Richard Kadrey: Blind Shrike

"I'm sorry," Bilal said.

Spyder nodded, patted the demon's barstool.

"Climb back up in the saddle, big man. Let me buy you another Jager."

"You're not going to kill me?"

"Hell no," said Spyder. "I understand about bad moods and being stuck someplace maybe you don't want to be. So, you get to keep your head and I get to not spill demon guts all over this nice, clean shirt."

Bilal gestured to his chest.

"Could you?"

"Sorry." Spyder touched the demon. The skin of Bilal's chest shifted, unsealing his second mouth.

Rudi bought him a shot of Jager and Spyder passed it to the demon. He clinked his Coke against Bilal's glass in a toast.

"Tell me the truth," said Spyder, leaning in close. "People taste a lot like chicken, don't we?"

By the end of the first month, the world slowly began to feel solid under his feet, the edges of things stable and reliable, his skin his own.

At home, Spyder kept the TV on, but the sound off. He tried to listen to music, but everything sounded flat and dull. Spyder made a couple of calls and he and Lulu started doing work out of Luscious Abrasion, a body mod studio near their old place on Haight Street. A small but steady part of Spyder and Lulu's new clientele were demons, Gytrash and other non-humans.

"Word's spreading about us. You know what this means?" asked Lulu.

"What?"

"Demon groupies."

No one at the studio ever seemed to notice, and their special clients always paid in gold so everyone was happy.

In May, on Orson Welles' birthday, an old art house theater in the Mission District had a marathon screening of his films. Spyder had seen the early stuff dozens of times, so he only came for late night flicks, It's All True , Welles' doomed Brazilian epic, and The Other Side of the Wind , a dark, micro-budget film about a bitter director, played by John Huston. He knew there weren't enough guns or tits to get Lulu to sit through either movie, so Spyder went alone.

It was almost two in the morning when the movies let out. Spyder went to the corner where he'd parked the Kawasaki and lit a cigarette. It was cold and wet. Heavy fog was blowing through the streets like sparkling ghosts.

"Hey, ponyboy."

She was leaning against the front door of a check cashing shop. Through the open door, restless illegals pretended not to see the down-on-their luck whites who were busy pretending to be somewhere else entirely.

Spyder sat on the bike, took a drag off the American Spirit.

He said, "I have this scar on my arm. Sometimes at night I touch it just to make sure I didn't imagine it. It's where the Clerks marked me. On the table by my bed, I have this big black knife. I close my eyes and my head is full of the strangest images. And none of it seems real. Like maybe all those things I think I remember are kind of the opposite of a drunken blackout. A drunken picture show. But when I fall asleep it's all okay because at the end of the pictures, I get the girl. Only I didn't, did I?"

"I'm sorry I ran off. I'm worse at goodbyes than you are," said Shrike.

"How's your father?"

"He died."

"I'm really sorry to hear that."

"It's all right. I took him home, to the Second Sphere. He rallied briefly. I think he was happy when he went."

"So, there's a happy ending, after all. I'm glad you both got that."

"You don't have to be so magnanimous."

Spyder nodded, took a pull on the cigarette.

"Yeah, I do. Otherwise the walls start doing that closing in thing and I want a drink and I'm trying real hard not to want that."

"You're not drinking? That's a good thing."

He shrugged. "Leaves more money for cigarettes."

"I'm so sorry I left you like that."

"You said that already."

Shrike walked over to him. Her eyes were clear and bright, though a little dark, as if she hadn't slept in days. Spyder looked for the white cane that doubled as her sword, but he didn't see it.

"My father was dying. I knew it the moment I saw him back in Madame Cinders' tower. I had to take him home," Shrike said. "And I had to get away from you."

"Did I do something to upset you?"

"Just the opposite. You saved me."

"Bullshit. You're the one with the sword, the one who knows magic and how to move between worlds. I was just faking it, doing card tricks."

"You don't understand. I'm a killer. I'd dedicated my-self to destroying life because mine had been stolen from me. I told the few people who asked that I was sorry I had to do it, but it was all that I knew. The truth is, I enjoyed taking life. And doing it for something as cheap as money made it all the better. I wanted to burn down the world for what it did to me and my family."

"I know the feeling."

"If things had gone a little differently years ago, I might have become someone like Madame Cinders. If you hadn't come along on this journey, I would have given her the book. I would have made a deal with the Dominions to bloody the whole world. I still thought about doing it, right up until the end."

"What happened?"

"You. I used you that first night because I wanted sex, so I gave you drugged wine. I needed someone to stand next to me at Madame Cinders', so I took you along. I needed someone who knew Hell, so I dragged you into something that could have killed you a thousand times. And I wouldn't have blinked if it had. Every time you gave me something I needed, I was ready to cut you loose. I was stringing you along because I knew how."

"If you came back all this way just to call me a sucker to my face, mission accomplished."

Shrike came closer, resting a hand on the bike's throttle, not touching him.

"I kept waiting for you to bolt. I kept waiting for you to catch on and sell me out. Betray me. But you wouldn't. At first I thought you were playing a game, angling to get the book for yourself. Then, I decided it was simple self-preservation. You wanted to get out alive and get the magic to restore your precious ignorance. But you kept not betraying me. You kept…" She hesitated.

"Caring about you?"

"I told myself you were trying to manipulate me, but you gave the book to Madame Cinders to save my father. Then you destroyed the book, and I knew you'd never tried to deceive me. I would have killed anyone to have the power in that book. You already had it in your hands and you threw it away. I know you wanted to save your world, but I think partly you did it for me."

"You know I did."

She looked way and frowned. "And I couldn't bear that. I couldn't look you in the eyes after I'd lied and used you all down the line. Being with you brought back all these feelings I'd thought I'd burned up years ago. Then, when I had my father and I knew he was dying, it was too much. I had to run away. Can you forgive me?"

"Of course."

"No," she said, holding onto his coat sleeve. "Not like that. Don't forgive me like you forgive some street urchin who picks your pocket. I need you to save me one more time. I need to know you can forgive me from that other part of you that refused to betray me or leave me when you could have."

Spyder tossed his cigarette, and put a hand over hers. "I can. I do. I always did. I wanted to strangle you for -pulling that ghost act back in the tunnels, but I knew you must have had a good reason. And I always knew I'd see you again."

"Really?"

"No. That was me being Cary Grant. I didn't know what the fuck to think when you took off. I was going out of my mind and I hated you. But you didn't lift my wallet, which is more than I can say for most girls you meet in alleys."

Shrike smiled and leaned against him.

"Maybe we can go to your place and try that first meeting again."

"On one condition."