Butcher Bird_ A Novel of the Dominion

Fifty-Five


Table Scraps

He awoke on the floor of Lucifer's palace. Someone was standing over him. His eyes fluttered fully open and he recognized a woman's face. Tears were flowing from her empty sockets.
A name floated by and he said, "Lulu." She reached down and pulled the knife from his chest. He groaned.
"Alive?" said one of the Clerks.
"He is surprising," said the head Clerk.
Spyder leaned shakily against the cage that housed the book. Lulu spun on her heels and blasted the Black Clerks with round after round from the four-ten.
"Don't," said Spyder, reaching for her.
Each of Lulu's shots hit, but it was like shooting at scarecrows. The rounds went through the Clerks, as if there was nothing but straw to absorb the blasts.
The head Clerk snatched the shotgun from Lulu's hands and tossed it across the hall. "Your debt is past due. We will collect now. Your heart, I think?" he said.
"No," said Spyder. He got to his feet and stretched. "Damn. Sometimes dying is like a week in Vegas."
"Perhaps your head was hurt in your fall?" said the head Clerk. "We move from Earth to Heaven to Hell. Nowhere is closed to us. We swallow life and spit out creation. And you say we will not take this child's tiny life?"
Spyder went and stood close to the head Clerk, close enough to smell the rot in his borrowed flesh. "I know what you are. You aren't gods. You aren't even demons. Come on out of the closet, boys."
"We don't believe you."
"I know, but that doesn't mean dingo's balls. You're hollow. Puppets. I don't even think you're really alive."
"Are you mad? I think so."
"Don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain, that's the best you can come up with? It didn't work on the girl in the ruby slippers and it doesn't mean shit to me."
"Enough," said the Clerk with the ledger. He opened the book and withdrew something that looked like a thick, ragged tree limb. Dropping the ledger, he twisted the limb until a dozen ragged blades sprang from the shaft: killing thorns. The Clerk lunged, but Spyder side-stepped the blow, slipping behind his attacker. Slamming his arm around the Clerk's throat, Spyder held him so that the others could watch, as he whispered a single word into the Clerk's ear. When Spyder released him, the Clerk remained frozen in place, his deformed weapon still in the air.
"A trick? Yes," said the head Clerk.
The frozen Clerk began to shake. His mouth came open and he made a sound that was part wonder and part howl of pain. He shook until he was a blur, and the stitches holding his pale body together began to split. The wan internal light the Clerks always gave off burst through his seams as he flew to pieces. As each broken part of him hit the floor, it vanished.
The two remaining Clerks looked at Spyder.
"I said the true name of time and decay," he told them. "Do you even know what you are? You're the boy-toys of the Old Gods, the Dominions. You need used-up organs because you're trash on two legs. Golems. Animated table scraps. A word made you walk and a word can make you stop. I saw into the book. I learned the words."
"We are the engines of creation and destruction," said the head Clerk. "We balance the Spheres. We prune dead branches, taking life where it is not appreciated, such as in this sorry child?" The Clerk nodded at Lulu. "We pass her breath back into the universe for new souls."
"That was your burden. That's what you used to be. You balanced order and chaos, but something happened. The Dominions got inside of you. Instead of serving the universe, you started serving the Old Gods. You're their delivery boys. You grant wishes to the weak, the wounded and lost, getting your hooks in their souls so the Dominions can feed on them. There's nothing left of your old selves, when you balanced the universe. You're empty shells. This book was made to bring the Dominions back, but I'm not going to let you do that."
"Is someone going to kill someone soon?" Xero called from the stairs. "I was about to win a war."
"You were about to be eviscerated in front of your troops," said Lucifer.
"We know you. You are not a man, but a broken child?" said the head Clerk to Spyder. "You've seen and learned much lately, but you remain a drunken libertine who despises his own foolish weakness above all else. And your mortal body is trapped forever in Hell. But we will take pity and give you the gift of annihilation."
"I'm not afraid of you."
"But it is yourself you hate and yourself you must fight?" The head Clerk raised his hand to the palace entrance, where a figure was waiting.
Spyder saw his reflection. Sort of. A version of himself, but scarred like Lulu, crudely stitched together, like the Clerks themselves.
"He is your Shadow Brother, built from a broken memory you left in Berenice. All the blood you left in the street? A very powerful elixir. We sacrificed a few of the organs we'd collected," said the head Clerk. He turned to Lulu. "Child, do you recognize your eyes in another?"
"You got the jump on me in Berenice, bro," said the lacerated Spyder. "But I'm back and bad and ready for love."
"More golem trash," Spyder said to the Clerks. "You think I won't kill it this time?"
"We're counting on it. He's special. Not you in name and form, but you, literally. A strike against him is against yourself? Show him," the head Clerk told the golem.
Spyder watched his Shadow Brother pull the punch dagger from behind his back and slide it hard across his chest, carving a deep, crimson wound. Spyder felt something like a live wire being dragged over his skin. He looked down and saw that he had a chest wound identical to the golem's.
"You know the true names. Use them. Turn him to dust!" called Shrike.
"I can't. I might dust out, too," Spyder said.
Feinting and teasing, the golem came at him with the knife. Spyder backed up and started to draw Apollyon's blade from his belt, but stopped himself. It would be suicide.
The golem kept making little charges, then stabbed and sliced himself. Spyder twitched in pain and bled, feeling each twist of the blade. The golem circled him, splashing blood onto the marble floor and laughing.
"Why are you running? This is what you always wanted. Life's too hard for people like us. Let me fix it for you," said the golem.
Spyder backed up. Sweat flowed into his wounds, stinging him.
"Remember the Middle Way, little brother!" yelled Lucifer. "Would the Buddha fight himself?"
Spyder stopped in his tracks, his gaze flicking to Lucifer, then Shrike. He stretched his arms out wide and closed his eyes. The golem rushed him, jamming its knife deep into Spyder's chest. Gritting his teeth at the pain, Spyder wrapped his arms around the golem and held on. They were both bleeding and the floor was slippery with their blood. Spyder lifted the younger, smaller version of himself and spun on his heels, dropping his Shadow Brother onto the book. Gasping, Spyder twisted and threw all of his weight on his doppelg?nger, pinning him long enough to pull the black blade from his own belt and swing it once.
Both Spyder's and the golem's heads slid off their shoulders and rolled onto the floor.