Blind Shrike | Page 3

trekking in Nepal," Rubi said. "First night out we came to this little village and I asked this lady who ran the local teahouse where the toilets were. In Nepali she said, essentially, `Anywhere but here,' and pointed to an open field."
As Spyder unzipped in the alley, he consider the club's name and wondered if the real afterlife would be at all like this. A tab at your favorite bar. Pretty girls to chat up. The occasional piss in an alley next to God's own dumpster. It didn't seem like the afterlife would be too bad a place. Spyder wondered who the bouncer in the Bardo Realm would be. The Black Bhairab, he decided. Shiva's most wrathful form. The six-armed, crown-of-skulls-wearing Mad Max of the afterlife.
Spyder zipped up and turned to reenter the club. Like a bad dream, the Black Bhairab was right there beside him. Something big enough, strong enough and wild enough to be the Black Bhairab, though Spyder knew that these qualities were also present in most of your dedicated crackheads, Spyder. This particular crackhead grabbed Spyder by the front of his shirt and lifted him off him feet, tossing him into the trash cans and empty liquor boxes at the back of the alley.
Stunned, Spyder reached for his cash, hoping this would get the guy to back off. The mugger came up and slammed his boot into Spyder's midsection, then kept kicking, even after he'd snatched the money from Spyder's hand. Spyder didn't even get a decent look at the guy and that really bothered him. He wanted to see the face of the man who was about to kill him.
As if the mugger had heard Spyder's thoughts, he felt himself being pulled up by his collar until he was standing upright. Then Spyder's feet lifted from the dirty alley floor and he hung limp in the air at the end of the mugger's arm. "You know how to whistle don't you? Just put your lips together and blow," Spyder croaked as he hung there. He punched the crackhead as hard as he could. The guy's face gave as if there were no bones in there, just a lot of flesh-colored pudding.
The mugger's face began to change. His skin crawled in the jittery sodium light from a street lamp. The mugger's eyes swelled and burst from their sockets, black and glittering with facets. His lips seemed to melt, drawing down into a long, twitching tube. Cracked, curved horns burst from the sides of his head. The mugger exhaled a fetid cloud of steaming breath. Spyder's brain was on overload. The adrenaline rush and oxygen-deprivation had him flashing on a frantic stream of schizophrenic data. Snakes. Insects. Wolves. Angels. The mugger had a smell. Overwhelmingly sweet. Vanilla roses. Rotting fish. The perfume of dead school girls. Spyder thought of his room in high school. He'd had a poster on the wall, a parody of the kind of out-of-date Civil Defense instructions they used to give kids in case of nuclear attack. The last line had read, "Put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye."
Spyder vomited on the mugger's arm. The puke seemed to have some kind of mysterious juju power because at that moment the mugger's head sheered off and rolled to the alley floor. His body, which still had a solid grip on Spyder's collar, follow a second or two later.
When he could open his eyes, Spyder saw a pair of shiny vinyl boots in front of his face. He closed his eyes again, ready for this new intruder to finish him off.
"Get up," came a woman's voice.
Spyder looked up and saw the blind dancer he and Lulu had spoken to in the bar earlier that night. She was holding a long and bloody sword in her hands.
"I'm tapped out. The dead guy got all my money," said Spyder.
"I'm not mugging you, fool. I'm saving you. Not that you deserve it." The blind woman reached down for Spyder's arm and helped him to his feet.
"Thanks. What the fuck just happened?"
"A Bitru demon attacked you. I killed it."
"I don't believe in demons."
The woman nodded. "All right. It was a junkie with the head of an insect and possessing superhuman strength."
"Okay," Spyder croaked.
Spyder looked at the body at his feet. He hadn't been hallucinating. The body wasn't even vaguely human.
"What the fuck... Why would a demon want me?"
"A Bitru doesn't just drop by for blood and crumpets. He doesn't come unless he's called."
"I did not call any goddam bug monster thing to kick my ass. I wouldn't even know how."
"You must have his mark on your body. Near your heart," said the woman. She ran both sides of her sword across the demon's body, cleaning the blood from the blade. Planting the tip of the