Blind Shrike

by Richard Kadrey

  “You’re next, little brother. Don’t leave the lady waiting,” Non said, giving Spyder a leg up the rock. As he climbed, Spyder heard Lulu huffing and cursing behind him. When he reached the ledge where Shrike waited, she grabbed him and pulled him inside. Spyder turned and pulled in Lulu, as Count Non came up behind her. Outside, the killing light from the airships was hitting all around the cave entrance. Dust and stones rained down on them from the ceiling. The smell of roses was sickening, cloying, overripe. Spyder was suddenly afraid. A light bolt hit just below the lip of the entrance and threw them deep inside the cave.

  “We’re not safe here,” said Count Non. “We have to get down below.”

  “Back here.” Shrike’s voice came from deeper in the cave. “Stone doors. They’re warm. And they smell like an abandoned florist.”

  Spyder and the others scrambled to her through the dark. At the rear of the cave, stood two massive doors, forty feet high, carved from the mountain itself.

  “How do we open them?” Spyder asked.

  “They feel light,” said Shrike. “I think I can just pull them.”

  “Wait,” said Count Non. “Shrike and Lulu are safe, but you mustn’t forget your blindfold.” Non slid Lulu’s blindfold from where it hung around her neck, unknotted it and stepped behind Spyder to tie it on.

  “Shouldn’t we put that back on Lulu?”

  “Don’t worry. I doubt even the Clerks can see through dead eyes in Hell.”

  “I hope you’re right. I didn’t like the idea of stumbling around down there with all of us blind.”

  Quietly, Non said to Spyder, “We made it, little brother. The entrance to the Inferno. ‘And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places.’” As the cool cloth of the blindfold slid over Spyder’s eyes, something nicked his left ear. Then his arm. He heard something shoot by and strike the wall.

  “Get down!” screamed Lulu.

  Spyder didn’t have a choice. Count Non had collapsed against his back, knocking them both to the ground. The Count was dead weight on top of Spyder. He slowly crawled forward. Things flew by over his head, but he made it behind a bend in the rocks. From there Spyder looked back and saw Count Non’s body bristling with at least a dozen golden arrows. Bright angels were pressed shoulder-to-shoulder at the cave entrance, arrows and quivers raised.

  “Get ready to open the gates,” Spyder shouted to Shrike. “Now!”

  He bought the Hornet up and spun the business end as fast and hard as he could. The angels’ arrows flew at them, but were vaporized by the Hornet’s flails. Spyder kept the weapon between the angels and them. The angels advanced steadily into the cave. Some stood over Count Non’s body, and that made Spyder angry. He spun the Hornet faster as a blast of heat and the stink of rotting flowers washed over his back.

  A strange light filled the cave when Shrike pulled open the gates of Hell. The walls turned a deep russet, and the light seemed to bubble, as if it were boiling to the surface of the world in sluggish waves, weighed down by the malevolent gravity of Hell below and the miles of earth it had to pass through.

  The forward-most angels’ skin and wings turned dark and shriveled in the Hell light. The ones that didn’t cook and collapse immediately, backed quickly out of the cave. When they were gone, Spyder went to Count Non and checked his pulse. He was dead. Spyder pulled the blindfold from the Count’s hand and set the Hornet gently down beside him.

  “I can’t use this blind. Maybe it’ll do you some good wherever you are,” Spyder said.

  There was a spiral wrought-iron stairway beyond the open gates, and sounds came from deep below. Some were rhythmic, others random. The rhythmic sounds were like the banging of vast and relentless machines. The arrhythmic sounds were screams. The walls of the cave flickered as if someone were quickly clicking a light switch on and off.

  Before they entered the gates, Shrike knelt on the floor, took a handful of dust and sprinkled it over her head. “Count Non and Primo Kosinski. Strength to your spirits, my comrades, my friends.”

  “Vaya con dios,” said Spyder quietly.

  “Sweet dreams, guys” Lulu said.

  She slipped the blindfold over Spyder’s eyes and made sure it was tight. Shrike took Spyder’s left hand and he took Lulu’s left. They walked through the gates of Hell and started down the long spiral staircase into the abyss.

  FORTY TWO

  Izanami and Red Dragon

  The first great war on Earth took place millions of years ago when the warrior princess, Izanami, fought Red Dragon, the rapacious prince of the west.

  With her army following behind, Izanami ran all the way across the land of Jodo to fight Red Dragon. Izanami finally cornered and defeated Red Dragon in a battle that lasted for years and destroyed a third of their kingdom.

  Izanami had a secret known only a few of her most trusted officers. Izanami didn’t defeat Red Dragon because she was a cleverer tactician or a stronger warrior. Izanami won because she was insane.

  She came to the battle field in a heavy cloak, under which she was wrapped in chains. As she entered the battle-field, she looked small and lost. It was only when she was released from all her heavy restraints that the full power of her madness was brought down on Red Dragon. Izanami won the battle by exploding a volcano in the Khumbu Mountains. The lava and ash almost destroyed the world, but killed Red Dragon and his army first.

  Izanami was the first hero on Earth, though few have ever heard of her historic combat. Her story remains popular with her people, but even among scholars across the three Spheres, Izanami’s story is obscure.

  The Nio, Izanami’s people, were smoke wraiths. The entire epic war between Izanami and Red Dragon lasted no longer than the span of a human breath—but for the Nio, that breath was a lifetime. And that was Izanami’s other secret. She knew how insignificant her people and their victory were in the universe. Its insignificance made the victory seem all the sweeter to Izanami, proving once again that the logic of Tricksters and the enlightened are hard to tell apart.

  FORTY THREE

  Eaten Alive

  They seemed to walk forever, but they never grew tired or hungry or thirsty.

  “What a lousy day to stop smoking crack,” said Spyder, stumbling on the staircase for maybe the fiftieth time. He had a deathgrip on the metal railing. It had never occurred to him that something as simple as walking down a flight of stairs could be such a pain in the ass when blind. His balance was off, his whole sense of where he ended and other objects began was gone and every new scream and sound from below startled him.

  “I knew this reporter down in LA. He was doing a series of stories on local sub-cultures for one of the alternative weeklies. You know, the kind of scene-hopping bullshit that desk monkeys and teenyboppers read to feel edgy. Eventually, his editor wants him to write about the Hell’s Angels. He gets a hookup to their clubhouse and he’s surprised by how smart and cool most of the Angels seem. At the end of his formal interview, they tell him they’re having a party and he should come, so he can get a better idea of what’s what. Sure, he says, expecting a phone call or a flyer or something.” Spyder stumbled again. Shrike caught him by the shoulder. “Thanks. About three in the morning, he’s in bed. When he opens his eyes, he finds about a half-dozen Angels in his bedroom. ‘Get dressed,’ they tell him. He’s no dummy. He does what he’s told. Outside are about a dozen more Angels. They rev their bikes loud enough to peel paint off the neighbors’ houses and roar out into the canyons over the Hollywood Hills, with my reporter friend riding bitch on the back of some guy’s bike.

  “The thing about those canyons is, there’s a lot of bodies buried out there. A million years from now, archeologists are going to understand us completely from all the bones of the dead TV producers, junkie musicians, porn stars and coke dealers scattered all up in those canyons. And my friend doesn’t know if he’s going to get laid or stomped or shot in the head and buried in a shallow grave. Then they round a corner an
d he sees the lights and hears the music. The Angels promised him a party and, sure enough, there’s a party going on.

  “But an Angel party isn’t a regular kind of party. There’s a lot of guys on massive doses of acid, playing William Tell with fifty caliber handguns. There’s knives flying by and gangbangs and more beer than in all of Milwaukee. And here’s my little artsy-fartsy weekly newsrag lit major buddy trying to be Cool Hand Luke with it all. The thing he said, though, and I believe this, was that after a while he really was cool with the savage craziness. The party went on all night and into the next day, and the way he put it, ‘You can only be terrified for so long.’”

  “I guess you’re still looking for your happy place on this trip,” said Lulu.

  “Working on it. I figure Hell can’t be any worse than Houston.”

  “Are we close to the bottom, Lulu?” asked Shrike.

  “Damned if I know. It just keeps going down.”

  “It’s getting hot,” said Shrike.

  “Yeah, but it’s a dry heat,” said Spyder. No one laughed.

  “Why can’t the Prince of Darkness have an elevator? Ozzy would,” Lulu said.

  “Don’t disrespect the demons in their own house, dear.”

  “Yes, daddy.”

  “Maybe this should be a quiet time, while we try to get our bearings,” said Shrike.

  Spyder stumbled again, cursed. He leaned over the railing and felt a warm wind rising from somewhere below. It still smelled of roses, but there was an undercurrent of something musky and subterranean, darkly fungal. Spyder had to admit that he was a little surprised and kind of annoyed with himself. After all the reading and study he’d done concerning the underworld, now that he was actually here, he kind of wanted the place to be a furnace full of guys in red suits, pointy beards and pitchforks. Those childhood images and fears never go away and never really get updated, he thought. You can add on new ones, but you never completely bury the old nightmares.

  “How many angels are there?” asked Lulu.

  “Depends on who you ask, but the consensus is between a hundred million and a billion. And a third of them went down with Lucifer when he got the door.”

  “You’re saying, there’s like thirty million crackhead angels down there?”

  “Give or take.”

  “How fucked are we?”

  “It could be worse,” said Shrike. “We’re sneaking into to a mad place at a chaotic time. War is a great cover for crime.”

  “What’s going to be down at the bottom of this staircase?” asked Lulu.

  “I wish I knew,” Spyder said. “Hell’s pretty flexible. Different to different people at different times. It’s got a geography, all these little fiefdoms controlled by Lucifer’s lodge buddies. There’s the big boy’s palace in the biggest city, Pandemonium. Some prophets say Hell’s just a big, pointless machine, that all the damned souls are cogs and gears and that the machine’s only purpose is to grow with no purpose at all. Others say that life in Hell’s just like life on earth, only more hopeless and boring. Some traditional types still go with the fire and brimstone story, and why not? Someone’s got to have that old school stick up their ass.” Spyder shrugged. “I’ve talked to Shrike about the demons and laws and traps I’ve read about, but, we’re not going to know what’s down there until we’re on the ground.”

  Lulu laughed.

  “What?” asked Spyder.

  “I’m just rememberin’ something. After I came out to my folks, all the times they told me this is where I’d end up. And here I am.”

  The air grew hotter and more fragile, brittle almost. Not like the desert. It felt artificial, as if someone had left on a giant dehumidifier and it was sucking the moisture from everything. The rising air from below was full of an itchy grit that settled on everyone’s skin and instantly itched. Hell already sucked and we’re barely through the door, Spyder thought.

  Spyder felt Shrike’s hand close around his. “When we get down there you stick close to me, pony boy.”

  “Why didn’t you tell that being blind was such a drag?”

  “You get used to it.

  “This probably wasn’t the time to start.”

  “Damn. We’re here. The bottom,” said Lulu. “Be careful stepping down.”

  “Where do we go now?” Spyder asked.

  “I was going to ask you, Mr. Wizard. What is this?”

  “Describe it. I’m Ray Charles over here.”

  “Right. Sorry,” she said. “Okay. We’re in a big cavern at the bottom of the stairs. There’s light, but hell if I can tell where it’s coming from. In front, there’s three really big doors. There’s no signs or nothing, but all of the doors have the pug ugliest demon faces carved on them. Looks like we’re marching down some monster’s gullet, whatever we do. But which one do we open?”

  “This wasn’t in any of the books,” Spyder said. “What do the demons look like?”

  “Like demons. Big scary teeth and huge goddam claws.”

  “Do the demons have snouts? Like dogs or wolves?”

  “Yeah. Kind of. What are they?”

  “I think I got it,” said Spyder. “It’s not ‘they.’ It’s ‘it.’ This is Cerberus. The three-headed hellhound. Some stories say Cerberus guards the entrance to Hell. Some say he is the entrance. To get inside, Cerberus swallows you. Only you have to pick the right mouth, otherwise, he shits you out into chaos. Not heaven or Hell, just stone cold nothing.”

  “So, which head gets the bone?”

  Spyder hesitated. He heard someone moving around by the doors. Shrike. She was muttering a spell that wasn’t working. The situation was so frustrating. Spyder wanted to rip the idiot blindfold off his eyes and not have to stand around like a crippled child.

  “The one on the right feels light on its hinges. It’s been used the most. Maybe it’s the way,” said Shrike.

  “Or it’s a trick to get us down the beast’s belly,” said Lulu.

  “We go in through the center,” Spyder said.

  “How do you know?” asked Shrike.

  “Count Non knew things about Hell. He told me to be like the Buddha. Buddha always took the middle way.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Open it.”

  He listened to Lulu going to the door. Hesitation. A footfall. Silence. The sound of dry hinges grinding and a door scraping over a dirty floor.

  “Lulu?” asked Shrike.

  “There’s a tunnel. Something’s moving at the end. People. And like a river, I think.” She pushed the door open wider. “Hey man, thanks for not dooming us right off.”

  Spyder smiled. “All part of the service. I guess we’re supposed to go in there now.”

  Someone fell. The sound was dry and hollow in the warm, thick air of Hell. Spyder moved toward the sound.

  “Shrike, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Let me catch my breath.”

  “Lulu?”

  “I’ve got her. Follow my voice over here.”

  Spyder found them sitting on the floor. Shrike was leaning on the cavern wall. Her hands were wet and cold.

  “Something in my chest,” she said. “I think it’s the key Madame Cinders put inside me. I can feel it moving. It must know we’re getting near the book.”

  “When you’re ready, we’ll go,” said Spyder.

  “I’m ready,” she said and got up slowly.

  The middle tunnel through Cerberus’ gullet was warm and wet. When Spyder touched the wall, the stone was fleshy and yielding. They all hurried through as quickly as they could.

  FORTY FOUR

  Daddy Longlegs

  “Hello?” Lulu called. “Anyone back there?”

  “What’s wrong?” asked Spyder.

  “I thought I heard something back in the tunnel. Who’d a thought there’d be weird sounds in Hell?”

  “Is the river ahead?” asked Shrike. Spyder heard the rustling of the thick, rubbery sheets as she unfolded the map. “We have to cross it t
o get to Pandemonium.”

  “That won’t be a problem. The crossing part, I mean.”

  “Lay it out for us, Lulu,” said Spyder. He had his back to a stone outcropping just beyond the tunnel. Around them were dozens of voices, people screaming and talking, people on crying jags. From above came a metallic humming punctuated by momentary squeals, the wail of rusted wheels and rotten gears. Spyder didn’t like the idea of machines that he couldn’t see hanging over his head.

  “I don’t know where to start. We’re in a Hieronymous Bosch painting,” Lulu said. “Hear all those people? They’re standing around waiting to get across the river. I bet you don’t smell roses anymore, do you? There’s pipes all around dumping what looks a lot like shit, blood, carcasses and lord knows what other puke into the river. Jesus fuck!”

  “What is it?” Shrike asked, her sword half-raised.

  “Something, like a big, white worm just popped out of the water, latched on to one of those people and dragged ’em under.”

  “They aren’t people, Lulu. They’re souls. Don’t worry, they can’t drown,” said Spyder

  “No, but I bet that thing can chew on ’em for a good long time.”

  “What else do you see? Can you tell how we get to the other side?” asked Shrike.

  “Yeah. There’s these metal cars, like the sky cars at an old amusement park, slung on wires over the water. Shit. I don’t know if I want to ride on one of those with those hungry worms waiting for us to drop.”

  “We have to,” said Spyder. “Listen, the thing that grabbed that guy, it wasn’t random. Souls are sorted all over Hell, starting right here. This is the Bone Sea. The ones who end up in it are so foul that even Hell doesn’t want them. The ones wandering around this shore and on the other side, they’re maybe worse off. Completely lost. They can’t get into Heaven and they won’t go into Hell. They’ll spend eternity right here by this river of shit. We don’t have that option. If we don’t move, Shrike’s going to die.”

  The voices of the wandering souls grew quiet, then came back louder than ever. Lulu said, “Remember how I used to tease you about it being all ironic with you named Spyder, that you’re so afraid of spiders?”