Butcher Bird (25 page)

"Like what?"

Very quietly and not entirely in key, Spyder started to sing, "We're caught in a trap, I can't walk out, because I love you too much, baby." In a moment, Lulu picked it up, "We can't go on together with suspicious minds . . . "

Lulu said, "Praise Elvis. We made it." A moment later, the bottom of the cart dragged across a beach that crunched underfoot, like crushed shells. They jumped out and landed safely on the ground, as the cart continued its endless roundabout journey.

Lulu grabbed Spyder and pulled him and Shrike to their feet. "Let's move. We're attracting a crowd. More of those hangin' around dead folks."

Spyder didn't need her to tell him. He could hear them coming, crunching lightly across the beach toward them. Their voices were like whispers drifting through a long ventilation duct—flat, distant and insistent. Spyder stumbled and went down on one knee, cutting his hands on the sharp shells. Lulu and Shrike started to help him up, but other hands were there, pulling him away, purring and cooing and desperate.

"Blood. He's alive!"

"Please wizard, do me a service in Hell and I'll tell you where to find a great treasure back on earth . . . "

"Take my place in the Inferno and your heirs will rule a vast and wealthy kingdom!"

"So pretty. The red. Life."

"Save me, my lord. I am a virtuous woman . . . "

There were so many lost souls on this side of the Bone Sea, and they were much more aggressive than the souls who'd refused to make the crossing. None had much individual strength, but their combined desperation had Spyder pinned within their massed presence. It was like being slowly crushed under a ton of feathers. Spyder felt his leather jacket rip and his shirt come apart. The souls gasped and fell back.

"His skin marks . . . "

"L'homme peint . . . "

"A warrior . . . "

Their hands were on Spyder's back, and running over his arms and face. So many of them, he couldn't breathe. They pulled his hair and clawed at his cheeks. He tried to push them away, but it was like pushing at air. Fingers slipped under his blindfold and into his eyes. The souls' fingertips glowed inside his eyeballs like eerie deep-sea creatures.

"Get back!" Spyder yelled.

The weight of the souls instantly left his body—but a second later a hand swept across his face. Among the faint gasps and wails, Spyder heard the distinct sound of laughter. He turned toward it and was shoved down hard onto his back. The fall knocked the wind out of him and Spyder slowly opened his eyes. It took his mind a few seconds to register that the streaks of gray and white he saw weren't ghostly fingers in his eyes but the bone beach. When his eyes focused, the first thing he saw was the dim, colorless souls crowded around him, then Hell's rough, black cavern walls. They seemed to go up forever.

"Back off!" Spyder screamed as he scrambled to his feet. He heard the sound of laughter again and spun toward the sound, pulling Apollyon's blade from his belt. When the sound came again, Spyder swung the blade at the nearest specter, a big man dressed in the leather and iron of an ancient Roman soldier. The knife passed through the soul as if through smoke, but the knife tore him as it went. The soul clutched at the bloodless wound, trying to hold himself together. Too late. He split apart completely, like fraying cloth, and vanished with a breathy sigh. The remaining souls scattered down the beach.

Off to his left, Spyder saw Lulu, laid out on her back, her mouth open in a kind of silent scream. A crowd of souls had her pinned to the ground and seemed to be examining her wounded body. Dead fingers probed her eye sockets and surgical scars. Spyder slashed through the crowd, scattering terrified souls, and pulled Lulu up. She buried her face in his chest, but didn't make a sound. She just clung to him and shook.

Further down the beach, Shrike was holding another group of souls at bay with her sword. She'd used her magic to cover the blade in fire, but the gesture wasn't really stopping the souls, just distracting them. Spyder got Lulu to her feet and pulled her over to Shrike. Some of the group must have seen him dispatch the other souls, because they ran away as he got close.

"Shrike, it's me," Spyder called, and she lowered her blade.

"Lulu?" she asked.

"She's here with me. She's pretty shaken up."

"How did you find me?" Shrike's hands were up searching for him. "You can see me?"

"Yeah."

Shrike found Spyder's face with her hands and felt for where the blindfold should be. When she didn't find it, Shrike sagged against Spyder and kissed him lightly on the lips.

"Damn," she said.

"That pretty much covers it."

"Ooo, a little group action. I like that," came a hissing voice. "Or is this some platonic expression of relief? What a bore. Lust is all that's amusing about talking meat. The faces you make and the all squishing sounds."

Spyder lunged with the Hell blade, jamming it under the chin of the demon staring at them from atop a black obsidian boulder.

"Don't hurt me with that thing!" it cried.

The creature was small, pink, bloated and naked. It had an oversized semi-human head with tiny eyes and a slit that seemed to serve for both a nose and mouth. Its hands and feet were so tiny that they appeared useless, yet its nails were black, twisted and razor-sharp. The thing's cock was thicker than its arm and dragged along the ground like a third leg. Into holes in its skull were set thirteen white candles, which never seemed to blow out. Wax flowed down the thing's head and face like slow-motion tears.

"You know what this is?" asked Spyder.

"I'm not blind," said the creature. "It's the black blade, hungry for death, even among the dead."

Spyder pressed the knife harder into the thing's throat. "Are you the little prick who snatched my blindfold?"

"Why would I do that? You talking meat are vile enough as spirits. Who wants you alive down here, eating and defecating and breathing your foul stenches into the air?"

Spyder withdrew the knife, but kept it by his side. The creature clumsily crawled onto its tiny feet.

"Who are you?" asked Shrike.

The creature proudly drew itself up to its full height of about four feet. "I am Ashbliss, servant and valet to his Divine Abhorrence, the Lord of Flies, Beelzebub."

"Why were you spying on us?"

"This is my day off. I often come here to play about with lost souls. They make funny noises."

"Fuck off, pink boy," said Spyder, "before I carve my initials in your ass just to see what kind of funny noises you make."

"You don't want to do that. I'm here to help you," said Ashbliss. "You're the Painted Man."

"Who?"

"Modesty is such a bore. But I know about you, and you need my help. You're here for the book, aren't you?"

"How do you know that?"

"The same way I know who you are. You're here because you have to be. It's all been foretold. You're not the first champion to come this way. You're not the first talking meat to come for the book. This beach and the roads of Hell are paved with the bones of the champions who came before you."

"How can you help us?" asked Shrike.

"I can take you to where you want to go. To the book."

"Why would you do that?"

"Because I want a small favor in return," Ashbliss said. "You're brave and you have the black knife, the blade that empties all vessels of life. I want to be free of my master. True, his cruelty is boundless and his depravity is deeper and darker than the chaotic void that lies between Heaven and Hell." Ashbliss looked at his feet over his round belly and shrugged his tiny shoulders. "My problem is that I know all his terrors and his tirades. He's a bore."

"So, you're a demon, huh? How's that working out for you?" asked Lulu.

"I enjoy my work. I don't enjoy my master. He's—"

"A bore. We picked up on that," said Spyder. "Everything bores you, doesn't it?"

"I'm hopelessly corrupt," Ashbliss said, smiling. "It's my nature."

"Thanks for the offer, but we know the way," said Shrike.

"So did they." Ashbliss spread his little hands indicating the expanse of bones at their feet. "And anyway, you're lying. I, on the other hand, know shortcuts. Secret paths. Passages that only a being such as myself can navigate."

"Truth is, I'd rather wander aimlessly than take the word of you and your horse dick," said Spyder.

"I understand. You're proud and strong. You're the Painted Man."

"What the fuck does that mean?"

The demon giggled. "I know your voices now," Ashbliss said. "When you need me—and you will need me—just call my name. I'll hear you anywhere in the underworld."

"Don't wait by the phone."

"To show good faith, I'll give you something for free." He pointed at two low hills in the distance. That path between the hills, were you going to take it to enter the Plains of Dis beyond?"

"That was the plan," Shrike lied.

"Yes, lots of lazybones try that route," said Ashbliss gravely. "Do not, under any circumstances, follow that impulse. Sulfur fumes rise from old mine shafts and mix with the damp fog that drifts down from the cliffs above. The air itself turns to acid. Even my kind shun the place. Go to the southwest, near the old library in the Forest of Lies."

"The Forest of Lies?" said Spyder.

Ashbliss sighed, mumbling, "Fools," under his breath. With a small gesture, he pulled a pen and sheet of vellum out of the air. The demon scratched away at the vellum for a few minutes and tossed it to Spyder.

"A map," said the demon. "That information is free. The next will cost you." He bowed, dribbling wax onto the bone shards at his feet. "Feel free to go back to your lust. I promise not to look. And enjoy your journey." With a jaunty wave, Ashbliss waddled away down the beach.

Spyder slipped on the remains of his jacket and followed the others.

They went along the route indicated on Ashbliss' map. Every step of the way, they crunched over the bones of other adventurers who had come for the book, but none of them talked about this. Spyder and Lulu led Shrike through tricky fields of loose rock. Looking after each other gave them all something to do, and the contact was reassuring.

"It wasn't supposed to be like this," said Shrike. "It wasn't supposed to go this way. You're trapped down here, Spyder, and I don't know how to help you."

"Then it's best not to dwell on it," he said. Shrike reached out for him, but he walked on ahead, describing the scene to her.

"We're going through a slit canyon. The light is grasshopper green. There are strata of some pale orange and turquoise rock that glows like glass lit from the inside. Along the top of the canyon are the ruins of buildings. They're pretty crude rock and clay shells. They may be some of the first things the angels built when they landed here. No one's used them in a long, long time. The canyon walls are covered in sigils, the magical symbol for each angel's name. I recognize a few. Baal. Pillardoc. Azazel. Salmiel. Beelzebub. Lucifer's sigil is just ahead. It's huge. The size of a whole cliffside. That hellhound took a great big whizz to mark his territory."

When they reached the spot on the map indicating that they should circumvent the Plains of Dis, Shrike stopped. It was on the wind: the faint, but unmistakable rotten egg stench of sulfur. Spyder checked the map and turned them to the southwest, as Ashbliss had advised. "This way," he said. They turned off the road and headed overland, through thick, thorny bushes, following the demon's map.

Soon, they came to the Forest of Lies, where things were seldom as they first appeared. Paths turned to dust underfoot. A bare tree sprouted vicious thorns when Lulu leaned on it to remove a stone from her shoe. The sickly, brooding birds that nested in the twisted branches murmured to them trying to break their spirits.

"She cares nothing for you. She wants the book. The power. When she has that, she'll leave you like all the others."

"You killed your father. With your treachery and lust, you took the snake into your bed and set him loose in your home."

"They still suspect you. They will abandon you here and return to the world and laugh about your torment while they fuck."

The deserted library in the Forest of Lies was an ancient wreck. Its doors and windows were long gone and the pages of its books blew through the woods like the ghosts of dead leaves. Spyder picked up the some of the papers that wrapped around his legs and snagged overhead in the trees. There were love notes, suicide notes, tax returns, forged money, old treaties embossed with government seals, lottery tickets, doctored photos, newspaper articles and religious texts.

They passed from the Forest of Lies into the Valley of Lost Desire. The place was eternally shrouded in a thick fog and lovers wandered through the gray desolation hearing each other's calls, but never finding one another. Ash from a nearby volcano drifted down into the valley, making the fog worse. It looked as if the volcano had erupted sometime in the recent past. Hard-baked bodies lay strewn across the valley floor, like a museum exhibit about the destruction of Pompeii. It wasn't until Spyder tripped over one of the heavily ashed corpses and heard a steady scraping from inside that he realized that the crusted forms each contained a trapped soul. Spyder tried cracking open a few, but the rocks he used always shattered without making so much as a crack in the stony prisons.

They passed from the Valley of Lost Desire into an overheated swamp that on the map was marked only as Rage. Faceless souls chased and savagely beat other souls in waist-high bogs of boiling blood. Once each attack had been accomplished and the victim beaten senseless or drowned, the victim and attacker would exchange roles and the whole process would begin again. The souls didn't seem to notice Spyder and the others as they inched by on a narrow ledge. They were grateful to make it out of Rage without incident.

They passed from Rage into the frozen Plains of Misery. The sullen, suicidal and malicious, who took nothing from existence but pain and who made others' lives as empty and excruciating as their own, lay half in ice, cursing and trying not to look at each other. As they went, Spyder looked down and saw other souls completely submerged in ice, swallowed up by the diamond-blue glacier that inched back and forth across the scarred open land.