Circus of Secrets 10/13
Jensen’s arm was heavy over Jared’s shoulders as they made their way through the dark, narrow streets. They kept away from the main thoroughfares bustling with drinkers and whores, jazz spilling out of lighted doorways, and instead they kept to the shadows. When they came upon a dimly lit square with a fountain, Jared looked around for other people, and finding them alone, he led Jensen to it and made him sit on the edge. He took Jensen’s blood dark hand from the sleeve of the cloak and washed it in the fountain.
“I’m sorry,” Jensen said.
“It’s okay,” Jared said.
“No, I’m sorry,” he insisted.
Jared continued to scrub at Jensen’s hand. When he found a bit of flesh under one claw, his gorge rose, but he forced it back down.
“The important thing now is getting a train back to the show and getting the hell out of Louisiana.” He couldn’t see any more blood, but it was too dark to be sure. He had to just hope their luck held.
“Jared.”
He looked up then. He knew he needed to. Jensen needed him to. Jared slid a hand behind Jensen’s neck.
“It’s okay. Really. I understand.” The hood fell back then releasing the powdered honey and nutmeg scent of plumage, and Jared leaned in and kissed Jensen’s forehead. He pulled the hood back up. “Come on, let’s go home.”
Jensen let Jared pull him to his feet and got an arm around him. He still wasn’t afraid of Jensen, didn’t shy from his touch, but he knew that he’d never get what happened in that room out of his head.
“You can leave now Mr. Arneson,” Jared had said.
“Agnes,” Arneson said and reached to take her arm.
“No,” Jensen said. “She stays. You get out.”
Arneson started to protest, but Jared cut him off. “Go on. I’ll take care of her.”
Arneson looked back and forth between the three of them. Anges nodded then, and he left.
‘What do I need to do?” Jensen asked again.
The Frenchman looked uncomfortable. “If you want to release the gryphon …”
“What would happen to me? You just said, didn’t you, that I was something new. If the gryphon is released, I cease to exist, don’t I?”
The man nodded. “Yes, the gryphon would be released and the boy would likely die.”
“So we do nothing …” Jensen said.
“No,” the man said. “The payment has been to keep the spell strong, to ensure that bond remains intact. It requires powerful magic.”
“And when you’re gone, what? Is there not a way to make it permanent?”
The man’s gaze skittered away. “No.”
Jensen took a step toward him and grabbed his upper arm. Jared saw talons sink through the man’s suit coat and he winced. “Tell me.”
“Sacrifice,” the man said.
“Blood?” Jensen’s hand dropped from the man’s arm.
“Yes, human.”
Jensen’s gaze fell on Agnes, and his lip twitched. “That can be arranged.”
Rather than cowering or protesting, Anges set her jaw. “You are a beast,” she said.
Jensen smiled but there was no humor in it. “I take after my mother.”
“You aren’t my son.” She’d said it before, but his time it was with a vehemence the held contempt and disdain.
Jensen’s mouth twisted into a cruel scowl. “You didn’t love that boy. You hated his weakness and ignorance. You wanted someone strong and smart, and you got him.”
“No, I never wanted this. Why do you think I never came around? I never wanted your violence or cynicism or wantonness. You disgust me.”
“Really, mother? You haven’t always been disgusted,” he said.
For the first time, she looked regretful, but she didn’t speak.
Then, talons closed around the soft, slack skin of the woman’s throat, but they didn’t sink in. They just held her immobile, a threat. “So you appreciated innocence after you destroyed it?”
Agnes set her chin and refused to reply. As she stared into cold green eyes, there was no plea in her gaze. It had been more of a challenge, Jared thought as they made their way through the back streets toward the train station. As they boarded the last train out of the city, Jensen’s words echoed in his head again.
“What do I need to do?”
The man had turned indicating a simple stone altar against the wall. “There,” he said.
Jensen lifted Agnes off her feet by her neck, and she made a choking sound then. She landed with a thud on her back across the stone with her feet kicking.
“When?” Jensen asked.
“I will say,” the man said.
“Jensen,” Jared cried out then.
Jensen turned and the green gaze fell on him - dark and ferocious but somehow apologetic. “This is what I need to do,” he said, and turned back to the altar.
The Frenchman started chanting in Latin, and Jared’s Latin had never been great. He hadn’t cared about it - not like he was studying to be a priest or a doctor - but he understood that the gryphon and man were being bound. Suddenly, Jared understood in a way he hadn’t that he’d been living with something that was perhaps more mythic beast than human. Cyrus and Agnes had taken a weak, sickly, simple minded child and bound it to something ageless, fierce, and wise. They’d created something new, something unpredictable and quite young.
“Now,” he heard the man say in the midst of chanting, and blood splattered the wall behind the altar. Jensen’s body blocked his view of the altar, but Jared could imagine only too well the way blood was welling up around the claws buried in the flesh, was spurting around the wounds and running onto the stone.
The chant ceased then. “It is done,” the man said.
Jensen stepped back from the altar, and Jared could see Agnes’ body then splayed across the stone, which ran red with her blood.
“This is your true form now,” the man said to Jensen who nodded and swayed before he fell to his knees on the cold, damp floor. Jared found himself there behind him, on his knees as well, pulling Jensen’s back against his chest and burying his face in sweet smelling plumage. It got the coppery smell of blood out of his nose, and he closed his eyes as he pressed his lips to the side of Jensen’s throat.
“You should go now,” the man said. “I’ll take care of this.”
Jared struggled to his feet, pulling Jensen with him.
“Don’t come back here,” the man said as they pushed through the door.
Jensen stayed huddled in the cloak in the dimmest part of the train carriage on the way back to the circus. Jared wished he could do the same. He kept looking for blood on his hands; he felt like people could see it there. He wondered if Jensen felt that way, or if he felt completely justified in what he’d done. He looked over at the creature - because creature he was, beast - and all he could see inside the hood was the set of Jensen’s jaw, lips tight and pursed. Whatever he was thinking, it wasn’t triumphant or satisfied.
Jensen tipped his head and one eye appeared under the edge of the hood. “Will you stay with me?” he asked.
“Of course, I’m not going anywhere,” Jared said without hesitation.
The eye fell closed for a moment, and his lips trembled before he nodded and looked away. Jensen’s cheeks were flushed and sweat beaded on his upper lip, and he looked fevered. Jared wondered what the spell had done to him. Jared just wanted to get him back to the train and take care of him. He wondered how he could feel so tenderly for this savage creature.
They slipped off the train at the whistle stop and made their way back to the circus. The field where the show had stood earlier that day was empty but for crushed grass and some trash. The engineer was hanging out of the cab looking for them, and Jared heard the engine begin to build power as they approached. Jared steered Jensen toward his carriage, but before they could reach it, Arneson was bearing down on them with a stiff gate.
“Where’s Agnes?” he demanded.
“Paying the piper,” Jensen said.
“What did you do?” Arneson shouted.
Jared stepped between them and with a hand on Jensen’s chest pushed him toward his carriage. Jensen couldn’t help but take a step back. The evening had taken a toll on him, Jared thought.
“Go to your carriage,” he said. Jensen gave him a hard look and turned away.
Arneson’s watched Jensen walk away and turned to Jared. “You said you’d take care of her, and you let that animal harm her.”
“She created that animal,” Jared said. “She turned her back on her own child, and she paid the price.”
Arneson took a step back and studied Jared for a moment. “My God, you can justify this? He murdered her, didn’t he?”
“He did what he had to do to survive,” Jared said. “She didn’t even ... She accepted it.”
“If he weren’t important to the show …” Arneson said.
“Don’t,” Jared cut in. “You can stay or you can go, but this ends here tonight.”
Arneson glared at him, and Jared waited for the man to continue, but he didn’t. He turned away and stalked off down the railbed. Jared waved at the engineer and climbed aboard. He vaguely noted to bottles of absinthe and a brown paper bag on the fainting couch as he passed through the sitting room. He found Jensen on his knees, naked, in the small bathroom. He had a wet cloth pressed to his face.
“Hey, are you all right?” Jared asked. He took the cloth and wet it again, wrung it out and wiped Jensen’s brow and cheeks. “Here. Sit up here.” He got him to sit on the commode lid while he held the cool cloth to the back of Jensen’s neck. Jensen leaned his forehead against Jared’s hip. Jensen’s arm was lying across the small sink, and Jared could see now that there were brown stains around the edges of his claws and in the creases of his hand.
He urged Jensen to lean back and began to scrub his hand with a nail brush. It was slow going. He had to scrub around and under each claw, rinse, and sometimes scrub some more. The dried blood was deeply embedded in places and required more than a cursory cleaning. When he was satisfied that he’d gotten all the stains off, he rinsed and dried the hand.
“There, I ...” He looked up, and Jensen was watching him. Tears were running down his cheeks.
“She hated me,” he said.
“Jen, she wasn’t your mother.”
“She was. She created me, kept me this way, and why when she couldn’t stand to be around me?”
Jared shook his head. “She loved him, and he loved you. I think, I think, that’s why. She did it for him.”
“But Jared, she killed her son.”
Jared slumped down on the floor, folding his knees against his chest in the tight space. “He would have died anyway.”
“Yeah.” Jensen closed his eyes. “Yeah, I guess so.”
Jared stroked the sleek fur of Jensen’s calf. “I know it’s a lot to take in, Jen.”
“For you too.”
“Yeah, but I was thinking that you’re really only, you know, about twelve years old. I don’t mean that you’re a child. You aren’t. You read a lot, but you’ve been very isolated, protected.”
Jensen tipped his head and peered at Jared. “Are you excusing what I did?”
Jared let his head fall back against the wall. “I just don’t think I can judge you as a 27-year-old man because you aren’t. You haven’t lived that life.”
Jensen leaned forward. “What am I, Jared?”
Jared smiled through his exhaustion. “You’re you, darlin’. Let’s go to bed, okay?”
Jensen nodded and let Jared pull him to his feet as he stood. The fell into bed together and were rocked to sleep by the motion of the locomotive as it pushed into Texas.
Jared woke in the night with claws trailing lightly along his arm, a hot wet mouth on his neck. There was a satiny slide of scales across his chest and a soft brush of fur over his thigh. Jensen’s need was pressed thick and hard against his hip, and he was responding in kind. He reached for Jensen who took Jared’s hands in his and entwined their fingers before pushing Jared’s hands onto the bed on each side of his head. He held Jared there as his lips ghosted over Jared’s, teeth scraped across the stubble of his chin, and Jensen kissed his way to Jared’s neck. His tongue traced the shell of his ear, and he sucked at the sensitive skin of his throat until it stung.
Jared squirmed, and his hips rolled, seeking contact, but Jensen was on his knees licking and sucking his way across Jared’s chest to his right nipple which he caught between his teeth. Jared hissed in a breath, but the bite was just this side of painful. Jensen was all restraint and care as he moved to the left, sucked and nipped.
“Jensen.”
“Shh,” he replied. Still, he didn’t let go of Jared’s hands. He drug them along as he made his way down Jared’s body, kissing and licking every valley and ridge, sucking a bruise onto his hip bone and dipping his tongue into his navel. Only when he reached the thick thatch of hair between Jared’s legs did he let go of his hands and grasp his hips as he sucked the weeping head of his cock between his lips.
“Oh God, Jen, your mouth ...” His fingers sank into thick feathers all the way to downy softness.
Jensen released the head of his cock and licked up the thick vein of the shaft, which sent Jared’s nerves skittering like water in a hot skillet. The tip of Jensen’s tongue dipped into the slit, wriggled there before his lips latched around the head again and sank to the base. It took everything Jared had not to thrust up into that molten grip. Jensen began to move in quick, short bobs with his hand moving at the base, and Jared never felt a claw. Jensen was drawing out his pleasure, pulling it from him with flicks of his tongue and perfect suction of hollowed cheeks, and Jared could feel himself approaching the edge, balance on the precipice, falling as heat burst through him and he came with a shuddering cry. Jensen continued licking and caressing until he was begging him to stop.
Jensen crawled up his body and kissed him chastely, but Jared pulled him down and licked his taste from Jensen’s mouth. He reached between them, and taking Jensen’s cock in his hand, he brought him to orgasm with just a few short strokes. Jensen pressed his face into the curve of Jared’s neck, shook and moaned, as he spilled his seed between them.
They lay quietly panting as their hearts slowed and sleepiness soaked through them. Jared knew they had to get up and wash before they fell asleep and awoke glued together. He kissed Jensen’s cheek.
“Better?”
“Mm, yeah.”
“Good. I feel good,” Jared said. He rolled Jensen off him and onto his back before rising and going into the bathroom. He washed himself off quickly and went back to the bedroom with a wet cloth. He tossed it onto Jensen’s stomach.
“There’s going to be fallout from this, you know?” Jensen said as he washed himself. “They all think I’m a savage. You’re the one who’s going to catch crap for it.”
“I can handle it,” Jared said.
Jensen looked at him with raised brows. “Oh, you have a plan?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not trying to give you a hard time. I just ...” He shook his head and tossed the wash cloth to Jared who threw it into the sink. Crawling back into bed, he turned off the light and pulled Jensen into his arms. He relaxed into the rock and sway of the train.
“We’ll figure it all out, Jen,” he said.
Jensen wrapped himself around Jared and sighed.
The next morning, Jensen met Jake on the platform with the breakfast pails as usual. Jake stood on the railbed and handed the pails up to Jared. The kid was polite but unusually quiet, and Jared wondered just how much had gotten around and how out of proportion the rumor had grown. Jared didn’t know what to say, but he wanted information.
“Jake, is something wrong?” he asked.
The kid looked up and squinted against the morning sunlight. “Agnes didn’t come back last night, did she?”
“No, she didn’t.”
“Is it Jensen’s fault?”
Jared took a deep breath and let it out before answering. He squatted down on the platform so he didn’t tower over the kid on the ground.
“It’s complicated,” he said, “but they were both kind of responsible. I ... she did something terrible to him - she and my uncle both - and I’m not excusing what Jensen did, but try not to judge him too harshly, Jake. Agnes made her bed.”
Jake nodded and looked away. “Not everyone knows, but she wasn’t such a nice lady,” he said and looked back at Jared. “I know that. I ... I just know it.” He turned then and started back toward the food tent. Jared watched him for some time, wondering.
Jared took the food pails into Jensen’s carriage and set them down. Jensen was still in bed, and Jared poured him a cup of coffee before heading to the bedroom to wake him because no one likes cold eggs. Bending down he grabbed Jensen’s ankle and shook it.
“Hey, sleeping beauty, breakfast is here,” he said.
Jensen flopped over on his stomach and buried his face in the pillow. Jared laughed and sat next to him on the bed. He slid his hand across Jensen’s back and kissed the back of his neck.
“Hey, Jen, your breakfast is going to get cold,” he whispered in his lover’s ear. “I brought you some coffee.”
Jensen turned his head to the side then and opened an eye. “Coffee?”
Jared smiled. “Yeah, but there’s no cream, darlin’.”
Jensen rolled onto his side and put out a grasping hand. “I can live with that.”
Jared handed him the cup and kissed his forehead. “I have to go pay some bills and update the books, but I’ll see you later, okay?”
“Mm, yeah,” he said as he pushed himself up to lean back against the headboard with both hands wrapped around the cup. Jared had turned to leave when Jensen spoke again. “Jared, are we... are we doing the show this afternoon?”
Turning back, Jared was struck by the image of the mythical creature propped up on snowy linen cradling a coffee cup in his taloned hands. Jared’s gaze swept over the tawny fur and glistening scales, the way long feathers fell over the uncertain jade gaze.
“Yeah, of course we are,” he said. “We can’t hide, Jen.”
Jensen nodded and he brushed feathers out of his eyes. “I know. I just ... It isn’t going to be easy, you know, with the others.”
“Are you ... worried about how they’ll treat you?”
“No,” Jensen said, but Jared could see he was, maybe a little frightened even. “But she had some good friends.”
“Yeah, but I’m beginning to think she had some enemies too. There may be some people who are relieved to see her gone.” Jared leaned in the doorway.
Jensen frowned. “Why do you say that?”
“Jake this morning - he told me that she wasn’t a nice person. Why would he say that?”
“I don’t know. Like you said, I’m kind of isolated, but ....”
“What?”
“I just thought of something Emile said once, that she liked pretty boys. You don’t think ...”
Jared felt his stomach try to tie itself into a knot. “I never thought of it. I guess Jake is kind of pretty.”
“Yeah.” The muscle in Jensen’s jaw twitched. “There was a young guy before Jake who disappeared one day, and when I asked Cyrus about it, he told me that the guy had tried to get too friendly with Agnes. I thought he meant that he tried to force himself on her, but maybe that’s just what she told him. Maybe, he actually wouldn’t get friendly enough.”
Jared pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, but she loved Cyrus, right?”
“Maybe,” Jensen said. “Do you think she ever loved ...” Jared almost heard the me fall from Jensen’s lips before he said, “her son?”
“I don’t know, Jen. Why?”
Jensen rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s just ... She seemed to hate his weakness, that he was sickly and simple minded, but me ... She loathed me, didn’t she?”
Jared nodded. “She wanted him to be strong and smart, but she traded his innocence for it. I think she must have hated herself for that. She must have hated that she didn’t get what she wanted from him or you. That’s why she didn’t fight you. She knew she was getting her just desserts. I wonder, you know, if she’d been expecting it at some point. She knew she’d have to pay one day.”
“Do you think so?” Jensen asked.
“She didn’t ask you to spare her life, Jen. It was like she was challenging you, daring you to do it.”
Jensen nodded. “I just thought she wanted me to have to live with the guilt.”
“Do you feel guilty?”
“I’ve never meant to kill anyone, hurt anyone even, but there’s something in me ... It frightens me sometimes, Jared.” He held Jared’s gaze for a moment, and when Jared didn’t respond, he continued. “No, I don’t feel guilty. I feel ... justified.”
“Good,” Jared said. “Now come eat your breakfast before it gets cold.”
Jensen stretched out his legs. “Yeah, okay. Can I get more coffee before you steal the thermos?”
“Sure, if you promise to make me more coffee later. Yours is better anyway.”
“Yeah, of course,” he said as he slipped by Jared with flutter of feathers and a wave of warmth that made Jared want to grab him and drag him back to bed. He restrained himself and followed Jensen through the short passageway to the main room.
“You should put something on,” he said.
“Why?” Jensen asked as he poured himself some more coffee.
“Because I really need to go get some work done.”
Jensen grinned and held the thermos and one of the breakfast pails out to Jared. “I’ll be sure to put something on before I bring the coffee over.”
“You do that, beautiful.” Jared winked before heading back to his carriage where he set the pail and thermos on the desk. He dropped into his desk chair and covered his face with his hands. He tried to show Jensen a brave face, tried to exude confidence that he didn’t entirely feel because he knew that things could go very wrong. There might be some people like Jake on their side, but there could be people equally against them. Agnes had been with the circus a long time. She’d been the boss’s ... whatever they were to each other ... which gave her a certain power.
Whatever happened he had to hold it all together for Jensen. If things went south, he could go back to the real world, the world of rubes and marks, but there was nothing else for Jensen, and he was Jared’s responsibility, his friend, lover, everything. He had to care for him, protect him.
Jared wondered if his uncle had any idea realistically of what he was getting him into, and he wondered why he gave him no hint at what he was up against with Jensen. Everything led him to believe that Cyrus had cared deeply about Jensen, and yet he’d left him to Jared’s care with no warning and no instructions. Jared couldn’t understand how his uncle, Jensen’s father for all intent and purposes would have done that.
Then he had a thought that had him on his feet and out of his carriage.
Chapter 11
Talk to me.