Blind Shrike | Page 4

sword on the ground, she gave it hard shake. The sword blurred and when she stopped shaking, it had transformed into the white cane she'd had earlier.
"Damn." Spyder opened his shirt and looked at his chest. "I have a lot of ink on me. Geometrics. Tribal work. Religious geegaws."
"Any runes or symbols?"
"A shitload."
"And do you know the meanings of all those runes?"
"'Course. Some. In a Trivial Pursuit kind of way. They're just designs."
"So says the man covered in demon blood." The woman moved closer to Spyder. "Did it ever occur to you that those symbols have meaning and power?"
"Where? How? I've done a thousand tattoos like that on people."
"Some of them are probably going to have a dream date like the one you just had." She laid her hand over his heart. "You don't believe in demons, but you believe in magnetism, right? These symbols you put on your body, like the Bitru's sigil, these are a kind of magnetism. You don't have to understand how they work. The demons do."
"What can I do?"
"Take it off. Change it. All the signs and symbols that you don't know."
"What's your name?" asked Spyder.
The woman took her hand from his chest. "Most people just call me Shrike."
"Thank you, Shrike."
She ran a hand lightly over Spyder's cheeks and jaw. "Good thing you're pretty. You're not the quickest little pony on the track, are you?"
"You underestimate me," said Spyder. "This was all my clever plan to meet you. I think it went pretty well."
"Take care of yourself," Shrike said, moving back toward the mouth of the alley.
"My name is Spyder," he called to her.
"Take care of yourself, Spyder." She waved without turning around.
"Wait. Do you have a phone number or email or something? I owe you."
"You don't owe me anything."
"But I'm madly in love with you and stuff."
She turned gracefully and continued walking backwards, never breaking stride. "Not the quickest pony at all."
She was gone. Spyder started after her, but when he tried to take a step, his legs shook so much that he fell against the alley wall. A few minutes later, Lulu came outside looking for him. She helped him back into the Bardo Lounge. Spyder noted that Lulu didn't seem to notice the large dead demon lying nearby in the alley. Together, -Spyder and Lulu got very, very drunk.
Four
Traffic Jam
It was light out when Spyder woke up, but his eyes refused to focus, so he couldn't read the time on the Badtz-Maru clock-radio near the bed.
His head felt as if someone had scooped out his brains and filled his skull with broken glass and thumb tacks. When he tried to sit up, every part of his body ached. He rose slowly to his feet and walked stiffly to the bathroom. Spyder's shoulder throbbed and when he switched on the bathroom light he saw why.
There was a long gash running across his shoulder and down his chest. He had a black eye, a swollen lip and his arms and ribs were spotted in livid purple bruises. Spyder remembered the scene in the alley. It wasn't a dream. He had been mugged.
Blood from the gash had dried on his skin, gluing part of his white wife-beater to his chest. Spyder stood under the hot shower until the blood softened and the water soothed his knotted muscles.
When he stepped out of the shower, he left the wet shirt draped across the towel rack beneath the framed Lady from Shanghai poster that Jenny hated. The gash on his shoulder burned and his headache was com- ing on strong behind his eyes. Spyder slapped on some gauze squares and taped them down with white medical tape.
Christ, he thought, I was supposed to call Jenny last night and tell I was going to be late. She must be pissed. Then it hit him, as it had hit him almost every morning for weeks: Jenny was gone. She'd packed up and moved the last of her stuff to LA. That's why he'd gotten so drunk with Lulu. It was the one month anniversary of her desertion.
"No fucking way I can put ink on anyone today," he thought. It was already after one in the afternoon. Spyder didn't want to go the studio, but he needed to call his clients and reschedule. He dressed quickly into battered black jeans, steel-toed Docs and the largest, loosest gray Dickies shirt he could find in his closet. A pile of Jenny's abandoned textbooks were stacked at the back, The Gnostic Gospels, Heaven and Hell in the Western Tradition, An Encyclopedia of Fallen Angels. Spyder slammed the closet door.
The warehouse Spyder rented was across town from the tattoo studio. He usually rode the Dead Man's Ducati--the bike he'd bought cheap from a meth dealer he knew down in Tijuana; the previous owner had gone