Butcher Bird

"He starts driving and we don't know where the hell he's taking us. I'm suspicious, because that's my nature. But Pablo is cool. He takes us by some old buildings where Jean-Paul Marat and other French Revolution psychos used to live. He takes us into a dark, wet park where it's just starting to snow. This is the park where the best hookers hang out. Sure enough, there's a woman in a fur coat standing at an intersection, looking like she's waiting to cross. As we pull near her, she opens the fur coat. She's naked underneath, a Victoria's Secret wet dream. Pablo asks if we've ever seen Versailles. We hadn't, so he drives us out."

Spyder spun the Hornet's metal strands, and thumbed a stud on the grip. Spring-loaded spikes popped from both ends of the weapon. The Count had explained that when a fighter destroyed an enemy's sword, the spikes could be driven into the opponent's midsection as a finishing blow.

"Now, this is after midnight on Christmas Eve. In Paris. Everything is closed. Does this stop Pablo? Hell, no. He drives us all the way around Versailles until, in the back, we spot a guard gate that's open. This is too good to pass up. We sneak inside.

"There's a guard house maybe ten feet away, and we can hear the guards inside getting juiced on Christmas cheer. They don't care that three idiots are sneaking into a national monument. Did I mention that we'd been drinking?"

"I took that for granted."

"By now, the snow's stopped and there's mist everywhere. We're not drunk enough to try and bust into the palace itself, but there's acres of gardens out back. We wander back there for an hour, whispering, hoping not to set off any alarms. At times, the fog is so thick, we can't see anything, even standing next to each other. Leafless trees appear out of nowhere and then vanish again into the gloom. We sit on benches and smoke and try to peek inside the palace to see the Hall of Mirrors or where the Sun King might have shagged a mistress in secret.

"We couldn't see anything and the cold was starting to sober us up. Now we're getting nervous, so we decided to get out of there. Of course, when we went back, the guard door was locked. There's nothing to do but climb one of the stone walls to get out, and the only wall low enough to climb was right by the guard shack. We started up and hoped to god that the guards stayed put. We had to walk along the top of one wall and drop over the side of a second to get out of the place. The whole time we were going, I was praying, Please, Lord, don't let them find us sneaking out of there with a Peruvian. They'll think we're Shining Path guerillas and never believe we didn't plant a bomb or something."

What was weird about the Count's weapon was that, as polished and well-balanced as it was, its surface felt uneven and rough. Like maybe it hadn't been built-and even here, in this insane new world he inhabited, it struck Spyder as an odd idea-but as if it had been grown, like a flower.

"Is that it?" asked Shrike.

"I didn't get to the good part. The guards came outside with their stinky cheese and we had to shoot our way out."

"You did not."

"No, we didn't. We drove back to the hotel, ran upstairs and hid, waiting for the gendarmes to come and take us to jail on Christmas Day. But they didn't come and we got away with it. I suppose, it's not much of an adventure, as far as adventures go. There's no sex or imminent death or flying monkeys, but for some reason it sticks in my mind as a kind of perfect night."

"And the cynical tattooist is revealed to be a romantic."

"All losers are romantics. It's what keeps us from blowing our brains out."

Twenty-Eight

Suspicious Minds

"We'll reach the city by midday tomorrow, if we get moving by dawn," said Count Non.

"Good news," said Primo. "We need to reach the Kasla Mountains by the full moon. A shadow cast through a certain rocky promontory is the only way to find the entrance to Hell. If we miss the moon, we'll have to wait a month until the next one." He made a face and rubbed the shoulder where his arm was missing. Spyder felt for the guy. His side was hurting after the all-day hike.

"Fuck that," said Lulu. "Fuck that with Michael Jackson's pet monkey."

"Full moon's just a few days off. Think we can make it?" Spyder asked Shrike.

Shrike was smoking Spyder's last cigarette, puffing, then passing the butt to him. Spyder took a drag, then passed the precious smoke to Lulu, who opened her mouth to accept it like a communion Host. She smoked and passed the butt to Shrike, who leaned on her cane, lost in thought.

"We have to make it," Shrike said. "We can't hide out here like bugs in the sand for a month. We're lucky to have made it this far."