Blind Shrike

"When I've bled you dry, I'll bring you back here and make you my concubine. I'll rape you in Hell forever."

Lucifer, back in his more presentable angelic form, staggered to his feet. "Alizarin," he said and reached out his hand. Shrike grabbed Lucifer and pulled him toward her, hard, throwing herself onto the floor.

Spyder ran to them, covering Shrike's body with his own. Xero screamed. Spyder turned and saw the general pushing madly at Lucifer's body. The tip of Apollyon's blade, which was protruding from Lucifer's belly, had buried itself in Xero's mid-section when Shrike had pulled Lucifer down. The general shrieked as the blade cooked him. Lucifer grabbed the man, bearhugging him, driving the knife in deeper. Their bodies glowed red. Xero's blackened lips curled back like burning paper.

The general was suddenly very still. Lucifer pushed free and backhanded Xero across the face. The fried mortal soul crumbled, a burned-out husk.

Spyder went to Lucifer and pulled the blade from his back.

"I thought that knife killed demons," he said.

"You're not any fool and I'm not any demon," said -Lucifer, falling back against the railing.

Spyder snatched the tunic from Xero's corpse and went to Shrike. Holding her upright, Spyder pressed the cloth over the wound in her chest. Lulu, exhausted, collapsed near Lucifer. Across Hell, the wall finally came down and the Dominions poured through. They were so alien and so massed together, shouldering their way from their exile in chaos, that, later, no one there, mortal or angel, could describe what exactly came into this universe through the ancient breech in time and space. There were shaggy heads and arms that were lined with eyes, reptile wings, tentacles, cocks with teeth, legs like a bird's and legs like machines. Emerald flesh, exposed bones, metal talons, fire, wind and ice.

The Dominions circled the roof of Hell once, twice and on the third pass, shot up together, blasting through and out into the night sky. Gazing up through the glass dome atop Lucifer's palace, Spyder saw familiar constellations. Orion. The Big Dipper. It was Earth. It was home.

Fifty Seven

Jesus Christ and Bruce Lee

"So Spyder, what was the deal with your head back there? 'Cause if you're a zombie, I got dibs on Shrike," said Lulu.

"Ask your boyfriend what happened. He's the one who gave me the idea," said Spyder. He turned to Lucifer. The Prince of Hell sat with his elbows on his knees, his fingers steepled, staring out at his ruined kingdom. "How'd you know that my dying would kill the golem, but not me?"

"I guessed," Lucifer said. "You had a fifty-fifty shot."

"Something happened when I got sucked into the book. I was with the Dominions for a second, I think. Some of their life or whatever keeps them going rubbed off on me."

"I think you're right," said Shrike. "Look." She moved the cloth from where Spyder had been holding it on her chest. The wound was closed.

"Come here," Spyder said to Lulu.

"Why? I was kidding about macking on your girl."

"Sure you were. Come on down here."

Lulu came down the stairs and sat next to Spyder.

He took both her hands, saying, "I'm not sure what I'm doing, so just close your eyes and relax."

"It's prom night all over again."

The palace was a disaster. The walls were webbed with cracks big enough to put a fist in. Part of the dome had collapsed. Hell proper was in sad shape, too. Millions of tons of rock had come crashing down when the Dominions blasted their way out of the place. Most of Lucifer's new Heaven and much of Pandemonium lay in ruins. The group had all remained on the stairs throughout this harrowing of Hell. Exhausted, bleeding, they were way down the road past both fear and surprise, stalled between numbness and wonder. None of them even blinked when Shrike's father disappeared. They chose to see it as a sign of release, that with Xero's passing the curse that held the old man's spirit in the underworld had been broken.

"That fool's curses were as thin and hollow as his head when I cracked it," Lucifer had said.

"When you get through with my hands let me know, okay?" Lulu asked. "I've got a nuclear meltdown nose itch."

"I think we're about done here," Spyder said.

"Dude, what did you do to me? I feel all hot and strange."

"Go look."

She stepped over the fallen masonry and broken glass, navigating her way across the buckled floor to Lucifer's curiosity cabinets. None of them had broken, but they lay at crazy angles against the walls and floor. The Chaos cabinet was still standing in its original spot. Lulu went to it and checked herself in the glass. Her reflection stared back with the swirling nothingness behind it.

"It's me," she said. "I look like me again."

"Eyes and skin and everything. Did I get it all right?"

"You tricked me out like an old Chevy. For what? The Clerks still own me. They'll just come and take these eyes, too."

"Lulu, the Clerks are gone. At least the ones who snagged you. If any others ever show up, I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow `em all down."

Lulu leaned her head on the cabinet, holding her belly. "Why do I feel like this?"

"You were empty. They were making you into them. That's what they do. You're alive again. Being alive hurts," said Spyder. "And you haven't had a stomach in a couple of years. That one's probably hungry."

"I remember hungry."

"You okay?"

Lulu nodded. "Yeah."

"I did the right thing, didn't I?"

Spyder couldn't see Lulu's face. Turning, she walked back to the stairs, staring at her hands.

"Yeah, you did good. It's just a lot to get hold of. I didn't realize how much they'd taken."

"For what it's worth, I know how you feel," said Shrike. "I haven't seen colors in so long. I remember them all, but I can't quite recall which is red and which is blue. It's a little overwhelming."

"That's one word for it."

"Sit with me," Shrike said. Lulu came over the wreckage and curled up with her head in Shrike's lap.

"I'd fuck a duck for a cigarette right now," Lulu said.

Lucifer was inspecting his palace. He picked up a couple of fragments of cherry-colored glass that had fallen from the dome. Holding them over his eyes, he peered up through the hole in the roof of Hell.

"Maybe we should put a skylight up there," he said. "I miss the stars sometimes."

"Sorry for busting up the place," said Spyder.

"Sorry for tricking you into the bowels of Hell."

"I was thinking about taking some time off anyway."

Lucifer smiled to himself. "This is all an enormous joke, you now. I manipulated you, but the universe slipped a good one past me."

"By saying `universe' you're trying not to say `God'?"

"Perhaps," said Lucifer. "I had to go to talking meat- sorry, mortals-to save my kingdom. Not only did you have the power to save it, but to destroy it, too. Maybe pride really is my sin. The Painted Man was right in front of me this whole time, and I never even saw you coming."

"Hell, you brought him here," said Lulu.

"Thank you. I'd almost forgotten that little detail." Lucifer picked up a gilded candle sconce, looked around and dropped it again. Going to his curiosities, he began picking up the cabinets that had fallen over. Spyder went to help him.

"I don't know about the Painted Man thing," Spyder said as they turned the wooden Fabergé egg case upright. The gleaming eggs lay in a thousand pieces on the bottom of the velvet-lined cabinet, bejeweled junk. "I don't exactly feel like Jesus Christ or Bruce Lee."

"Good. That's my job," Lucifer said.

"What happens now?" asked Shrike.

Lucifer pulled the cabinet with John the Baptist's heart from where it was leaning precariously against the wall, setting it flat on the floor. Shifting it inch by inch, he got it aligned exactly where he wanted it. Spyder helped him slide the crown of thorns cabinet until it was just so.