Blind Shrike

by Richard Kadrey

  “You know the true names. Use them. Turn him to dust!” called Shrike.

  “I can’t. I might dust out, too,” Spyder said.

  Feinting and teasing, the golem came at him with the knife. Spyder backed up and started to draw Apollyon’s blade from his belt, but stopped himself. It would be suicide.

  The golem kept making little charges, then stabbed and sliced himself. Spyder twitched in pain and bled, feeling each twist of the blade. The golem circled him, splashing blood onto the marble floor and laughing.

  “Why are you running? This is what you always wanted. Life’s too hard for people like us. Let me fix it for you,” said the golem.

  Spyder backed up. Sweat flowed into his wounds, stinging him.

  “Remember the middle way, little brother!” yelled Lucifer. “Would the Buddha fight himself?”

  Spyder stopped in his tracks, he gaze flicking to Lucifer, then Shrike. He stretched his arms out wide and closed his eyes. The golem rushed him, jamming its knife deep into Spyder’s chest. Gritting his teeth at the pain, Spyder wrapped his arms around the golem and held on. They were both bleeding and the floor was slippery with their blood. Spyder lifted the younger, smaller version of himself and spun on his heels, dropping his Shadow Brother onto the book. Gasping, Spyder twisted and threw all of his weight on his doppelganger, pinning him long enough to pull the black blade from his own belt and swing it once.

  Both Spyder’s and the golem’s heads slid off their shoulders and rolled onto the floor.

  FIFTY SIX

  Stars

  Spyder rose on wobbly legs and set his head back on his shoulders.

  “You know those days when you just can’t do anything right? You’re having one of them,” he said to the head Clerk.

  “This is some trick of yours, Lucifer?”

  “It’s all me,” said Spyder. His throat felt full of pins and needles as he spoke.

  “No matter? Alive or dead, you are lost, locked in Hell forever. So is the woman.”

  “Not necessarily. You did us a favor, brainiac. Shrike makes these little blood sacrifices when she does small magic. All this golem’s blood and mine should be good for one big favor, don’t you think?”

  “What are you doing?” asked Lucifer.

  “I’m sorry, man. You’re my friend, but Shrike and I can’t spend forever down here.”

  Lucifer looked stricken. “You don’t want to do that, Spyder.”

  “Sorry.”

  The book was already sucking down the blood Spyder and the golem had spilled on the floor. Spyder laid his hands on the metal cover and whispered strange words that seemed to flow into his mind. He was speaking a language he didn’t understand, a tongue so guttural and inhuman that it would have been agony even if his throat hadn’t been freshly slit.

  The runes etched into the book cover glowed and the remaining blood began to boil. Spyder pulled his hands back as the golem’s lifeless body, along with the last dregs of blood, were absorbed into the book.

  Far across Hell there was a sound like thunder, only it came from beneath the ground, as if the foundation of the underworld itself had cracked.

  “Do you know how insane this is?” asked Lucifer.

  “I’m the fool, remember? I do shit you sensible guys wouldn’t dream of.”

  Quivering green light, like a fluorescent bulb shining from the bottom of the ocean, blasted through cracks in the ancient unfinished wall Spyder had seen while walking to Pandemonium with Ashbliss. The colossal iron reinforcing beams began to bend and buckle as some fantastic new weight pressed against the bricks from the other side.

  “Glorious! Glorious! They are here!” cried the head Clerk.

  “Not for you.”

  “It is accomplished! We believed the Butcher Bird would free the Dominions, as revenge when you and the slut died. But you have done her job for her. The universe is ours.”

  “You’re talking to a guy who just cut off his own head. You don’t get to tell me what’s yours and mine,” said Spyder. He grabbed the head Clerk and ripped away the stolen skin that covered his face. In shock, both Clerks retreated a pace or two. The head Clerk touched his fleshless face, feeling for the missing meat, his eyes wide and locked on Spyder’s.

  “For your information, that cold knot in your belly is what we talking meat call fear,” Spyder said. He then spoke a single word and the Clerks tumbled to their knees. They grew smaller and softer, as if their bones were turning to warm butter, until they were nothing but pale puddles on the stone floor.

  Spyder looked back across Hell as the ancient wall began to crumble. Hands clawed at the gigantic bricks from the other side. Strange howls filled the air. Spyder became aware that both Xero and Lucifer’s armies had grown considerably smaller since the Dominions had made their presence known. Deserters continued to sprint out the front of the palace.

  Lucifer limped to Spyder and stood next to him, watching the ancient wall crumble. “You may have beaten the Clerks so cleverly that you’ve killed us all,” he said.

  Xero came slowly down the stairs. “What did he do?”

  “He’s released the Dominions,” said Lucifer.

  “Why?” asked Lulu.

  Before Spyder could say anything, Xero charged down the stairs to where Shrike was cradling her father in her arms. He grabbed her by the hair and held a knife to her throat. “Come to me, old ones! Give me the power to defeat my enemies! I make this blood sacrifice to you.”

  Lucifer let loose an animal howl and charged, his body morphing as he went. His cheeks split as misshapen rows of rotten shark’s teeth sprouted from his jaws. Fire jetted from his eyes. As he leapt, his arms and legs twisted into the mad animal forms Spyder had seen in medieval woodcuts of the Devil.

  Shrike fought Xero’s hand from her throat. The man was concentrating on Lucifer. Spyder realized that Xero was reciting a spell.

  “Look out!” Spyder screamed.

  A blur of silver shot from the great book and into Lucifer’s spine, as Apollyon’s knife flew across the room and embedded itself into his back. The prince of Hell collapsed at Shrike’s feet. She swung her sword backwards over her head and buried it in Xero’s skull. The general just laughed.

  “When I’ve bled you dry, I’ll bring you back here and make you my concubine. I’ll rape you in Hell forever.”

  Lucifer, back in his more presentable angelic form, staggered to his feet. “Alizarin,” he said and reached out his hand. Shrike grabbed Lucifer and pulled him toward her, hard, throwing herself onto the floor.

  Spyder ran to them, covering Shrike’s body with his own. Xero screamed. Spyder turned and saw the general pushing madly at Lucifer’s body. The tip of Apollyon’s blade, which was protruding from Lucifer’s belly, had buried itself in Xero’s mid-section when Shrike had pulled Lucifer down. The general shrieked as the blade cooked him. Lucifer grabbed the man, bearhugging him, driving the knife in deeper. Their bodies glowed red. Xero’s blackened lips curled back like burning paper.

  The general was suddenly very still. Lucifer pushed free and backhanded Xero across the face. The fried mortal soul crumbled, a burned-out husk.

  Spyder went to Lucifer and pulled the blade from his back.

  “I thought that knife killed demons,” he said.

  “You’re not any fool and I’m not any demon,” said Lucifer, falling back against the railing.

  Spyder snatched the tunic from Xero’s corpse and went to Shrike. Holding her upright, Spyder pressed the cloth over the wound in her chest. Lulu, exhausted, collapsed near Lucifer. Across Hell, the wall finally came down and the Dominions poured through. They were so alien and so massed together, shouldering their way from their exile in chaos, that, later, no one there, mortal or angel, could describe what exactly came into this universe through the ancient breech in time and space. There were shaggy heads and arms that were lined with eyes, reptile wings, tentacles, cocks with teeth, legs like a bird’s and legs like machines. Emerald flesh, exposed
bones, metal talons, fire, wind and ice.

  The Dominions circled the roof of Hell once, twice and on the third pass, shot up together, blasting through and out into the night sky. Gazing up through the glass dome atop Lucifer’s palace, Spyder saw familiar constellations. Orion. The Big Dipper. It was Earth. It was home.

  FIFTY SEVEN

  Jesus Christ and Bruce Lee

  “So Spyder, what was the deal with your head back there? ’Cause if you’re a zombie, I got dibs on Shrike,” said Lulu.

  “Ask your boyfriend what happened. He’s the one who gave me the idea,” said Spyder. He turned to Lucifer. The Prince of Hell sat with his elbows on his knees, his fingers steepled, staring out at his ruined kingdom. “How’d you know that my dying would kill the golem, but not me?”

  “I guessed,” Lucifer said. “You had a fifty-fifty shot.”

  “Something happened when I got sucked into the book. I was with the Dominions for a second, I think. Some of their life or whatever keeps them going rubbed off on me.”

  “I think you’re right,” said Shrike. “Look.” She moved the cloth from where Spyder had been holding it on her chest. The wound was closed.

  “Come here,” Spyder said to Lulu.

  “Why? I was kidding about macking on your girl.”

  “Sure you were. Come on down here.”

  Lulu came down the stairs and sat next to Spyder.

  He took both her hands, saying, “I’m not sure what I’m doing, so just close your eyes and relax.”

  “It’s prom night all over again.”

  The palace was a disaster. The walls were webbed with cracks big enough to put a fist in. Part of the dome had collapsed. Hell proper was in sad shape, too. Millions of tons of rock had come crashing down when the Dominions blasted their way out of the place. Most of Lucifer’s new Heaven and much of Pandemonium lay in ruins. The group had all remained on the stairs throughout this harrowing of Hell. Exhausted, bleeding, they were way down the road past both fear and surprise, stalled between numbness and wonder. None of them even blinked when Shrike’s father disappeared. They chose to see it as a sign of release, that with Xero’s passing the curse that held the old man’s spirit in the underworld had been broken.

  “That fool’s curses were as thin and hollow as his head when I cracked it,” Lucifer had said.

  “When you get through with my hands let me know, okay?” Lulu asked. “I’ve got a nuclear meltdown nose itch.”

  “I think we’re about done here,” Spyder said.

  “Dude, what did you do to me? I feel all hot and strange.”

  “Go look.”

  She stepped over the fallen masonry and broken glass, navigating her way across the buckled floor to Lucifer’s curiosity cabinets. None of them had broken, but they lay at crazy angles against the walls and floor. The Chaos cabinet was still standing in its original spot. Lulu went to it and checked herself in the glass. Her reflection stared back with the swirling nothingness behind it.

  “It’s me,” she said. “I look like me again.”

  “Eyes and skin and everything. Did I get it all right?”

  “You tricked me out like an old Chevy. For what? The Clerks still own me. They’ll just come and take these eyes, too.”

  “Lulu, the Clerks are gone. At least the ones who snagged you. If any others ever show up, I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow ‘em all down.”

  Lulu leaned her head on the cabinet, holding her belly. “Why do I feel like this?”

  “You were empty. They were making you into them. That’s what they do. You’re alive again. Being alive hurts,” said Spyder. “And you haven’t had a stomach in a couple of years. That one’s probably hungry.”

  “I remember hungry.”

  “You okay?”

  Lulu nodded. “Yeah.”

  “I did the right thing, didn’t I?”

  Spyder couldn’t see Lulu’s face. Turning, she walked back to the stairs, staring at her hands.

  “Yeah, you did good. It’s just a lot to get hold of. I didn’t realize how much they’d taken.”

  “For what it’s worth, I know how you feel,” said Shrike. “I haven’t seen colors in so long. I remember them all, but I can’t quite recall which is red and which is blue. It’s a little overwhelming.”

  “That’s one word for it.”

  “Sit with me,” Shrike said. Lulu came over the wreckage and curled up with her head in Shrike’s lap.

  “I’d fuck a duck for a cigarette right now,” Lulu said.

  Lucifer was inspecting his palace. He picked up a couple of fragments of cherry-colored glass that had fallen from the dome. Holding them over his eyes, he peered up through the hole in the roof of Hell.

  “Maybe we should put a skylight up there,” he said. “I miss the stars sometimes.”

  “Sorry for busting up the place,” said Spyder.

  “Sorry for tricking you into the bowels of Hell.”

  “I was thinking about taking some time off anyway.”

  Lucifer smiled to himself. “This is all an enormous joke, you now. I manipulated you, but the universe slipped a good one past me.”

  “By saying ‘universe’ you’re trying not to say ‘God’?”

  “Perhaps,” said Lucifer. “I had to go to talking meat—sorry, mortals—to save my kingdom. Not only did you have the power to save it, but to destroy it, too. Maybe pride really is my sin. The Painted Man was right in front of me this whole time, and I never even saw you coming.”

  “Hell, you brought him here,” said Lulu.

  “Thank you. I’d almost forgotten that little detail.” Lucifer picked up a gilded candle sconce, looked around and dropped it again. Going to his curiosities, he began picking up the cabinets that had fallen over. Spyder went to help him.

  “I don’t know about the Painted Man thing,” Spyder said as they turned the wooden Fabergé egg case upright. The gleaming eggs lay in a thousand pieces on the bottom of the velvet-lined cabinet, bejeweled junk. “I don’t exactly feel like Jesus Christ or Bruce Lee.”

  “Good. That’s my job,” Lucifer said.

  “What happens now?” asked Shrike.

  Lucifer pulled the cabinet with John the Baptist’s heart from where it was leaning precariously against the wall, setting it flat on the floor. Shifting it inch by inch, he got it aligned exactly where he wanted it. Spyder helped him slide the crown of thorns cabinet until it was just so.

  “Thank you,” Lucifer said. He looked at Shrike. “The Dominions have broken the boundaries of Hell. All bets are off. You can go home any time you like. Me, I begin rebuilding. None of this affects our work here, you know. Yahweh had his little laugh, but we’re still building our Heaven.” He pulled a scarlet silk kerchief from his pocket and wiped some of the dust off the glass of the cabinet that housed the crown of thorns. “And if he destroys that one, we’ll build it again. We have eternity to get it right.”

  “We’re going to have to take the book with us,” said Shrike. “Madame Cinders will want it in return for my father.” She brushed some of Lulu’s hair out of the girl’s eyes.

  “Take it. I don’t want the damned thing around here.”

  “Can we really give it to her?” asked Spyder. “I got a glimpse of what it is. I don’t know anything about magic and look what it did to me. What could someone with her knowledge do with it?”

  “She’ll do exactly what Xero was going to do. Make a deal with the Dominions and grab as much power she can,” Lucifer said. He opened the case with his puzzle boxes and set them back on their proper display stands.

  “We can’t let her do that,” Spyder said. He went to where Shrike was sitting and knelt down next to her. “We can’t give her the key to all that power.”

  “She’ll kill my father. Or worse. Curse him again. He’ll be right back in Hell and all of this will have been for nothing.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Little brother, you’re a hero now. You�
�re going to have to learn to learn to think on a larger scale,” said Lucifer. He used his kerchief to slap at the dust that had settle on his clothes while moving the cabinets. “You just cracked open a hole in the universe, wrecked Hell, deceived the devil and sent the Black Clerks packing. Even I couldn’t do all that and I can do a lot. Yet with all that to your credit, you’re telling me you can’t control one dying hag?”

  “I wouldn’t know what to do.”

  “You have a warrior by your side and the Prince of Darkness for a friend. What you don’t know is how to ask for help, but that is how we gain knowledge and improve ourselves.”

  “Okay,” said Spyder. He leaned back his head, threw out his arms and shouted as loudly as he could, “Help!”

  Lucifer shook his head. Shrike covered her ears.

  “Damn, I’ve wanted to do that for days,” Spyder said.

  Lucifer kicked his way through the rubble until he found what he was looking for. When he picked it up, Spyder recognized the knife the head Clerk had used to stab him.

  “You asked for help and here it is,” Lucifer said. “When troubled by a diseased sorceress like Madame Cinders, you need a miracle. Look to the saints for a cure.”

  Lucifer took the knife and went to his curiosity cabinets.

  “Come here, so I can give you something,” he said. Spyder went to him. Lucifer made one quick slice and wrapped the prize in the scarlet kerchief before handing it to over. “Don’t lose that.”

  “I won’t,” said Spyder, finding himself suddenly able to be a little shocked again.

  Shrike went to where the cage with the book had fallen over. The impact had turned the marble beneath it to powder and driven the book several feet into the floor.

  “Any suggestions on how we can move this thing? It’s a thousand pounds if it’s an ounce,” she said.

  “Travel for all of you, including the book, is being arranged right now,” Lucifer said.

  “So, we’re probably at the goodbye portion of the evening,” said Spyder. “I really suck at this.”