Richard Kadrey - Blind Shrike

The enormous mouth opened wetly in the demon's chest and he pulled Spyder closer. A leathery, black tongue darted out, licking Spyder's face. "Shit!" yelled Bilal, slurping the enormous tongue back into his chest. He turned Spyder's arm over, revealing the Black Clerk's mark.

"You must shit candy and piss champagne, son. Everyone wants a piece of you," said Bilal.

"You mean you can't hurt me because of this mark?"

"I didn't say that."

"It sure as hell looked like it."

"Smile while you still have lips. The Clerks have you penciled in. What they'll do to you is a hundred times worse than what I had planned."

"I'm looking for Shrike," said Spyder.

"Just because I'm not eating you doesn't mean I'm helping you."

"Yeah, but if I find her and get her to help me, maybe she'll get in trouble with the Clerks, too. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"Shrike's not that stupid," Bilal said. He took the last of Spyder's tequila and swallowed it, glass and all. "Still, she likes them pretty and dumb. You might drag her down to your level." Bilal spat broken glass onto the ground at Spyder's feet. "She's got a room at the Coma Gardens. It's a bordello down by pier 31."

"I've never heard of it."

"It's not for your kind."

"Right. Thanks."

"Go to Hell."

Rubi asked Spyder if he wanted another drink. He shook his head. "You okay?" she asked. "You've been here muttering to yourself all night."

"Just replaying that last fight with Jenny. I keep trying it different ways hoping it comes out another way."

"You poor thing," said Rubi.

"I've seen you in here a hundred times before. I've stolen your drinks and I've spit in them. But you've never seen me," Bilal said to Spyder. "How does it feel to suddenly have to live in the real world?"

"It's the worst thing that ever happened to me."

"Good." All the demon's mouths smiled. "I've been around for a while and I can tell the ones who are going to make it once they get the Sight and you're not one of them. You'll be dead by Christmas. A bullet. Maybe poison. I don't see you as the hanging type."

"I'm going to kill myself just because I see uglies like you? In your wildest dreams, Cinderella."

"No, you're going to kill yourself because you can't stand the real world. Reality has a special weight. It's a burden like no other, and it just keeps getting heavier."

"I'm going back to ignoring you now."

"I've seen it a thousand times. It's like when you first learn that you have colonies of dust mites living on your eye lashes and in your bed, eating flakes of your dead skin. You never look at yourself or the world the same again. That's the weight of reality. Once you take on that burden, the world looks at you differently, too. Check out the crowd. All those pretty girls who used to flirt with you, your friend behind the bar, they're all watching you having a nice chat with an empty barstool. They're already starting to wonder about you. Tomorrow they'll tell their friends. Maybe I can't hurt you, but I have connections who can influence mortal minds. Reinforce the doubt that's already there. By Monday, you're going to be Jeffery Dahmer to these people. They'll crucify you for blinking at them," said Bilal. "Yeah, you're going to kill yourself."

"Tell me something, when you jerk off, do those little lizards on your hands bite? I bet you like that."

"And then there are the Clerks. They've claimed you and you know what that means. They're going to pick you apart like a maggot-covered carcass. Could you feel them slicing you up with their eyes, deciding what piece they'll take first?"

Nick Cave's "Red Right Hand" came on the jukebox. A girl whooped drunkenly and Rubi turned the song up loud.

"I take it back. You won't make it till Christmas," said Bilal. "You won't even make it to Halloween."

"Get a costume and come on over. I'll put razor blades in some apples for you. Enough for all your mouths."

Bilal leaned over the bar and used the lizard mouths on his fingertips to spear some cherries from Rubi's drink set-ups. The demon popped the cherries into his face-mouth one at a time. "Give Shrike a big kiss from me. She'll be so happy to see you, little prince."

Spyder got up from his stool and started for the door. He couldn't help noticing that people were pointedly getting out of his way. At the door Spyder heard Bilal yell, "An OD! You're going to OD! How could I have missed that?"

Spyder wondered what time it was. He was in another cab and trying hard to ignore the chatty driver. It pained Spyder that he hadn't ridden his bike that morning. Without the bike, he always felt tied up and weighed down.

Ever since he could ride, Spyder had always had a motorcycle of some kind. "You never know when you're going to need to get the hell out of Dodge," he'd liked to tell friends. "And you can only run so far in a cab." He told the driver to pull over.

"This ain't even near Pier 31," said the cabbie.

"I feel like walking." Spyder paid the man and got out. He looked around as the cab made a U turn and headed back the way they'd come. Spyder had lived in San Francisco for ten years and during a brief breaking and entering period in his early twenties, had prided himself on knowing every backstreet, alley and bypass in the city. Right now, however, he didn't know where the hell he was.

Ahead of him, where he was certain the waterfront warehouses should begin, well-trodden sand dunes sloped down to San Francisco Bay. A lot of the city had been built on reclaimed beach. This, he was certain, was what the waterfront had looked like a couple of hundred years ago. Spyder stood where the cab had dropped him, fighting contradictory impulses. His body told him that ahead, past the dunes, was where the piers lay. But his eyes told him that there was nothing but shifting beach and black water. Then he saw a flicker-orange light from the far side of the dunes. In that moment of illumination, Spyder could see a line of silhouettes moving along the edge of the dunes, heading over them. Some of the silhouettes carried burdens on their backs. Others were merely misshapen. It was enough. Spyder's body and mind were finally in synch and he started walking.

At the top of the last big dune Spyder looked down onto a maze of market stalls that sprawled from the where he stood to the more familiar warehouses and piers in the distance. As he got closer to the market, sounds and smells hit him: the screams of hawkers, a dozen different musics pouring from out-of-tune instruments and cracked speakers, the heavy smell of roasting meat, spices and rotten wood. There were toys and piles of mismatched shoes, fresh vegetables, dried chameleons and flowers that sighed when you smelled them. There were orerries and telescopes, cracked eye glasses and black eggs that hatched kittens who (according to their seller) spoke perfect ecclesiastical Latin. Sellers tugged at Spyder's arm and waved squirming things, glittering things and mechanical things at him.

By a stall selling decomposing medical books and sex toys made of black lacquer and amber (some with ominous-looking beetles sealed inside) Spyder bumped shoulders with a tall, handsome man.

"Sorry," said Spyder. "My fault."

"You should watch your step, little brother," said the big man. "Not everyone in the market is as reasonable as I. Some are downright belligerent." The man's voice sounded the way black velvet looked and felt. Spyder wondered if it might be some kind of magic trick. Not that he actually believed in magic, but he was beyond ruling out that much anymore.

Though they were physically the opposite, the tall man reminded Spyder of Shrike. He held himself with the kind of grace that Spyder had seen in the swordswoman. But the man was huge, more than a head taller than Spyder. His face, while classically handsome, was marked with deep scars that, at first, Spyder thought might be -ritual, but then decided were some terrible accident. Chainmail covered the man's upper body and he wore pants that seemed to Spyder like modified motorcycle leathers. Metal plates and studs had been affixed along the legs, which were tucked into heavy steel-toed boots. At his side, the man wore a wide-bladed Kan Dao sword like ones Spyder had seen in maybe a thousand kung fu movies.