Butcher Bird

by Richard Kadrey

  Spyder sat on the bike, took a drag off the American Spirit.

  He said, “I have this scar on my arm. Sometimes at night I touch it just to make sure I didn’t imagine it. It’s where the Clerks marked me. On the floor by my bed, I have this great big knife. I close my eyes and my head is full of the craziest things. Like some kind of acid flashback, only it’s not mine. It’s someone else’s. But when I fall asleep it’s all okay because at the end of the craziness, I get the girl. Only I wake up and remember I didn’t.”

  “I’m sorry I ran off. I’m worse at goodbyes than you are,” said Shrike.

  “How’s your father?”

  “He died.”

  “I’m really sorry to hear that.”

  “Don’t be. I took him home, to the Second Sphere. He was happy when he went.”

  “So, there’s a happy ending after all. I’m glad you both got that.”

  “You don’t have to be so magnanimous.”

  Spyder nodded, took a pull on the cigarette.

  “Yeah, I do. Otherwise the walls start doing that closing in thing and I want a drink and I’m trying real hard not to want that.”

  “You’re not drinking? I’m impressed.”

  “I still drink. Just less.” He shrugged. “Leaves more money for cigarettes.”

  “I’m really sorry I left you like that.”

  “You said that already.”

  Shrike walked over to him. Her eyes were clear and bright, though a little dark, as if she hadn’t slept in a while.

  “My father was dying. I knew it the moment I saw him back in Madame Cinders’ tower. I had to take him home,” Shrike said. “And I had to get away from you.”

  “Did I do something wrong?”

  “Just the opposite. You saved me.”

  “Bullshit. You’re the one with the sword, the one who knows magic and how to move between worlds. I was just doing card tricks.”

  “You don’t understand. I’m a killer. I’d dedicated myself to destroying life because mine had been stolen from me. And I enjoyed taking life. Doing it for something as cheap as money made it all the better. I wanted to burn down the world for what it did to me and my family.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  “If things had gone a little differently years ago, I might have become someone like Madame Cinders. If you hadn’t come along on this journey, I would have given her the book. I would have made a deal with the Dominions to bloody the whole world. I still thought about doing it, right up until the end.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “What do you think? I used you that first night because I wanted sex, so I gave you drugged wine. I needed someone to stand next to me at Madame Cinders’, so I lied and told you she’d fix you. I needed someone who knew Hell, so I dragged you into something that could have killed you a thousand times. And I wouldn’t have blinked if it had. Every time you gave me something I needed, I wanted to get rid of you. I strung you along because I knew how.”

  “If you came back to call me a sucker to my face, why don’t you put it in a postcard and stick it up your ass?”

  Shrike came closer, resting a hand on the bike’s throttle, not touching him.

  “I kept waiting for you to bolt. I kept waiting for you to catch on and betray me. But you wouldn’t. At first I thought you were playing a game, waiting to get the book for yourself. Then, I decided it was simple self-preservation. You wanted to get out alive and get the magic to restore your precious ignorance. But you kept not betraying me. You kept…” She hesitated.

  “Caring about you?”

  “I told myself you were trying to manipulate me, but when you destroyed the book, I knew you’d never deceived me. I would have killed anyone to have the power in that book. You had it in your hands and you threw it away to save me.”

  “You know I did.”

  She looked away and frowned. “I couldn’t bear that. Being with you brought back all these feelings I’d thought I’d burned up years ago. Then, I had my father and I knew he was dying and it was all too much. I had to run away. Can you forgive me?”

  “Consider yourself forgiven,” he said, putting the key in the bike’s ignition.

  “No,” she said, holding onto his coat sleeve. “Not like that. Don’t forgive me like you forgive some street urchin who picks your pocket. Save me one more time, that’s all I want. Forgive me from that other part of you that refused to betray me or leave me.”

  Spyder tossed his cigarette, looked at the crowd milling in front of the theater. “I can. I do. For a long time I wanted to strangle you for that Houdini in the tunnel, but I knew you must have had a good reason. And I always knew I’d see you again.”

  “Really?”

  “No. That was me being gallant. I didn’t know what the hell to think when you took off. I was going out of my mind and I fucking hated you.” He turned and looked at her. She was beautiful in the drifting fog. “But you didn’t lift my wallet, which is more than I can say for most girls you meet in alleys.”

  Shrike smiled and leaned against him.

  “Maybe we can go to your place and try that first meeting again.”

  “On one condition.”

  “What?”

  “Teach me magic. I’m going out of my mind. I can’t control it. I dreamed about my younger self the other night and in the morning the street outside was full of all the cars I’d ever stolen.”

  Shrike stroked his hair and nodded.

  “I can only teach you the little I know. But there are others who can teach you more.” She shrugged. “I’m going to take back my kingdom from the brigands who now hold it. If you come along, learn to control your power, we can figure out a way to drive the Dominions back into the oblivion where they belong.”

  Spyder ran his hands down Shrike’s back, thrilling to her warmth and smell, the reality of her presence.

  “It’s sweet, how you have no ambition,” he said.

  “I’ll have to leave this Sphere to get ready. You’ll come with me?”

  “There’s not much holding me here,” he said. “I can’t go without telling Lulu.”

  “In the morning,” said Shrike. “In the morning.”

  Shrike climbed onto the back of Spyder’s bike and wrapped her arms around him. Spyder kicked over the motor and gunned the engine. They shot off and the fog closed in behind them, swallowing the tail lights and even the engine noise.

  They were gone.

  BULL RIDING

  A BUTCHER BIRD SHORT STORY

  Spyder Lee was in the front of the body modification shop he shared with Lulu Garou. Lulu was in the back of the shop, behind a shoji screen with a nervous, skinny kid who looked barely old enough to get a piercing. He also looked like he might faint at any moment, but that wasn’t Spyder’s problem; he had his hands full lasering a tattoo off the left shoulder of maybe the ugliest guy who’d ever walked into the shop.

  Like the kid in the back, Spyder’s client was skinny to the point of being bony. He had a long neck topped with a too-big head, thick lips, and ears that stuck out at odd angles. To Spyder, he looked like something that had just crawled off the ocean floor. However, his money was good and he paid in advance with cash.

  And I’m not exactly Cary Grant either, thought Spyder, and he went back to vaporizing some interesting black work off fish man’s shoulder.

  Normally, it was Spyder’s policy to never ask clients about tattoos they wanted covered up or lasered off. But there was something special about this piece—dead black pigment done in swirls and whorls that wound around each other in intricate, interlocking patterns. The art was laid into fish man’s skin so carefully that the pattern looked almost three-dimensional. Damn thing’s hypnotic, he thought, and he hated watching it disappear.

  “Sorry, man, but I have to ask: Where did you get ink like that? And why do you want it gone? I’ve never seen better work,” Spyder said.

  Fish man stared straight ahead. “I got it at a bad time in my li
fe. It brings back bad memories.”

  Spyder nodded. “I understand. That’s why I got the laser. Help folks burn out those bad times. Still, I wouldn’t mind getting a piece from whoever did it.”

  From behind the shoji screen, Lulu yelled, “For fuck sake, Spyder, stop sucking his dick and just ask him.”

  Fish man looked from the screen back to Spyder.

  “My partner,” he said. “A shy, retiring girl.”

  “Obviously.” After a moment, fish man added, “Ask me what?”

  “Would you mind telling me the name of the artist and how I could get in touch?”

  Fish man took a deep breath. It made his skinny cheeks puff out and his ears move like his head was trying to swim off his body.

  “She’s not easy to find. And anyway, she doesn’t generally do commissions. Her ink isn’t a prize. It’s more of a punishment.”

  Spyder stopped lasering and looked at the guy. “What do you mean punishment?”

  Fish man’s thick lips inched up in a lopsided smile. “She only marks those deemed lowly enough by the Appraisers. Not that you would have heard of them. Neither she nor the Appraisers are from this Dominion.”

  There was something about the way fish man tossed off the word “Dominion” that made Spyder sit back on his chair. That and the fact he had heard of the Appraisers.

  “They’re some kind of inquisitors, aren’t they? Which makes you a jailbird.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  Spyder pushed his chair back. “Normally, I’m not opposed to cleaning old ink off ex-cons, but I have a feeling you’re a lot more con than ex.”

  Fish man turned and looked at where Spyder had set down the laser. “We’re not done,” he said.

  “Yeah we are. You can even have your money back.”

  Turning so that he could see his shoulder in the shop’s mirror, fish man said, “You know, I think you’ve taken off enough. I can do the rest myself.”

  He reached into one of his engineer boots and pulled out a long, thin knife, the kind of thing you’d use to precisely slice meat off a bone. Without a moment’s hesitation, he laid the blade against his arm and began sawing at the remains of the now pale tattoo. Spyder stood up and backed away from fish man, not because of what he was doing, but because of what else was happening. As the flap of flesh came off his arm, fish man didn’t scream and worse, he didn’t bleed. Red and green crystals the size of marbles fell from the wound. When they hit the floor they sprouted legs and quickly scuttled into the shadows.

  Spyder kept a baseball bat and a .38 pistol under the counter to settle down rowdy customers. But the way the shop was arranged, he’d have to make it past fish man to get either weapon.

  When fish man finished cutting, the flap of skin with the remains of the tattoo fell to the floor. More bugs crawled from it as fish man put away the knife and stood.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I’ve wanted that off for millennia. I knew you were the man to do it.”

  Spyder balled his hands into fists. “Why’s that?” he said.

  “You’re no ordinary tattoo artist. You’re the Painted Man. Who in all creation would be more qualified to remove cursed ink?”

  Spyder picked up a tattoo gun from a nearby stand. It wasn’t exactly a knife, but if it came to it he could shove it deep enough into fish man’s throat to sever an artery.

  “Who are you and what do you want?” he said.

  Fish man moved his arm around, sighing as if a great weight had been lifted from it. “Who I am is Temmah of the snake clan. And what I want is you,” he said. “Surely you know that there’s a bounty on the head of the Painted Man.”

  Spyder tossed the tattoo gun back onto the table. “This shit again,” he said. “Look, I don’t do that stuff anymore. I’m retired.”

  Temmah shook his head. His ears shrank and disappeared. His lips grew thin and green scales rose like welts to cover his skin. “Retired or not, I’ll have your head.”

  Spyder inched around nearer the counter and the pistol. “Why don’t you come back in another fifty years or so? I’ll be done with it by then.”

  Temmah took a step to the side, cutting Spyder off from the counter. Then he reached into his pocket, pulled out an elastic headband and snapped it around his head. Mounted on the front of the headband was a small GoPro videocam. He switched it on.

  “Excuse me,” said Spyder. “What the fuck is that?”

  Temmah’s thin snaky mouth rose slightly in an imitation of a smile. “To capture the moment. And share it with like-minded dwellers in other Dominions.”

  Spyder looked at him hard. “You’re saying monsters have Youtube now?”

  “Hey, monster is a trigger word where I’m from.”

  “Sorry.”

  “And yes, we have all sorts of social media,” said Temmah. “I’d show you our Facebook, but you’ll be dead soon.”

  Spyder shrugged. “You said a bounty, right? If it’s money you want, hell, that’s easy. I’ve tattooed folks from all kinds of Dominions and most of them pay in gold. Lulu and me don’t know what to do with it, so it just piles up in the back. Here, I’ll show you.”

  Spyder took a step and Temmah got in front of him, his forked tongue licking the air. “Why do I think you’re trying to trick me?”

  Spyder pointed past him. “Nope. It’s right through that curtain in the storage room.”

  “Thank you,” Temmah said. “When I’m done eating you, I’ll take the gold too.”

  Spyder crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall. A couple of the little red and green bugs ran across his feet. He kicked them off.

  He said, “I’m trying to be reasonable here, but you’re just determined to be a complete shit, aren’t you?”

  Temmah looked Spyder up and down. “How many have come for your head, Painted Man?”

  “None,” said Spyder. “You’re the first.”

  “I can see why. You’re truly a disappointment.”

  “I just do tattoos and have fun. What do you do with your spare time besides travel the universe being an asshole?”

  “Enough talk,” hissed Temmah. “Prepare to die.”

  Spyder slid down the wall a couple of steps. “Actually, I’ve just gotten started talking. What’s your sign? I bet you’re a Leo. They think a lot of themselves.”

  “This is what I was afraid of,” said Temmah. “All the tales about you making your way out of Hell and battling the Black Clerks, all lies.”

  “No,” said Spyder, holding up a finger. “Those are all real. But like I said, I’m retired.”

  “That’s disappointing. I was hoping for an epic battle. You know. To post online.”

  “All I was hoping for is making happy hour at the Bardo Lounge. Too bad for both of us. Sorry.”

  “You will be.”

  Temmah lunged for him, but Spyder danced out of the way. The man-snake crashed through Spyder’s drawing table, knocking pencils, pigments, and a Bluetooth speaker onto the floor. Temmah brought his foot down hard, crushing the speaker under his heel.

  “Hey, you prick. That’s expensive,” Spyder shouted.

  Temmah kicked the remains of the speaker across the room. “How did you become so pathetic?”

  “He’s not pathetic, you scaly dick bag,” shouted Lulu. She ran out from behind the screen with the knife she used to do cuttings and jammed the blade into Temmah’s chest. He let out a great howl and swung a leathery arm at her.

  Before he could connect, Spyder grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels from the wreckage of his drawing table and broke it over Temmah’s head.

  The little bugs swarmed everywhere the whiskey pooled on the floor, drinking it greedily.

  “What the hell are those little bugs you’re bleeding all over my shop?” Spyder shouted.

  “Croluzon beetles,” said Temmah. “When you’re dead, they’ll strip the flesh from your bones, and I’ll auction them on eBay.”

  Lulu squinted at him. She said, “I don’t thi
nk you can sell body parts on eBay.”

  “Monster eBay, right?” said Spyder.

  “Exactly,” Temmah said.

  This time when Temmah attacked, he went in low and fast. Before Spyder could react, Temmah grabbed him and threw him across the room and into the back wall of the shop. The snake man took a couple of steps in Spyder’s direction when Lulu pulled a 9mm pistol from the back of her jeans and emptied the clip into Temmah’s back. He turned to her and just laughed.

  Lulu put the gun back in her pocket. “Shit.”

  As Temmah went for her, Spyder grabbed his legs, and the snake man fell on his face. Spyder crawled on top of him, punching at his eyes and snout. Temmah swung at Spyder’s body, got his feet under him, and tossed Spyder backwards into the counter. He hit it square in the back and groaned as the edge of the counter dug into his spine. Spyder tried to stay on his feet, but he collapsed to his knees.

  Temmah crossed the room slowly. When he was right over Spyder he tore his shirt open. Temmah’s scales were standing outwards all over his body, like thorns on an acacia tree. He tensed his body, and when he relaxed, dozens of scales shot from his chest, embedding themselves all over Spyder’s body. He fell over screaming.

  “How does it feel to die, Painted Man? My flesh is poison to all but the snake clan. Hold still and let me make sure I’m getting a good shot,” Temmah said. He moved his head this way and that, trying to get Spyder in the center of the GoPro frame.

  Just when he found the exact position he wanted, Lulu leapt onto Temmah’s back, whooping and digging her heels into his sides.

  “Goddamn, I love bull riding!”

  Temmah stood, waving his arms and spinning around, trying to shake her off.

  “You’ll have to do better than that, you horn toad fucker,” she shouted.

  From the floor, Spyder said, “Ride him, Lulu!”

  Temmah stopped spinning and looked down at Spyder. “You’re poisoned. Why aren’t you dead?”

  Lulu kissed Temmah on the cheek and hopped off his back. “That was fun,” she said. “Best two out of three?”

  Temmah looked at her as Spyder got to his feet, pulling scales from his chest.