"What?"
"John the Baptist's heart. I hid it in the spine of the book. I thought it would maybe make the magic not work. I sure as hell didn't see this coming:"
Madame Cinders fell on her stomach, her body convulsing, her shoulders twitching. Her head snapped up and lolled to the side. Her eyes were pearl white and flames seemed to dance inside. She drew in a long, harsh breath that began as a hissing in her lungs, rising in intensity until it was the growl of a rabid wolf. Boils, red and livid, grew and burst along her right arm and spread across her body. Her white hijab, now stained with her blood, began to smoke as her skin gave off a black incandescent glow. Her bones were visible beneath the skin, and soon the skin itself was peeling and dropping off in long, dry strips. She seemed to shrink, as if something were draining her from the inside. Runes rose like welts on her blackened skin.
Whatever force she used to control her mechanical flower suddenly broke and Shrike fell to the floor. Spyder ran over and took Shrike's face in his hands. "You all right? Talk to me." He held her until she opened her eyes. "You can't get away from me that easy," he said.
"Look," said Lulu, pointing to Madame Cinders.
The witch was on her feet, her arms out, using every bit of her strength to keep her balance. She seemed paralyzed in place, unable to move. Suddenly, her head snapped toward Spyder. She took one step and the thin blackened skin that still covered her bones, sloughed off and fell to the floor like boiling tar. Her bones sank into the thick mess and disappeared.
Spyder and Lulu tried to pull Shrike to her feet, but she screamed in pain. Spyder lifted her shirt and found the deep bruising and cracked ribs. Her skin was lacerated with the serrated tooth marks of the orchid's blades. Without thinking about it, he lay his hands on her and closed her eyes. Soon, he could hear Shrike's breathing become slow and steady. A few minutes later, she could stand on her own.
They searched every room in the tower until they found Shrike's father-alive, though frail and confused. Wrapping him in a blanket they found in the guards' barracks room, they bundled the old man down from the tower.
Madame Cinders' servants waited anxiously in the courtyard as the four came out.
"We need a coach and horse," Shrike told them. The servants didn't need to be told twice.
They rode back through the Medina and just managed to squeeze the cart into the tunnels that ran to Alcatraz. Shrike held her sleeping father in her arms the whole way, speaking to him quietly as they went. Spyder put his arm around her. She reached up and squeezed his hand. He could see her fighting back tears.
When they reached the old cavalry stables, Lulu asked, "What's it going to be like back home, you think?"
"I don't know," said Spyder. "You're covered, I guess, but I might have to leave town. We'll see."
"Going to be weird to be back. You know with a full set of eyes and insides and skin."
"Weird's not so bad when you get used to it."
"No shit."
They stepped down from the coach, but when Spyder turned to help Shrike and her father, they were gone.
Sixty
Worshipping Crocodiles
"Oh, you poor things," said Mrs. Porter.
When they got back to San Francisco, Spyder and Lulu, broke and shaky, managed to hitch a ride with the Porters, a family on vacation from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who'd had their bags stolen off the luggage carousel at SFO.
The Porters were very sympathetic to the nice Texas couple they found stranded at Fisherman's Wharf, after Spyder fed them a story about their brand new Toyota hatchback being stolen. After they'd all piled into the Porters' SUV, with both parents and three kids, Lyle Porter, the husband, launched into a nonstop monologue all the way to Spyder's warehouse.
"These people they got workin' at the airport, they're not stealing to be evil. Where they're from, stealing's a way of life. Everybody does it, from the president to the police chief, from the school teachers to the local witch doctor. Every one of 'em's a goddam thief. Hell, if I was in their shoes, I'd probably steal, too. But this is America. We don't need to do that kind of shit, pardon my French, here. You work hard and you get your reward. But, I suppose, when you're raised worshipping crocodiles or some such nonsense, anything goes. Am I right?"
"Right as rain, Lyle," said Spyder, hoping they got home soon or got hit by a semi.
Lulu crashed with Spyder that first disembodied night back. Realizing he had no idea where his keys were, Spyder had to wheel over a dumpster from the car repair place next door, then climb onto the roof and drop down into the upper loft through a skylight. In the morning, Spyder found his battered old hardback of Naked Lunch on the bookshelf and pulled out the hundred dollars in emergency money he kept hidden in the spine. He and Lulu got on his old bike, an oil-leaking Kawasaki Police 1000, and Spyder took her back to her place in the Mission.
For the duration of the ride, Spyder obsessively checked his mirrors and scanned the street, waiting for a siren or a vigilante to point him out as a killer or a child molester. But it didn't happen. As he pulled up in front of Lulu's building, Rubi was coming out. She smiled brightly and kissed both Lulu and Spyder, giving no indication that she recalled Spyder punching her. Lulu gave a shrug and followed Rubi back inside, after blowing Spyder a kiss from the steps.
Spinning a quick one-eighty across the median, Spyder cruised over to the Haight. The tattoo studio was still gone, and the vacant lot still looked like whatever had occupied it had burned. Spyder couldn't decide if that bit of historical consistency was comforting or not.
He left the Kawasaki parked between an art car covered in plush toys having sex with naked Barbies and a Jews for Jesus panel truck. He went into the Long Life Cupboard health food store. Immediately, his stomach was burning and his shoulders were one big knot of tension. Spyder's fight-or-flight instincts were locked on high alert for any funny look, wayward gesture or wandering beat cops. No one even acknowledged him except the cute blonde hippie chick at the register who smiled and asked, "How's it hanging?" as Spyder paid for his orange juice. "Sucks about your shop," she said.
"Thanks."
"You opening another one?"
"We haven't decided yet."
"Let me know if you do. I was thinking about getting a mudra tattooed on my shoulder," she said. "Tell Lulu hi, and don't be a stranger."
"You got it," said Spyder. He smiled awkwardly and fled the place. It was all too much. The city. Too many people. Too much noise. Copper jitters. The angels, demons and strange beasts that had wandered in from other Spheres were there, too, but their presence seemed kind of normal. It was the athletic shoe ads on the buses, the wandering tourists and ultra-hipsters, the panhandling poser kids that were making it hard for him to breathe. Spyder downed his OJ, gunned the bike into traffic and drove home. He'd been social enough for one day. No need to push my luck and find that one guy who still thinks I'm Charlie Manson, he thought.
Back at the warehouse, Spyder sorted through a pile of mail on the floor by the front door. There was an official-looking letter from an insurance company. Inside was a settlement check for the burned studio. The check displayed a prominent one followed by many more zeroes than Spyder had ever seen on a document relating to him.
Later that night, he met Lulu for a drink at the Bardo Lounge and showed her the check.
"Rubi, give my future ex-husband a drink on me."
"Just make it a Coke, thanks."
"You feelin' sick?"
"Like I'm wearing borrowed skin."
"Me, too," Lulu said. "Still haven't heard anything from Shrike?"
Spyder shook his head. He pulled out a fresh pack of cigarettes, cracked the pack and removed one. Lulu stole one and lit Spyder's smoke with the pink Zippo she'd almost lost by the Bone Sea.