Blind Shrike

FIFTY SEVEN Jesus Christ and Bruce Lee

“So Spyder, what was the deal with your head back there? ’Cause if you’re a zombie, I got dibs on Shrike,” said Lulu.

“Ask your boyfriend what happened. He’s the one who gave me the idea,” said Spyder. He turned to Lucifer. The Prince of Hell sat with his elbows on his knees, his fingers steepled, staring out at his ruined kingdom. “How’d you know that my dying would kill the golem, but not me?”

“I guessed,” Lucifer said. “You had a fifty-fifty shot.”

“Something happened when I got sucked into the book. I was with the Dominions for a second, I think. Some of their life or whatever keeps them going rubbed off on me.”

“I think you’re right,” said Shrike. “Look.” She moved the cloth from where Spyder had been holding it on her chest. The wound was closed.

“Come here,” Spyder said to Lulu.

“Why? I was kidding about macking on your girl.”

“Sure you were. Come on down here.”

Lulu came down the stairs and sat next to Spyder.

He took both her hands, saying, “I’m not sure what I’m doing, so just close your eyes and relax.”

“It’s prom night all over again.”

The palace was a disaster. The walls were webbed with cracks big enough to put a fist in. Part of the dome had collapsed. Hell proper was in sad shape, too. Millions of tons of rock had come crashing down when the Dominions blasted their way out of the place. Most of Lucifer’s new Heaven and much of Pandemonium lay in ruins. The group had all remained on the stairs throughout this harrowing of Hell. Exhausted, bleeding, they were way down the road past both fear and surprise, stalled between numbness and wonder. None of them even blinked when Shrike’s father disappeared. They chose to see it as a sign of release, that with Xero’s passing the curse that held the old man’s spirit in the underworld had been broken.

“That fool’s curses were as thin and hollow as his head when I cracked it,” Lucifer had said.

“When you get through with my hands let me know, okay?” Lulu asked. “I’ve got a nuclear meltdown nose itch.”

“I think we’re about done here,” Spyder said.

“Dude, what did you do to me? I feel all hot and strange.”

“Go look.”

She stepped over the fallen masonry and broken glass, navigating her way across the buckled floor to Lucifer’s curiosity cabinets. None of them had broken, but they lay at crazy angles against the walls and floor. The Chaos cabinet was still standing in its original spot. Lulu went to it and checked herself in the glass. Her reflection stared back with the swirling nothingness behind it.

“It’s me,” she said. “I look like me again.”

“Eyes and skin and everything. Did I get it all right?”

“You tricked me out like an old Chevy. For what? The Clerks still own me. They’ll just come and take these eyes, too.”

“Lulu, the Clerks are gone. At least the ones who snagged you. If any others ever show up, I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow ‘em all down.”

Lulu leaned her head on the cabinet, holding her belly. “Why do I feel like this?”

“You were empty. They were making you into them. That’s what they do. You’re alive again. Being alive hurts,” said Spyder. “And you haven’t had a stomach in a couple of years. That one’s probably hungry.”

“I remember hungry.”

“You okay?”

Lulu nodded. “Yeah.”

“I did the right thing, didn’t I?”

Spyder couldn’t see Lulu’s face. Turning, she walked back to the stairs, staring at her hands.

“Yeah, you did good. It’s just a lot to get hold of. I didn’t realize how much they’d taken.”

“For what it’s worth, I know how you feel,” said Shrike. “I haven’t seen colors in so long. I remember them all, but I can’t quite recall which is red and which is blue. It’s a little overwhelming.”

“That’s one word for it.”

“Sit with me,” Shrike said. Lulu came over the wreckage and curled up with her head in Shrike’s lap.

“I’d fuck a duck for a cigarette right now,” Lulu said.

Lucifer was inspecting his palace. He picked up a couple of fragments of cherry-colored glass that had fallen from the dome. Holding them over his eyes, he peered up through the hole in the roof of Hell.

“Maybe we should put a skylight up there,” he said. “I miss the stars sometimes.”

“Sorry for busting up the place,” said Spyder.

“Sorry for tricking you into the bowels of Hell.”

“I was thinking about taking some time off anyway.”

Lucifer smiled to himself. “This is all an enormous joke, you now. I manipulated you, but the universe slipped a good one past me.”

“By saying ‘universe’ you’re trying not to say ‘God’?”

“Perhaps,” said Lucifer. “I had to go to talking meat—sorry, mortals—to save my kingdom. Not only did you have the power to save it, but to destroy it, too. Maybe pride really is my sin. The Painted Man was right in front of me this whole time, and I never even saw you coming.”

“Hell, you brought him here,” said Lulu.

“Thank you. I’d almost forgotten that little detail.” Lucifer picked up a gilded candle sconce, looked around and dropped it again. Going to his curiosities, he began picking up the cabinets that had fallen over. Spyder went to help him.

“I don’t know about the Painted Man thing,” Spyder said as they turned the wooden Fabergé egg case upright. The gleaming eggs lay in a thousand pieces on the bottom of the velvet-lined cabinet, bejeweled junk. “I don’t exactly feel like Jesus Christ or Bruce Lee.”

“Good. That’s my job,” Lucifer said.

“What happens now?” asked Shrike.

Lucifer pulled the cabinet with John the Baptist’s heart from where it was leaning precariously against the wall, setting it flat on the floor. Shifting it inch by inch, he got it aligned exactly where he wanted it. Spyder helped him slide the crown of thorns cabinet until it was just so.

“Thank you,” Lucifer said. He looked at Shrike. “The Dominions have broken the boundaries of Hell. All bets are off. You can go home any time you like. Me, I begin rebuilding. None of this affects our work here, you know. Yahweh had his little laugh, but we’re still building our Heaven.” He pulled a scarlet silk kerchief from his pocket and wiped some of the dust off the glass of the cabinet that housed the crown of thorns. “And if he destroys that one, we’ll build it again. We have eternity to get it right.”

“We’re going to have to take the book with us,” said Shrike. “Madame Cinders will want it in return for my father.” She brushed some of Lulu’s hair out of the girl’s eyes.

“Take it. I don’t want the damned thing around here.”

“Can we really give it to her?” asked Spyder. “I got a glimpse of what it is. I don’t know anything about magic and look what it did to me. What could someone with her knowledge do with it?”

“She’ll do exactly what Xero was going to do. Make a deal with the Dominions and grab as much power she can,” Lucifer said. He opened the case with his puzzle boxes and set them back on their proper display stands.

“We can’t let her do that,” Spyder said. He went to where Shrike was sitting and knelt down next to her. “We can’t give her the key to all that power.”

“She’ll kill my father. Or worse. Curse him again. He’ll be right back in Hell and all of this will have been for nothing.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Little brother, you’re a hero now. You’re going to have to learn to learn to think on a larger scale,” said Lucifer. He used his kerchief to slap at the dust that had settle on his clothes while moving the cabinets. “You just cracked open a hole in the universe, wrecked Hell, deceived the devil and sent the Black Clerks packing. Even I couldn’t do all that and I can do a lot. Yet with all that to your credit, you’re telling me you can’t control one dying hag?”

“I wouldn’t know what to do.”

“You have a warrior by your side and the Prince of Darkness for a friend. What you don’t know is how to ask for help, but that is how we gain knowledge and improve ourselves.”

“Okay,” said Spyder. He leaned back his head, threw out his arms and shouted as loudly as he could, “Help!”

Lucifer shook his head. Shrike covered her ears.

“Damn, I’ve wanted to do that for days,” Spyder said.

Lucifer kicked his way through the rubble until he found what he was looking for. When he picked it up, Spyder recognized the knife the head Clerk had used to stab him.

“You asked for help and here it is,” Lucifer said. “When troubled by a diseased sorceress like Madame Cinders, you need a miracle. Look to the saints for a cure.”

Lucifer took the knife and went to his curiosity cabinets.

“Come here, so I can give you something,” he said. Spyder went to him. Lucifer made one quick slice and wrapped the prize in the scarlet kerchief before handing it to over. “Don’t lose that.”

“I won’t,” said Spyder, finding himself suddenly able to be a little shocked again.

Shrike went to where the cage with the book had fallen over. The impact had turned the marble beneath it to powder and driven the book several feet into the floor.

“Any suggestions on how we can move this thing? It’s a thousand pounds if it’s an ounce,” she said.

“Travel for all of you, including the book, is being arranged right now,” Lucifer said.

“So, we’re probably at the goodbye portion of the evening,” said Spyder. “I really suck at this.”

Lucifer smiled. “I know. I looked into the minds of some of your exes.”

“Find anything good in there?”

“You’re not universally despised.” Lucifer leaned in to whisper, “That includes Jenny. But you need to learn to let go of things that only exist in the past tense.”

Lucifer went to Shrike. She smiled and put her arms around him.

“You helped me free my father. I’ll always be grateful for that,” she said.

“You’ve lived half your life in light and half in darkness. Which do you prefer?” Lucifer asked.

“When I’ve seen enough of either I’ll tell you.”

“Fair enough,” he said and leaned in to kiss her cheek. Then reached out for Lulu’s perfect, restored hands and gave each a kiss.

“You’re a prince, Prince,” she said. “You could turn a dyke’s head.”

“A higher compliment I’ll never receive.”

Lucifer went to Spyder and the two of them looked at each other.

“Think we’re ever going to meet up again?” Spyder asked.

“Abyssus abyssum invocat,” Lucifer said. “‘Hell calls hell.’ For better or worse, we are brothers. We’ll see each other again.”

“When you get Heaven finished, invite me to the opening.”

Lucifer smiled, nodded toward the palace portico. “Your ride is here.”

Spyder turned. He knew what was coming from the sound and the word picture Lulu had painted for Shrike and him back at the Bone Sea. Finally seeing the enormous mechanical spider, however, was a much stranger sight than he’d imagined. Still, the contraption wasn’t as frightening as what had been in his head back when he’d been blindfolded. The creature moved so delicately on its long legs, Spyder thought that it looked like it was walking on tip-toe.

Lulu walked up to the machine.

“Cornelius, remember me?” she asked.

The head on the enormous mechanism looked puzzled. “I apologize, madam. My memory isn’t what it used to be. However, meeting you now is certainly a pleasure,” he said. Cornelius turned his attention to Lucifer and bowed deeply.

“You were a gleeful and criminally stupid thug during your life. Do you recall any of that?” Lucifer asked. He approached Cornelius, who continued to hold his deep bow.

“No, my lord.”

“We harnessed your brutish tendencies to make use of you while you were in my domain. But I’m prepared to relieve you of this job. Would you like that?” Lucifer made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Don’t bother answering, I know you would. You will take these good people and this book out that hole you might have noticed in the roof. You will take them wherever they want to go and do whatever they ask of you. When they dismiss you, and only then, you will return here to me and we’ll discuss finding you some other task that won’t wrack your pea-size brain. Do you understand?”

“Yes. Thank you, my lord.”

“Pick up the book and wait outside.”

Cornelius stood up and moved with delicate, almost mincing steps until he’d positioned his enormous body properly on the uneven floor. Four of his metal legs scrabbled in the wreckage and pulled the book free. When it was secure against his belly, metal jaws clamped down on it, allowing him to lower his legs. He turned and went outside, a bit slower than when he’d entered, weighed down by the book’s bulk.

They followed Cornelius out to the plaza and one by one climbed onto his back. Lucifer stood below in the palace portico looking up at them through the cherry-colored dome glass he held before his right eye.

“The good thing about glass is that we can melt it down and use it again. This marble is a total loss, though. Maybe I’ll have some bankers dig it out with their teeth.” Lucifer bowed deeply to them, waved once, turned on his heels and strode back inside his palace.

Spyder and the others held on tight as Cornelius loped through the wreckage of Pandemonium, out across the plains of Hell to one of the impossibly high walls that were the boundaries of the underworld. Then, they began to climb.