Butcher Bird

The middle banker nodded to his companions, then to Spyder. "You. The girl. This does not matter. The debt matters. The restoration of balance? This is our burden." One by one, the three men entered the little bathroom at the back of the studio. When Spyder opened the door a moment later, they were gone.

"What was that word he called you just now?" Spyder asked Lulu.

"Oblation," she said. "It's a kind of sacrifice. The kind you're supposed to give with thanks."

"It's not enough they zombify you. You're supposed to send them a thank you card, too?"

"Pretty much. You wouldn't think it to look at them, but the Black Clerks are all about having a good time." Lulu put her hand lightly on Spyder's shoulder. "You have no idea what you just got yourself into."

Spyder kissed the top of her head. "It's all right. I think I know someone who can help."

Ten

DOA

After dropping Lulu at home, Spyder took at cab to the Bardo Lounge. He'd always preferred the night, but now he was falling in love with it.

Spyder couldn't really deny the angels in the sky or the anacondas with the faces of crying children hiding in the palm trees along Dolores Street, but in the dark the smaller curiosities were swallowed by shadows, mostly invisible. Besides, night had always seemed a time of madness and possibility. The visions just felt more natural at night.

The neighborhood around the Bardo Lounge had taken on a heavy, wet jungle feel, as if the cab had stumbled into the abandoned set of some expensive dinosaur movie. There were always a lot of film crews in town and, for a moment, Spyder thought that they might have genuinely rolled onto a set. But sacrifice poles dotted the corners, animal heads and flowers dripping in the thick, humid air.

The Bardo Lounge was packed. Rubi was serving drinks. She gave Spyder a kiss on the cheek and brought him a tequila. He was relieved to see that she was entirely normal, with none of Lulu's mutilations.

The bar was alive with a happy, drunken weekend crowd. Leather-clad boys and girls with hair in cotton-candy colors and lips shining brighter than their vinyl skirts. Spyder wanted to wade out and dive into their beauty, and be baptized by their sweat and saliva. But for the first time since he was an awkward teenager, he couldn't think of anything to say to them. He felt as removed from the crowd as the monsters he'd been seeing in the streets all day. Spyder turned away and drank his tequila.

There was a demon sitting on the stool next to Spyder. It was a huge bare-chested olive-skinned man, his features lost beneath cascading rolls of glistening fat. White geometric designs covered his arms and chest, some kind of tribal markings. Considering everything, he didn't look too bad, Spyder thought. Pretty human, in fact. Not at all like the monsters in Jenny's mythology textbooks. The demon stole the beer of the girl sitting next to him and poured the whole thing into a wide, toothless mouth that split open in the middle of his chest.

Spyder sighed and the demon caught him looking. The demon leaned in close and said, "How do you get twelve humans to wear one hat?"

"How?" asked Spyder.

"You bite the heads off eleven."

Spyder turned back to his drink. "Sorry for not laughing, but I'm going to be over here ignoring you."

"I'm Bilal," said the demon, "You're the little prince, aren't you? The one Shrike killed for. What's your story?"

"There is no story. I'm just an inker who had to take a leak."

"That's beautiful. Maybe they'll carve that on your tombstone? You'll be an inspiration to future generations." A stoned couple stumbled by and Bilal delicately plucked the cigarette from the mouth of a cadaverous, lavender-lipped boy. The demon sniffed the cigarette once and dropped it into his chest-mouth. "Though I was really hoping you could justify your existence. Like maybe you were some minor deity on pilgrimage. Or a diplomat off to a secret rendezvous to stop a war."

Bilal blew out a long puff of smoke out through his regular mouth.

"What's it like being a demon here in a place like this?" asked Spyder.

"I don't know. What's it like being a human?"

Spyder looked in the mirror behind the bar, taking in the crowd. There were other demons, mostly talking to each other. A couple of guys playing pool were cut up in a way that looked like the work of the Black Clerks. "Weird and getting weirder," Spyder said. "Like Salvador Dali weird, all melting clocks and checkerboard deserts."