Blind Shrike

by Richard Kadrey

  Madame Cinders continued, “Any fool can stumble into luck once, twice, a hundred times, but at the end of the day, luck always fails. Then, skill and knowledge are required. You have neither. The Butcher Bird has some, but not enough to save you both.”

  “I have plenty of skill. I’m a pretty good tattoo artist. And I know how to make a sour apple martini,” said Spyder.

  “The last time you were here, the Butcher Bird was the one who spoke. Now, puffed up with yourself, you do all the talking. Or are you jabbering because she is planning some action against me?”

  “I’m not speaking because I have nothing to say to you, witch,” said Shrike.

  Cinders laughed her awful, gurgling laugh. “But you have you sight, child. And soon you will have your father. I should think you’d be grateful for these things.”

  “We’re not smiling ’cause you lied to us about the book. It was never yours. You conned us into stealing it for you,” said Spyder.

  “Did I? How wrong of me.” Cinders’ pumps kicked into action, hissing and cranking, filling the tower room with their noise. A thick green discharge was extracted from Cinders’ midsection while separate pink and clear fluids dripped through tubes embedded in her skull.

  “Neither your feigned outrage nor your glibness can hide your fear, boy. You forget that your mind is as clear and open to me as the sky in mid-summer. I know you want to keep me from taking the book, but you cannot. You know my vengeance would be fearsome. And there’s the girl’s father.”

  “How is he?” Shrike asked.

  “Well. And quite himself. No longer mad. You saved him,” said Madame Cinders. “Now can you save yourself and your companions?”

  Shrike was moving before the old woman had finished speaking, slashing one guard across the midsection before his sword was drawn, then slicing through another’s throat. Crouching, Shrike spun and slashed through the knees of two guards who rushed her from behind. As the men fell, she lunged and disemboweled a third. Launching herself into the air, she caught the last guard with a kick to the temple as he charged her.

  An arrow shot past Shrike’s right ear. She whirled around and saw one of the now legless guards reloading a small crossbow attached to his left gauntlet. Shrike bought her sword down in a sharp arc, slicing off the guard’s arm below the elbow, then looped the blade back in a quick figure-eight to neatly remove his head. When she advanced on the second legless guard, he held his empty, trembling hands out before him in a gesture of terrified submission. Shrike turned and swung her blade towards Madame Cinders, but the old woman was ready. Later, Spyder thought that Cinders had thrown the guards at Shrike as a sacrifice, knowing that she’d tear them to pieces, partly as a game and partly as a distraction.

  In the fraction of a second it took for Shrike to turn her attention to Cinders, the old woman had prepared herself. She pressed together the withered claws that were her hands. A screeching filled the air, like the metal wheels of a thousand subway trains slamming on their brakes at the same time. Shrike was lifted from the floor, surrounded by a quivering blue light. She began to tumble, head over feet, faster and faster. Enough to kill her, Spyder knew.

  “Cornelius!” Spyder shouted.

  The spider clattered forward, its metal legs gouging holes in the stone floor as it shot at Madame Cinders. Spyder and Lulu climbed onto a table and grabbed hold of Shrike’s legs, using their weight to stop her tumbling. Cinders didn’t notice or didn’t care. She moved her left hand and pointed it, palm out, at Cornelius. The spider came to a shuddering halt and flew back across the room, smashing into the far wall, exploding into a thousand twitching fragments of bone and metal.

  “You will not keep me from my destiny. No one in this world or any other can lock me in this dying body any longer,” Madame Cinders said. “The Dominions and I will rule forever. I’m not greedy. Let them have the universe. I’ll be happy with this one small world.”

  Cinders reached under the folds of her hajib and pulled, breaking a thin gold chain that held a small vial around her neck. Pushing a button on her gurney, she rolled forward, positioning herself next to the great book.

  “I’ve guarded this vial for a hundred years,” she said. “It’s the last of my blood. I had it extracted and preserved when my body succumbed to the curse, after returning from Hell. I’ve been a slave to these machines ever since. No more. With this blood sacrifice, I’m reborn into a new body.” Madame Cinders inclined her head toward Shrike. “Perhaps I’ll take hers. If I haven’t already broken it.”

  She raised her shriveled hand and threw the vial, shattering it on the Dominions’ book. The thick red fluid spread across the metal like a living thing. It smoked where it touched the runes. The blood bubbled, and the book began to drink it down. Struggling, Madam Cinders turned on to her side, and reached out with her right hand to touch the book and her boiling offering.

  Still clinging to Shrike’s legs, Spyder shoved his hand into his pocket. Madame Cinders’ head lolled back. Spyder couldn’t tell if she was in pain or ecstasy. Pulling out the kerchief Lucifer had given him, Spyder took the black, leathery strip that lay inside—a thin slice of John the Baptist’s heart—and dropped it into the little pool of Madame Cinders’ blood on the book.

  Madame Cinders drew in a long, harsh breath. The sound seemed to stretch out for an inhuman length, starting as a hissing in her lungs and rising in intensity until it was the growl of a rabid wolf. Boils, red and livid, grew and burst along her right arm and spread across her body. Her white hajib, now stained with her blood, began to smoke as her skin gave off an ochre incandescent glow. Whatever force she had used to hold Shrike in place broke, dropping her, along with Spyder and Lulu, to the floor.

  Spyder took Shrike’s face in his hands. “Are you all right? Talk to me.” He held her until she opened her eyes. “You can’t get away from me that easy,” he said.

  “Look,” said Lulu. She pointed to Madame Cinders.

  The old woman was gone, her gurney and the wheezing pumps that kept her alive were melted to slag on the tower floor. The blackened shell of the book kicked off staggering waves of heat. The book was scorched ruins, a pile of vaporized steel and shredded paper. The flagstones where it lay softened to a gray putty and slowly engulfed both the book and Madame Cinders’ remains. When it had swallowed them both, the floor again turned to solid stone.

  Spyder and Lulu helped Shrike to her feet. They searched from room to room in the tower until they found her father—alive, though confused. Taking some of the guards’ clothes from a barracks room, they bundled Shrike’s father down from the tower.

  Madame Cinders’ servants waited anxiously in the courtyard as the four left her tower.

  “We need a coach and horse,” Shrike told them. The servants didn’t need to be told twice.

  They rode back through the Medina and just managed to squeeze the cart into the tunnels that ran from Alexandria to Alcatraz. Shrike held her sleeping father in her arms the whole way, speaking to him quietly as they went. She squeezed Spyder’s hand and he could see her fighting back tears.

  Reaching the place where the tunnel exited through the old cavalry stables, Lulu asked, “What’s it going to be like back home, you think?”

  “I don’t know,” said Spyder. “You’re covered, but I might have to leave town. There’s just some stuff I want to get from my place first.”

  “Gonna be weird to be back. Gonna be weird to be back with a full set of eyes and insides and skin.”

  “Weird can be good.”

  “I noticed.”

  They stepped off the coach, but when Spyder turned to help down Shrike and her father, they were gone.

  SIXTY

  Worshipping Crocodiles

  “Oh, you poor things,” said Mrs. Porter.

  When they got back to San Francisco, Spyder and Lulu, broke and shaky, managed to hitch a ride with the Porters, a family on vacation from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who’d had their bags stolen off the luggage car
ousel at SFO.

  The Porters were very sympathetic to the nice Texas couple they found stranded at Fisherman’s Wharf, after Spyder fed them a story about their brand new Toyota hatchback being stolen. After they’d all piled into the Porters’ SUV, with both parents and three kids, Lyle Porter, the husband, launched into a non-stop monologue all the way to Spyder’s warehouse.

  “These people they got workin’ at the airport, they’re not stealing to be evil. Where they’re from, stealing’s a way of life. Everybody does it, from the president to the police chief, from the school teachers to the local witch doctor. Every one of ’em’s a goddam thief. Hell, if I was in their shoes, I’d probably steal, too. But this is America. We don’t need to do that kind of shit, pardon my French, here. You work hard and you get your reward. But, I suppose, when you’re raised worshipping crocodiles or some such nonsense, anything goes. Am I right?”

  “Right as rain, Lyle,” said Spyder, hoping they got home soon or got hit by a semi.

  Lulu crashed with Spyder that first disembodied night back. Realizing he had no idea where his keys were, Spyder had to wheel over a dumpster from the car repair place next door, then climb onto the roof and drop down into the upper loft through a skylight. In the morning, Spyder found his battered old hardback of Naked Lunch on the bookshelf and pulled out the hundred dollars in emergency money he kept hidden in the spine. He and Lulu got on his old bike, an oil-leaking Kawasaki 1000 Police model, and Spyder took her back to her place in the Mission.

  For the duration of the ride, Spyder obsessively checked his mirrors and scanned the street, waiting for a siren or a vigilante to point him out as a killer or a child molester. But it didn’t happen. As he pulled up in front of Lulu’s building, Rubi was coming out. She smiled brightly and kissed both Lulu and Spyder, giving no indication that she recalled Spyder punching her. Lulu gave a shrug and followed Rubi back inside, after blowing Spyder a kiss from the steps.

  Spinning a quick one-eighty across the median, Spyder cruised over to the Haight. The tattoo studio was still gone, and the vacant lot still looked like whatever had occupied it had burned. Spyder couldn’t decide if that bit of historical consistency was comforting or not.

  He left the Kawasaki parked between an art car covered in plush toys having sex with naked Barbies and a Jews for Jesus panel truck. He went into the Long Life Cupboard health food store. Immediately, his stomach was burning and his shoulders were one big knot of tension. Spyder’s fight-or-flight instincts were locked on high alert for any funny look, wayward gesture or wandering beat cops. No one even acknowledged him except the cute blonde hippie chick at the register who smiled and asked, “How’s it hanging?” as Spyder paid for his orange juice. “Sucks about your shop,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  “You opening another one?”

  “We haven’t decided yet.”

  “Let me know if you do. I was thinking about getting a mudra tattooed on my shoulder,” she said. “Tell Lulu Hi, and don’t be a stranger.”

  “You got it,” said Spyder. He smiled awkwardly and fled the place. It was all too much. The city. Too many people. Too much noise. Copper jitters. The angels, demons and strange beasts who’d wandered in from other Spheres were there, too, but their presence seemed kind of normal. It was the athletic shoe ads on the buses, the wandering tourists and ultra-hipsters, the panhandling poser kids that were making it hard for him to breathe. Spyder downed his OJ, gunned the bike into traffic and drove home. He’d been social enough for one day, no need to push our luck and find that one guy who still thinks I’m Charlie Manson, he thought.

  Back at the warehouse, Spyder sorted through a pile of mail on the floor by the front door. There was an official looking letter from an insurance company. Inside was a settlement check for the burned studio. The check displayed a prominent one followed by many more zeroes than Spyder had ever seen on a document relating to him.

  Later that night, he met Lulu for a drink at the Bardo Lounge and showed her the check.

  “Rubi, give my future ex-husband a drink on me.”

  “Just make it a Coke, thanks.”

  “You feelin’ sick?”

  “Like I’m wearing borrowed skin.”

  “Me, too,” Lulu said. “Still haven’t heard anything from Shrike?”

  Spyder shook his head. He pulled out a fresh pack of American Spirits, cracked the pack and removed one. Lulu stole one and lit Spyder’s smoke with the pink Zippo she’d almost lost by the Bone Sea.

  “Not a word,” said Spyder.

  “We been sitting around too long. We need to work.”

  “I’m not ready to even think about opening another shop. Maybe we could get a couple of chairs in a shop on the street. Big Bill’s or Colored People.”

  “There you go.”

  Rubi came back with their drinks. “Cheers,” she said, giving them a big smile. Spyder was almost used to Rubi not hating him.

  Lulu raised her glass in a toast.

  “To the Kaiser’s moustache.”

  “To Lucifer’s tail.”

  “Better yet.”

  A demon was on the stool to Spyder’s right, nursing a glass of Jagermeister. Bilal, the demon, fat and shirtless, poured the Jager into a mouth that opened in his chest. He looked straight ahead, trying not to catch Spyder’s eye.

  Spyder leaned over to him. “What’s the difference between a demon and a glass of beer?” Spyder asked.

  Bilal shifted his eyes toward Spyder, but refused to turn his head. “What?”

  “Beer’s still good without a head.” Spyder put his hand on the demon’s shoulder. “Remember me?”

  The demon turned away.

  “Talking meat all looks pretty much the same to me.”

  “You’re Bilal?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Then you should remember me. Or do you curse so many people that we all blur together?”

  “You need to go away now,” Bilal said. His chest-mouth opened slowly, emitting a growl and hot breath that reeked of wet decay.

  “Stop that,” said Spyder. He touched the middle finger of his right hand to Bilal’s chest. The skin shifted like sand, sealing the extra mouth shut. “What were you saying?”

  The demon heaved its enormous bulk from the barstool, feeling for its lost mouth.

  “I’ll destroy you,” it said.

  “Yeah, your first one worked out so well. What do you do for an encore? Not swallow my soul?” Spyder took a sip of his Coke and a long drag off his cigarette. It was good to have real smokes again. “I was in the book. I am the book. And your demon noise sounds like cricket farts to me now. I have Apollyon’s blade. I’m the devil’s brother. I killed the Black Clerks. What are you but some back alley rat-eater who likes to take out his bad moods on people who can’t fight back?”

  Bilal was breathing hard. He was angry, but Spyder could tell that he was even more scared.

  “Leave me alone,” said Bilal.

  “All I wanted was to be left alone, but you tried to eat me. When that didn’t work, you cursed me. Made people think I was Hannibal Lecter.”

  “That was before.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before I knew who you were.”

  “And who’s that?”

  “The Painted Man.”

  “Don’t you forget it. Now, what’s the magic word?”

  “What word?”

  “What do we say when we’ve fucked up and we want forgiveness?” asked Spyder.

  Bilal hesitated, shook his head. He stared at the floor. “Lucretia My Reflection” came by on the jukebox.

  “I’m sorry,” Bilal said.

  Spyder nodded, patted the demon’s barstool.

  “Climb back up in the saddle, big man. Let me buy you another Jager.”

  “You’re not going to kill me?”

  “Hell no,” said Spyder. “I understand about bad moods and being stuck someplace maybe you don’t want to be. So, you get to keep your he
ad and I get to not spill demon guts all over this nice, clean shirt.”

  Bilal gestured to his chest.

  “Could you?”

  “Sorry.” Spyder touched the demon. The skin of Bilal’s chest shifted, unsealing his second mouth.

  Rudi bought him a shot of Jager and Spyder passed it to the demon. He clinked his Coke against Bilal’s glass in a toast.

  “Tell me the truth,” said Spyder, leaning in close. “People taste a lot like chicken, don’t we?”

  SIXTY ONE

  The Other Side of the Wind

  By the end of the first month, the world slowly began to feel solid under his feet, the edges of things stable and reliable, his skin his own.

  At home, Spyder kept the TV on, but the sound off. He tried to listen to music, but everything sounded flat and dull. Spyder made a couple of calls and he and Lulu started doing work out of Luscious Abrasion, a body mod studio near their old place on Haight Street. A small but steady part of Spyder and Lulu’s new clientele were demons, Gytrash and other non-humans.

  “Word’s spreading about us. You know what this means?” asked Lulu.

  “What?”

  “Demon groupies.”

  No one at the studio ever seemed to notice, and their special clients always paid in gold so everyone was happy.

  In May, on Orson Welles’ birthday, an old art house theater in the Mission District had a marathon screening of his films. Spyder had seen the early stuff dozens of times, so he only came for late night flicks, It’s All True, Welles’ doomed Brazilian epic, and The Other Side of the Wind, a dark, micro-budget film about a bitter director, played by John Huston. He knew there weren’t enough guns or tits to get Lulu to sit through either movie, so Spyder went alone.

  It was almost two in the morning when the movies let out. Spyder went to the corner where he’d parked the Kawasaki and lit a cigarette. It was cold and wet. Heavy fog was blowing through the streets like sparkling ghosts.

  “Hey, ponyboy.”