Blind Shrike Page 4

The bar was alive with a happy, drunken weekend crowd. Leather-clad boys and girls with hair in cotton-candy colors and lips shining brighter than their vinyl skirts. Spyder wanted to wade out and dive into their beauty, and be baptized by their sweat and saliva. But for the first time since he was an awkward teenager, he couldn’t think of anything to say to them. He felt as removed from the crowd as the monsters he’d been seeing in the streets all day. Spyder turned away and drank his tequila.

  There was a demon sitting on the stool next to Spyder. It was a huge bare-chested olive-skinned man, his features lost beneath cascading rolls of glistening fat. White geometric designs covered his arms and chest, some kind of tribal markings. Considering everything, he didn’t look too bad, Spyder thought. Pretty human, in fact. Not at all like the monsters in Jenny’s mythology textbooks. The demon stole the beer of the girl sitting next to him and poured the whole thing into a wide, toothless mouth that split open in the middle of his chest.

  Spyder sighed and the demon caught him looking. The demon leaned in close and said, “How do you get twelve humans to wear one hat?”

  “How?” asked Spyder.

  “You bite the heads off eleven.”

  Spyder turned back to his drink. “Sorry for not laughing, but I’m going to be over here ignoring you.”

  “I’m Bilal,” said the demon, “ You’re the little prince, aren’t you? The one Shrike killed for. What’s your story?”

  “There is no story. I’m just an inker who had to take a leak.”

  “That’s beautiful. Maybe they’ll carve that on your tombstone? You’ll be an inspiration to future generations.” A stoned couple stumbled by and Bilal delicately plucked the cigarette from the mouth of a cadaverous, lavender-lipped boy. The demon sniffed the cigarette once and dropped it into his chest-mouth. “Though I was really hoping you could justify your existence. Like maybe you were some minor deity on pilgrimage. Or a diplomat off to a secret rendezvous to stop a war.”

  Bilal blew out a long puff of smoke out through the mouth in his face.

  “What’s it like being a demon here in a place like this?” asked Spyder.

  “I don’t know. What’s it like being a human?”

  Spyder looked in the mirror behind the bar, taking in the crowd. There were other demons, mostly talking to each other. A couple of guys playing pool were cut up in a way that looked like the work of the Black Clerks. “Scary and Salvador Dali weird,” Spyder said. “Wrath of god weird. The kind of weird where you think if you see one more shadow or hear one more bang, your heart’s going to explode.”

  “Welcome to the world, boy. As for my personal complaints, you can add having to deal with idiot talking meat like you.” Bilal pocketed a two dollar tip someone had left for Rubi. “See, that demon who died last night was Nebiros. He was a friend of mine. In fact, my best friend in this sorry Sphere.” Bilal put his hand on Spyder’s arm. Each of the demon’s fingers was tipped with a scaly lizard mouth lined with tiny needle teeth. The lizards bit into Spyder as Bilal squeezed his arm. “You owe Nebiros a life and me, well, I miss my friend and that makes me mad. You know what I mean?”

  The enormous mouth opened wetly in the demon’s chest and he pulled Spyder closer. A leathery, black tongue darted out, licking Spyder’s face. “Shit!” yelled Bilal, slurping the enormous tongue back into his chest. He turned Spyder’s arm over, revealing the Black Clerk’s mark.

  “You must shit candy and piss champagne, son. Everyone wants a piece of you,” said Bilal.

  “You mean you can’t hurt me because of this mark?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “It sure as hell looked like it.”

  “Smile while you still have lips. The Clerks have you penciled in. What they’ll do to you is a hundred times worse than what I had planned.”

  “I’m looking for Shrike,” said Spyder.

  “Just because I’m not eating you doesn’t mean I’m helping you.”

  “Yeah, but if I find her and get her to help me, maybe she’ll get in trouble with the Clerks, too. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Shrike’s not that stupid,” Bilal said. He took the last of Spyder’s tequila and swallowed it, glass and all. “Still, she likes them pretty and dumb. You might drag her down to your level.” Bilal spat broken glass onto the ground at Spyder’s feet. “She’s got a room at the Coma Gardens. It’s a bordello down by pier 31.”

  “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “It’s not for your kind.”

  “Right. Thanks.”

  “Go to Hell.”

  Rubi asked Spyder if he wanted another drink. He shook his head. “You okay?” she asked. “You’ve been here muttering to yourself all night.”

  “Just replaying that last fight with Jenny. I keep trying it different ways hoping it comes out another way.”

  “You poor thing,” said Rubi.

  “I’ve seen you in here a hundred times before. I’ve stolen your drinks and I’ve spit in them. But you’ve never seen me,” Bilal said to Spyder. “How does it feel to suddenly have to live in the real world?”

  “It’s the worst thing that ever happened to me.”

  “Good.” All the demon’s mouths smiled. “I’ve been around for a while and I can tell the ones who are going to make it once they get the Sight and you’re not one of them. You’ll be dead by Christmas. A bullet. Maybe poison. I don’t see you as the hanging type.”

  “I’m going to kill myself just because I see uglies like you? In your wildest dreams, Cinderella.”

  “No, you’re going to kill yourself because you can’t stand the real world. Reality has a special weight. It’s a burden like no other, and it just keeps getting heavier.”

  “I’m going back to ignoring you now.”

  “I’ve seen it a thousand times. It’s like when you first learn that you have colonies of dust mites living on your eye lashes and in your bed, eating flakes of your dead skin. You never look at yourself or the world the same again. That’s the weight of reality. Once you take on that burden, the world looks at you differently, too. Check out the crowd. All those pretty girls who used to flirt with you, your friend behind the bar, they’re all watching you having a nice chat with an empty barstool. They’re already starting to wonder about you. Tomorrow they’ll tell their friends. Maybe I can’t hurt you, but I have connections who can influence mortal minds. Reinforce the doubt that’s already there. By Monday, you’re going to be Jeffery Dahmer to these people. They’ll crucify you for blinking at them,” said Bilal. “Yeah, you’re going to kill yourself.”

  “Tell me something, when you jerk off, do those little lizards on your hands bite? I bet you like that.”

  “And then there are the Clerks. They’ve claimed you and you know what that means. They’re going to pick you apart like a maggot-covered carcass. Could you feel them slicing you up with their eyes, deciding what piece they’ll take first?”

  Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand” came on the jukebox. A girl whooped drunkenly and Rubi turned the song up loud.

  “I take it back. You won’t make it till Christmas,” said Bilal. “You won’t even make it to Halloween.”

  “Get a costume and come on over. I’ll put razor blades in some apples for you. Enough for all your mouths.”

  Bilal leaned over the bar and used the lizard mouths on his fingertips to spear some cherries from Rubi’s drink set-ups. The demon popped the cherries into his face-mouth one at a time. “Give Shrike a big kiss from me. She’ll be so happy to see you, little prince.”

  Spyder got up from his stool and started for the door. He couldn’t help noticing that people were pointedly getting out of his way. At the door Spyder heard Bilal yell, “An OD! You’re going to OD! How could I have missed that?”

  ELEVEN

  The Voice of the Sphinx

  Spyder wondered what time it was. He was in another cab and trying hard to ignore the chatty driver. It pained Spyder that he hadn’t ridden his bike that
morning. Without the bike, he always felt tied up and weighed down.

  Ever since he could ride, Spyder had always had a motorcycle of some kind. “You never know when you’re going to need to get the hell out of Dodge,” he’d liked to tell friends. “And you can only run so far in a cab.” He told the driver to pull over.

  “This ain’t even near Pier 31,” said the cabbie.

  “I feel like walking.” Spyder paid the man and got out. He looked around as the cab made a U turn and headed back the way they’d come. Spyder had lived in San Francisco for ten years and during a brief breaking and entering period in his early twenties, had prided himself on knowing every backstreet, alley and bypass in the city. Right now, however, he didn’t know where the hell he was.

  Ahead of him, where he was certain the waterfront warehouses should begin, well-trodden sand dunes sloped down to San Francisco Bay. A lot of the city had been built on reclaimed beach. This, he was certain, was what the waterfront had looked like a couple of hundred years ago. Spyder stood where the cab had dropped him, fighting contradictory impulses. His body told him that ahead, past the dunes, was where the piers lay. But his eyes told him that there was nothing but shifting beach and black water. Then he saw a flicker—orange light from the far side of the dunes. In that moment of illumination, Spyder could see a line of silhouettes moving along the edge of the dunes, heading over them. Some of the silhouettes carried burdens on their backs. Others were merely misshapen. It was enough. Spyder’s body and mind were finally in synch and he started walking.

  At the top of the last big dune Spyder looked down onto a maze of market stalls that sprawled from the where he stood to the more familiar warehouses and piers in the distance. As he got closer to the market, sounds and smells hit him: the screams of hawkers, a dozen different musics pouring from out-of-tune instruments and cracked speakers, the heavy smell of roasting meat, spices and rotten wood. There were toys and piles of mismatched shoes, fresh vegetables, dried chameleons and flowers that sighed when you smelled them. There were orerries and telescopes, cracked eye glasses and black eggs that hatched kittens who (according to their seller) spoke perfect ecclesiastical Latin. Sellers tugged at Spyder’s arm and waved squirming things, glittering things and mechanical things at him.

  By a stall selling decomposing medical books and sex toys made of black lacquer and amber (some with ominous-looking beetles sealed inside) Spyder bumped shoulders with a tall, handsome man.

  “Sorry,” said Spyder. “My fault.”

  “You should watch your step, little brother,” said the big man. “Not everyone in the market is as reasonable as I. Some are downright belligerent.” The man’s voice sounded the way black velvet looked and felt. Spyder wondered if it might be some kind of magic trick. Not that he actually believed in magic, but he was beyond ruling out that much anymore.

  Though they were physically the opposite, the tall man reminded Spyder of Shrike. He held himself with the kind of grace that Spyder had seen in the swordswoman. But the man was huge, more than a head taller than Spyder. His face, while classically handsome, was marked with deep scars that, at first, Spyder thought might be ritual, but then decided were some terrible accident. Chainmail covered the man’s upper body and he wore pants that seemed to Spyder like modified motorcycle leathers. Metal plates and studs had been affixed along the legs, which were tucked into heavy steel-toed boots. At his side, the man wore a wide-bladed Kan Dao sword like ones Spyder had seen in maybe a thousand kung fu movies.

  “Do I know you, little brother?” asked the big man.

  “I don’t think so,” said Spyder. “I’m new here.”

  “Still, you seem familiar.”

  “I’ve got one of those faces.”

  “Perhaps that’s it.”

  The tall man picked up a particularly elaborate sex toy from the stall and shook it. Six little legs sprang from the bottom and some kind of spring-wound plunger popped from the top and began pumping the air vigorously. The little legs kicked as if looking for something to grab on to. When the tall man laughed at the thing, Spyder noticed that color on his face was unnaturally intense. He realized that the man was wearing makeup, trying to cover his scars. The sudden insight made Spyder feel oddly more at home. Even here, down the rabbit hole or wherever the hell he’d ended up, people still had egos and still worried about how they looked.

  “I’m looking for a place called the Coma Gardens. Do you know it?” Spyder asked the man.

  “Very well,” he replied. “Go down this aisle and turn toward the water at the Sphinx. Be sure not to speak to her. She will never let you go. Keep walking and when you see the Volt Eater, the Coma Gardens lie just beyond. You can’t miss it.”

  “Thanks,” said Spyder desperately wanting to ask what the hell a Sphinx and a Volt-Eater were, but thinking the better of it. He knew he’d find out soon enough.

  He wasn’t disappointed. Following the crowd in the direction the mercenary had pointed, Spyder saw a Sphinx. A living, breathing Sphinx, like the sculptures in Golden Gate Park. The Sphinx sat up on its haunches, its lion body acorn brown, muscled and sleek as a cruise missile. Gathered around the Sphinx was a rapt crowd. They were clearly in awe, maybe hypnotized, thought Spyder. The Sphinx’s face—the face of a human woman—was easily the most beautiful he had ever seen. Spyder looked away when he caught himself staring, but the Sphinx had already noticed him.

  “Don’t be shy, my friend. Come closer. I can answer all your questions and tell you your destiny.”

  Spyder half-turned in her direction. “Nope. Sorry. No thanks,” he said.

  The Sphinx’s eyes narrowed with sudden interest and the crowd turned to see who she was looking at. “Yes, you should keep moving,” she said to Spyder. “Don’t let anything or anyone stop you from getting where you’re going.” Lowering her voice, the Sphinx spoke to her adoring crowd. Spyder slowed his gait, listening to her words. “See what passes, my children. A blind fool. A golden champion. What could he be seeking under heaven’s rough gaze? We have a mystery in our midst.” When Spyder turned to sneak a last look at the Sphinx, she was staring him right in the eye. The beautiful beast gave him a smile and a wink. “It looks as if heroes are coming smaller this year.”

  Spyder’s head spun. He turned away and hurried down the aisle. At the end, he found what he figured must be the Volt Eater. An exotic bare-breasted beauty, her skin oiled and gleaming, she was inhaling in long draughts from a wrist-thick cable attached to a gas powered generator. After each breath, she spat lighting bolts, snaking and crackling, over the heads of the happily screaming crowd. People threw money at the Volt Eater’s feet after each demonstration of her electric skills. It made Spyder a little sad to see her. On any other night, she would have been the hands-down highlight. He would have been in temporary love and dreamed about her as he went home with whomever he was with that night. Tonight, however, the Volt Eater was just a pretty girl spitting watts, no more or less miraculous than Bible-quoting kittens or the lion-woman who’d just pronounced him both a fool and a hero.

  Just when Spyder thought he would never be surprised again, he came to the edge of the market and saw the Coma Gardens. Bathed in light the color of blood and pumpkins, the whole building was engulfed in a spectacular fire. Part of the roof collapsed and flames shot fifty feet into the night sky. The only thing more shocking than the fire was the fact that no one in the market was paying the slightest attention to it. They went on with their selling and haggling even as the whole structure cracked and caved in on itself.

  TWELVE

  Cyanide Recall

  The Coma Gardens kept on burning. The beams glowed as if they’d been injected with magma, shedding hot jets of flame and debris over the sales stalls. Spyder walked along the cement broadway between the market and burning hotel, unsure what to do.

  If Jenny hadn’t taken the cell phone, Spyder thought, he could call 911. Of course, he wasn’t sure exactly where he was. Still, all he’d have to tell th
em is that there was a burning building on the pier. The fire trucks would be able to see it from all the way down at Fisherman’s Wharf. In fact, someone had probably already called the fire in, which was both good and bad. It was good in that the fire department would put it out. It was bad in that it bought Spyder back to the fact that he had no idea what he would do if Shrike was inside the burning building. He didn’t want to think about it. Spyder turned around one more time to see if anyone in the market was forming a bucket brigade. The market went on as if it had all evening—oblivious, a world unto itself.

  Then Spyder saw someone at the edge of the crowd. She was talking to a man wearing an enormous, jeweled bird mask, one that covered his entire head (or actually was his head, Spyder later thought). The woman wore her shades, and moved her white cane from one hand to the other so she could shake the bird man’s feathered mitt. Spyder ran to her through the smoke of the smoldering Coma Gardens.

  “Shrike!” he yelled. The woman turned her head toward him as the bird man walked away. Spyder ran up and grabbed her happily by the shoulders. “It’s me, Spyder. You saved my life the other night.”

  The blind woman gave him a crooked smile. “Oh yes. The pretty pony boy. How are you?”

  “I’m…” He started to answer, but realized he had no idea what to say. He felt giddy at having found her, but there was the accumulating wreckage of the rest of his life. “I’m fine,” he said. “I can see things now. The real world. That’s how I found the market. And you.”

  “Good for you,” she said. “Maybe you’re more clever than I thought. A trick pony. Me, I’m off to find new lodgings.”

  “I can see why,” said Spyder.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do I mean? Look! Your hotel is an in-fucking-ferno.”

  “No, it’s not. I would be able to feel the heat.”

  “Of course it is. I can see it burning from here.”

  “Really? Because the Coma Gardens isn’t going to be built for another fifty years,” she said. “And it’s not going to burn for another twenty after that.”