“Fuck you, you twisted old bitch,” said Spyder. Shrike laid a hand on his arm and stood up.
“She’s right,” Shrike said. “It’s just part of bargaining and as fellow women we can, of course, trust each other.” She gave Cinders a thin smile.
“You see?” said Madame Cinders. Though he couldn’t see her face, Spyder knew she was smiling, showing black, rotten teeth under her veil.
“And here is my last bargain,” said Shrike, holding up Apollyon’s knife. “When we’ve returned your book, if you don’t deliver everything you’ve promised, I’ll make sure this gets back to it’s original owner with the name of the person who took it and where, precisely, to find her.” Shrike bowed to Madame Cinders. “I promise this to you. As a woman.”
Shrike turned and walked out, with Spyder following her. Primo trailed along behind, keeping his distance, clearly nervous.
Madame Cinders had been right about their transportation. A tuk-tuk, a loud, three-wheeled motorcycle that spewed black exhaust and rattled like a glorified lawnmower, was waiting for them in the tunnel. Spyder, Shrike and Primo rode in silence until they came to the wet crossroads where they’d paused earlier. Primo led them back on foot through the passages to Alcatraz. Shrike didn’t say a word on the way back, but on the windy deck of the tourist boat back to San Francisco, she turned to Spyder and leaned against him. He put his arms around her and held her there. She sighed and relaxed into him.
“This is nice,” Spyder said. He felt her nod. “You warm enough?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I’m not going with you,” Spyder blurted. “I thought I could, but I can’t. I drank tequila with a demon. I talked to a sphinx. I almost got hacked into fertilizer and fed to man-eating daisies. And now I’m supposed to go to Hell. Only I’m not going. Somewhere between the alligator men and the demon knives, I hopped off this train.”
“It’s all right to be afraid,” Shrike said. She pulled away from him. “I’m afraid, too.”
“You’re a killer. You’ve trained for this. A couple of days ago, my greatest fear was leaving a message for one girl on another girl’s answering machine.”
“This is funny. I’d planned on ditching you after Madame Cinders offered us the job. I didn’t want you to get hurt. But I don’t know anything about Hell and I need your help.”
“Why? So demons can use your skin to shine their boots? This isn’t sneaking into the drive-in with your fuck buddies. This is putting one over on the Prince of Darkness and an army of fallen pissed-at-god-and-the-universe angels.”
“You know I have to go.”
“You’re a cute girl, Shrike. I can say that because your intestines are still on the inside.”
“I have to save my father.”
“I don’t save fathers. I couldn’t save mine from drinking himself to death and yours looked pretty far fucking gone, too.”
“You don’t have to enter Hell itself. It’ll take days getting to the Kasla Mountains. Tutor me. Bring your friend’s books and teach me so I won’t get lost in the underworld.”
“That thing in a wheelchair said that if I see Hell, I’ll be stranded there forever.”
“You won’t see it, I promise. I know this isn’t your problem. I know you fell into this. But I need you now.”
Spyder leaned against the rail and closed his eyes, feeling the rocking of the ship as they docked at Fisherman’s Wharf.
“If you’re coming, meet me at dawn. Primo will be here with our transportation. You hear me, pony boy?”
Spyder kissed Shrike on the cheek. “Good luck, Alizarin. Come back safe. And thanks for trying to help me out.” He turned and walked away.
TWENTY
Badlands
Spyder grabbed a cab at Fisherman’s Wharf and took it back to his warehouse.
When the driver tried to engage him in tourist chit-chat, Spyder ignored him and stared out the window. It was dusk. The sky was midnight blue and shot through with glowing stripes of salmon. Lights were coming on as they drove through North Beach. Strip clubs, punk clubs, sports bars and Italian restaurants hissed by. On the corners were groups of tourists shivering as fog came down them in their Alcatraz Swim Team T-shirts. Fidgety clusters of students, street kids and sailors in dress whites ran through the traffic, eager to get on to the next good time.
And there were the mutilated, sipping cappuccinos at sidewalk cafes. The beautiful Volt Eater from the night market was being ferried down Broadway on a glittering sedan chair. Outside a sex shop at Broadway and Columbus, a blue-robed angel sat atop a sacrifice pole holding a dead kitten in its arms and weeping.
Spyder dug the crumpled pack of American Spirits from his pocket and lit one. He thought of something Lulu had said when he first discovered her awful secret, “If you wait long enough, everything becomes normal.” There’s a lot of truth in that, he thought, watching the animal-shaped airships drift through the evening sky. Nothing was bothering him at that moment. With a little practice, he was certain that nothing would ever bother him again.
At the warehouse, Spyder handed the driver a wad of bills and got out of the cab without waiting for change. Inside, the warehouse was cold and not all that comforting. As much as Spyder loved to travel, he was always thrilled and relieved to be back in his own comfortable, messy rooms. As he flicked on the light, however, the familiar piles of books and videos, the scattered clothes, felt odd and alien. He grabbed a fresh pack of cigarettes from the kitchen counter and hit the button that rolled up the big garage door that took up most of the west wall of the warehouse. Dropping on to the seat of the Dead Man’s Ducati was the first thing that felt right to Spyder since leaving the boat at Fisherman’s Wharf. He gunned hit the button to lower the door and popped the clutch. Ducking at the last possible moment, Spyder cleared the weather stripping on the bottom of the door by an inch. He roared onto the 101 freeway.
Shooting off the Fell Street exit, Spyder headed up to Haight Street with the throttle wide open, blowing red lights and slow traffic the whole way. He didn’t let up on the gas until he was a block from the tattoo parlor. Fog was drifting in when he rolled the bike between an SUV and a battered El Camino with NUESTRA RAZA stenciled high on the windshield.
Spyder was standing in the street before he realized that the Route 666 Tattoo parlor was gone. The area where the parlor once stood was a charred ruin cordoned off with yellow caution tape.
Spyder’s mind was a complete blank as he ducked under the tape and stood where his customers had scanned the walls, looking over the flash designs. What he felt eventually was surprise. He’d only been gone a day, yet the place had burned and all the debris had been hauled away. Street people had already started a little colony of shopping carts where the back of the shop had stood. A couple of them (Men? Women? He couldn’t tell in their layers of bulky coats) stared at him while passing a bottle of Four Roses back and forth. Spyder kicked at the garbage that had begun to accumulate on the site. In the trash, he found the fried remains of one of his tattoo guns. He picked it up and weighed the thing in his hand. Dead metal. Worthless. Spyder stood up and let the tattoo gun fall back into the debris.
Jogging back to the Ducati, he gunned it to life and tore across Haight Street, up onto the sidewalk and through the caution tape into the shop, scattering trash and splinters of blackened wood. Revving the throttle, Spyder turned donuts in the debris, smoking his rear tire and scaring the winos enough to huddle together in the back. As a foot patrol cop came running into the burned shop, Spyder slammed back onto the street and away.
The light was on in Lulu’s Mission District apartment. Spyder rang her bell and, when there was no answer, yelled up at her window. When that didn’t work, he climbed the fence into her backyard and went across a neighbor’s roof until, with a jump, he could reach the bottom of the fire escape. Spyder hauled himself up to the bottom landing and climbed the stairs to Lulu’s apartment on the fourth floor.