Malakai Carnage's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Malakai Carnage wanted one thing in MukMuk: a circus so bloody the town that outlawed clowns would never forget it. He'd hauled his tools across the ruined edge of town for weeks. Tonight his monster truck sat in the dark, its clown face snarling over the dust. Behind it he'd chained a wheeled Ferris ride and a barbed guillotine. He had the machines. He needed a stage. The broken clown-shaped church up the road was perfect, and it already had an owner. A hunter had claimed it. Word said he killed anyone who took a kill on his ground. Malakai had come to make an offer anyway. He climbed the church steps with the guillotine's chain still in his fist. Sader Nightshade stepped out of the dark doorway first. Malakai knew the type. A demon wearing clown paint like a costume. Red horns, painted diamonds, a tail flicking behind. Sader worked for a boss in Hell, and clowns got close to people without warning. That was the trick of the disguise. "You want the church," Sader said. Flat. Not a question. "I want a stage," Malakai said. "The hunter can keep feeding. I'll fill the pews." Sader looked past him at the truck and the wheel. "He doesn't share." "Then I'll make him." "You won't." Sader dropped it there and went quiet. A shape filled the church door. Huge. Undertaker-tall, white paint cracked over a gray face. The hunter, curse lifted, feeding free. He looked at Malakai like meat. "My ground," the hunter said. "You leave, or you beg." Malakai grinned. He'd heard about the begging. The curse was gone now, but the habit stayed. The hunter still wanted them to plead first. So Malakai knelt. He put both knees on the church steps and raised his painted hands. "Please," he said. "Please don't." The hunter came down the steps, jaw wide, drawn to the plea like a fly to blood. He reached for Malakai's throat. Malakai yanked the chain. The barbed guillotine tipped forward off the truck bed. He'd rigged the blade to drop on the pull. It fell. The clown-motif blade caught the hunter across the neck as he bent low. His head hit the steps and rolled once. Sader didn't flinch. He watched the body drop. "He begged from the wrong side," Malakai said. He stood and wiped his knees. Sader studied him a long moment. "Midnight," he said. "I have a deadline. My boss wants a name delivered." He nodded at the church. "You just made this place loud. That draws the wrong eyes to both of us." "Good," Malakai said. "Loud is the whole point." He dragged the guillotine inside and set it before the altar. He rolled the wheel in after it. The church was his now, and empty, and open. But Sader was right. The kill had noise. And Sader's boss was already counting down.