Butcher Bird

As Primo worked the stiff lock on the gates of the fortress, Spyder shielded his eyes from the sun. Frowning to himself, he remembered his first tattoo: barbed wire around his neck. It was a traditional prison tat. Spyder had told people that the tat was a memorial to his friend Gus who had died in the San Luis Obispo county jail in a fight with a member of a rival bike gang. And that was half true. It had genuinely broken Spyder up when Gus died during what should have been nothing more than a weekend in the drunk tank. But Spyder knew enough about tattoos to know how people would back off when they saw what they thought was a symbol of his having survived serious jail time. Thinking about it now, in the company of two genuine killers who looked anything but dangerous, Spyder saw much of his early ink less as a tribute to the art and more to his own neuroses. He wore his fear on his skin for everyone to see.

Spyder had avoided thoughts like these his whole life and, as Primo wrestled the gates of the fortress open, they came down on him hard. Fear and covering up fear had probably been his primary motivator since childhood. Oddly, now that he had real monsters to deal with and not just the neurotic shadows that he'd dragged with him from childhood, none of it was as bad as he'd imagined it would be. Maybe because he wasn't alone. Shrike's arm was solid against him. If he wasn't really brave, maybe he could watch her and learn to act bravely. A line he used more than once to sell tattoos to uncertain customers popped into his head: "Sometimes changing the outside is the first step to changing the inside."

Beyond the wall, the fortress was another world. Olive and orange trees lined the inside of the courtyard, providing shade and cooling the air to bearable levels. A fountain filled the air with the pleasant sound of running water and a tile walkway pointed the way into the main domed building. Primo ushered Shrike and Spyder inside to an opulent room of cushions and low, inlaid tables on a polished teakwood floor. Primo gestured for them to make themselves comfortable by a table piled high with fresh fruit and bottled water. When they were seated, Spyder put Shrike's hand on the fruit and she eagerly took a fig from the pile. Spyder peeled an orange and said, "I could get used to this."

"It's very nice," replied Shrike. "It's also for our benefit. Letting us know that she can take care of us."

"I like the sound of that."

"It's very nice when you're on good terms. It's also a way of letting us know that her wealth and power can hurt us if things go badly."

"You're getting a lot more from that fig than I'm getting from this orange."

"Keep quiet. There are people listening."

"Where?"

Shrike inclined her head to a grating set into the wall. Spyder looked and saw numerous pairs of eyes staring at him through the wooden latticework. As soon as he focused on them, the eyes were gone. He crawled over the cushions and looked through. Beyond the wall was a large, formal room. Serving girls and white-clad boys were cleaning the place and taking great pains not to look in Spyder's direction.

"She'll see you now." It was Primo, down at the far end of the chamber. Spyder gave Shrike his arm and they followed the little man down a long, cool passageway past dozens of rooms, out the back and into a sprawling Victorian greenhouse. The glass walls and roof were white with steam. Inside, it was like a sauna. Spyder was immediately drenched in sweat. Primo led them deep into a thick internal jungle filled with tropical plants whose thorns and poison sap tugged at their clothes.

They entered a wet crystal-walled room filled with orchids of every imaginable size and color. Servants were gently tending the flowers with potions and fertilizers. Using a silver scoop, a young boy tossed ground meat into the soil. The orchids bent gracefully and used their fleshy blossoms to gather up the bloody scraps. Those that couldn't reach the meat ripped the petals from nearby flowers. The place smelled like a cross between a department store perfume counter and a slaughterhouse.

Spyder felt Shrike stiffen and when he looked, Madame Cinders was being rolled into the greenhouse in a gilded wheelchair, as elaborately decorated as any Louis XIV throne. Attached to the wheelchair was an intricate pump system tied to an intravenous tube that slid under the rich folds of Madame Cinders' sky blue hijab. The woman's face was entirely hidden by the headdress. There was only an oval-shaped grid across her eyes, and through it, Spyder could see nothing but darkness.