Free Circus of the Damned by Laurell K. Hamilton Page B

yourself. It’s just a snake. A giant man-eating cobra snake, but still only a snake. Yeah, right.
    Every hair on my body stood at attention. The power that I’d felt the snake charmer calling up was still here. It wasn’t enough that the thing was poisonous and had teeth big enough to spear me with. It had to be magic, too. Great, just great.
    The smell of flowers was thicker, closer. It hadn’t been Jean-Claude at all. The cobra was filling the air with perfume. Snakes don’t smell like flowers. They smell musty, and once you know what they smell like, you never forget it. Nothing with fur ever smelled like that. A vampire’s coffin smells a bit like snakes.
    The cobra turned its giant head with me. “Come on, just a little farther.” I was speaking to the snake. Which is pretty stupid, since they’re deaf. The smell of flowers was thick and sweet. I shuffled around the ring, and the snake shadowed me. Maybe it was habit. I was small and had long, dark hair, though not nearly as long as the dead snake charmer. Maybe the beastie wanted someone to follow?
    â€œCome on, pretty girl, come to mama,” I whispered so low my lips barely moved. Just me and the snake and my voice. I didn’t dare look across the ring at Jean-Claude. Nothing mattered but my feet shuffling over the ground, the snake’s movements, the gun in my hands. It was like some kind of dance.
    The cobra parted its mouth, tongue flicking, giving me a glimpse of scythelike fangs. Cobras have fixed fangs, not retractable like a rattlesnake’s. Nice to know I remembered some of my herpetology. Though I bet Dr. Greenburg had never seen anything like this.
    I had a horrible impulse to giggle. Instead, I sighted down my arm at the thing’s mouth. The scent of flowers was strong enough to touch. I squeezed the trigger.
    The snake’s head jerked backwards, blood splattering the floor. I fired again and again. The jaws exploded into bits of flesh and bone. The cobra opened its ruined jaws, hissing. I think it was screaming.
    Its telephone-pole body slashed the ground, whipping back and forth. Could I kill it? Could just bullets kill it? I fired three more shots into the head. The body turned on itself in a huge wondrous knot. The black and white scales boiled over each other, frenzied, bloodspattered.
    A loop of body rolled out and punched my legs out from under me. I came up on knees and one hand, gun in the other hand ready to point. Another coil smashed into me. It was like being hit by a whale. I lay half-stunned under several hundred pounds of snake. One striped coil pinned me to the ground. The beast reared over me, blood and pale drops of poison running down its shattered jaws. If the poison hit my skin, it would kill me. There was too much of it not to.
    I lay flat on my back with the snake writhing across me and fired at it. I just kept squeezing the trigger as the head rushed down on me.
    Something hit the snake. Something covered in fur dug teeth and claws into the snake’s neck. It was a werewolf with furry, man-shaped arms. The cobra reared, pressing me under its weight. The smooth belly scales pushed at my nearly naked upper body like a giant hand, squeezing. It wasn’t going to eat me, it was going to crush me to death.
    I screamed and fired into the snake’s body. The gun clicked empty. Shit!
    Jean-Claude appeared over me. His pale, lace-covered hands lifted the coil off me as if it wasn’t a thousand pounds of muscle. I scooted backwards on hands and feet. I crab-walked until I hit the edge of the ring, then I popped the empty clip and got the extra out of my sport bag. I didn’t remember firing all thirteen rounds, but I must have. I jacked a round into the chamber, and I was ready to rock and roll.
    Jean-Claude was elbow deep in snake. He pulled a piece of glistening spine out of the meat, splitting the snake apart.
    Yasmeen was tearing at the giant snake like a kid with