Butcher Bird

  “Let’s see what’s under your mask, little boy,” said the Clerk Spyder and he dug his spiky, broken nails into Spyder’s face, ripping away chunks of flesh and muscle. “What are little boys made of? Meat and tears and bones and fear, that’s what little boys are made of!”

  Spyder awoke with a stifled scream.

  Sitting on a small, child-size chair that looked like it was intended more as a decoration than a functional piece of furniture was a pale, small man in a brown suit at least two sizes too small for him.

  “Who are you?” asked Spyder, hoping he wasn’t about to start the whole dream over again.

  The man stood up and made a small, stiff bow. “I am Primo Kosinski. I have been sent to fetch the Butcher Bird to Madame Cinders’ home.”

  Spyder shook Shrike, then realized she was already awake and playing possum. “I heard him come in,” she said. “I just wanted a little more sleep.”

  “I am to bring you to Madame Cinders at your earliest convenience.” The words rushed out of the little man’s mouth in a high, breathy voice.

  “We heard you the first time,” Shrike said. She snuggled closer to Spyder. “I’m not a morning person.”

  “It’s afternoon, ma’am.”

  “Damn,” she said. “All right.”

  The little man remained standing as Spyder crawled out of bed and began to look for his clothes. Primo’s attention was anxious and unnerving. Like what a herd dog must make a sheep feel like, Spyder thought. “Would you sit the hell down and relax?” asked Spyder.

  “Certainly.” Primo sat, but it didn’t help much. He perched on the edge of the little chair, his attention as keen as ever. “And close your eyes while she dresses,” Spyder added. The little man closed his eyes and covered them with his hands.

  “I don’t care,” said Shrike. “It’s not like there’s anything here worth lusting after right now.” Spyder knew how she felt. Whatever kind of wine they’d been drinking, it left him lightheaded, clumsy and oddly forgetful. Even when he found his clothes, it took him a few minutes to decide that they were his. It was some small consolation that Shrike, too, was moving slowly and painfully. The wine had kicked her ass, too. Good, he thought. At least we’re starting out the day even.

  “How far is it to Madame’s?” Shrike asked.

  “From here, perhaps three hours,” said Primo, his voice muffled by his hands. “There is a boat and then the Blegeld Passage.”

  “You’ve arranged transport through the passage?”

  “Yes, ma’am. A very agreeable tuk-tuk. Very luxurious.”

  “There’s no such thing as a luxurious tuk-tuk,” said Shrike, pulling on her boots.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The day was starting slow, but all right, thought Spyder. He remembered that Shrike had not wanted him to speak much. That request was working out fine since, once again, he didn’t know what she and Primo were talking about other than they were all going somewhere and, happily, using a boat for part of the journey. At least he’d recognize something.

  When they’d dressed, Shrike ordered both Primo and Spyder out of the room. She stood in the doorway with the little book open flat on her hands and said a few words. As Shrike slapped the book closed, the bed and carpets were gone and the room was back to its original dingy state. Even the dust hadn’t been disturbed. Shrike tucked her cane under her elbow and took Spyder’s arm. “Lead us to the boat, Primo.”

  “This way, please, ma’am.” He hurried down the steps ahead of them as Spyder walked down with Shrike. Spyder couldn’t tell if she was walking slowly because of the hangover or because she wanted to appear relaxed and indifferent to their journey. In any case, it was pleasant to have her on his arm again. Though all through the walk, Spyder felt as if he were floating beside his body watching himself. He was so out of it, in fact, that Primo was handing them the boat tickets before he realized they were back at the ocean, on the edge of Fisherman’s Wharf.

  “These are tickets for the tour boat to Alcatraz,” said Spyder.

  “Yes, sir. You’re very observant,” said Primo brightly.

  Spyder let it go since another thought had popped into his mind. “We’re going to get in line for the boat. Please give us a moment alone, Primo.”

  “What the hell are you doing?” asked Shrike as Spyder pulled her away from the little man and toward their gate on the dock. “It’s dangerous for us to be alone like this. He might think we’re plotting against Madame Cinders.”

  “That wine we had last night. What was in it?” asked Spyder.

  “Grapes. Spices. I don’t know all the ingredients.”

  “Was it some kind of magic wine?”

  “No. Not magic.”

  “Then chemical. My mind keeps floating and my memory feels like it’s been pissed all over. And don’t tell me this is normal for a hangover because I’ve had about a million, none like this.”

  “It’s a special wine,” said Shrike. “I didn’t know you well last night. If it had gone badly I would have let you drink a little more. I would have had more, too. Then we would have both forgotten. That’s all. It’s just something I keep around for passing situations that might turn sour. No one needs that kind of thing cluttering up their head. You understand, don’t you, pony boy?”

  “Passing and sour, you know how to make morning-after sweet talk, don’t you?”

  “I didn’t let you forget it all. I didn’t forget, either. And it turned out to be better than passing. Kind of nice. If you could remember, you’d know that I stopped you from drinking too much.”

  “If I could remember,” said Spyder.

  “Don’t worry,” said Shrike. “When we do it again, I’ll make sure it’s memorable.”

  “When we do it again? You’ve got it all figured out.”

  “I’m a girl with her own sword. That’s your type.” Then she added quickly. “Don’t kiss me now. Primo will be watching. Wave him over. Be careful from here on. No smiles and no talking. You’re the quiet, deadly type.”

  “Easy for you to say. You don’t have a hard-on.”

  “Shh!”

  FIFTEEN

  I LUV LA

  They crossed San Francisco Bay to Alcatraz Island with a hundred other tourists and their children. Spyder hadn’t been to the island in a couple of years. He’d always regarded the place as a bore and used the foggy crossing and general gloom that surrounded Alcatraz’s abandoned maximum-security prison as compelling seduction tools. It usually worked.

  Jenny had been the last woman he’d taken there and it felt odd to be going back again. He looked at Shrike. She was at the bow of the boat, looking fierce in the bay wind, and clearly enjoying the feel of it on her face. Primo stood a few steps behind her and from where Spyder stood on the opposite side of the deck, the little man looked even more ragged than he’d first thought. Not only was Primo’s suit too small, but the seams and the fabric itself looked frayed and was clearly torn in places. Spyder wondered, if this Madame Cinders is such a big deal, can’t she dress her help in something that doesn’t look like it was copped from a dumpster behind the Salvation Army?

  When they moored at Alcatraz, Spyder and his companions waited until most of the families had gone ashore before exiting the boat. A park ranger was giving the group a canned orientation lecture, explaining that they shouldn’t damage the facilities and that donations were always welcome. From earlier visits, Spyder remembered that the place had originally been a military prison during the Civil War. He’d hated being there, even for a few hours. He couldn’t imagine what being locked up for years in that frigid, wind-beaten rock would be like. Alcatraz made him think of a nasty monster-movie castle looming over a doomed village. He wondered what Shrike’s castle had been like. Nothing like this, he hoped. If, of course, she were telling the truth and there was a castle. It occurred to Spyder that she might have been telling him a tall tale. She’d slipped him a Mickey Finn because he didn’t matter. Why should she bother telling him the
truth about herself? She was beautiful, but he resolved to be more careful around her, then smiled to himself knowing how unlikely that was. He was into something whose depths he couldn’t begin to guess. This was pretty much a hang-on-and-hope-you-get-to-wear-your-skin-home situation and that didn’t leave much room for being aloof.

  The ranger finished her spiel and the tourists split into smaller groups to explore the island. Spyder and Shrike followed Primo up the hill toward the prison cellblocks. As they climbed the steep grade, Spyder became aware that many of the tourists, especially the fathers in family groups, lumbered under the weight of demonic parasites that were attached to their bodies. Some of the parents bore scars from the Black Clerks. Spyder met one man’s gaze—he still had his eyes—and the look the man gave Spyder was filled with such resigned despair that Spyder had to turn away. Out of the corner of his eye, Spyder watched the man herding his wife and children into the prison gift shop.

  Past the cellblocks, on the edge of the island looking back toward San Francisco, were rusted steel double doors. They were chained loosely together and, with a little effort, Primo was able to push himself through the opening. Shrike, smaller, slid easily through the gap. Spyder had to take his leather jacket off to get through and even then there was a lot of grunting and dragging himself inside by inches. But he finally made it.

  “I probably could have picked that lock,” he said once he was inside the tunnel.

  “Don’t worry. I have a key,” said Primo, and walked away into the darkness.

  “Then why…?” Shrike elbowed Spyder to remind him not to speak. He followed them, giving up trying to understand his companions’ logic.

  “This is one of the old animal pens,” Primo told them eagerly. “The soldiers kept their horses here during the winter rains. You can still hear them whinnying if you put your ear to the wall during storms.”

  In the near, but never total, darkness, they climbed down ladders and through storm grates. They walked passages with floors of mud, passages lined with planks, cobblestone passages and some whose floors seemed to be some kind of soft, spongy metal that made Spyder want to run like a little kid. He was sure that there was no way all these passages were part of the prison complex. This was confirmed for Spyder as they moved through a rocky tunnel whose walls were lined with clay water pipes marked with inscriptions in Latin and Greek. Were they moving in time as well as space? Spyder wondered.

  They went through underground vaults and what looked like old sewer sluiceways. Occasionally, they would meet another group moving in the opposite direction. Some were dressed in rags, some looked like ordinary city dwellers, while others looked like escapees from some particularly mean and decrepit Renaissance Faire. The groups never acknowledged each other. Spyder got the impression that the passages weren’t the safest place to be.

  Up ahead, he noticed that Primo had slowed down and was nervously wringing his hands. At a watery intersection that reminded Spyder of the high gothic sewers where Orson Welles met his bloody fate at the end of The Third Man, Primo stopped. The little man turned in slow circles, peering into the distance. He stared hard at the walls, as if looking for a message.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Shrike.

  “Our transport isn’t here. A tuk-tuk was supposed to be waiting.”

  “Did Madame Cinders pay them in advance?”

  “Naturally.”

  “That was your mistake.”

  “No. She knows this family well. They are reliable. That’s why she employs only them to transport her guests.”

  “Maybe they broke down,” said Shrike. “If they were anywhere nearby, we could hear the damned racket from the tuk-tuk’s engine.”

  “We shouldn’t remain still too long. It’s dangerous. I suppose we should start walking.”

  “That would be my suggestion,” said Shrike. Spyder didn’t like the idea of being in the passages any longer than they had to. He looked back the way they had come and saw things moving in the darkness. Golden eyes glinted and slid along the floor. Spyder caught up to Shrike and made sure not to fall behind again.

  After what seemed like hours, they were moving through a passage lined with old red brick and dry rot timbers. A cool breeze touched Spyder’s face. Sand had piled in miniature dunes where the timbers met the floor.

  “Oh dear,” said Primo leaning over a broken machine in the tunnel ahead. Twisted wheels lay on the bricks. Spyder could already smell the stink coming from the wreck. Melted rubber, gasoline and burned flesh.

  “I’m guessing this is the tuk-tuk we were waiting for?” said Shrike.

  “It would seem so,” replied Primo. “Hmm. I don’t believe this was a motor accident. There appears to be an arrow in the driver’s eye. I wonder who could have put that there?”

  “That would be us,” came a croaking voice from the roof of the passage.

  Four men (and the gender of the intruders was just a guess on Spyder’s part) dropped to the floor. The men weren’t holding anything, so Spyder wasn’t sure how they’d been holding on to the ceiling. But what seemed more important to him now was the men’s elongated faces and crocodilian skin. Each was dressed differently—one in a firefighter’s rubber overcoat, another in priestly vestments, the third wore shorts and an I LUV LA T-shirt and the fourth was wearing a high school letter jacket. Spyder didn’t want to think about where the lizard-men might have acquired their clothes, but the rust-colored stains on the LA T-shirt gave him some idea.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen,” said Primo, and he gave the lizards a bow. “I am Primo Kosinski and I am conducting these guests to the abode of Madame Cinders. The Madame has negotiated safe passage through the Blegeld Passage for herself and all her guests.”

  “She didn’t negotiate with us,” said the lizard-priest in a gravelly, hissing voice.

  “That’s because the compact is universal. No one may ignore or prevent—” Primo began. Shrike cut him off.

  “What will it cost us to get through?” she asked.

  “The pretty green. Piles of it. Do you have that?”

  “You know we don’t,” Shrike said.

  “Good,” hissed the lizard in the letter jacket. He took a step toward Shrike. Just as she was bringing her sword up, Spyder saw Primo ram his shoulder into the lizard’s midsection, smashing him against the wall in an explosion of bone, blood and dry skin. Next, Primo rounded on the priest and back-fisted him, ripping off a good portion of the beast’s face. Spyder was pulling Shrike back from the carnage. As awful as it was, he couldn’t turn away. The first thing he noticed, aside from the fact that Primo had the last two lizards by the throat and was slowly choking the life from them, was that the little man’s clothes were no longer loose on him. In fact, they seemed a little tight. His skin had turned a bright crimson and long, thorned hooks protruded from every part of his body, ripping through the fabric of his suit. Primo growled with animal fury as he crushed the throats of the lizards until their heads hung at odd angles on limp flesh. Dropping the attackers’ bodies, Primo turned to Spyder and Shrike asking, “Are you both all right?”

  “We’re fine,” Shrike said. “Thank you.”

  The little man, for he was already shrinking back to his original size, approached them, cleaning his hands on the T-shirt he ripped from the body of one dead lizard. “Forgive me, please,” he said. “You were under my protection and should never have had to even raise your weapon. You may ask Madame for my life, if you like.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Shrike. “You protected us and we’re grateful.”

  “I’m happy to be of service.”

  “You’re of the Gytrash race, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Members of my family have been guides for Madame Cinders and her friends for over a thousand years.”

  “Your family should be very proud of you, Primo.”

  “Thank you. I believe they are. At least, they sit well with me.”

  Spyder felt Shrike’s hand on his arm, quieting
him until Primo had moved away to inspect the lizard-men’s bodies. When he was out of earshot, Shrike whispered quickly. “The Gytrash are nomads and escorts for travelers. They are a very practical race. They eat their dead for nourishment, but also as ritual. It’s their highest act of love and praise.”

  “We’re almost there,” said Primo. “Shall we continue?”

  “Let’s,” said Shrike. Spyder walked beside her trying to decide which member of his family, in a pinch, he could eat.

  SIXTEEN

  THE BIRTH OF MONSTERS

  When the world began, there were no such things as monsters. Demons were just fallen angels who, booted out of Heaven and bored with Hell, wandered the Earth sticking little girls’ pigtails in inkwells and sinking the occasional continent.

  The word monster didn’t really exist until the Spheres separated and the humans and beasts in the First Sphere forgot about their brethren in the other Earth realms.

  In fact, most of what people call monsters are at least partly human. Many are the offspring of Romeo and Juliet encounters between mortals and races from the other Spheres. The first monster was the offspring of a man, Chrysaor, and Nyx, the snake queen. Their daughter, Lilith, was the first of the Lamia race. When she fell in love with another human, Umashi, and created the long-nosed Tengus. It wasn’t just humans coupling with the older races. Earth was a romantic free-fire zone before the Spheres split. Old races mated with the new ones, which created still newer races, new cultures, new myths and new possibilities. Later, when mortals only saw the other races of the Earth in their dreams, they called these long-forgotten siblings monsters.

  Of course, mortals weren’t always tops on the invitation list for parties, either. A number of animal races, especially the ones in the oceans and air, didn’t regard humans as truly sentient beings and considered mating with them to be the grossest kind of bestiality. This generally low opinion of humanity was widespread in the outer Spheres and didn’t change for thousands of years, until certain mortal stories trickled out to the hinterlands. Gilgamesh, for instance, was quite a hit with the swamp kings and lords of the air. Other stories of reluctant heroes and reborn champions, characters such as Prometheus and the trickster Painted Man, elevated humanity in the eyes of the other races because in all those stories the heroes die or give up some core part of their being for their people. That humans could grasp the idea of self-sacrifice was big news in the outer Spheres. Humanity was cut some sorely needed slack from races that previously regarded them as a kind of chatty land krill.