Chapter Seven

 

 

 

Elizabeth woke up on the roof of the funhouse. The center of it was basically a nest, with a ragtag collection of pillows and blankets that looked like they’d been stolen from rest stops and people’s porches. Everything around had been suffused with the Creature’s scent, inoffensive but overwhelming. The rest of the roof showed other signs of being lived on—prints and scratch marks in the dust where the Creature preferred to crawl, a clear plastic tub of books that looked as piecemeal as his nest, a plastic drawer unit.

The Creature crouched on the edge of the roof. There wouldn’t be any guests today, but he sniffed the air as though there were scents he could feed upon there. Elizabeth just smelled the traditional breakfast smells from the big top.

The early morning light had an unreal cast to it with the low cloud cover, but she could see the circus now, could orient herself against the big top and the animals’ barn, the carousel, the canvas tents and wooden booths on the carnival side, and the caravan on the other side of the big top. She could see everything from here.

The Creature didn’t turn to greet her as she approached the edge. “You would have been safer sleeping inside the funhouse than on the steps. But I have a place to sleep, and the clowns don’t prowl up here.”

“The clowns? The ones that are supposed to eat trespassers?”

“They prefer veal, but they’ll eat tougher meat if it’s all they can get, and they prefer fresh rather than the incubus’ and succubus’ castoffs. They might not have recognized you as one of ours. Do you want me to lower you to the ground now?”

“If you don’t, Bell’s going to make me crawl down, and I’m afraid of heights.”

A curve softened the hard line of his lips as he continued to stare out over the tents. “Turn around and close your eyes.”

“You going to do some kind of Christmas Carol spirit shit?”

“No—not looking helps with heights. As far as you’re concerned now, you’re on solid ground. The aim is to make the time between those two realities as short as possible.” He took one prime hand and one secondary hand then lifted her from the roof. Cold wind from his wings buffeted her naked body as he quickly lowered her to the grass. Elizabeth opened her eyes. It had taken less than four seconds.

“But then what would you eat?” The question came out meaner than her curiosity intended.

“There’s plenty to consume here,” he replied quietly. “Without you, I still have the prison to feed upon. Unlike the clowns, I never go hungry.”

“Prison?”

“The funhouse victims are not free, though they have cells where they recover, so to speak, in one of the semi-trailers. I’m the only one who visits them, but they don’t know I do. They don’t like Bell’s pets. They’re least fond of anything they believe to be a demon.”

She closed her eyes again, rubbing her forehead. “Of course they are.”

“I will not bother you again, Spider.”

Elizabeth lifted her head at the billowing of wings, but he disappeared so efficiently, she suspected invisibility was another talent in his arsenal. After all, a creature like him flying around, looking for something to attach to… Someone would have noticed.

Her chest ached at the thought she might have hurt him, because he’d been nothing but kind to her—comforting, soothing, feasting on her fear, attempting to untangle her ambivalence through last night’s mistake, though she could hardly claim it had been done against her will.

But she wasn’t fond of Bell’s pets either. The Creature was as complicit as the rest of them, gnawing at the scraps of Bell’s sadism. All that mattered was that it wouldn’t happen again.

 

* * * *

 

After slinking back to her RV for a shower to scrub spider legs and the Creature’s touch from her skin, Elizabeth slipped into the big top for an early breakfast. At this time of morning, the only other people backstage aside from the golems were two naked people lounging in the big cat cages.

She ate as she walked past the caravan to the five semis parked neatly at the edge of the clearing. There were holes in the sides of all five, which meant they’d once been used for some kind of livestock, but other than that, there were no distinguishing qualities or marks, not even to advertise Arcanium along the highways. They were as nondescript as the caravan.

She went around behind them to investigate the doors into the trailers. Three of them were locked. The fourth wasn’t locked, but it was empty. There were black clothes and shoes folded in tubs along the sides, as well as boxes labeled for different seasons and venues. There weren’t any pallets or cots, not even sleeping bags, so Elizabeth still didn’t know where the staff-bots slept, but she’d found where they dressed, at least.

She shut the fourth trailer and approached the fifth. The handle turned without resistance. Elizabeth yanked the door open and pulled herself up into the trailer. Whatever she’d been expecting, tiny pod apartments lining the walls wasn’t it. They were like space station bunks or the micro-apartments she’d seen in pictures of Tokyo, where a person was confined to a pod about twice the size of a coffin to rest and sleep, with only a little shelf for belongings. Lights made some of the honeycomb pods glow, but most of the pods were unlit. Like the funhouse and Kitty’s tent, Bell had been flexible with the physics of the place, the inside larger than the outside, but not by much.

In the darkness, the trailer sounded like hell. Not the wailing and gnashing of teeth of the haunted funhouse, but a steady ebb and flow of sobs and gasps of pain.

“Get out of here and shut the fucking door!”

Someone emerged from one of the dark pods and snarled at her, then pitched forward and threw up blood. It was too dark to be vomit. He clutched his abdomen, because his intestines threatened to fall out of him through the wide stitching keeping his belly mostly closed.

She shut the door, but she didn’t leave.

“I said go away! Goddamn bitch.”

She skittered around the blood pool and stared in horror as her eyes adjusted.

Alerted to an intruder, some of the prisoners crawled to the edge of their pods to peer out at her.

“You’re not welcome.”

“Get the fuck out!”

“None of Bell’s bitches in here. You’re trespassing, Spider.”

“What part of ‘get the fuck out’ don’t you understand, you stupid cunt?” The Man Doll, his little petticoated girl-doll body topped with a bearded man’s head, jumped out of his second-level pod and ran at her like some kind of demented character from a video game. His pacifier hung on a chain around his neck. “We’re not here for your entertainment. We get enough of that during the weekends when the funhouse is open, but we’re entitled to some fucking peace from the rest of you fucking freaks.”

Elizabeth fought off his little tantrum hands with bemusement, caught between wanting to scream and laugh—not because it was funny, but because it was just so ridiculous that she didn’t know how to react.

“No, Hank, we’re not.” A young man with curly light brown hair and a back that had been rendered into raw meat dangled his legs over the side of his third-level pod. He winced, groaned, as he climbed the ladder down to the floor.

“Speak for yourself, Kevin.” The guy who spoke peeked out from the third level. He was still wearing bloody scrubs, which made him the doctor who’d cut open the guy’s abdomen—the guy whose blood she was still trying not to step in with her bare toes.

“Yeah,” Man Doll said, kicking Kevin’s leg with his Mary Jane shoe. “Take your goddamn shitty guilt and shove it right up your cornhole, fucking choir boy.”

“Ignore him. Hank’s always a douche when he pulls the tea party princess straw,” Kevin said. “You’re the new girl in the funhouse, aren’t you? The black widow in the rope web.”

“She’s Bell’s new bitch. If she were one of us, she’d be sleeping in here, wouldn’t she?” Falling Guts Boy said.

“No dogs allowed, you multi-legged freak.” This time the Man Doll tried to kick her, but Kevin shoved him away.

Now that she’d recovered from the initial bemusement, she was starting to find the Man Doll annoying, like a Pomeranian. “Freak? You’re one to talk.”

“At least we’re not bitches,” Surgeon said.

“If by ‘Bell’s bitch,’ you mean I do what Bell tells me, we all do that, don’t we?” Elizabeth said. “But I make him force me to do it. And I came in here because everyone out there drank the Kool-Aid. I’m from a goddamn cult, but I can still smell Bell’s bullshit. It’s sickening.”

She’d never called it a cult aloud before. Dez had called it that all the time, and she’d known before she ever left the community, but she’d never said it aloud.

“You wish yourself in, or did he give you the whole ‘cake or death’ speech, but with wishes instead of cake and clowns instead of death?” Kevin asked.

“I didn’t wish in on purpose. He stole me from my family in the night. Fucking stripped me down in front of everyone and transformed me so the rest of his cast could gawk. I’m not on his side. It’d be nice to be with other people who aren’t on his side either.”

It would remind her that she had other options other than submission. These people weren’t allowed to become complacent, weren’t allowed to get comfortable. She could learn a thing or two from them. Complacency had left her shaking the tables in the red tent. Complacency had convinced the Creature she’d wanted those things, had convinced her that she needed them.

“I wouldn’t call us good company,” Kevin said.

“I’m not good company,” Elizabeth said. “I’m not asking for good company.”

“She’s not one of us!” Man Doll crossed his arms over his pinafore.

“Jerk off, Hank. She’s close enough.”

“It’s your fucking dick that got you into this mess,” Chainsaw Guy said, sitting in the pod next to the Surgeon’s. “You gonna let it get us into another one?”

“How was I supposed to know the circus had a succubus making everything hard? Not that Bell gives a shit either way,” Kevin shot back bitterly. “But we trespassed and we hurt his people. What we were going to do to them, demon-influenced or not, is still shady as hell.”

“Fuck that. We didn’t deserve this,” Hank said. “You want to talk justice? You could have been boohooing all the way to prison to be someone’s bitch there, not in the goddamn demon version of Guantanamo Bay while people laugh at your torture like it’s some kind of funny. You think you got it bad, Spider Lady? You think Big Bad Bell done you wrong because you have a few extra limbs and had to get naked, when you’ve clearly already done that to get tattooed? Your robe is fucking open all the way up to your shriveled cunt.”

Elizabeth hit him, her knuckles striking above his beard with an audible thwap. The disproportionate weight of his head sent the Man Doll pinwheeling into one of the pods, falling onto a man whose limbs had been sewn together as shoddily as Falling Guts Boy. The victim’s face was a mess of snot and tears, and he could barely move without whimpering, which was the only sound his sliced throat could make.

Elizabeth didn’t give two shits about the Man Doll, but she hated to see the other man in more pain than he was already in.

So Bell repaired them just enough to survive. He didn’t spare them the way he did her, with his promise that nothing would harm her, not a single bite or sting or irritating hair. He didn’t even offer them a basic medicine cabinet, never mind prescription-grade opiates or even street drugs to let them escape from reality—nothing but bandages and sewing kits. For the ones who were the villains in the tableaus, that would be the closest they got to mercy—witnessing the pain of the person they’d maimed and tortured for the rest of the week instead of enduring it.

Elizabeth had to swallow against how the prisoners left her shaken. What happened to them seemed so much more real outside the funhouse.

“I didn’t come here to have some little doll in a dress act like he’s getting tortured worse than anybody else ever,” she said. “Don’t take your childhood trauma out on me. It may not sound too bad to you, but Bell knows I’m arachnophobic as hell. He still made me this. He still puts me in a tent that looks like the goddamn spider Taj Mahal and locks me in a glass coffin with the biggest fucking spiders he can find while the rest of you are licking your wounds. I’m not saying it’s worse, but don’t you fucking dare say I’ve got it chocolate and roses. Now, I don’t have a lot of time before he makes me do it again. Do I need to put you in a timeout until then, Mr. Dolly?”

“You’re such a fucking bitch,” Hank spat, but his lower lip trembled like a child’s, as though he had a little girl’s sensitivity to go along with the dress.

“Yeah, I am. But I’m not Bell’s bitch. Got it?”

“I like you.” One of the other whipping boys crawled out of his pod. “You got rouse-a-crew-to-mutiny kind of spirit. We don’t get a lot of girls, and Blondie doesn’t talk much anymore. Being forced to blow poison ivy until the End of Days does that to people, I guess.”

The vine-wrapped girl scooted to the edge of her lit pod. In better light, Elizabeth could see how her tongue had been forced out by the size of the vine emerging from her mouth. Blisters and sores lined the visible portions of her tongue and lips. They must have gone all the way into her mouth and down her throat.

Kevin stepped back to stand next to the other whipping boy. “She’s not like the contortionist or the Torso Man playing scary in the funhouse whenever they feel like it. If Bell forces her in there, why shouldn’t she be here? If one of his pets has actually taken the ‘red pill’, we shouldn’t make her leave, right?”

“You’re just saying that because you think you can screw this one.” Hank pouted, crossing his chubby arms. “As if Bell would ever let us screw anyone but Blondie—if she didn’t have a vine up there half the time, anyway.”

“And you’re only saying that because you know you can’t, not the way you are. Keep your skirt on,” the other whipping boy said.

“Next week, butch, you might be the one in the dress,” Hank snapped back.

“Nah, she’s not like us,” a woman with short hair said from the second level. “She says it isn’t roses and chocolate just because she’s scared of itty bitty spiders, poor thing. But if Bell wanted her to be like us, he would have made her a nice little room in the funhouse, filled it to the brim with spiders and tied her in, like when we’re with the rats or getting melted. You want some of this, girlie?” She thrust out her arms, which were necrotic and smelled of pus and rot.

“Believe me. I know it could be worse,” Elizabeth said. “My rational mind knows that. Phobias don’t give a damn. I’d lose my mind just as much if Bell put one little wolf spider in there with me, but he doesn’t. He’s got every spider you were ever afraid was hiding under your bed, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to spend time in the coffin with every one of them, and oh God…”

The way she couldn’t get enough air when she gasped, no matter how much she inhaled, the narrowing and graying of her vision, the roaring in her ears… The stealth panic attack struck fast and hard. Elizabeth stumbled back against the side of the compartment, her robe parting over her legs and probably giving most of them an even better view than she’d given the Man Doll.

“Boo-fucking-hoo.” The woman slid back into her pod and turned out the light.

But the two whipping boys flanked her, grabbed her hand when she reached for them, and some of the others emerged from their pods, if just to enjoy a break from their pain by watching someone else’s.

“Not dying, not dying, not dying,” Elizabeth murmured to herself.

Kevin scoffed. “Yeah, like Bell would let us die.” But he awkwardly stroked her bare head and let her clench her clammy fist around his hand. The other whipping boy wiped away her hysterical tears while she destroyed his hand as well.

Time distorted during a panic attack like that. She didn’t think it lasted long. She nearly fainted about three times, but the boys held her up, and she always seemed to get enough air when her body went limp and stopped struggling against itself.

“She’s only been here a couple weeks,” Chainsaw Guy said as she started to get more control over herself. He even looked like the kind of guy who would wield chainsaws and hack people to bits, with his flannel shirt, work jeans, sunspots on his pale skin and flyaway blond hair. “She’s got no perspective. But her being here isn’t her fault, and not having perspective isn’t her fault. I’m okay with her hanging around as long as she doesn’t come to stare or make our lives worse than they already are. Like that contortionist, making the fire-eater her puppy. Those lucky bastards—getting caught back before Bell decided to make the funhouse. Think they know how lucky they are?”

“Lucky?” Elizabeth lowered herself to the floor, adjusting her robe so she wouldn’t flash anyone else—not that it made much of a difference now that they’d all seen her. And what the hell, she was at least ten years older than most of them, anyway, except for maybe Chainsaw Guy. They wouldn’t think much of her either way, even if their bodies were in any shape to show interest.

Kevin slid down to sit next to her, while the other whipping boy went back to sit in his pod. “The funhouse has only been around, like, a year…or however long we’ve been here. Cheryl keeps track, but most of us stopped counting. It doesn’t matter anyway. We don’t age, and our situation doesn’t get any better. But before he had the funhouse, the circus just had the freak show to torture trespassers with.”

“And the carousel,” the plague woman called out from inside her pod. Elizabeth assumed she was Cheryl.

“Yeah. The carousel’s got a few living people working as wooden horsies,” the other whipping boy said. “But the engineer’s a peach.”

Kevin looked down, picking at one of his fingernails. “I’m pretty sure some of the animals were human once, too. The way I hear it, though, he didn’t used to like really torturing people, but some of the demons were making noises about leaving or taking over. Then we… We did our shit, and Bell suddenly had an influx of people he had to punish. Necessity, the bitch of invention, and all that.”

Elizabeth leaned away from him. “What exactly did you do?”

Kevin stopped fidgeting. He didn’t bother playing at offense. “It’s in the past. And maybe we deserved the first month of torture, okay? I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Choir boy there thinks he’s better than the rest of us because he’d beg for Bell’s forgiveness if he thought it would make a difference,” Hank said. “But even by his fucked-up standard, we’ve been punished way past what we ‘deserve’, which means Bell knows the rest of us would take it out on his pets if we got half a chance. That’s why he doesn’t give us half a chance. That’s why he makes sure we’re too weak to rise up. That’s why we’re out here.”

“Have you already forgotten what it was like when he captured us? The choice he offered? What the clowns and the Ringmaster did?” Kevin asked. “You chose life, same as the rest of us.”

“I didn’t choose to get maimed, murdered, whipped, eaten, burned and turned into a freak for the rest of my natural life,” Hank said. “You think when he lets us out, we’ll even recognize the world? In fifty years? A hundred? You think you’ll ever see your mother again? You think we’ll have a red cent to our name? What use will your guilty conscience be then?”

“It can’t possibly be that long,” Kevin muttered. But his expression betrayed him.

“You really think he’s going to keep us fifty or a hundred years?” Sweat coated Elizabeth’s palm with another slippery layer, and her face flashed hot and cold in dizzying turns. “What’s the longest someone’s been in Arcanium, anyway?”

“If you’re talking human, the Bearded Lady is the oldest, I think. Crazy, hairy whore,” the other whipping boy said. “I heard she and the contortionist have been around for about twenty years. That demon Bell stripped powers from before he put him in the carousel, he’s been here fifty-ish years, right?”

“Bell’s immortal.” Kevin shuffled his feet on the floor, grimaced when leaning against the wall tugged at his thinly healed whip welts. “He could keep us here for a thousand years, no trouble.”

Everyone fell silent.

Elizabeth wrapped her robe more tightly around her. The gesture brought the neckline up to her collarbone, like she was wearing her old modesty garments. “Has anybody ever found a way out, a way out that doesn’t hurt you when you step outside the borders? Or whatever happens to you when you do that.”

“You haven’t tried? Not even once?” one of the plague victims asked. “All of us tried.”

“I’ve only been here a couple of weeks. Bell’s kept me on a close leash, tying me down to wherever he wants me to be. I tried running right after he changed me, but I wasn’t used to the extra legs. I didn’t get to the gate in time,” Elizabeth replied.

“Just another reason you’re not like us, sweetheart,” Hank said. “If you were like us, you would have tried harder to leave. You wouldn’t have needed us to tell you. You’re a precious little minx who thinks just because she’s scared, she’s in hell. But you’re not. And no matter what you say or how you say it or how many tattoos you’ve got and where, you’re not the badass you work so hard to pretend to be. At least I’m not so horny I’m willing to overlook that.”

Kevin rolled his eyes. “It’s not horniness to show a little sympathy, you know. There are other reasons to be nice.”

“Not here,” Hank said. “Not in Arcanium.”

“It’s cute you think all of this is me trying to be a badass,” Elizabeth said. “It might have been about that when I was eighteen, but it stopped being about that pretty damn quickly. You don’t know me. You have no idea why I’ve done the things I’ve done. And if you could not assume everyone’s exactly like you, that’d be cool, too.”

“Everyone is like me. They’re just cowards who won’t admit it.” Hank stuck his lower lip out in another exaggerated pout.

“It’s always the people at the bottom of the barrel who can’t imagine anyone else being anything but trash,” she said.

“And you want this woman to hang around here, knowing what she thinks of us?” A crocodile tear dripped into his beard.

Elizabeth tilted her head with a humorless smile. “Not them, doll. Just you.”

“Fine.” Hank pushed himself to his feet and flounced away, sniffing like his world had ended.

Kevin snorted from holding in laughter, then winced with a hissing intake of air.

“Troy, the Tattooed Man, used this potion from a blue bottle to make my new tattoos heal really fast,” Elizabeth said. “Bell has plenty of that stuff. I’m sure I can get my hands on some.”

“Appreciate it, but the only healing that works is whatever Bell allows us once the funhouse closes. Then we’re left with whatever we can live with, although ‘living’ is a pretty loose term. We managed to snag a bottle once. It didn’t do anything.”

“There’s really nothing we can do, is there?” she said.

He rested a hand on her shoulder. “Not yet. But the minute the opportunity presents itself—the fucking second Bell goes weak—you better believe we’ll slip through the cracks.”

“I don’t think it’s like Cinderella. We don’t turn back into a pumpkin after midnight. Even if we manage to get out, we’re still…this.” Elizabeth kicked all four of her feet.

Kevin narrowed his eyes with grim determination. “Anything’s got to be worth getting free.”

Elizabeth ignored him. “Anything? Flesh-eating bacteria, vines, burns, amputation, disembowelment? Arcanium keeps you from dying. What would stop death out there?”

“I’d take my chances, Spider Woman,” Kevin said. “Anything.”

Elizabeth climbed to her feet. Kevin used the holes in the wall to help himself up as well.

Then she grabbed him by the throat. “That’s good to know, pig scum. It keeps me vigilant, patching the cracks.”

“Told you she wasn’t one of us!” Cheryl shouted, but Kevin held up his hand to stop anyone from running at them. Elizabeth’s hold gave him room to breathe—just enough. He coughed.

“I’m afraid I have to take my Spider back now. Always work to be done. If she still has the poor judgment to return to you afterward, that’s her prerogative,” Elizabeth continued. At least, her voice did. But she’d immediately recognized the telltale sensation of Bell pulling her strings, and it appeared Kevin had had the same thought.

She pulled him close, almost nose to nose. “You know she’s far too good for you, don’t you?” she said, too softly for anyone else in the compartment to hear.

He nodded, coughing again. “Yeah. I figured that when you gave her the tour.”

“As long as we’re clear.” Bell released him.

Kevin backed out of her way like a chastised puppy, rubbing his throat. “Bell’s taken her over. It’s not her.”

“Maybe that’s just what she wants you to think,” Falling Guts Guy said. He groaned, doubling over in his pod. “You’re such a sap.”

Elizabeth bent down to look him in the eye with a directness she never could have on her own. “In what world would any of mine voluntarily spend time with filthy vermin like you, Felix? I can’t keep the Spider from fraternizing with belly-crawlers in her free time, but you’re a fool if you think I put her here. I, of all people, don’t need a spy.”

Bell straightened then opened the door and jumped out. The door closed behind Elizabeth without her touching the handle again—just in case anyone inside the truck still believed she was playacting at being Bell.

He walked her body all the way to the big top, where he waited for her, carrying a bag with her costume and wig.

“Really, Lizzie?”

Elizabeth snatched the bag away. “I’d rather be with them than with the people who kiss your ass.”

“You condemn me as though there’s nothing in the world that could justify what they endure. But I assure you, justice as well as vengeance has been served, and they are much more fortunate than they believe themselves—ironic, given how they believe the same of you.” He followed the path of the bats around the curve of her ear, but he didn’t pursue her when she jerked away.

“I don’t think ‘it could be worse’ is the most stirring of affirmations. And it’s not close to lunch yet. You could have left me in there longer.”

“I don’t want you with them.”

“You said you wouldn’t control with whom I spend my time,” Elizabeth said. “Are you going to start controlling me twenty-four-seven to make sure I surround myself only with all the monsters and slaves you prefer me to emulate?”

Bell took her by her secondary arm to stop her from stalking away. His expression seemed strange, as though he were both concerned and a little offended. “Those pigs fear the Ringmaster because they suffer his pleasure every time the circus opens. They only suffered my pleasure once, when they gave me their wish. They feared me for a time, but of late I’ve become only the devil of dreams, a devil they believe they can eventually defeat. So many people underestimate me because I rule from the wings, because I accept limitations. I don’t want them to make you do the same, Lizzie. There’s no future in which that ends well.”

Elizabeth glared at him until he let her go. “Do you have a point somewhere in that sermon, Pastor?”

Bell stepped closer. It occurred to her that he was a little shorter than she was—for some reason, she’d always thought he was a little taller. Maybe it was because he was barefoot now instead of wearing boots. “What does it profit you to surround yourself with the same kind of people you surrounded yourself with after you left the Petrosian Church? You ran from your church, then ran from your artist and his people back to the Petrosians. Will you run right back to the sort of people who had you running back home?” He sighed, frustration plain in his expression. “Must you insist on always moving backward, Elizabeth? Don’t you know I want so much better for you?”

“You sound like my father. But both of you are as far from qualified to decide what’s better as people can get.” She enunciated each quiet word, just in case he wasn’t paying attention.

Bell didn’t blink. “You don’t have such an exemplary track record on the subject yourself.”

Elizabeth made a fist and brought her knuckles to Bell’s chest to push him back. She didn’t even want to touch him with her fingertips. “You can make me do whatever you like—terrify innocent people, scare me to death forty times over, feed the Creature. I’m obviously here to entertain you, just another spider for your collection. But I don’t want to be anywhere near you or the people happy to let you do all of this. If that means consorting with a criminal element… Well, like you said, it wouldn’t be the first time. I can handle them, no problem. You, however, can go fuck yourself in your handbasket to hell. Now, you clearly want me to get ready, so excuse me. You’ll have to force me to the tent and into the coffin, but I think I can dress myself. And don’t think the Creature is the way you’re going to get into my head. I’m not letting him do that to me again.”

Bell cocked his head in curiosity at the mention of the Creature, but he raised his hands in surrender. “Wouldn’t dream of it. I’ll take you to the tent when it’s time.”

As she stalked off again without him, he called after her, “You know, what I do to you is nothing like what I do to them. Not even close. One day you’ll see it.”

“Just keep away from me, you and your people.”

He smiled. “I don’t control their wills either. But you may avoid them at your leisure, my dear. They cannot do anything to you without your consent.”

Elizabeth had the distinct impression he was telling a joke only he understood, but he gave no clue as to what he found so amusing.

 

* * * *

 

Bell had her get into the coffin on her hands and knees.

“What can I do to make you understand that you’re not here to be tortured, that I derive no joy from the fear you suffer?” He tucked a lock of hair from her wig behind her ear.

“You could fill the coffin with kittens instead,” Elizabeth replied through the measured breaths he gave her.

“If we lived in a world where kittens were the terrifying beasts they believed themselves to be, I would gladly grant such a request.” Bell lowered her into the coffin with a hand on her back, adjusting her spider legs to his liking. He arranged her head so that she would look out of the tent instead of toward the tables, so when he stepped away, she didn’t know what he was retrieving.

“Just let me wish myself out,” she said quietly. “Please. I’m no good for you. If you don’t want me with the prisoners, then let me out.”

She could almost convince herself that his tenderness was genuine as he replied, “There’s nothing for you out there. Everything you need is here. Arcanium is your home. Now, this is a Goliath birdeater. Being the original circus we are, I call him Goliath. He’s quite large, bigger than the huntsman but with a smaller leg span. As tarantulas go, he’s unusually personable. And no, that doesn’t mean he was once a person. He just grew accustomed to handling more quickly than most of our specimens, and he doesn’t mind people. I’m quite fond of him. About as close to a kitten as I have for you, I’m afraid.”

“If you weren’t omnipotent…” Elizabeth twitched as he placed the spider in the valley of her spine.

“I know,” he said gently. “You may hate me however you please.”

“What if it pleases me to smash a hammer in your face?”

He laughed, then locked her into the coffin with Goliath.

 

* * * *

 

When the lock opened and the coffin lid lifted, she hadn’t moved.

She’d felt everyone’s gazes as prickly on her skin as the spider wandering over her, though eventually he’d returned to her back and crouched there. She could have sworn recognition had heated one man’s gaze. No, she wasn’t going to stay a secret much longer, and Elizabeth didn’t know what she was going to do when the word got out about more than just the weird chick with extra limbs posing in a box full of spiders.

“Stay still. I’ll take the spider away.” The Creature tucked his hand underneath the crouched body of the tarantula.

Elizabeth twitched violently when the spider moved up her back instead of going into the Creature’s hand. She turned her face into her arm and tried her hardest to control the trembling of her released body. The price of remaining still was that she couldn’t hold back anymore. Gasps broke her wail, but it wouldn’t stop, as though all the restrained trembling from the day made its way out through her vocal cords.

As soon as the spider no longer touched her body, she flailed, unable to keep her composure any longer. Her elbows and knees struck the Plexiglas with bruising force as she struggled to her hands and knees.

“You said you’d leave me be. Bell said he wouldn’t push you on me again.”

“I will not linger. I simply volunteered to continue releasing you, because I can continue to offer my services. If you want me to take your fear, I can take it from your wrists almost as well as I can from your neck. Or I can leave now.”

Elizabeth finally managed to pull herself upright in the coffin, a shriek strangled in her choke-tight throat.

The Creature tilted his hand into an empty terrarium, patient as he waited for Goliath to climb off. He eyed her clenched fists warily, but he did not flee.

“Just your fear, Elizabeth. I never sought anything else.”

Elizabeth pressed one of her fists to her mouth against a pathetic whimper. Then she bit the pad of her forefinger, digging her sharp teeth in. The pain grounded her in the moment—and at this moment, a giant spider no longer crawled all over her. All the little beasts were in their places, which wasn’t on her. She shook her head, though the hand she bit rattled her head with its trembling.

“Very well. I’ll leave you be.”

Blood spread over her tongue. She was digging her teeth too deeply. If she kept going like this, she’d reach bone.

Elizabeth bent double and squeezed her eyes shut, as though closing her eyes would somehow stifle the cries that whined through her chest.

The train of his wings had almost crossed from the tent to the rest of Arcanium when she called, “Wait.”

She clutched the sides of the coffin to turn around, her extra limbs ungainly and her fear removing anything left of grace. Instead, she moved like an invalid. Fear made some people angry, made them strong. Elizabeth wasn’t fortunate enough to experience that side of fear. It burned out too quickly. She’d used every last bit of her energy just to endure Bell keeping her still all day.

God, is this going to be my life?

“Please.” She slumped over the side of the coffin in defeat, stretching out her arms toward him as though she’d been wandering the desert and he was the woman at the well. “Please, take it from me.”

The Creature ducked into the tent again, inscrutable as ever without expression. He took her primary hands, accepted her secondary hands when they also strained to grasp him. As he brought them to his mouth, he turned the delicate undersides of her wrists toward him.

She unclenched her hands, spread her fingers to touch his neck as he parted his lips over the edge of her sleeve tattoos. Cool air swirled over her skin whenever he exhaled. His eyes hooded in pleasure, and Elizabeth’s breathing slowed and deepened.

She lowered her head, ashamed that she would beg, ashamed that she would offer herself to him when she’d sworn she wouldn’t do this again. With every inch of relief he gave her, the faster and hotter the tears poured down her cheeks and stained the glass with diluted mascara. She couldn’t even recover gracefully. She kept her face turned against her arm, her wig helping to conceal her.

The Creature lifted his mouth from her wrists. “I should stop now. It would not do for me to gorge when there is no end.”

“Can you become full with fear?” She rubbed her face on her arm, which would do nothing to improve the mess.

He released her hands with clear reluctance. “You can. My body responds to it differently than yours.”

“I remember,” she whispered.

“That wasn’t from your fear, little Spider. That was from you, from your touch…your insistence.” It was more difficult for her to tell when he kept his head still, but she sensed the descent of his gaze over her body. “The passion in your fingers and in the taste of your kiss. I don’t need fear as an aphrodisiac. What need has Arcanium for aphrodisiacs when it keeps an incubus and a succubus who feed upon trespassers and each other?”

Elizabeth lifted her head from her arm. “Everyone keeps mentioning… Are you saying that just having sex demons in the circus affects the rest of us?”

He blinked. “Has no one told you? Their magic strengthens when they hunger as well as when they feed. It spreads through the whole circus.”

“And did they feed last night?”

“They did. Two trespassers who thought it would be romantic to sneak into a circus and make out in one of the oddity tents. Sasha and Mikhail feed, then leave the rest for the clowns. Their feed is far more fatal than mine.”

Elizabeth grasped the edge of the coffin so hard her already pale skin went white above the knuckles. “So what happened last night, that was because the sex demons sent out magic to make us…”

“They didn’t make us do anything. They didn’t make you touch. They didn’t make me assent. Incubi and succubi manipulate, of course, but the residue of their magic has no purpose, no aim. It’s secondhand sexual desire at best. All it can do is magnify what already exists.” He stepped back, wings spreading to open the curtain. “It was a pleasure, little Spider, but it was my pleasure and yours, not theirs. Theirs simply intensified what you started.”

“What I started…” With the strength-sapping fear siphoned from her, Elizabeth vaulted over the side of the coffin. Indignant, she cleared the glass as though she’d lived with the extra weight and consideration of her limbs all her life.

“All I wanted from you was your fear until you touched me, kissed me, until the essence of your skin emanated a different kind of arousal than fear.”

“You were practically making out with my neck. What was I supposed to do with that?”

“I do not shame you for your desire, Elizabeth. It is you who is ashamed, not I.” He kept his distance from her, his wings tucked between the edges of the curtain, as though insulted by her shame. “Becoming aroused has always been a decision I must make, and in Arcanium, it tends to be an inconvenient one. If you had not shown an alternative interest, I never would have pressed upon you, never would have responded. But I see nothing wrong with what we did, nor in enjoying the effect of the sex demons’ magic.”

“Of course you don’t see anything wrong.”

He was a monster—not human, not demon, and without the accountability of either, no more than a beast of the field or bird of the air. He wouldn’t understand what sex meant to a creature who suffered consequences, physical and emotional.

If it wasn’t a need or even a biological imperative, how could a monster understand what he had done? How could he understand how her mind and memory had been stirred in sticky tar, how the same destructive patterns always rose to the surface with all the subtlety of dinosaur bones? How a touch, a kiss, a man entering her, wasn’t just a pleasure? How it wasn’t—couldn’t be—that simple for her? Or how letting demons drive her urges was little different than offering herself to them?

It wasn’t his fault. It was foolish of her to try to absolve herself by blaming him. This was as much her responsibility as it had been when Dez had first revealed to her pleasures of the flesh. The fact that she still suffered the same weaknesses embarrassed her. After seventeen years, she hadn’t grown at all.

“I’ve taken what fear I can, although you will continue to refill the well faster than I can drain it,” the Creature said. “I will leave you.”

Elizabeth wrapped her secondary arms around herself, held her head in her prime hands. “Are they feeding now? The demons?”

The Creature paused. “No. Their influence has dissipated.”

She tucked her fingers under the edge of the wig, freeing her scalp from the helmet of heat that came from it. The wig didn’t itch, but it was still constrictive and eventually became hot from the fever of her panic that had nowhere to vent.

With the wig a dark pile in the coffin, she stroked her palms over the skin. A bearded lady covered head to toe with fur, and a spider with only eyelashes and eyebrows to her name. A woman without limbs and a woman with extra. A spider and a flying monster. Bell liked balancing his weird.

The Creature still stood, watching as she soothed the skin over her head. She felt his regard as heat, less irritating than the kind contained under the wig.

“But they still have an effect?” Elizabeth said.

“Always. Even when Bell permits them to hunt beyond the borders of the circus. This is their home. The magic lingers.”

“Is that all this is?”

The Creature pulled his wings in, and the curtains swung closed behind him. He tilted his head in consideration. “What is this, then?”

“I told you to leave. I told you to take only fear. But I…”

But I’m weak. I always have been—the sins of the father and mother, pouring over in the child of the same sin.

It was no excuse. This was her struggle, the one etched onto her bones, a curse from the beginning of time.

“I try to leave, Elizabeth, but you ask me to stay. Would you like me to leave now? I’ve taken what I need, at no shame to you. Don’t make me your demon. I won’t play Bell to your soul.”

He came closer, furling his wings entirely, but still keeping a respectful distance. He made it clear time and again that he had no desire to pressure her—quite unlike when Dez’s hands had slipped into every opportunity her confused, eager body had presented. The Creature gave her the space to deny him. She wouldn’t have dreamed of denying Dez his bottomless hunger, especially once she’d realized her matchless own that sometimes had him struggling to keep up.

Lust and fear, two sides of arousal—perhaps it was no surprise that when one receded under a gentle hand, the other always rose to take its place, eventually entangling the two in an irreparable knot that had scarred over from her trying and failing to remove it.

Always failing, always running. Was there anything in the world she could be proud of?

She lowered her eyes like a penitent but reached up without looking to take his head between all four of her hands and bring him down to drink from his kiss.

“If only you’d fucking left,” she muttered into his mouth, just before she parted her lips for the possession of his tongue.

God, it tasted so sweet, every inch of her skin and all the paths of her pleasure alighting without effort.

No, she couldn’t blame the demons for the sweetness, for the betrayal. She knew she should resist the urges that had always destroyed her, but she didn’t, because his body against hers was a comfort.

And he had no reason to resist.