Butcher Bird (35 page)

Bilal gestured to his chest.

"Could you?"

"Sorry." Spyder touched the demon. The skin of Bilal's chest shifted, unsealing his second mouth.

Rubi brought him a shot of Jäger 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. "Do we taste more like pork or chicken?"

A month later, the initial rush of being back home had worn off. Spyder waited for his mind to settle down, his moods to slide into their regular patterns; he waited for the world to become solid under his feet, but it didn't happen.

He ate. He slept. He ordered a new tattoo gun and an autoclave from an online wholesaler. When they arrived, he got as far as opening the box before losing interest. Every day he went out to buy food, but just came home with more cigarettes. When the insurance check covering the fire in the tattoo shop arrived, he finally admitted that he wasn't going to go back to work anytime soon. After a few calls, he got Lulu a table at Luscious Abrasion, just down the street from where their shop had been. He'd visit her there every couple of days.

It had been more than a month, but he was startled every time he saw her. She looked so good, so happy to be back. Soon, it was hard to remember all that the Clerks had done to her.

"You look lost at sea, sailor." Lulu and Spyder were having burgers at an outdoor café near Golden Gate Park. Lulu stole another of Spyder's American Spirits and lit it with the pink lighter he'd taken back from Lucifer while they were still in Hell.

"I'm feeling a little adrift, yeah. No big deal. It'll pass."

"You need to work, dude. Get back to what you know and what you're good at. I bet you could really make the colors dance now that you've got all those Dr. Strange super powers."

He shook his head and took a bite of his burger. The meat was chewy and tasteless in his mouth.

"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" he asked. "But I can't control it. I'm a little scared of my hands. What if my mind wanders—and it's wandering a lot these days—and I turn some baby goth girl into a Black Clerk?"

"If you make any Angelina Jolies, save one for me." She smiled at him and when he didn't smile back, Lulu shook her head. "I don't understand why you can't just do stuff now. You healed me back at Cinders' place. And you fixed Shrike."

"That was all one big rush. Like I was running, and as long as I kept running, I could do anything. But now I stopped and I can't find my feet. The more I think about the magic, the worse I get at it."

"What are you going to do?"

"Don't know. The insurance money came through, so I don't really have to work right now. Besides, I dream about money and there's gold in my sock drawer when I wake up."

"Must be nice," said Lulu, irritation edging into her voice. "What'd be even nicer was if you got over this whiny little bitch thing you're in and you went out and found Shrike."

"You don't think I've tried? I've been back to the night market. Down to the Coma Gardens. I even busted into the tunnel under Alcatraz. Nothing. No one's seen her. She's gone."

"Sorry, bro."

"I should go."

He didn't tell Lulu the whole truth about his home life. The magic or power or whatever it was he'd acquired inside the book was getting more out of control every day. The deeper he sank into his dark mood, the more dangerous the magic became. Each night, he woke up from restless dreams to find his apartment choked with hellfire or locked in glacial ice. His bedroom was invaded by souls wandering in from the edge of the Bone Sea. Galaxies swirled where the ceiling should be, and he could see the Dominions floating between the stars, eating worlds and swimming in swirling clouds of cosmic dust.

Spyder couldn't stand being in the warehouse anymore, so he rented an ancient, rundown metal workshop in the industrial zone on a winding road out by the old Navy yards. The place was just four metal walls and an aluminum roof with a razorwire fence outside. There was nothing inside the shop for him to break or freeze or burn up when he dreamed. All Spyder took with him was his motorcycle, an air mattress, cartons of cigarettes and beer. Everything else he dealt with as he needed. During the day, he kept Apollyon's blade under the mattress. It mostly came in handy on those sleepless nights when he thought he was going crazy. He would take out the knife and feel its weight in his hand, smell a faint echo of Hell when he held the grip close to his face. When sleep refused to come, he thought about hiring an airship and flying deep into the desert to find the hole he'd blown in Hell's roof. Lucifer would be happy to see him and might let him stick around to help rebuild Heaven. Or would he? The fallen angel had told him to go home and live his life, but what did that even mean anymore?

What an amazing place to have gotten yourself to, he thought, when even Hell isn't an option.

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 the 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 in either movie to get Lulu to sit through them, so he 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, pony boy."

She was leaning against the front door of a check-cashing shop. Through the open door was a miserable line of restless illegals pretending not to see the down-on-their luck Caucasians who were busy pretending to be somewhere else entirely.

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. 

RICHARD KADREY IS A FREELANCE WRITER LIVING IN San Francisco. He has written about art, culture and technology for
Wired,
The San Francisco Chronicle
,
Discovery Online
,
The Site
and
Wired For Sex
on the G4 cable network.

He is also the author of three other novels:
Metrophage
,
Kamikaze L'Amour,
and
Angel Scene
.

Along with the Pander Brothers, he developed the original comic,
Accelerate,
for DC/Vertigo, which will be reprinted as a graphic novel in Fall 2007 by Image Comics. His short fiction has appeared in
Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine
,
Interzone
, Rudy Rucker's
Flurb,
InfiniteMatrix.net
, as well as a number of anthologies. His story, "Goodbye Houston Street, Goodbye," was nominated for the British Science Fiction Association Best Short Story award.

In 2001, Haft Entertainment turned his story "Carbon Copy' into the truly awful film,
No Ordinary Baby,
starring Bridget Fonda.