Butcher Bird

by Richard Kadrey

  Spyder sent a couple of the soldiers off the edge of the trail as they tried to avoid the spinning Hornet, while the Count gutted one, then another of the smoke soldiers. Spyder saw other soldiers forming at the foot of the mountain. While the others attacked the remaining few pursuers, Spyder grabbed Shrike.

  “Do you know any magic to make the wind blow harder?” he asked.

  “One spell.”

  “Use it.”

  Shrike got down on one knee and rolled up her sleeve. Whispering a low incantation, she pulled back the metal bird on the lancet, locking it into place. A moment later, the bird snapped down and Spyder saw blood run down Shrike’s hand. The wind kicked up at their backs, pushing them toward the edge of the cliff. Spyder grabbed Shrike and pulled her back against the mountain.

  Below them, the hurricane that now blasted down from the mountain scattered the burning scrub from which the soldiers were coalescing. Half-formed soldiers splattered onto the sand, a wet corruption of skin, bone and exposed organs.

  Overhead, immense, dark things blacked out parts of the sky. Search lights played across the desert floor, illuminating the underbellies of the airships. The lights pooled around the bodies of the dead soldiers near the cave.

  Count Non and the others trudged up the hill into the wind, finally reaching Spyder and Shrike.

  “We should keep moving.” The Count had to shout to be heard above the wind.

  “Can you turn the wind off now, pretty please?” Spyder asked.

  Shrike raised her hands and uttered a few words. Nothing happened. She indicated that they should start up the hill. “Sometimes it takes a few minutes,” She said. “This isn’t like turning off the TV.”

  They started up and within a few minutes, the wind began to slack off. The airships kept up their search, lighting up the bodies of the slaughtered soldiers on the trail below. Looking for us among the dead, thought Spyder. He felt a surge of excitement, having come through another fight. Primo came up from the rear, still scanning the sky, trying to find some clue in the mad light and crisscrossing shadows cast by the twin moons.

  “That archway in the rock above us,” he said. “I think it’s pointing to an opening in the rock face.”

  “Lead the way, man,” said Spyder, and slapped him on the back. Primo flinched from the blow. Spyder saw that he was holding his side. Blood stained the front of his white shirt, and oozed from between his fingers.

  “You’re hurt.”

  “It’s nothing,” Primo said. “We’ll be away from them soon.”

  Primo went quickly up the trail, but Spyder could tell that he was more badly hurt than he was letting on. The little man constantly looked northward at a stone archway in the rocks above. In the crazy mix of shadows, Spyder couldn’t really see what had Primo so excited.

  Thunder rumbled behind them, then lightning. The ground shook. Heat and a wave of static bristled over their skin. Spyder could tell that it wasn’t thunder in the sky, but more of the light weapons he’d seen back in the airship battle. Rocks tumbled down at them as searing white bolts blasted into the mountain. They pressed themselves as close as possible to the rock face and kept moving. Looking up, Spyder thought he saw angels circling the mountaintop, high above.

  “There!” yelled Primo, between thunderclaps. The mountain rumbled up through their legs. “I need to climb. Please give me a leg up.”

  Spyder still couldn’t see where Primo wanted to go, but he crouched by the little man’s leg to give him a boost. Primo took a breath. His remaining hand was bloody and his balance was a little shaky. Holding on to Primo’s shoulder, Count Non steadied him enough to step onto Spyder’s hands and begin the climb.

  He must have cat eyes, thought Spyder. Using his one arm, the little man climbed steadily up the rocks, reaching a deep, recessed shadow just a few yards above their heads. “We would have walked right past it,” Spyder said to himself. The ground shook and rocks came down, almost knocking Primo off his perch at the lip of the cave.

  “This is it!” Primo called. “Climb!” The mountain trembled and Primo used his one arm to brace himself in the cave entrance. Where his bloody hand touched the mountain, the rock turned black. The blackness spread outward and around the cave like paper crisping in an invisible fire. “Hurry!” Primo shouted to them.

  “Look out!” Spyder screamed.

  Primo frowned, cocking his ear, trying to hear Spyder above the thunder. The little man was now standing in a circle of curdling black set against the mountain. Spyder tried to wave him away from the entrance.

  “Do you smell something?” asked Shrike.

  Above them, Primo screamed as crooked black spikes spun out of the rock, drilling through Primo’s body, pinning him to the rock. As Primo struggled, Count Non started climbing toward him. Too late. Double-edge blades, as long as Primo’s arm, sprang from the sides of the mountain and closed on Primo like the jaws of a colossal mechanical beast. The blades sliced cleanly through the little man and he was silent. Then the spikes rotated out of Primo’s mangled body, allowing the pieces to fall quietly over the rock face. If there was any sound, Spyder couldn’t hear it above the thunder and his own screaming. As the spikes disappeared into black rock, the side of the mountain turned back to a dull gray. Count Non dropped down beside Spyder.

  “They’re gone. Primo and the cave,” said Spyder. “I can’t see anything.” Rocks tumbled down the mountain at them.

  “We can’t stay here!” shouted Lulu.

  “Help me up,” said Shrike. “I’m climbing.”

  “It’s gone!” shouted Spyder. “We can’t see anything.”

  “I don’t need to see it,” she said. “Can’t you smell it?”

  “What?”

  “Flowers.”

  “The smell of the Inferno is like vanilla roses,” said Count Non. “If you can follow that scent, we’ll follow right behind you.” Shrike nodded and the Count lifted her onto the rock face. Shrike climbed slowly, carefully, feeling her way up the wall, groping with her hands and feet for each purchase on the cliff.

  Below, the desert floor was turning red and liquid as the sand superheated to glass where the airships’ light weapons hit. Spyder pressed his forehead into the mountain. For the first time in what seemed like a long time, he stepped outside himself and looked at where his sorry ass had landed him: clinging to a murderous mountain on some imaginary island, with warrior angels above and demons below. “If you could see me now, Jenny,” he whispered. “If you could see me now.”

  Count Non put his hand on Spyder’s shoulder. Spyder looked up and saw Shrike kneeling on a ledge, gesturing for them to come up.

  “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 and 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 Spyder mustn’t forget his blindfold.” Non slid Lulu’s blindfold from where it hung around her neck, unknotted it and stepped behind Spyder to tie it on.

  “Should
n’t we put that back on Lulu?”

  “Don’t worry. Even the Clerks can’t see through dead eyes into Hell.”

  “You sure?”

  “My father knew the place well.”

  “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. ‘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 out from under the Count’s body. 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 brought 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 to 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 battlefield in a heavy cloak, under which she was wrapped in chains. As she entered the battlefield, 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 up 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 subcultures 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 from all the bones of the dead TV producers, junkie musicians, porn stars and coke dealers scattered through 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 and 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, dad
dy.”

  “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. Some claim a hundred and forty-four thousand. Other guys a million, a hundred million, or even a billion, but those are probably just bad translations. Anyway, a third of Heaven went down with Lucifer when he got the door.”

  “You’re saying, there’s between a hundred forty thousand and a few 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 perfect 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.”