Butcher Bird

  It was beautiful and sad where he was. So lonely. He was the oldest living thing in the universe. Or was with it. Or it passed through him, like air moving in and out of his lungs, leaving a little of itself behind—just a few molecules. Each molecule grew into pictures and words. The pictures and words flowed together to form a structure. It had doors and windows and a seemingly endless number of rooms. It was a cathedral. A memory cathedral, the kind monks used to memorize whole sections of the Bible. Spyder had read about them in Jenny’s books. But the rooms in this cathedral were filled with something else. Some immensely older knowledge. Each image he touched, each word he mouthed filled him with power and dread. For a long time, he thought he was dead. Then he tripped over an uneven door frame. He caught himself before he fell, but tore the palm of his hand on the frame. His blood dripped onto the floor of the cathedral. This body is alive, he thought. I’m alive.

  I’m alive.

  And then he was falling again.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  TABLE SCRAPS

  He awoke on the floor of Lucifer’s palace. Someone was standing over him. His eyes fluttered fully open and he recognized a woman’s face. Tears were flowing from her empty sockets.

  A name floated by and he said, “Lulu.” She reached down and pulled the knife from his chest. He groaned.

  “Alive?” said one of the Clerks.

  “He is surprising,” said the head Clerk.

  Spyder leaned shakily against the cage that housed the book. Lulu spun on her heels and blasted the Black Clerks with round after round from the four-ten.

  “Don’t,” said Spyder, reaching for her.

  Each of Lulu’s shots hit, but it was like shooting at scarecrows. The rounds went through the Clerks, as if there was nothing but straw to absorb the blasts.

  The head Clerk snatched the shotgun from Lulu’s hands and tossed it across the hall. “Your debt is past due. We will collect now. Your heart, I think?” he said.

  “No,” said Spyder. He got to his feet and stretched. “Damn. Sometimes dying is like a week in Vegas.”

  “Perhaps your head was hurt in your fall?” said the head Clerk. “We move from Earth to Heaven to Hell. Nowhere is closed to us. We swallow life and spit out creation. And you say we will not take this child’s tiny life?”

  Spyder went and stood close to the head Clerk, close enough to smell the rot in his borrowed flesh. “I know what you are. You aren’t gods. You aren’t even demons. Come on out of the closet, boys.”

  “We don’t believe you.”

  “I know, but that doesn’t mean dingo’s balls. You’re hollow. Puppets. I don’t even think you’re really alive.”

  “Are you mad? I think so.”

  “Don’t pay attention to the man behind the curtain, that’s the best you can come up with? It didn’t work on the girl in the ruby slippers and it doesn’t mean shit to me.”

  “Enough,” said the Clerk with the ledger. He opened the book and withdrew something that looked like a thick, ragged tree limb. Dropping the ledger, he twisted the limb until a dozen ragged blades sprang from the shaft: killing thorns. The Clerk lunged, but Spyder side-stepped the blow, slipping behind his attacker. Slamming his arm around the Clerk’s throat, Spyder held him so that the others could watch, as he whispered a single word into the Clerk’s ear. When Spyder released him, the Clerk remained frozen in place, his deformed weapon still in the air.

  “A trick? Yes,” said the head Clerk.

  The frozen Clerk began to shake. His mouth came open and he made a sound that was part wonder and part howl of pain. He shook until he was a blur, and the stitches holding his pale body together began to split. The wan internal light the Clerks always gave off burst through his seams as he flew to pieces. As each broken part of him hit the floor, it vanished.

  The two remaining Clerks looked at Spyder.

  “I said the true name of time and decay,” he told them. “Do you even know what you are? You’re the boy-toys of the Old Gods, the Dominions. You need used-up organs because you’re trash on two legs. Golems. Animated table scraps. A word made you walk and a word can make you stop. I saw into the book. I learned the words.”

  “We are the engines of creation and destruction,” said the head Clerk. “We balance the Spheres. We prune dead branches, taking life where it is not appreciated, such as in this sorry child?” The Clerk nodded at Lulu. “We pass her breath back into the universe for new souls.”

  “That was your burden. That’s what you used to be. You balanced order and chaos, but something happened. The Dominions got inside of you. Instead of serving the universe, you started serving the Old Gods. You’re their delivery boys. You grant wishes to the weak, the wounded and lost, getting your hooks in their souls so the Dominions can feed on them. There’s nothing left of your old selves, when you balanced the universe. You’re empty shells. This book was made to bring the Dominions back, but I’m not going to let you do that.”

  “Is someone going to kill someone soon?” Xero called from the stairs. “I was about to win a war.”

  “You were about to be eviscerated in front of your troops,” said Lucifer.

  “We know you. You are not a man, but a broken child?” said the head Clerk to Spyder. “You’ve seen and learned much lately, but you remain a drunken libertine who despises his own foolish weakness above all else. And your mortal body is trapped forever in Hell. But we will take pity and give you the gift of annihilation.”

  “I’m not afraid of you.”

  “But it is yourself you hate and yourself you must fight?” The head Clerk raised his hand to the palace entrance, where a figure was waiting.

  Spyder saw his reflection. Sort of. A version of himself, but scarred like Lulu, crudely stitched together, like the Clerks themselves.

  “He is your Shadow Brother, built from a broken memory you left in Berenice. All the blood you left in the street? A very powerful elixir. We sacrificed a few of the organs we’d collected,” said the head Clerk. He turned to Lulu. “Child, do you recognize your eyes in another?”

  “You got the jump on me in Berenice, bro,” said the lacerated Spyder. “But I’m back and bad and ready for love.”

  “More golem trash,” Spyder said to the Clerks. “You think I won’t kill it this time?”

  “We’re counting on it. He’s special. Not you in name and form, but you, literally. A strike against him is against yourself? Show him,” the head Clerk told the golem.

  Spyder watched his Shadow Brother pull the punch dagger from behind his back and slide it hard across his chest, carving a deep, crimson wound. Spyder felt something like a live wire being dragged over his skin. He looked down and saw that he had a chest wound identical to the golem’s.

  “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, his 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 Bro
ther onto the book. Gasping, Spyder twisted and threw all of his weight on his doppelgänger, 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, little brother.”

  “No, but I’ve got to.”

  The book was already ingesting 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 face, feeling for the stolen flesh that was no longer there.

  “Feeling cold? Something missing?” Spyder asked. 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 body went transparent, like living glass, then burst into a blinding silver light. His eyes, however, dimmed to shimmering, pitiless black pits, and he became what Spyder knew had to be a wrathful version of this original angelic form.

  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 shot from the great book as Apollyon’s knife flew across the room and embedded itself into Lucifer’s spine. 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 familiar Count Non 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 midsection when Shrike had pulled Lucifer down. The general shrieked as the blade burned him. Lucifer grabbed the man and rolled off Shrike, 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 just any fool and I’m not just any demon,” said Lucifer, leaning heavily 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 next to 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 that 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? Why aren’t you completely damn dead?” said Lulu.

  “Ask your boyfriend. 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 chance.”

  “Something happened when I went 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 told Lulu.

  “Why? You haven’t gone all Dawn of the Dead, have you?”
>
  “Quiet. 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’re through with my hands let me know, okay?” Lulu asked. “I’ve got a hellacious nose itch.”

  “Then it’s working,” Spyder said. “I think we’re about done here.”

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

  “Go look.”

  She stepped over the fallen columns 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.”