     She moved in on the statues, batting around their feet and skirts with the broom, grumbling under her breath about rats and Angelica Huston's eyes. There was another soft scrape. This time it sounded distinctly like a foot step.
     Masque turned, glares and grumbles fading as she looked around. Her breath came in white puffs, curling around her pale face and up through her blond hair. Her brows furrowed together, lips a flat line. She turned again, coming face to face with Frank N. Furter. She started, and then giggled at her surprise, putting a hand over her chest.
     Then Frankie snatched her by the throat.

* * *

     Lili stalked the Carnival grounds, cloven hooves striking sparks as they stamped down in the path, serpentine forked tail snapping back and forth. Her black, leathery wings were folded in tight to her back, her scaled red skin gleamed under the Carnival lights, and her eyes, glistening golden without pupil or iris, were narrowed. The air was ripe with the stench of sin and her nose twitched, breathing in the scent like sweet perfume, her black lips pulled back in a smile, revealing sharp, pointed teeth. She was hunting, and not a patron of the Carnival noticed her passing, except possibly as a shiver racing down their puerile monkey spines.
     Lili had lived on the apex of the Big Top for a millennium, appointed there by her father to watch and take note, and what had begun as a mission under her own will had ended as an infinite term in prison. Someday soon the trumpets would sound and the armies would rise, the moon would turn black and the seas as blood, and there would be pestilence and famine and war and death, and Lili would still be here, trapped in this cursed Carnival, staring down from the Big Top and taking note of the foolishness of these people.
     She had long thought that her father had known this would happen, and had sent her here for punishment. It no longer mattered. There had been a time of rebellion against her imprisonment, and then sullen anger as she sulked atop the tent, and finally, resignation, and she had simply perched there, taking note as ordered. She harbored no hopes of escape, for there's no hope in Hell and so she'd never learned how to do it.
     She'd watched the patrons and Carnies come and go, always different and always exactly the same, foolish little simians dressed up as monsters and powers and pretending their efforts made some difference, sad little men and women and children searching for ways out of their self-inflicted miseries, imagining they were suffering when in truth they had but tasted a dab of the true sorrow awaiting them. She had often laughed to herself as she watched some mortal fool claim some sort of salvation from this bastard Carnival, and laughed all the harder when they did not. She particularly enjoyed seeing the patrons tossed into the Labyrinth, although, come to think of it, the House of Mirrors had rendered some fairly gruesome punishments in the past, as well.
     It was occasionally quite interesting to sit at the peak of the Big Top and watch. It was frequently humorous to watch the Carnies scrambling to rectify their own errors as they compounded on themselves, stirring up chaos and trouble. Mostly, though, it was boring up on the tent, and there was even less reason to come down. She wasn't let to play with the patrons, and there was hardly ever anything of real consequence to take note of.
     But now, finally, at last, there was something of import. The gates had opened, and she had entered, and Lili meant to find her.

* * *

     Brick had put paid to the majority of the bottle, and his head was warm and pleasantly fuzzed. The music from the adjoining tent was quite loud, something that was part country jamboree and part jig and seemed to involve a lot of fiddles and harmonicas, and Brick was tapping his foot in time to it. He was considering the merits of wandering over there and seeing if he could locate a pretty woman who needed kept company for the night, when someone sat down next to him.
     “Can I get a beer?” Said the new arrival.
     Brick glanced idly over at the newcomer, waited a moment for his eyes to focus. He was a tall guy, but then, nearly everyone was tall to Brick, with short dark hair, somewhat mussed, and a five o'clock shadow. He was wearing a Red Sox t-shirt and his jeans had sawdust on them, like he might have fallen earlier. He glanced over at Brick, and Brick felt a pang of recognition.
     “I know you.” The words came out slurred. Brick's face wrinkled into a frown.
     “Sure you do.” Said the man. “You're the big guy who helped me out in the parking lot.” He offered out his hand. “Roger Brighton.”
     “Oh yeah, the cop.”
     “Yeah. Hey, I appreciate the help. Looks like you had the same idea I did. Let me buy you a beer.” Roger grinned, a warm, eminently friendly expression.
     Brick brightened. “Sure. I'm Brick.”
     The two men shook hands, and the bartender turned up with a couple of beers. Roger held his up, slid the other over to Brick. “Cheers!”
     “Right on.” Said Brick, and emptied his cup.

* * *

     Alice looked the trailer over. It was an antique wooden carnival trailer, the old-fashioned, horse-drawn kind that she'd expect to find Gypsies living in, although the hitch was propped up on an ornate wrought iron stand. It was low-key, varnished wood, moons and stars burned delicately into the wood in a border around its trim, and a small set of steps led up to the door.
     “Fortune teller.” Alice contained the sneer that wanted to come with the words. She could count on one hand the number of real oracles she'd ever encountered. Actually, she was pretty sure she could count them on her mangled hand, at that. She could already imagine the wizened hearth witch inside, and her sinuses were bracing for the onslaught of cheap incense while she ran over Tarot card meanings in the back of her mind to make sure the old bat was getting them right.
     The clown grunted and gestured for Alice to proceed him. He looked a little uneasy, sharpened teeth peeking out from his blood-colored grin.
     Alice glanced him up and down, and then ascended the stairs. She raised her good hand to knock, and a high small voice said, “Come in, Alice.”
     “Cheap trick.” Alice muttered to herself and opened the door. She stepped in and stopped.
     It looked like Barbie's Dream House had exploded inside the trailer. It was extremely pink, and extremely lacy. There were pink pillows and pink curtains and the walls were painted pink. There were dainty white chairs surrounding a delicate white table, and the cushions on the chairs were pink and dripped lace, and the table cloth was pink lace. There were four chairs around the table, one occupied by a dark-haired eight-year-old, and the other three taken up by a chocolate brown teddy bear, a Raggedy Ann, and a large stuffed rabbit the color of Pepto Bismol.
     A plain crystal ball sat in the center of the table, surrounded by three pink candles that smelled like peppermint, and a plastic tea set. The little girl had paused in the midst of pouring out a Kool-aid tea service to her stuffed animals. She was an adorable little girl, long, dark hair, heart-shaped face, great big brown eyes, and was grinning. She was missing a front tooth, and wearing a pair of pink camouflage jeans, and a pink Dora the Explorer blouse. As if all of that were not enough, the walls were hung in Technicolor tapestries, children's cartoon characters portraying Tarot card scenes and mythological settings.
     “Jesus Christ.” Alice said, looking around.
     “Language, miss!”
     Startled, Alice glanced towards the back of the trailer, spotting a woman sitting in a (pink) recliner in the corner, knitting. The woman seemed quite ordinary at first glance, if somewhat oddly clothed. She was middle-aged, hair pulled back in a shiny black bun, little round glasses perched on a pert nose, and her eyes were black, too large for her face. She was wearing a deep red house dress speckled with black polka dots, and over that, a white apron. She was a chubby, matronly woman, round and cheerful-looking.
     “What the hell is something like you doing here?” Alice exclaimed before she could stop herself.
     “That's my nanny, Lady Staceybug, silly.” Said the little girl, as she finished pouring out tea. “And I'm Ambrosia, and you're Alice, and that's Violent Clay, behind you. Come in!”
     “Staceybug.” Alice repeated dumbly as the clown jostled her out of the way so he could get in.
     The woman nodded, smiling. It was a very knowing expression.
     “Mr. Bunny and Ann will move so you can sit. You can have their tea. They aren't thirsty.”
     Alice didn't hear a word the girl said. She was still staring at Lady Staceybug. When Alice had been small, and first brought into Detroit to be trained as a magus, one of her teachers had been a staid, professorial librarian named Owen. He had been an excellent teacher, despite being neither a magus, himself, nor even human. Oh, he'd looked human enough on top, much as Staceybug did, but Alice had seen him for what he was, just as she could see Staceybug. Owen had been a Volkswagen-sized drone bee minding his pocket-dimension hive of worker bees, carved out of the basement of the Detroit Public Library. It was a major accomplishment to attract an extraplanar entity like Owen to live in Detroit, and in exchange for all the essence of knowledge his worker bees could harvest from Detroit, he had taught the young magi there.
     Staceybug wasn't exactly the same thing – Alice doubted she was here harvesting knowledge, for one – but she was close enough to be a cousin. Alice couldn't make out exactly what the pretend woman looked like, but she had the vague sensation of a giant ladybug in pince nez, and the feeling that if she could see them, she'd see tiny little ladybugs crawling everywhere, on everything, sipping gently of . . .
     Alice stared, glanced at little Ambrosia, then back at Staceybug. The entity nodded again, smiling pleasantly. Sipping gently of children's dreams, then, and storing the essence away as food for Staceybug's version of a hive.
     Jesus. Soul-eaters and outlanders, vampires and undead clowns, magi and fae . . . what the hell else could possibly be living in this damn Carnival? Alice glanced around the trailer, drifting towards a chair and setting Mr. Bunny aside so she could sit. Violent Clay stayed at the door, glowering at the room in general.
     The deeper she got into the Carnival, the worse the news got. Bad enough when she thought Junior might have made his way into a place of magic. Worse, when she got here and saw the Carnival for herself, tasted the pulsating power of the place. Alice couldn't begin to conceive of how dreadfully bad it would be if Junior managed to sink his hooks all the way into the Carnival, and draw from its power. It would be like a perpetual motion machine, generating energy for the Skindancer. Junior wouldn't just be an abyssal entity anymore, he'd nearly be a god in his own right, with a place like this under his thumb.
     This Carnival wasn't just any magic circus, Alice abruptly realized. Dr. Celestine's Carnival of Souls was a Well of Worlds. She'd read about them. Hell, Owen had taught her about them, sites in the world where reality had worn thin and quantum possibilities leaked through to become corporeal themselves, where gods and devils were birthed on a regular basis. Anything was possible in a Well of Worlds, and the power they encompassed was nigh infinite.
     If Junior got a hold of the Carnival of Souls . . . Alice wasn't a woman given to fear, but her blood ran icy cold at the thought. Even the Shadow, usually full of whispers and plots, had fallen silent.
     “Alice?”
     “I'm sorry, what?” Alice started, glancing at the little girl.
     Ambrosia held up a deck of Tarot Cards. Daphne Duck posed as the Empress on the top card. “Want your fortune read?” She grinned, as though she'd just asked if Alice wanted to play jacks.
     “Sure. Why the hell not.” Alice said, still numb from her epiphany.
     “Oh, goody. This should be fun.” Ambrosia clapped her hands and started laying out the cards.

* * *

     Frank N. Furter's make-up was running. Actually, his whole face was running. As Masque dangled from his vise-like grip on her throat, one of his glassy eyeballs oozed out of the socket and rolled briefly down his cheek before dropping to the tile floor with a soft plinking noise. His arm oozed and dripped but was no less strong, and Masque's fingers sank into the wax flesh as she tried to hold herself up. The wax was hot under her hands, and she could feel her own fingers softening, loosing shape in the heat baking out of the dummy. She kicked her feet, one slipper flying away as she gurgled and choked.
     Frankie's sexy leer was melting, one side sliding down to his jaw as his face ran, and then plopped off, revealing the plastic skeleton underneath. The skeleton, too, was softening. Masque kicked and struggled as her eyes bugged and her vision dimmed. Frankie's fingers had sunk through her wax throat to the real flesh underneath. He pulled her closer and she struck out, her fist sinking into his chest and sticking. She kicked and her feet stuck in his torso, one after the other. She had a flash of memory, her father reading her a bedtime story, Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby, and in her terror, she giggled.
     The raspy giggle cut off as slender wisps like strings whipped out of Frankie's chest and wrapped around her arm. They burned, even through her wax, and more whips flew out, snagging her legs, burning and hissing. The wax on Frankie's chest began to bubble, and his bustiere smoldered. Something was pushing through, something slimy and gray and worm-like, and more cilia whipped out of the wax, flying around Masque's head, pulling her wig astray. She felt the tension in the lines as the creature used its grip on her to pull itself free of the wax, towards her.

* * *

     There was a pyramid of shot glasses sitting on the bar in front of Brick and Roger, and the booze was flowing mightily. Not just for the two men, either. The level of drunkenness in the beer tent had reached epic proportions, and there was a crowd gathered around the cop and the strong man, cheering them on as they went shot for shot. Brick finished the slurred punchline on the joke he was telling, and Roger choked on his shot, laughing out perfectly good whiskey.
     Brick pounded him on the back, knocking him off his stool by accident, and Roger continued to laugh as he sat on his ass, looking up at Brick.
     “You're not so tough!” Roger exclaimed. “I bet I could whip you arm wrestling.”
     “Oh, fuck that.” Brick said, laughing too. “You're on.”
     “Clear a spot!” Roger roared, staggering up. “Shorty here wants his ass kicked!”
     A moment later, a table had been cleared for the two men, and the crowd was hooting and cheering so loudly they drowned out the music. Money exchanged hands and bets were shouted back and forth. Brick and Roger practically had to carry each other to the table, and they more fell onto the benches opposite each other than sat, but they managed to get their arms up on the rough wood and facing each other.
     “Did I tell you the one about the two penguins walking into the bar?” Brick asked, holding his hand out and grinning.
     “Nah.” Roger grabbed his hand, bracing his elbow.
     “The third one said, 'Man, you'd have thought the second penguin would have ducked!'”
     “That was awful.”
     “But you're laughing – Okay, ready? I'll try not to put you in the hospital.”
     Roger's face took on a thoughtful cast as the crowd chanted to three. Brick grunted and flexed, and Roger's arm didn't budge an inch.
     “What the fuck -- ?”
     “Hospital.” Roger said, musing, as Brick strained to put his arm down.
     “Dude, seriously!”
     “That solves a lot of problems, actually.” Roger said, voice quiet. “See, they closed this damn place up. Can't get any more food in with the joint closed.”
     Brick put his weight into it, paying no mind to Roger's mutter. Fuck, I must be really shit-faced. Roger's arm wasn't even shaking. It wasn't moving at all.
     “But if someone had to go out to go to the hospital . . .” Roger was studying the table as the crowd chanted and cheered, drowning his words out. He glanced up at Brick, who had gone red-faced. “You're straining pretty hard, there, big guy. Why don't you just have a heart attack?”
     Brick met the cop's eyes. “What -- ?” Then a mule kicked him in the chest. Or at least, that's what it felt like. Brick caught his breath, dropping Roger's hand to grab his chest, eyes bugging, face going white.
     “Oh shit!” Roger stood abruptly. “Man, are you all right? Someone call 9-1-1!” The crowd hushed as Brick toppled off the bench, clutching his chest. “Come on! Call an ambulance!”
     Chaos erupted, and Roger grinned.

* * *

     The little girl shuffled the cards. They were too big for her hands, but that didn't slow her down. Her small hands were as dexterous as an old Vegas card sharp, shuffling and folding with lightning speed and rippling rhythm. She split and folded them together, split and folded, split and folded, the cards slapping each other with a sound like an ace in bike spokes on a hot summer day. She shoved the crystal ball aside and slapped the cards down in front of Alice.
     “Cut them, please.” Her face was serene, smiling. “Mr. James always says 'Cut 'em like they owe you money'.” She giggled.
     Alice glanced down at the cards. They were very plain, the backs a bright blue diamond design. She picked up half the cards and set them aside, piling the rest on top.
     “Good.” Ambrosia picked the deck up and started dealing them out face-up, in a Celtic cross. Looney Tunes characters graced the fronts in lurid candy colors. The Queen of Wands, played by a red-headed bit of Merrie Melodies cheesecake, sat in the center of the spread, reversed.
     Alice glanced over the spread. She spotted the seven of wands and the ace of swords, the ten of swords and the Death card, the Devil, several pentacles, Justice, and the Fool.
     “Hmm.” Said Ambrosia, glancing up at Alice. “That's a mess.” She shuffled the cards back together. “Danger, death, misery, and failure. Discovery and friendship. A challenge you aren't up to, and your winning Lotto numbers are fifteen, twelve, thirty-two, and twenty-five.”
     “Excuse me?”
     “Want me to write them down? I wouldn't want you to miss out on the money.” Ambrosia pulled out a crayon and a scribble pad and wrote the numbers down.
     “Money?” Alice stared at her.
     “That's why you're here, right? Money? Someone paid you?”
     “Well, yeah --”
     “Right.” She ripped off the page and handed it over. “Well, I'm paying you to go away. You're a storm crow. Go away before you hurt someone. That's the jackpot, by the way, I promise.” She crossed her heart.
     Alice stared down at the numbers, scrawled in large blue crayon. “But --”
     “You aren't going to go on about duty or something are you? No one believes you when you say it.” Ambrosia's large, dark gaze was directed over Alice's shoulder, at nothing in particular. “You only want one thing.”
     Alice had the feeling the little girl wasn't talking to her anymore.
     “You make her strong, sure, but what do you get out of it?” Ambrosia asked. “I know. You think you'll manage to talk her into it? If you do, get her out of here before it happens. I don't want that here. We've got enough of it as it is.”
     Alice glanced over her shoulder, seeing the clown with his uneasy grin at the door, and nothing else. Who was the little brat talking to? Not . . . the Shadow? “What are you going on about, kid?”
     Ambrosia looked back at Alice, and smiled, sad. “You think you're in charge of her, don't you?”
     “I --”
     “Grown-ups are so stupid.” Ambrosia put her cards away with the utmost disgust, the kind of frustrated ire that only an eight-year-old can summon. “You think souls are what she wants? Souls are small change, Alice, you know that. A dime a dozen.”
     “Plug and play hardware.” Alice heard herself say. She'd used the line before.
     “Right. There's so much worse she can take. So much worse, and you give it away like it means nothing.”
     “Ambrosia.” The clown's rusty voice startled them both.
     The little girl glanced up at Violent Clay. “Is it your turn next?” She grinned her gap-toothed grin.
     “Where's the thing from the parking lot?”
     Ambrosia blinked. “Is that what you wanted? You better hurry. It's in the beer tent, killing Brick.” She burst into tears, shuddering all over. “It's killing Brick!”
     Staceybug was suddenly at Ambrosia's side, sweeping the little girl up. “Shh, shhh! It'll be okay, sweetums.” Ambrosia wailed, a high, horrified sound, squirming around to bury her face in Staceybug's shoulder. “You had better hurry, Clay, dear.”
     The clown was already turning, jerking the door open. Alice jumped up, knocking the chair over in her haste, jogging the table and splashing Kool-aid tea everywhere. She darted out behind the clown, Ambrosia's paper wadded up in her injured hand.

* * *

     The creature pulled itself out of Frankie's chest with a thick, wet glopping sound and swung between them, more tentacular cilia whipping out to encircle Masque, pulling itself to her stomach. Frankie staggered and fell, splashing on the floor, sending wax up in a flesh-colored shower. Masque, throat freed, managed a gagging scream as the leech pulled itself up to her chest. She batted at the squirming thing, eyes bugging as a mouth opened on the leech, a wide, vaginal circle full of sharp little teeth. Her scream spiraled upwards as she seized the creature, pulling on it. It writhed in her melted grasp and she couldn't get a good grip. She careened back towards Angelica, reaching out and snagging the scalpel in the cork board.
     The scalpel fell to the floor as the softened wax of her fingers peeled back, oozing. Wild-eyed, she beat at the leech with the revealed stump of her right arm, the thing's mouth opening and closing, dilating wide and narrow like a cat's pupil, teeth snapping together as it dragged itself up to her face.
     “Aimee? Aimee, what's – Jesus!”
     Masque heard the voice, recognized it, and suddenly Mr. James' flunky Hank had an arm around her, one big fist gripping the leech and jerking it away. Cilia snapped with guitar-like twangs and he flung it. It hit the ground and rolled, and as Masque fell to her knees, gasping for breath, Hank strode to the leech and stomped it viciously, greasy sludge squittering out from under his heavy work boot. His boot hit the ground twice more, stomping the thing into oblivion, as Masque huddled on her knees, remainders of her hands up over her face, pearly white tears rolling down her wax mask face.
     “Jesus, what was that, Aimee, are you all right?”
     He turned to look at her, and she shoved herself up in a raw panic, knowing her faux flesh had run, knowing her mask was destroyed, and she fled through the studio to the safety of her room, slamming the door behind her.
     Hank stood, confused, one foot still in the puddle of twitching, dying goo on the floor, staring at the door. “Aimee?” He called. He went to the door, leaving slimed footsteps behind him, and knocked softly. “Aimee?” He could hear her weeping behind the door, and sighed to himself. Gals, he thought, shaking his head. As though he would care about her face, as long as she was all right.

* * *

     The beer tent was a mad house. Half the patrons hadn't even noticed the struggle Violent Clay was pushing his way towards. Alice followed behind him, doing her own fair share of elbowing and pushing to get through. The music had been cranked up to jet engine levels, and she could still hear the shouting over that.
     Alice's mind was racing. On the way here, there had been four fist fights, one of which was an old janitor beating the piss of out of a teen over an unopened green coke bottle on the ground. There had been a slender man buying a stack of elephant ears from a stand. The stack had been as tall as Alice. Two woman had been slapping each other at a merchandising stall over a faux Prada purse, both with a death grip on the tearing leather. Three stoners had been laying in the lee of a tent, just laying there, one in his own filth, barely breathing, joint in the dirt between them, forgotten, as they stared dustily up into the Carnival lights. In the beer tent, the party atmosphere was frantic, hysterical.
     The clown shoved through the final circle and found Brick laying on the ground, the bar tender kneeling over him, eyes huge, face pale. “He stopped breathing!” He yelled over to someone else, then froze as the clown's shadow fell over him.
     Alice shoved Violent Clay. “Find the fucker! It's still here!” Clay turned to glare at the woman. “It's doing this! Find it!” She waved around at the tent with her mangled hand, still clutching Ambrosia's paper. “I got this guy.”
     Alice dropped down to one knee as the clown stepped over the prone man, shoving on into the crowd. “What's wrong?”
     “Heart attack – we called an ambulance!”
     Alice put her hand over the man's chest, up to his throat to check his pulse. “No heart beat.” She glanced around, patting her pockets and coming up empty for anything useful. She was great at gashes, bullet wounds, broken bones, and most other fight-oriented first aid, but she didn't know a damn thing about heart attacks. She'd seen a lot of ER a few years ago, though, while recovering from a broken knee, and it seemed like those guys were always nailing patients with the shock paddles when their hearts stopped. Alice wasn't a healer, but she could manage an electric shock. She stuffed Ambrosia's note paper in her pocket and planted both hands over the man's heart, and pushed down.
     For a split second, her bones were visible through her skin, and the scab on her wounded hand smoked. She hissed in pain, and pushed down again, bones black shadows under yellow flesh, fresh blood from the scab hissing and popping. The man jerked and groaned.
     Alice pulled her hands back, fingers trailing smoke, and found a thready pulse at his throat. His eyes rolled open briefly, focused on her, and he whispered, “The fucking cop.”
     “What?” Alice exclaimed, but he'd passed out again. “Keep an eye on him.” She told the bar tender, pushing herself up and shoving into the crowd after Violent Clay. Cop? What cop? she wondered, following a trail of aggrieved-looking drunks left in the clown's wake. As she passed by, some guy yelled at another, “Did you push me? Did you fucking push me, asshole?” and slammed his fist into another man's face, his expression a dark twist of wrath.
     There was more going on here than just the Skindancer, Alice realized. Something else was going wrong in the Carnival, aggravating Junior's work. All that was going to do was feed Junior more juice, and the last thing Alice wanted to deal with was an even more powerful Skindancer. She broke out of the crowd, back into the fairway, and stopped, running her hands through her hair. She had to figure out what the other problem was and put a stop to it, and quickly. Let the clown tangle with Junior for awhile, keep them both busy. Alice had to sort out this second fiasco.
     Where to start, though? In this lunatic place, it could be literally anything. She turned, and a hand descended on her shoulder, spinning her the rest of the way around. She looked up into the hissing face of a demoness.
     “Shit!” She tried to twist back, but the demoness had her in steel vise grip.
     She leaned in close to Alice, forked tongue swirling over black lips. “Are you Alice? Black Alice?” The demoness snapped her wings open, mantling over her shoulders, tail lashing back and forth as she grinned. Alice looked down, and realized the demoness was holding something in her talons. She was holding --
     -- a scrap book and pen?
     “Can I get your autograph?” The demoness asked. “I'm a huge fan of your work.” She handed the book to Alice, who accepted it, stupid with amazement.
     Alice looked down at the scrapbook. It was opened to a page lined with yellowed news clippings detailing the Great Galveston Hurricane in Texas in 1900. Alice stared at the hundred-year-old news clippings. She knew the storm. She'd seen a thing about it on the Weather Channel once. Some reports said 12,000 people had died in the storm and resulting floods, making it the worst natural disaster ever to strike the United States.
     On the right hand page, above an article, was a sepia-toned news picture showing several survivors huddling together in front of a heaping mass of ruins. One of the survivors was a smiling little girl with curling hair, wearing a pinafore dress. Alice recognized the girl immediately. That's me, she thought. That's me, over a hundred years ago. Jesus.
     “Amazing, how you pulled that off. A whole hurricane. I could never manage anything that big. And over eight thousand dead. I can't imagine the power it generated! That's real quality, there.” The demoness continued to gush praise as Alice signed the book and handed it back. “Are you here to take the Carnival? My father will love this. And I get to be here to see it! This is great!”
     Alice looked up at the demoness, at a loss for words. “Um. Right. Take the Carnival.”
     “Can I help? I'd love to see how you do it first hand.”
     “Trade secrets, you know.” Alice managed.
     The demoness' face fell. “I suppose you're right. Still, I guess I get a front row seat, don't I?” She pointed away to the Big Top. “I'll be up there if you change your mind. Thanks for the autograph!”
     “No problem.” Alice watched as the demoness turned away, tail flipping back and forth as she headed back towards the Big Top. “What the fuck.” She said softly to herself. She had no memory whatsoever of any hurricane, resulting power gathered, nothing, and yet there had been her picture.
     She turned in a slow circle, hands holding her hair back, staring at the Carnival, and watched a large man, all painted up gold, stride by. She stopped, her astonished train of thought derailing as she noted that the man wasn't painted gold, he was made of gold. One glance told Alice he was one of the Freak Master's creatures.
     The Freak Master's creatures. The Freak Master, BB Wolfe, the soul eater, and his dark minions, patterned after the Seven Deadly Sins. The Sins, like greed, wrath, gluttony, envy . . . “Oh, fuck.” Alice said, remembering the fights and oddities she'd seen on the way here. “Fuck me.” The last place in this miserable shithole she wanted go, and she was suddenly positive that the Sins were the things aggravating the Skindancer's work. She let her hands drop, her hair falling into her face as she patted down her pockets for her cigarettes. She came out with her battered pack of Camels, her lighter, and Ambrosia's piece of paper, crumbled up in her maimed hand.
     Alice stared at her hand, at the page. This goddamn job had already cost her half a fortune. Two fingers off her shooting hand, a whole bag of gear, her car, not to mention the cost of the gas to get here. She was in the hole on this job whether she charged for expenses or not, and here she was, holding what an eight-year-old oracle claimed were the winning Lotto numbers. Hell, if they were the winning numbers for her home state, that was more than what the Father of Blood was paying. Alice could skip on out of this insane Carnival with its uncomfortable revelations and psychotic employees, head home. She could make her house payment for the next two years and still afford to set up her own workshop, become a master magus in her own right instead of just a journeyman, and still have money left over to screw around. This whole damn place could go straight to hell. It wasn't her territory after all. What did she really care if some abyssal demigod took the Well over and used it to . . .
     . . . devour the whole world . . . eventually . . .
     “Not my problem.” Alice said, smoothing the paper out to look at the crayon numbers. “Not my problem, man.”
     Indeed. You've seen enough, and we've more than enough to do in Detroit, without troubling ourselves here, as well. And just imagine how much easier Detroit will be to manage, now that you've seen the Freak Master's minions. It would be easy enough to create our own.
     “Right.” Alice said, softly, remembering Ambrosia's big, dark, serious eyes. You're a storm crow, the girl had said. Go before you hurt someone. “Right.” What else had the kid said? Something about challenges she wasn't up to? Being talked into something? She glanced down at the paper again.
     She wadded the paper up and pitched it into the trash. “Motherfucker.” She spat, while the Shadow hissed angrily in the back of her head. “Hey, you. You there.” She snagged an employee headed back to his booth. “Which way is the Freak Show from here?”
     “That way. Take a left.”
     “Great. Thanks.” She lit up a cigarette, heading in the direction the carnie had pointed out. “Dammit, I'm stupid.” She sighed, and caught a whiff of something burning. She glanced at her cigarette, and then stopped, reaching into her pocket and pulling out the golden ticket. The admittance hole had already been punched by the Ticket Master. As she watched, the gold melted out of a second pip in a perfect circle. Alice glanced tiredly around at the Carnival. “I am so fucked.” She jammed the damned ticket back in her pocket, and struck off in the direction of the Freak Show.

---

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Becky stalked away from Celestine's trailer, blushing furiously.

That son of a bitch. She had half a mind to take off her belt and make him take her seriously. She knew how. Daddy had given her lots of lessons. Give the good doctor a few welts to remember her by, something to sizzle and twitch when he sat down and remind him of all the things she could make him feel, whenever she wanted...

She stopped, clenching her fists at her sides, glaring down at the sawdust and straw with watery eyes. But she refused to cry. No. That's not right. That's just Daddy, still trying to fuck up her life. Becky took a deep breath, forcing her hands to relax. That wasn't her. Well, maybe, once in a while, just for fun... But she didn't have to be like that all the time.

"Hey, goil! C'mere!" She looked up, into a drifting cloud of straw. The big black crows, Heckle and Jeckle, were flapping furiously, carrying their pet scarecrow over the canvas wall between the trailers and the midway. The scarecrow, the puppet the birds plied with supernatural ability, had seen better days. It was torn wide open, and straw was drifting out with each breeze. They landed next to her, and one of them hopped down and began clumsily gathering straw. The other hopped onto the dummy's head, glaring at her. "Yeah, youse with da thumbs! C'mere and help out, whydoncha?" She smiled.

"What happened?" She knelt, and the two crows fluttered about while she scooped the dummy's filling back inside.

"Dunno, exackly." groused Heckle.

"It was that abominable child, that's wot." Jeckle's oh-so-British accent always made Becky smile. The two birds were eerily similar in appearance, but their voices, one accented with Brooklyn, the other pure London, were worlds apart. "Lit'le bahsturd. Came up to the scarecrow, right, like it wanted to give 'im a hug, he did."

"Only then, see, instead'a huggin, the little shit took a big old bite right outta his chest!"

"We took to the air right off, we did, and even then I think the wee monster tried to eat one of 'is feet!"

"Sounds like an awful child!"

"Yeah, yeah. And you wanna know what's really weird? The kid was gray. Like, all over. Gray. I tell ya, kids dese days."

Becky was tugging at the ragged edges of the scarecrow's shirt. The kid had taken a bite out of it? That would explain why she couldn't quite get it to close. "I'm going to need to get my sewing kit out of my trailer to fix this. It needs another patch." Each bird took a firm grip on the dummy, and flapping and swearing, they dragged it along behind her as they made their way. She loved the birds. They were her favorite carnies, even more than Shaggy and his big elderly great dane. They always had time for her, telling her jokes and stories and making their scarecrow dance for her. She'd long since forgotten how astonished she'd been to hear them talk that first time... When had that been? Long time ago. It didn't matter.

They avoided the public areas, moving around behind the concessions and booths. Becky knew the layout like the back of her hand, the shortcuts and quiet hidey-holes amidst the chaos and noise of the Carnival. They were just cutting around behind the Hall of Mirrors, when the birds dropped the scarecrow. "Hold it, goil!" Heckle snapped. She stopped, turning to see both birds carefully peering around the corner.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Shhhh!" they hissed in tandem, their feathers ruffled.

She peeked around, and saw Dana in the alley between her Hall and the Ring Toss. The Lady was whispering with a burly young man, who had a mechanical arm! That was new. "...very important that I find him," he said.

"I am sorry, but I cannot let you in," she replied. Becky could see right through her, and as always was a little jealous of the graceful way Dana's feet almost never touched the ground when she moved. "Your ticket has already been here."

"But I don't have a ticket!" he insisted.

"You do, let me assure you. Maybe you don't have a paper ticket, but you have the gold, I insist. And it's gold that has already crossed my threshold."

"Who's that?" Becky whispered. One of the birds glared up at her.

"Then what would you suggest?"

"For you? The easiest way to find him?" Dana considered. She crossed her arms, tapping her chin while she thought and walked around him in a small circle, eyeing him. She passed right through one of the ropes supporting the canvas walls of her Hall, but the man with the mechanical arm simply stood there, patiently. A small hiss of steam vented from his elbow. "The Labyrinth. I sense almost no turmoil in you. You are a man at peace. It should be your best route."

"Where is it?"

"Go. Wander. It will find you." Becky saw the strange man look through Dana, right at her. He didn't wink, or acknowledge her in any way. But he did see her, she knew it. She withdrew, and the birds went back to their positions holding the dummy.

"Who was that?" she repeated.

"Couldn't say, dear girl. But he is a prophet, that much is clear."

"Prophets," snorted Heckle, sinking his claws into the scarecrow's crotch. "Tricksy ones, those. Youse just keep your distance, if ya know what's good for ya. They're dangerous."

"I thought prophets were just, you know, preachers?"

"Who told ya that?" Both birds looked up at her, incredulous. "Prophets make Gods, Becks. They tell them what they to be." She laughed.

Jeckle sputtered, sending little black feathers flying. "Moses. Buddha. Mohammed. Even the Christ. Any of these names ring a bell, my peach? Sound, oh, a tech familiar? Prophets shape a god, gods shape the world."

"I think you have that backwards. They tell people about God, not the other way around."

The crows looked at each other, and back up at the girl, beady little eyes dead serious. "That's right, poppet. Heckle and I are just a pair of deluded avians. What would we know about Gods?" They went on their way, the girl happily ignoring the grousing birds, the birds carelessly birdhandling their burden along.

When they had gone, Dana stepped out through the back wall of the Hall. She eyed the trail of straw, and looked around the corner, at the alley where she and Thunk had been talking. "Hunin!" she called. "Munin! I know you're near, stormcrows! Come out!" But the birds did not show themselves, and, before she could follow the trail of straw, she felt someone summoning her at the entrance. Frowning, she faded from sight.

******************************************

The wolf cub scampered. Normally, he'd lope, to show his sire and dam how grown-up he'd become, but he was having too much fun and besides, they weren't anywhere around. There were hoomens, lots of them, but none of them paid him any attention. Already he'd found hot dogs, and cotton candy, and pastries and cups with beer still at the bottoms. His little tummy bulged, he'd eaten so much, but every time he rounded another corner, he found another trash bin overflowing with treats and tastes he'd never even dreamed of.

He'd snacked on that female's fingers, before, even though he knew his dam wouldn't approve. And why not? She didn't need them anymore, and he'd always wanted to try hooman meat. It'd been okay. Not great, but not bad. And when he'd run off some distance so he could eat the fingers undisturbed, he'd seen the Carnival down in the valley below. It had been just glowing, and all sorts of smells had come wafting up to him. He'd finally gotten to eat hooman, and here was a host of new smells, new maybe-tasty things to try! How could he not have run down here to try them?

The little wolf cub was half-hidden under a flap of tent, gnawing on half a pretzel covered in the most delicious yellow stuff, all sweet and spicy at the same time, when something grabbed him. He was hoisted up into the air, held by wicked claws in his ruff as a beast glared into his eyes. A beast with yellow eyes, like some great cat! A predator, and huge! "What have we here?" it rumbled, its voice a silken growl. The cub, with a hunk of paper-wrapped prezel still held in its mouth, peed. It roared, outraged, and the cub whimpered. Oh, well. It had been fun while it lasted.

******************************************

The crowd screamed and dispersed, as Stevens summoned a gout of fire along the length of his cane at the Ticketmastyr. Oily black smoke roiled into the sky, and Dave, the gates, and the ticketbooth were engulfed in the blaze. Vincente stared, horrified. What the fuck was going on here?

A triplicate roar emerged from the fireball, and Vincente spun around, uncoiling his whip and bellowing at the crowd to move. The few stragglers and gawkers left behind cringed away from the cracking lash in their faces, and hauled ass deeper into the Carnival. Stevens bellowed "I manage this crippled excuse for a goddamned circus! Me! You're just the fucking doorman! So do your fucking job, doorman, and open that damned gate right fucking now!" For emphasis, he pointed the cane at the sky, and called down half a dozen blasts of lightning. The light and noise staggered the beastmaster. He felt the shockwaves as thunder rolled over him like jackhammers, and blinked eyes blinded by the incandescent strikes.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" he screamed, but his voice was lost in the din. Dav strolled out of the blaze, seeming untouched by fire or lightning. He scowled, and Vincente saw his brow sloping, his jawline more pronounced. It gave the pale man a simian aspect, one that was exaggerated when he flexed, and his shoulders moved farther and farther apart from each other.

"Mine is the gate, and mine the only key. By my grace these doors open or close and mine alone. I have sworn to the Celestine to seal or part by his wish, and your desires mean little. Little to me, hollow magus, and less to the Celestine." Even Dav's voice had changed, becoming deep and booming, resounding with an almost musical echo. "Whose might is cast against me? Thine? For it seems that Celestine's hand bestowed the fury you wield so cavalier. Power he bestowed for another purpose, lest I mistake! Faithless servant, to squander such a gift! Were it mine, 'twould not be wasted so!"

"Take it, then, you allegorical animal!" screamed the old man in the mustard-and-lilac plaid suit. He dropped the cane, and clapped his hands. The shockwave blasted out, bowling Vincente ass-over-teakettle even though he'd been standing behind the Ringmaster. Much, much more of the force slammed into Dav, leveling the ticketbooth and smashing a hot dog cart into splinters and mangled steel. But the canvas and chain-link gates didn't so much as ripple, and while Dave's clothes were torn to tattered shreds, he didn't move an inch.

Two more heads rose, flanking the ticketmaster's golden gorilla face. The rightmost head was an emerald goat, with golden horns and eyes, a mouth full of fanged teeth, and a gold ring adorning a long, curly goatee. The leftmost head was a white lion, with red eyes, teeth of blackened stone, and a pink ribbon in its mane evocative of a certain Japanese feline icon. All three heads roared, their voices spanning from masculine to feminine and harmonizing in ways that made Vincente's ears hurt, and he saw honey-colored wings spreading, revealing how little of the ticketmastyr's bulk had been fat.

This had gone too far! The whip lashed out, scoring a bloody slash across the chimera's chest. Stevens laughed, only to receive the next whiplash on his forehead. Both combatants staggered back, and Vincente placed himself between them, whip twitching to and fro like an angry serpent. "Enough!" he bellowed. Stevens had fallen on his ass, momentarily blinded by the blood in his eyes. The blood smoldered and smoked, and was probably really uncomfortable. Good. He focused on Dav.

The goatface was snarling at him, leaning forward and drooling acid that sputtered and smoked where it landed on the sawdust. The leonine face was twisted into a snarl of defiance, black smoke curling past the wickedly sharp teeth. The center face, though, had smoothed and had lost some of its simian fur, looking more like Dav usually looked. "What was that for?" he/it said, sounding genuinely hurt and confused, making Vincente feel like he'd just lashed a kindergartener.

"Look at yourself, man! Look at Stevens! What are you doing?" The leftmost head lunged forward, but Vincente cracked the whip and barked "No!" The lance of bluish white flame came nowhere near him, and Dav absently reached up and flicked the lion-face on the nose.

"Bad kitty." he said, and the two other heads began to fade and recede, the wings folding around the barrel chest. A white labcoat seemed to fade into existence again, cloaking his bulk as his face returned to normal. Stevens lurched to his feet, a ball of fire forming in his fist and Vincente twitched his lash forcefully, coiling it tightly around the older man's throat.

"Stevens. Things are going on here, and your power is needed to protect all the customers. Waste another drop of it, and I swear I'll finish you here and now." The two of them glared at each other, and Vincente knew this game. Four eyes locked, two on two. One pair enraged, angry enough to kill, the other pair cold, dominant and patient, but plainly ready to mete out punishment. It was a test of wills, beast and tamer, and one he had never, ever lost.

"Hey, my booth!" Dave squealed. "My stuff!" He scrambled in the wreckage, wailing and clutching a shredded Hello Kitty doll to his breast. Stevens broke first, laughing at the spectacle. Vincente allowed himself a smile, before drawing the lash taut once more.

The tension in the bullwhip cut Stevens' laugh off short, and he was suddenly focused only on Vincente again, looking positively horrified. "Are we cool, old man?" He nodded.

Vincente did something with his wrist, and the whip dropped away from the ringmaster's throat. From off to one side, quiet applause sounded, and the two of them glanced over, both of them recoiling in horror at the sight of Tiffany standing against an electrical pole, clapping and beaming at them. "Guys, that was amazing. Really, really good stuff. I'm impressed, really."

Stevens and Vincente glanced at each other, and looked back at the clown, the ball of fire and the lash ready again. From the wreckage of the booth, Dave was moaning "Sweet limited edition autographed animation cell number 10034739, never did you harm another, and now, your lovely smile destroyed, your frail cellulose rent asunder... Oh, were 'twas me!"

The other three glanced at him. "Is he gonna be okay?" Tiffany asked.

"Oh, no, cruel fate! Not my first-run storybook casettes! Oh, the tragedy, the useless pointless shame!" He looked up at the others, holding the shattered plastic remains to his bosom. "I say sooth, on mine honor, they were mint in box."

Stevens refocused back on Tiffany. "What do you care?"

"Not a lot, I'll give you that. Look, which way did Violent Clay go? Is he around?"

Vincente began, cautiously, recoiling his whip. "If he were, don't you think he'd have jumped into the fun?"

She looked surprised. "I don't know, would he have? Does that mean I should have? Sorry, this is all pretty new to me. Look, I've got a couple of things on my plate, here, and if you boys are done playing, it'd be great if you could help me out." She looked off to one side, shaking her finger at nothing. "And you mind your own business, beeyotch." She flicked her wrist dismissively. "Shoo." Tiffany strolled over, pulling a string of scarves out of her sleeve and offering one to Stevens. He took it, and dabbed at his forehead wound, while she continued to pull out scarves. They were piling at his feet. "I've gotta find V.C. cause the boss thinks he's going to need a hand. I think it's pretty serious. But I'm also supposed to help keep the peace around here, and I'm halfway sure that the demon thing that used to be on the bigtop needs some attention." She pulled a hand grenade out, attached to the string of scarves. "That's where that went. Cool." She tugged it free of the silk, and tucked it back up her sleeve, giving the end of the string to Stevens, who looked down at the pile of scarves he was standing knee-deep in, holding both ends.

"Yeah, the big top demon moved. That's what I was coming here to tell you," Vincente grumbled, unwilling to take his eyes off the clown.

"Moved?" Stevens mumbled.

"Not moved," Tiffany offered helpfully. "Gone. It came down while you guys were playing mine-is-bigger." Vincente spun around, and sure enough, the demon was gone.

"It can't have gone, the gates are shut. That means it's loose, with the customers!" Stevens hopped gracelessly out of the pile of scarves. "I will find Celestine. Vincente, send your scouts out, find the demon!"

"I'll find Violent Clay, and help hurt stuff!" Tiffany volunteered, clapping her hands.

"Um." Stevens said. "Actually, that's not a bad idea. You do that. Incidentally, when you said 'boss,' earlier...?"

"Mister James, natch!" She called back over her shoulder, as she was already sprinting away.

Vincente and Stevens took a moment to digest that. Dav, for his part, found the pulverized remains of his Hello Hummel Figurine set and once again burst into tears. "Is that bad?" the beast tamer asked, quietly.

"I don't know! Flip a fucking coin! Heads, it's great news!" snarled Stevens as he stalked away. "And keep an eye out for my clipboard! I've got to go tell Celestine to put his damned pants back on!"

********************************************

Envy swirled gently away, following the taste of the woman, Black Alice. Immaterial, invisible, her body a shapless cloud of pale lime, with green eyes creased in thought, she followed the trail leading toward the Freak Show.

Interesting, that. The she-clown could see her, and more, seemed immune. The creature was dead, and soulless, and totally focused on her tasks to the exclusion of anything else. That boded poorly; BB would have to be told about this addition to the gambler's arsenal.

Oh, how BB had wanted the woman in leather, the one with the missing fingers and the gaping hole full of need where her soul had used to be. Only his resentment at what Bloody Mary had had, and he did not, had been stronger. Stronger, perhaps, because Envy had been near. She wondered what would have happened at the gate if he'd brought Greed instead? The Alice creature was another, one like BB. Did she bring avatars of her own? Was she here to usurp the Freakshow? Would she kill BB, and free the Sins to come into themselves?

These were, sadly, purely academic questions. Envy had her task. Follow Alice. Prevent the other carnies from taking her. BB wanted her for himself. It hadn't been easy to provoke the gatekeeper, but Stevens had been much, much simpler. And once he had gone over the edge, Dav hadn't been too hard. Their weakness had been like fine wine, and Envy hoped others would try for Alice, too. Perhaps Masque, yes, lots to work with there. Lots to use, to fan into flame. She would be so sweet...

The trail stopped behind the supply tent. A small collection of bones lay strewn about, marked with tiny toothmarks. Shreds of clothing lay here and there, and even the sawdust was gone in a rough circle around the bones. What was this... Envy wafted over and through the bones, tasting. Gluttony had been here, but hadn't eaten... There would be no bones left. Something else, something... other. But hungry, bottomless aching hunger and a longing for pain, for blood... Envy reared up, her unseen yes flashing.

Had Gluttony become? Had she spawned avatars of her own? Couldn't be! And yet...

Remembering herself, she flailed about, seeking the trail again... but it was gone. Whatever had feasted here, had eaten bone and muscle, cloth and sinew, and had devoured the very auras of everything in the area. There was no trail to follow. Oh, that was bad.

***************************************************

Brick sat down in the beer tent. Yesterday had sucked. People dead in the parking lot. Those teenagers, that poor cop, and no matter how strong he was, how powerful, he'd been unable to stop any of it. He'd been too slow, too late. He really, really, really hated feeling helpless. He still wasn't sure what exactly had happened out there. Everyone he talked to about it had a different story, each more wild and unlikely than the last. Nonsense, all of it. He idly crushed a stone in his left hand, grinding it into sand, and then into dust as he waved at the bartender with his right.

Yesterday had sucked.

Today, there was going to be alcohol, and lots of it. Enough of it, and today would be a blur. And then, tomorrow, there'd be a nice comfortable blur between him and the clusterfuck in the parking lot. Maybe tomorrow would be a blur, too. And if he was really, really lucky, the blur would stretch back and wipe out the whole damn parking lot fiasco. "Usual, Brick?" Callahan asked.

"Leave the bottle." He looked sharply up, and added "And don't ask."

Ania awoke to a stabbing pain in her stomach followed by the sound of giggles in her head. 

"You fucking bitch!"  More giggles followed in resonse.  She rolled out of her coffin.  Her head was throbbing with pain as her hair was curling on itself, tightly.  The giggles continued through a child's rhyme, "All around the games of skill the clown chased the Lady.  Lady got dropped with the clown on top! OOPS no more Lady!"

"Get out of my head you drag-queen-second-rate-whore!" The giggles became louder.  Ania became enraged clawing at her hair to get rid of the curling.  Scratching at her burning skin.

She heard voices at her door, along with someone opening the deadbolts.  The door opened to reveal a fat pig with over-the-top make up and bad clothes being held by a bear in overalls.  Ania's hunger grew and she savagely reached out for the pig delighted to hear it squeal as she sunk her claws in and pulled her into her darkness.  

Feed. She thought. Become stronger and shake this off.  She bit into the pig's neck only for her first swallow to make her gag at the taste.  The blood fueling the aggression.  She dropped the pig to find it was a lady.  A blind fit for violence consumed Ania, turning the lady into a punching bag.  The first blow to the head killed the woman, snapping her neck as Ania continued to box the body.  

Ania started to giggle.  "That was fun."  She covered her mouth as she said it.  But a smiled formed underneath her hands, claws retracting.  She walked to her closet and started digging.  She found her Alice in Wonderland costume from halloween a few years ago, she thought the reference would be funny then, but they acted like they've seen it before and seemed more shocked that she was wearing some color.  The costume changed from blue to black and more ruffles seemed to grow.  Ania danced in the costume.  "I hope he likes it," as she twirled amid the clouds of color she saw in the darkness.  Her skin was tingling.

The knock at her door made her giggle.  The fact that it was Mista J made it all the better.  Ania wondered what he would say when his knees were broken when he denied her a raise, again.  When the door opened, the sudden reception of the holy light blinded her and her vampire instincts were to hide.  She curled up on herself in the back corner.  The light became a darkness as she passed out, then returned to a glow that revealed bubbles in the air.  Ania took pleasure in popping them as she heard the giggles fading.

"Good girl." Mr. James was walking toward her with his hands in his pockets.  He looked and sounded younger.

"What? For popping bubbles? Shouldn't you be glaring for me to get back to work or something?"

He smiled, "And you would wait for me to leave just to pop them again."

She glared at him again and muttered, "Why wait for you to leave?" She continued popping until Mr. James grabbed her hand.  She looked at him confused. "You alright, Mista J?"

"Fine, thank you." As he started to dance with her.  No ballroom dancing could compare to the beauty the two displayed.  Ania felt like there was no ground beneath her feet.  The air around her was becoming a warm sensation on her skin. 

"The game, Ania."

"Huh?"  Now that he had mentioned it, the feeling she had was much like that when he had put her in the booth and she played with the cop.  She could feel it now, embracing her. 

Mr. James dipped her and brought his face so close to hers he could feel his light breathing on her face.  She closed her eyes.  It was that orgasmic feeling all over again, until the thought struck her. She stopped dancing and stepped back from Mr. James looking at him like she did when he told her to get into the booth, confused and wary.  She felt a small pinch in her chest.

"I'm going to flip this coin.." he pulled the coin from his pocket.

"Oh no you're not!"  She interrupted.  She felt odds in her head.  Fifty-fifty shot my ass!  "Hello, games of skill not...."

"Catch it in air."  His turn to inerrupt her."What?"

"Watch it, catch it on heads." 

"That's not possi...." And he flipped, she watched the coin go up.  She felt the game swell on her, the odds changing with every flip.  She focused, the odds changing again.  She snatched the coin in mid-height and slammed it on the back of her opposite hand.   She already knew the outcome without lifting her hand.  She slid the coin off her hand and fisted it.

Mr. James smiled as he receded into the glow, which became darkness.  She was hearing sounds of Tiffany talking to someone.  

"You know the answer to that. Now get out of here. Ania's resting. When she wakes up, she can meet her new toy."   Ah, Mista J.  The game still rested on her, but not as strongly as in her dream.

She heard him lock most of the bolts as she lifted the lid.  Her body was still sore, the new muscles could still be seen under the new skin, and parts were still a bit missing, but she was thankful the nightmares and dreams were over.  They were always too confusing.   Her mind crossed to the source of her wounds, which led to her thoughts again on Dana.  Dana knew something that Ania needed to know.  She tried to lay and rest.  She felt the warmth of blood in her stomach and the comfort of laying in the silent darkness, but her mind was restless of Dana.  Her last clear memory, which was foggy at best, was Tiffany saying something about Dana.  Ania would rather talk to Dana than track down lil Ms. Shoot-em-up in such a poor shape.

She climbed out of her coffin and grabbed a coat to cover herself and walked out the door.  She was heading straight for the House of Mirrors.

Bright is the moon high in starlight
Chill in the air cold as steel tonight
We shift
Call of the wild
Fear in your eyes
It's later than you realized
-- Of Wolf and Man, Metallica

     “Houston, we have a problem.” Alice stood there, smoking a cigarette. The clown was standing a little near for comfort, glaring down at her. The Shadow had pried Herself up from the ground and was hovering over the corpse, up to Her black shoulder in the corpse's mouth, rooting around in the innards.
     Alice glanced over at the clown. “We need to destroy this body. And with a quickness.”
     Clay grunted. “We got people for that. Come on.”
     Alice plugged her cigarette between her lips and snapped her fingers. The Shadow pulled free of the corpse and flopped back into place on the ground. Alice drew the cigarette from her lips and breathed out a long plume of smoke. “Lead on.”

* * *

     Two paramedics knelt in the ditch working on the dying driver of the flatbed tow truck. They were surrounded in equipment, working in the light of strobing red and blue flashers, and the spotlights from the ambulance and cops cars.
     The cops, for their part, stood up on the road, poking around the truck, speaking quietly into their radios. One, a well-built older man in his middle-forties with the kind of iron-gray hair a man had to earn, was kneeling on the road behind the tow truck, studying the tire tracks.
     “Whatcha got, Josh?”
     Lt. Josh Benson looked up from the skid marks. “Looks like the guy braked to avoid something.”
     The younger cop wandered over, scanning around, over the woods, then back to the field. “Deer, probably.”
     “Probably.” Benson stood up, studying the tow truck. He turned, looking into the field, spotted the steaming rock. “This is the truck from that damn carnival.”
     “Yeah?” The younger cop followed Benson's pointing finger to the rock in the field. “That the asteroid thingie?”
     Benson nodded. “Yeah.”
     “Huh. Didn't make it very far, did he?”
     “No, he didn't. Is he going to make it?”
     The younger cop shook his head. “They're working on him, but . . .”
     Benson sighed, rubbing the back of his head. This night was getting longer and longer. “Call another truck. We're going to have to get this one out of the ditch.”
     “Yeah, it's on the way. What about the rock?”
     Benson glared at it. “I guess we're going to have to get that damn thing out of here, too.”
     The activity down in the ditch stilled. Benson and the younger cop turned to look, and the paramedics looked up at them, still kneeling next to the corpse. The two paramedics, a man and a woman, shook their heads. The woman rubbed her face, tossing the breathing bag she'd been using down disgustedly.
     “No good?” Benson asked, voice quiet.
     The man heaved a sigh. “He's been flat lined for over five minutes. We can't get him back. Something in his guts ruptured, I think. Looks like he hit the steering wheel on his way out the window.”
     “We got company.” The younger cop pointed down the road. “I should get the road flares out.”
     “Yeah, better.” Said Benson, squinting into the approaching glare of headlights.
     The car was slowing, getting over. Benson turned away, ignoring it, tired into his bones. He found himself staring down into the ditch, into the gape-jawed face of a dead man. He shuddered, turning back. The car had stopped, and the driver-side door was opening. A man stepped out. The car's headlights glared into Benson's eyes, turning the new arrival into nothing more than a black form, faceless.
     “Something we can do to help?” The man called.
     Benson cocked his head, squinting into the light. The voice sounded familiar, but he couldn't place it. “No, thanks. We got it in hand.”
     “You sure about that?”
     Benson started to answer, and then placed the voice. At the same time, the passenger-side door swung open, and a slow cold chill rolled down his spine.

* * *

     The sign over the tent read “B.B. Wolfe Presents The Freak Show And Burlesque”. The script was curly and gothic, gold letters on a harlot red sign, spanning out over three different entrances that seemed to lead back into the same voluminous tent. All three entries were closed, two tent flaps tied shut and in the middle, an imposing steel door. There was a sign out front of what Alice took for the main entrance, the door on the right. The little sign read “closed”.
     Alice looked the tent over. It had an ominous air even in the top layer of this odd little Carnival, but deeper in Alice could sense the shades of increasingly darker places, the Freak Show growing more and more twisted the farther into the Carnival one went. She glanced around, beginning to wonder if this Dr. Celestine guy had any idea of what, exactly, he had working for his Carnival, here.
     The clown was approaching the left hand door. Alice followed behind, eying the tent flap with distinct unease. She stood a little back while the clown thumped his massive fist on one of the framing poles. The tent flap peeked open a bit, revealing a narrow, ratty little face. Alice only caught a glimpse of the young man before the clown rumbled “Send me Gluttony.”
     The little face disappeared with a squeak, and the flap fell closed again. They waited a moment, and Alice heard ponderous footsteps approaching the front of the tent. The flap was lifted open, all the way, and Alice got a good look at the monstrosity at the door.
     It – she – was bigger than Violent Clay, or at least wider, a huge, quivering slab of leprous white flesh with a cottage cheese texture. She was wearing a spangled red bikini, the top of one if nothing else, because if she was wearing the bottom, Alice couldn't see it. It was lost in the slopping fat rolls. The woman was beyond huge, bigger even than the man at the ticket booth, upwards into the range where they start measuring things in tons. Her head was nothing but jowls and chins sloping down into her chest, which was itself immense, rolling down to her belly, which hung in pendulous folds to her knees, which were lost in hanging, quivering flaps of fat, to her calves, which hung over her swollen ankles, to two surprisingly dainty little feet in spangled red pumps. Her hair was short, a dark, greasy tangle, and her eyes were two piggy little slits nearly lost in the bulges of her cheeks. Her skin was slick with grease and sweat, and the body odor reek of her rolled off in palpable waves. Her breath came in the heavy, pained blowing of a wounded buffalo.
     Alice gagged, choked down her gorge.
     “There's a body back behind the supply tent. Deal with it.”
     The woman licked her lips, piggy little eyes widening slightly. “Fresh one?”
     The clown's nose wrinkled, lips pulling back from his teeth in a grimace. “Yeah.”
     “Oooo. I'll get the ketchup.”
     Alice's stomach did a lazy, queasy roll.
     Gluttony glanced her way. “Well, hello there.” Her voice was deep, thick, glutinous. She took a heavy step forward, then another, heaving for breath with each slow step. Alice felt like her feet were stuck to the ground as the woman heaved herself forward, breathing in deep, ragged gusts as she propelled her bulk along. Alice towered over the behemoth, but felt positively tiny and fragile when the thing stood in front of her, as solid and massive as a planet. Gluttony seemed to have her own gravity. “What have we got here?”
     Alice stared down at her, the woman's stink coating her throat and tongue. She blinked, and for a second, her vision came clear, and she was looking down not at a Fat Lady, but into a gaping, carnivorous chasm, into endless, aching hunger. Alice's Shadow stirred, the Shadow inside, and Her hunger sharpened in response to Gluttony's presence, as though echoing the Fat Lady's own nature.
     Alice ground her teeth and slapped the Shadow back into place. She knew the Shadow's hunger too well, had mastered it too long ago, to be much troubled by it.
     Gluttony poked Alice in the chest with one fat, sausage-like finger. “I'm not your Sin, am I? But we've got some others in there. Yes we do.” Her breath was a fetid cloud. “I bet we've got one in there for you.”
     Alice was mesmerized by the movement of the woman's livery lips, the jiggle of her cheeks as she spoke.
     Gluttony sniffed around Alice's shoulders. “I smell gold. What you hiding in there, little girl? You coming in to visit us after all?”
     With a dawning horror, a fine, bright edge of emotion, even more terrible for being something Alice hadn't felt in years, she recognized the woman. Yes. She knew this thing, an echo, an extension of the soul eater at the gates. This heaving blob of a woman housed BB's hunger, and Alice recognized her because she suddenly realized that at some time in the distant, foggy past she no longer remembered, she'd been a similar thing herself, a trapped extension of someone else's monster. She suffered a second of memory, and in it she saw a small, thin, familiar girl, all red-headed curls and flashing green eyes and chubby cheeks. Alice saw the girl weeping and smiling a sweet little smile as scabrous dark tentacles burst up from the ground, little mouths on the ends snatching and tearing at a screaming man before her, crushing and ripping and pulling the man down into the ground.
     “You can fuck directly off.” Alice's voice was a shimmery ghost.
     Gluttony laughed, and her whole body jiggled as she did, a mass of quivering white Jell-O. She turned on her heel, a slow revolution, and moved off. “Behind the supply tent?”
     Violent Clay nodded.
     “Mmmmmm.” The woman lumbered away, licking her lips and rubbing her hands together.
     “Jesus fucking Christ in a side car.” Alice whispered. “What is this place?”
     The clown giggled.

* * *

     Benson stood rooted to the ground. He couldn't have said why, but his spine was shot through with ice, and his bowels felt hot and loose, like they were about to let go. His heart beat doubled, and his blood felt full of cold needles. His hand itched to wrap around the butt of his gun.
     “Get back in your car, please, sir.” It took him two tries to get the words out. He'd gone cotton-mouthed.
     Something cracked loudly and Benson twitched hard. He found his gun in his hand.
     “Josh?” The cop next to him grabbed his arm. “What's wrong?”
     Benson shook his head, heart slamming in his chest. Both dark forms at the car had turned, looking out in the field. Benson turned, looking out that way as well. There was another loud cracking noise. With the glare in his eyes, Benson couldn't see what was going on in the field, but his gut told him, coiling into tight, hard knots, that something bad was going on.
     “Josh? You all right?” The younger cop shook his arm lightly, eyes wide with alarm. “Guys?” He called it over his shoulder to the paramedics. “Guys, c'mere! Josh – Mike, I think Josh is having a heart attack!”
     Benson shook his head. The cracking noise came again, with a long, rough, ripping undertone. His lips worked, finally managing, “What is that? What's that noise?”
     The the passenger of the car moved around the front, going to the driver's side. For a moment, as she walked in front of the headlights, the passenger was a stark, distinct black form, long, lovely legs, swinging hips and hair. For a moment, Joshua Benson forgot his fear, and then she passed out of the light, and his terror returned tenfold in a freezing rush.
     The two forms jumped the shallow ditch, and were out into the field. Benson squinted through the glare. They were headed for the rock. Benson jerked free of the younger cop and the paramedic, moving forward, past the lights. He heard them call his name as he hopped across the ditch, himself, and now, in the darkness, he could see the rock, split in half, smoke rolling thick and heavy out from the crack. “Hey! Hey, you two get back from there!”
     He couldn't have said why, but he leveled his gun. He could see the forms well enough now to recognize them for sure, the Freak Show carnie who'd been in the parking lot earlier, the guy with the shady eyes and too-pleasant smile, and the other was a woman, gorgeous, long dark hair, lithe form clothed in a little red dress. Benson glanced from them to the rock as his partner jumped the ditch.
     A hand came up out of the crack, fastening on the edge of the rock. The hand was spindly, very white, fingers too long, as though they had too many joints.
     “What the hell are they doing --” The younger cop's voice trailed off, eyes growing huge as he spotted the rock. “What --”
     “Call for help, Steve. Hurry.”
     “Josh --”
     “Steve. Help. Now.” Despite his terror, Benson's voice came out hard and calm, the words sharp, firm snaps. He took two steps forward. “Hey! You – Bart! BB!” He leveled the gun, racking the slide back with an unmistakable ratcheting click. “Get away from there! Now!”
     BB turned from the rock, where a second hand was flailing out, grabbing the ridge. He was grinning, an ear-to-ear leer full of cheerful good humor. “Lieutenant Benson, is that you? How good to see you again! Just coming to get my property back.”
     “Hands up. Step back. Now.” Benson knew he was going to shoot. He didn't know what was going on, but he knew the situation had gone deep south, knew things were profoundly wrong. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wondered if the gun would actually stop the carnie, and couldn't for the life of him think why it wouldn't, but . . . “Both of you! Hands in the air where I can see them. Get back from that thing.”
     BB put his hands up, the woman following suit. They were both smiling entirely too much. They took a couple of steps away from the rock, towards Benson, and Benson didn't care for that, either.
     “Come on, Lieutenant – I'm just here for what's mine. Rightfully mine, I might add.” The carnie spread his hands out in a harmless, friendly gesture. “No need for the gun, Josh, wasn't it? We're all friends, here.”
     A squalling sound issued from the rock, ragged, not quite human. Benson knew all the way to the core of his soul that he absolutely did not want to see whatever was about to crawl up out of the asteroid. He shifted his aim towards the rock, heart hammering so hard he almost couldn't feel the pause between beats. Somewhere behind him, he heard Steve pull his gun as well.
     “What the hell's in there, Josh?” Steve's voice was thready, weak. Benson knew if he looked, Steve's gun would be jittering all over the place.
     The carnie and his girlfriend were looking over their shoulders, at the hands gripping the edges of the cracked rock. There was a tension in the hands now, harsh little grunts coming out of the split. Something was pulling itself out of the rock.
     Please God, Benson prayed. Please don't let me have to see that.
     The carnie was staring at the rock, eyes wide and avid, grinning. The woman was still staring at them, smiling her lovely smile. Benson kept his aim steady on them, and in his peripheral vision, saw a set of arms clawing up out of the rock. There was a long, horrifying moan, and the arms tensed, pulling.
     Benson shifted his aim to the rock. “Oh God, please don't. Please don't.”
     All at the same time, the woman put her hand on her carnie boyfriend's arm, the thing levered itself up out of the rock, and Benson, in a white hot panic, began firing. All at the same time, the carnie turned, mouth opening wide in a howl of rage, the thing toppled out of the rock, and the woman darted forward. All at the same time, Benson thought, Thank-you, I didn't have to see it, and the carnie launched himself at the cops, the woman hot on his heels. Benson kept firing. He kept firing long after the chamber went dry. All he could see was BB's eyes, deep black empty pits.

* * *

     Gluttony rounded the corner of the supply tent, saw the feet of the body. A smile spread out on her fat face, bunching her jowls into layers of greasy wrinkles. She thundered slowly forward, heaving and panting for breath, advancing on the corpse. Drool ran in thin ropes down her chins.
     She looked down, and let out a low little moan of displeasure. The corpse was swollen, already bloating with death vapors. The stomach, in particular, was profoundly distended, poking roundly up, shirt shoved back by its bulk, hem of the jeans pushed down to make room. The flavor would be spoiled, now.
     Still, Gluttony supposed that was why she'd brought the ketchup along. She lumbered forward, raising the red plastic squeeze bottle, and the stomach abruptly split with a wet ripping noise. Gluttony froze in place. Her weight took her two more steps forward. Intestines spilled out of the cavity with a horrible reek.
     The intestines writhed. Gluttony blinked, staring, gape-jawed.
     Not intestines. Tentacles. The tentacles hooked the ground, and a wet, gray, slug-like thing dragged itself forth from the stinking cavity. It was streaked in blood and shit. Another followed. Then another. Then another.
     They had no eyes, but Gluttony could sense them staring at her, somehow, and the tentacles whipped and flailed, and they made a terrible mewling noise. They were hungry. Gluttony could feel it. Their hunger was vast and mighty, surpassing even her own.
     “Oh.” She whispered, and her smile came back, slow. “Oh, oh, my poor babies. You're just starving, aren't you?”

* * *

     The howl echoed off the sky, a long, loud, sonorous call that rolled out over the field and choked off into a jagged growling snarl. BB jerked his head up from his feeding, listening to the cop gag and moan as he scanned the wood line.
     At first all he saw was the yellow eye, and he almost mistook it for a lightning bug until he realized it was embedded in a long gray shadow. The shadow opened its mouth, revealing glistening teeth. It was pacing to the edge of the ditch. It bunched, preparing to leap.
     “Oh. Shit.” BB dropped the lieutenant, scrambling back. Somewhere off to his right, the paramedics continued to rip each other's clothes off as Lust feasted on them, and just behind him, the younger cop, who had leaped in front of his partner, lay in a heap, empty eyes smoking. He stumbled over the corpse as the wolf lunged across the ditch, landing with a dull, heavy thud on the dirt road. The growling intensified, a deep, savage, ragged sound, as the wolf stood there, braced in the headlights, tail a perfect rainbow arc, hackles raised, black lips peeled back from sharp teeth.
     “Shit. Can't be.” BB kicked back in the field, throwing dirt as he shoved himself up. “Can't be!”
     The wolf paced forward, vibrating with the growl, claws throwing hard-packed gravel, and BB heard the grinding crack of bones as the wolf began to twist and stand. In one, two steps it – she – was on her back feet, body warping as she moved, lengthening, gaining and shifting mass, eye growing more human, muzzle shortening, paws lengthening out into taloned hands, back legs still backwards-kneed, but longer, stronger. The half-wolf, half-woman stood on her back legs, threw her head back, and howled.
     BB took two steps back, turning. “Fuck.”
     His gaze went around the field in a rush, taking it all in. Mary was strong, and she was fast, and she had no business being here, but that was beside the point. She was, and he didn't have a drop of silver on him, but he did have one thing. Mary in her rage was powerful, but she wasn't the brightest thing ever to snarl on two feet.
     He had two options. He could get mauled and manage to survive somehow – the “somehow” being the tricky part in this scenario because Mary had always taken him a bit personally – painful in the short term, but immensely rewarding in the long term if he could survive a bite. Or, he could distract her for a few minutes, and -- “Lust!”
     He made eye contact with the Sin, and then pointedly turned his stare to the writhing, squalling, white form by the broken asteroid. Lust nodded, and BB turned and ran like hell. He could hear the paws in the dirt, the snarling, as Mary leaped after him.
     He needed his breath for running, but BB couldn't quite manage to stop himself from snickering.


     The wolf-woman landed next to Benson, and he saw it, and he fully realized that he had just seen a thing that was somehow part woman, part wolf, like fantastic CGI in some horror movie, but it just couldn't quite sink all the way in.
     I didn't see that, he told himself, and himself said back, Yes, you did. “Couldn'ta.” He managed the word, a weak shake of his head. His chest was on fire, as though hooks had been shoved down his throat and used to pull his lungs back out. His eyes burned, and his vision was blurry, teary. He had a vague impression of Steve jumping in front of him, shoving him back. He seemed to recall the carnie grabbing Steve, and just looking him in the eyes as Steve choked and gagged and moaned. The carnie had tossed him down in a tumbled heap, and Steve hadn't moved. And then the carnie had grabbed him and . . .
     And what? What exactly? Benson couldn't make it come clear in his mind. He lifted his head, slowly. It ached. He glanced around, blinking to clear his vision.
     His gun. There was his gun. He reached for it, felt immediately better for having it in his hand. He armed the water out of his eyes and pushed himself over, shoving himself to his knees. The paramedics, Mike and Danielle, were slumped together, unmoving, half-naked. Benson ejected the clip from his gun, managed to fumble another out of his belt, reloaded. Not that the first nine bullets had done him any good, but he felt steadier, more calm, with a loaded gun in his hands. He felt certain he had emptied at least five bullets into the carnie's chest, and he had just kept on, but that couldn't possibly be the case. This was a .9mm. One did not just take five bullets from a .9mm and keep on coming, Kevlar vest, no Kevlar vest, weirdo carnie or not. Life just did not work that way.
     Of course, life also did not include howling wolf-women, either, but Benson put that thought out of his mind. He'd just told himself he hadn't seen that, hadn't he?
     He turned on his knees, looking around, and spotted the woman, the carnie's pretty girlfriend. She was kneeling next to the rock, reaching for --
     -- I don't want to see it! --
     -- the thing behind the rock, and Benson got a foot underneath him and stood unsteadily, racking the slide on the gun. He checked the safety, found it off, and started towards the woman. He told himself again and again that he didn't want to see the thing in the rock, and himself answered back in the same calm tone, You might have to. Man up, Josh.
     He moved forward, quickly, before he could lose his nerve, and rounded the asteroid, face turned away, and then, with a little sound of dismay, looked dead on at the woman and the atrocity she was kneeling over.
     It was a little old man, nude, sexless if not entirely genderless, skin whithered white and sagging in wrinkles, joints all wrong, twisted, as though with arthritis, toothless as his mouth gaped, but his eyes were wide, young, innocent, and pure silver. The woman knelt over him, brushing his face. “There there, it's me, now.” She said gently.
     Benson raised his gun. She didn't seem at all aware of him.
     “Lady?” The old man's voice was quavery, weak, paper thin, accented with something almost Cockney in tone.
     “Yes, it's me.”
     “Lady?”
     Benson leveled the gun at the old man, hesitant now that he'd seen it, because it just wasn't all that awful, now, was it? Weird, sure, but just some diseased old man, a little on the senile side from the look of him, and he must have imagined that whole weird thing with the rock splitting open . . .
     “Lady? Izzit you, Lady?”
     The old man blinked, peering up at the woman, reaching a shaking hand up to her face. His smile faded, slowly, and his demented silver eyes narrowed. “That's not the Lady.” His voice was a hot little hiss.


     She was hunting, Mary was hunting, and it was good, it was so good, and the prey ran, and she chased him, moving in a long graceful lope. She'd almost forgotten this form, its eerie grace and power, and she ran on, smelling the fear of her prey. Her throat was full of growls as she ran, closing the distance easily, not even trying, and she could hear his pained gasps as he ran. She darted forward, slapping him with one huge hand full of claws, and he staggered, fell, twisting in the dirt to get himself face up. Mary pounced on him, and he let out a sharp little yelp.
     He struggled, scrambling back on his elbows, eyes wide and frightened, but he was grinning, too. Mary palmed his chest, her talons curving over his shoulders and around his ribs, and pinned him in the dirt. Her throat worked, forcing words up out of the growls. “BB. You little bastard.”
     His gaze went from her, to something behind her, back to her. “Too late.”
     She wouldn't have looked, but it was the knowing grin that got her, the slyness of it, and she turned, squeezing tightly to hold him, feeling claw tips puncture skin as he groaned. In the distance, she saw the woman, kneeling over the creature, and the cop behind them.
     “You're all too late. It's mine now.”
     Her yellow wolf's eye widened as she saw the creature raise his hands to the woman, and she howled, “No!”


     Benson jerked, startled, as the little man snatched the woman by the face, and suddenly the woman was shrieking, a high, God-awful spiraling noise that caught in her throat as she began gagging. Foam filled her mouth, spilling over her lips as she grunted and writhed in the creature's grasp.
     Benson pulled the trigger, and pulled the trigger, and pulled the trigger, and the little old man jerked and jumped under the bullets, whining back in his throat, but the woman just wouldn't stop screaming and foaming. “Jesus!” Benson yelled, hardly aware it was out loud. “What is it? Jesus!”


     Mary's head snapped back around, pinning BB in place with the heat of her glare. “You fucking idiot!” He was laughing up at her, and she snarled down at him, jerking her free hand back and slapping him, knocking him cold and opening his face in livid gashes. She rose from her haunches, BB dangling from her claws like a rag doll, and started back across the field.


     The woman fell backwards, clawing at her throat and chest, convulsing. The old man lay there, dead as a door nail, finally, something he could kill with bullets, chest blown wide open by an entire clip of .9mm ammo, and the gun fell from Benson's nerveless fingers. He staggered back a couple of steps as his brain did a short-circuit. It had already been running on overload, and now Benson was staring, eyes huge as dinner platters, at the wolfish monster coming across the field, dangling a body from one massive hand as though it were nothing, and that was it. That was all Benson could handle for one night. Something in his brain clicked uncomfortably, and he turned tail and ran for the squad car like all hell was after him.


     Mary dumped BB in an unconscious heap next to his convulsing Sin. She walked on, limbs straightening, form shrinking, hair drifting off in clouds, until she was just Mary, the woman. She was older now, her long, long hair gone salt and pepper, but her body still strong, carved in lean, flat muscle as she approached the little man's body. Her eye was still wolf-yellow but human now, and long, old scars marred the left side of her face, twisting the flesh to hide the empty socket there, and her body was scarred too, because no one took over a whole pack without a few fights, but for all that, she was still Mary.
     She knelt next to the corpse, which was already whithering, not rotting, but dusting away into a fine white powder. Mary touched the face, glassy silver eyes staring sightlessly up into the moonlit sky, and the whole head collapsed in a puff. She jerked her hand back. “Oh, Moon.” She sighed heavily, resting her hands on her thighs, expression sad and tired. “Escaped once too often, didn't you.” She shook her head as the last of the body crumbled. “Poor little guy. You never had a chance out here.” She turned, and the rock, too, was gently crumbling away. She spun further on her knee, and saw BB's Sin, Lust, she thought it was, had fallen still next to her master. Her face and chest still dripped foam, and even in her woman shape, Mary could smell the rabid lunacy infesting the Sin.
     No good would come of that. They had to be taken back to the Carnival.
     She heard paws on the ground, and spun around to see the wolf pack emerging from the woods, the aunts and sisters staying back with the pups while her alpha padded forward with his brothers. His ears were down, tail tucked, and he wouldn't look at her. Mary frowned, brows knitting together. “How did you guys get here so fast?”

* * *

     The Carnival seemed louder now, more hectic than before. Alice followed along through the crowd in the wake left by Violent Clay's passing, inhaling deeply. There was a kind of smell in the air, a miasma she hadn't noticed before. It smelled vaguely bitter, and something pungent, musky, that made Alice think of sweat and nude bodies.
     Beer. And sex. That was the smell.
     Alice frowned, scanning the crowd. The customers were grinning, and people were hanging a little too tightly together, and the music was louder, and the lights were brighter. Here and there, Alice spotted arguments starting, and in the shadows, couples were hanging on to each other, some kissing, some just close, and the whole place reeked of beer and sex, and it clouded her mind, filling it up muzzy and hot.
     Alice called her Shadow, and She stepped up, filling Alice with ice. Her mind cleared, and Alice kept the Shadow inside close. The Skindancer was out there somewhere, walking and feeding and generating its spells, and the Carnival was responding. She hurried to catch up to the clown. “We don't have a lot of time.”
     “No shit.” Said the clown, frowning heavily.
     “Where are we going?”
     “To find Ambrosia. She'll know where the fucking thing is.”

* * *

     Mary had a double fistful of the alpha's ruff, twisting him up off the ground. “What do you fucking mean, one of the pups is gone? You fucking lost one?” Her alpha snarled and jerked away, snapping at her, and she twitched back, returning the snarl. She darted at him and he snapped, missing her fingers by a hair, making a sound that was half bark, half snarl. Mary stopped, glaring for a second, then looked away and down, standing still.
     The alpha huffed at her and sat, proud and tall.
     BB groaned and stirred, and they all looked as he started to sit up, holding the side of his head, where blood still ran freely from the gashes Mary had given him. He got one elbow underneath him as they watched, got an eye open, looked Mary up and down, took in the pack arrayed against him.
     "Hi, Mary. You look good. These the kids? Aw, cute. And who's this?” He eyed the big male wolf. “Oh, you're her puppy-daddy. Quaint."
     Mary swallowed the growls building in her chest. “Someone grab the trash.” She jerked her head towards BB and his Sin. “I know where he went, and we need to take this back to the Carnival, anyway.”

---

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Sheila didn’t fall, so much as the ground itself closed over her body like a great fist, and squeezed. It pulled her down, as sudden and swift and gentle as an avalanche, and she plummeted into darkness, the crushing stone and earth bearing down on her from every direction.

She felt bones breaking, lots of them. Something hard hit her in the face, and she swallowed gravel mixed with broken teeth. Her hair was pulled, and her scalp tore free with a sucking sound she could feel in her whole body. Sheila fell, faster and faster, the vertigo and the weightless sensation in her stomach her only points of reference in this dark hell of pain and pressure. The descent lasted hours, the crushing grind of the earth interspersed with horrendous falls through black caverns, where Sheila would slam against the floor without warning only to have it swallow her again. Deeper and deeper, and always the stones cutting, smashing, pulverizing her as she went.

After a long, long time, she was jerked to a stop. She opened her eyes, but could only see out of her left one. She was dangling, held by a stone fist a hundred feet above a pool of lava. The air itself burned her, and she struggled weakly, shying away from the heat even as blisters rose on her ravaged skin. “You die, now, woman.” The voice resounded through the huge cavern, causing rocks to break free of the ceiling and plummet into the swirling, shining pool of molten stone far below. She watched with sick fascination one of her feet falling as well, it having been shaken off the scrap of skin that had been the only thing holding it on. She couldn’t feel it. She couldn’t feel much of anything except dull pain, and it seemed like there should be a hell of a lot more of that. She'd been pummeled enough to be killed a dozen times over, shouldn't it hurt more than this? The huge fist around her chest heaved her back and forth, and she flopped like a rag doll. “What, no prayers? Not going to beseech your God to save you?” She saw the glowing pool of magma recede, as whatever it was pulled her back up toward the ceiling, preparing to launch her into the pool. Prayer? Why?

Her lips moved, trying to tell whatever it was to fuck off, but no sound came. Her face and tongue were half cooked by the blazing hot air above the pit. Her lips and teeth were shredded and broken from her passage through the crust. Her lungs had collapsed, unable to inhale, and what air did come in seared and burned whatever it touched. Why wasn’t she dead?

“Call out to Him! I want Him to hear you pray for help that He cannot give! I want your final thoughts to haunt Him! Do it!” The hand squeezed, and organs burst. Her pelvis snapped, and she felt her spind grinding itself into powder. A fresh cloud of steam rose to envelop her, as her bodily fluids rained down only to sizzle and boil away, the vapors burning her all the more. It was the rock man, she realized. He's not letting me die. When I fall into the lava, what if he doesn't let me die then? Oh, shit.

“Pray!”

She thought of Todd. That's who he meant, obviously. She remembered how he'd looked, so tall and strong as he’d run into the clearing where the panther had attacked her. He'd been coming to save her. His footsteps had blazed with white fire, and his eyes had looked so deep, like windows into forever. He’d become some kind of god in this place. Maybe literally a god. And yet, even so…

She didn’t love him. She'd never loved him, she realized.

Faces came to her. The Mysterious Stranger, the man Todd had killed, the anti-Celestine figure who’d seduced her so amazingly, so thoroughly, so exhaustingly. Wonderfully. It had been wild and frightening and so, so liberating. She’d felt like she was riding a tiger, and while it was dangerous and insane it was also unlike anything she’d ever imagined. And then he was gone, and the next time she saw him Todd had killed him. She’d been upset about that, but hadn’t wanted to say so. She wished now that she had.

Thunk. Big and strong Thunk. Quiet and slow and patient Thunk. He’d been so sweet when she’d seduced him in the upstairs bedroom of Ralph's house. He’d told her that he’d loved her for so long, but hadn’t wanted to ruin her relationship, or his friendship with Todd. She’d shushed him, and given him permission to use those huge, gentle hands. In his arms, she’d felt so safe. He accepted her, asking nothing, denying nothing. Thunk would have been content to hold her forever… and then Todd had come in. He’d done something to Thunk that day, she thought. Todd blew out his light like a candle, and nothing remained but some kind of loyal zombie.

Pray to Todd? Not likely. It felt like every time she thought she found something good, somthing hers, Todd came along and destroyed it. Killed it. She'd never really thought about it, but before the House of Mirrors she'd kind of thought of herself as an accessory. As something incomplete, defined by the men around her. So Todd treated her like that from time to time - is that even his fault, or was he just giving her what she'd been asking for? Did it even matter? Friendships that interfered with their relationship, cut off. Jobs that took time away from Todd, gone. Some fired her, because she'd been absent, others she'd quit. Still gone. Even her own life – being uprooted from work and school and whisked on some bizarre quest to find the Carnival was just the latest example. The last. Holidays, friends, sultry summer nights, crisp autumn days... all over now, because of Todd. Because she'd let him... made him... become her world. Fuck Todd, she thought.

The pressure eased. “You do not worship the Todd?” boomed the chamber.

I don’t even like the Todd, she thought, I was so going to break up with him, but you never gave me the chance! The great stone hand opened, holding the smoldering shattered woman in its palm. Something dribbled down her chin. She wondered idly what was leaking out of her nose. Was that – oh, shit, it was brains.

He was cruel to you?

She convulsed, desperately trying to fling herself down to the lava, or do herself enough damage to die. No, but I never let him see me. I was using him to punish myself, I think. Not his fault, but I'm done with it. Are you going to kill me yet?

She wanted Thunk, and was a little surprised by it.

Her father would have fainted to see her now. Her mother would have retched, or hooked her up to expensive machines and kept her safe in a locked room forever. Todd wouldn't know what to do, but would probably have some theory or other, some carnie he could track down and force them to wish it all away. She wanted Thunk. She wanted him to hold her, one last time. She knew what he’d do, how he’d carefully make the pain go away, and mourn her afterward. He’d do it without even being asked, because he loved her. She'd spent most of her life not knowing herself at all, but Thunk had known her the whole time. Fucking tragic, but there it was.

The giant hand crumbled, and she tumbled down, down into the fumes and the magma. Falling ahead of her, she saw the fucking golden ticket. It glowed with a brilliant radiance, and seemed to get bigger and bigger as she fell.

Well, fuck. she thought, as it wrapped around her and she landed in the pool of lava with a bone-shattering impact. The ticket melted and dissolved, and then she did, too.





She was rising through the ground, faster even than she had fallen. This time, though, there was no pain. The earth slid away as she approached, roots and insects were immolated by her fiery touch. She felt the heat, felt the heavy, slowly churning of the metal and magma that had become her body. It was glorious. Sheila broke the surface, and laughed at the blast of pressure as the ice she touched exploded into steam at her touch. It tickled, and she did a little pirouette, delighted with it all. Was this what it felt like for Todd? Was the power this sensual, this delicious when he used it?

The clouds of steam thinned, tugged up by the draft of hot air rising off her. A figure was revealed, chained to the ice. She stepped closer, enjoying the tickle as each step devastated the snow, shattered the ice, threw up more steam and seared the soil to blackened glass. Who was that? He looked familiar…

It was Thunk. She smiled. Of course it was. Somebody had cut off one of his arms, and chained him naked to a glacier, by the looks of it. Silly damn thing to do to someone, but who was she to criticize? She was pretty sure that she’d just died. He stared at her, and she let him. If she looked as good as she felt, then it'd probably be quite a treat. The updraft from her heat caused the steam to swirl around them, particularly around her, and she wore it like a dress, letting it conceal and reveal at random.

Thunk, for his part, seemed to approve. His approval jutted from his groin in her direction just like he wasn’t bleeding to death from that missing arm. She smiled at him again, arching an eybrow and enjoying the way her whole body was making musical little pings as it cooled. Water was beginning to condense on the supple metal. She raised her hand, wanting to touch his face, but hesitant to do so. She might still burn him.

She saw elaborate Victorian filigree work etched all over her body, particularly prominent in her fingernails. It was the same pattern that had bordered the golden ticket. Thunk was straining toward her, reaching with an arm he didn’t have, nearly breaking his remaining arm as he fought the shackles. She felt the ghostly touch of his missing fingers, caressing her cheek, her lips, tracing down her neck. It made her shudder. She stepped closer to him, holding his hips and feeling him press his body against her. The vapors around them were settling again, more fog than steam now. While hot to the touch, she wasn’t hurting him, and she was glad. Was this really Thunk? Really him, not the mindless minion Todd had made of him?

She held him tight, and knew that it was. This was the real Thunk. The glacier was inside him, in his heart or soul. Parts of him were missing, she felt. Todd's power is only to destroy, not to remake a person. So he'd wiped away everything that wasn't loyal to him. He'd destroyed the world inside Thunk's being, locking him on this glacier, but letting him see the light, the fire, that was Todd. It reinforced the bindings.

Thunk tried to embrace her, but was stopped by the shackle on his right arm. His left arm caressed her back, reminding her of his careful, tender manner that day in Old Ralph’s place. It held her with the strength of a whisper, and she wanted more.

The shackles.

Those were Todd’s doing. She knew she couldn't break them, or unlock them. She knew the stone man had sent her here, perhaps in apology, and wondered what she was supposed to do...

She pulled away, looking into his eyes. He could remain here, imprisoned on the ice forever. Or she could help him get free, she realized. The knowledge was there, a parting, final gift from the stone man. Neither of them could break him free alone, but perhaps, just perhaps, if they were together… “Do you want me?”

He moaned, his eyes glazed and semicoherent. She writhed against him, relishing the feel of his skin, the pressure of him against her abdomen. What a damn shame, to only realize what life was about right at the end. Still, there was some comfort in the fact that she'd always be with Thunk. Always.

The fires in her core roared to life once more, and she felt herself once again becoming the blazing hot creature she'd been when she first arrived. Thunk didn't burn, but strained all the closer, as though starved for warmth, so hungry for her heat that he ate it before it could burn him. She held him so tight, even as she melted. She flowed into him, through his skin and his mouth as they kissed, sinking into Thunk and lending her fire to his heart, her steel to his spine. She filled in the places that had been accidentally destroyed by Todd as he came into his power. She faded, her consciousness falling away into the place we all go, as she gave everything she'd been given by the stone man to Thunk. Her last thought was a smile at how fitting it all was. Thunk accepted her, and she loved him for it. And then she was gone.

Neither of them were aware of the shackles melting away, falling in glowing droplets as Thunk stretched. His arms extended up, one of them shining metal, the other strong and solid flesh. They didn't notice the wave of heat that rolled off him like an explosion, shattering the entire glacier and relighting the sun high above.

Thunk missed it, because he'd regained consciousness in the tinker's workshed. All he knew was that he felt better than he'd ever felt. More complete, somehow. The old Thunk was gone, since once destroyed, certain things cannot be replaced. The man who remained was twice touched by divinity, remade in steel and fire and steam. A kind of holy man, perhaps, of a sort new in this world.

Sheila missed it because she was gone.
She'd found her peace, at long last.