Butcher Bird

TWENTY-FIVE Angel Fire

It was warm below deck, but Spyder shivered. He tucked Apollyon’s knife into his belt and pulled his jacket around himself.

Primo was pouring whiskey for everyone from a crystal decanter that looked like it was worth more than everything Spyder had ever owned put together.

“I thought we were on some kind of secret mission,” said Lulu. “Not much of a secret if every balloon jockey in Never Never Land shows up for the run.”

“Someone’s been ratting us out since day one. We got ambushed on the way to set up this job,” Spyder said, downing his whiskey in a gulp.

“Thanks for inviting me along, bro. This is tons better than being at home under the covers with Rubi.” Lulu, too, swallowed her whiskey and gave an exaggerated shake of her shoulders.

“Primo, did Madame Cinders tell anyone about trying to retrieve her book?” asked Shrike.

“Not that I know of.”

“How many people knew she had the book in the first place?”

“A great many. Every truly powerful practitioner of magic in all the Spheres knows about the book of true names.”

“Did Bel say why he wanted the book?”

“No, ma’am. In fact, I don’t think he knows what it was. He just kept offering more and more gold. I got the distinct impression that he was acting on behalf of someone else. Perhaps behind his family’s back.”

“Did he say that?” asked Spyder, pouring himself and Lulu more whiskey. Shrike and Primo weren’t drinking theirs, but, Spyder noted, seemed to take some comfort in simply holding the glasses.

“No. He was very evasive.”

“So, you’re just guessing.”

“I’m observing. I’m a traveler. We learn to read people or we don’t survive.”

“No offense, man,” said Spyder.

“None taken, sir.”

“What do we do now?” Spyder asked Shrike.

She finally drank her whiskey, in two long gulps. “Sail on,” she said. “Quickly. The sooner we reach the Kasla Mountains, the better.”

“The young prince is still attached to the bow,” said Primo.

“Get him off and get us out of here,” Shrike said.

“Right away.”

“So, the plan is we run real fast and hope they don’t pounce on us like a cat on a baby chick?” asked Lulu.

“There’s not much else we can do, bobbing along like a damned cork.”

“This balloon idea was bullshit.”

“A ship, a caravan or a magic pumpkin pulled by mice. It doesn’t matter. Someone was going to try and stop us from getting to the gates of Hell. I was just hoping we’d get more of a head start.”

Spyder was no longer gulping the whiskey, but sipping it. Still, its warmth wasn’t particularly comforting. Just when he felt like he was getting used to the high weirdness that had swallowed his life, that lost-at-sea feeling was coming on him again.

When Jenny was packing to leave and the warehouse had iced over into glacial silence, Spyder had rewatched what, in his opinion, was Orson Welles’s most peculiar movie, Mr. Arkadin. The flick was a puzzling mish-mash of Citizen Kane crossed with a baroque postwar crime melodrama sort of spot-welded onto the side. Mr. Arkadin was about an ambitious young smuggler who’s researching how the mysterious financier, Gregory Arkadin, made his first fortune. Arkadin himself ends up hiring the smuggler to finish the project. Apparently, he had amnesia and didn’t know his own early history. The story dragged the young ne’er-do-well through the junk and small-time gangster debris of postwar Europe, taking him from a flea circus to fleabag motels to mansions where drunks hinted at escapades in white slavery. As the bad guys who were murdering the people the ne’er-do-well had interviewed got closer and closer to him, Spyder didn’t understand why the guy didn’t just take his pocket full of expenses money, hop a train and head for the hills.

One thing about the movie had always stuck with Spyder, however: Arkadin’s amnesia story. Spyder wondered what that was like, waking up in some stranger’s clothes, afraid to touch anything because it might be a mirage, or a papier-mâché prop on a movie set or a museum artifact wired to an alarm. The cops would come running in and beat you, maybe kill you, before ever you had the chance to explain that you were simply lost. Drinking his whiskey, Spyder felt definitely lost, trapped in someone else’s life, imprisoned in some other loser’s skin.

The airship shook. Then shook again, knocking the whiskey decanter and teakettle onto the floor. Outside, the booming voice of the Christians’ talking head was back.

Spyder ran out onto the deck, followed by the others. The sacred heart airship had come much closer. At this distance, its size was shocking. The other ships, which had been keeping a discreet distance, were also closing in. When Spyder described the scene to Shrike, she yelled, “Primo, get us moving!”

“I can’t! The prince’s ship is still attached,” Primo yelled, struggling with the claw that still gripped the railing.

“Get that thing off us,” Shrike told Spyder. “Primo, get back to the navigation. When Spyder shakes us loose, take us low and away from here.”

Spyder kicked at the golden claw and managed to put a few cracks in the surface of the rail, but whatever the rail and line were made of, they were very tough. Lulu ran over and kicked along with Spyder, but both the claw and railing remained where they were. Then Lulu stopped what she was doing.

“Shrike, get away from the railing,” Lulu said.

Spyder turned to see what had caught Lulu’s attention. The Seraphic Brotherhood’s great burning heart was slowly opening, like the doors of a hangar. A burst of light and angels (or angel-shaped things) poured from the opening, flaming swords out before them. They scattered across the sky, some coming toward their ship, some toward the scorpion, while others headed for the more distant ships. The sound of cannon fire erupted across the sky as several of the more distant airships began to shoot at the angels and the Brotherhood’s heart.

Something scraped against Spyder’s side, and he remembered Apol­lyon’s knife. Pulling it from its scabbard, Spyder swung it down. The blade split the claw and sliced through the railing so easily that, at first, Spyder thought he’d missed. A thick black fluid pumped from the claw’s wrist as it and its tether fell away. The scorpion ship shuddered, perhaps in pain or perhaps in response to the angels slashing it with their burning blades.

Lulu was crouched with her back to the wall of the cabin, yelling, “Shit, shit, shit…” over and over. Shrike was at the far railing, slashing any angel that dared fly too low. Finally free of the claw, Primo had more control of the ship, but the angels overhead slashed at the steering lines. The deck swayed as the little man had less and less influence over the vessel. Spyder held onto the railing to keep from being thrown overboard. In the distance, a ship like a crystal skull was burning and a jeweled Garuda was sliced nearly in half before exploding.

The prince’s scorpion ship wasn’t faring much better. One of its enormous claws was falling away, on fire. At least they’re shooting back, Spyder thought, as something streaked across the sky between their ship and the scorpion. Angels fled from the flying thing. The ones that didn’t see it coming were sliced to pieces in its wake. Then the thing dived and was gone, only to emerge from under the far side of the deck, near Shrike. It flew right at and through the sacred heart, before circling back through the angel swarms, killing and maiming dozens as it swung back toward their ship.

Their seahorse was losing altitude fast. Spyder went forward to where Primo was struggling with the ship. Control lines and splintered sections of rigging lay at the little man’s feet. As Spyder reached him, he was wrestling with the few lines that still worked.

“Please take this,” Primo said. Spyder grabbed the line and was almost lifted off his feet by the weight. Primo had been holding it with one arm.

“Can you get us out of here?” Spyder asked.

“It’s doubtful. I’m just trying to make our crash as easy as possible.”

“What can I do?”

“Don’t let go of that line.” But it went slack in Spyder’s hand as more angels swooped down and slashed at the ropes. Shrike jumped to the base of the rigging and slashed the heads from two angels. Too late. The deck trembled and the whole vessel dropped thirty feet in a second, then seemed to catch itself. Primo strained against the remaining lines.

“It’s dead! Leave it,” someone shouted.

Hovering off the starboard bow was a small, flat black flier. Its tapered body was curved like a wasp’s, and its veined, quadruple wings were streaked with angel blood. The pilot had pushed back the canopy and was gesturing to them. “Get on board! You can’t stay aloft much longer!”

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” said Spyder.

“I’ll keep us steady and join you in a moment,” Primo said.

Angels, debris and flames were thick overhead. Spyder kept his head down as he ran. He grabbed Lulu by the arm and yelled, “Shrike, we’re leaving,” then pulled her to the flier at the bow of the ship. The tall pilot leaned from the cabin as Spyder helped Shrike over the rail. Taking her hand, the pilot pulled her inside. Lulu followed.

“Primo!” Spyder yelled. “Come on!” An angelic sword slashed at Spyder. He fell back, his arm scorched, his vision blurred by the flaming sword. When he could see straight again, Spyder saw Primo, swollen to his fighting size, spikes slick with blood. He was burned and bleeding; dead angels lay all around him. An angel in Primo’s grip fought weakly as he strangled it. Another angel dropped down from the overhead lines, slicing off Primo’s right arm. The little man screamed. Spyder, Apollyon’s knife out, felt the blade nick a rib as he buried it in the chest of the angel who’d cut Primo. The little man picked up his severed arm, then with Spyder’s help, they stumbled to the black flier, grabbing on as the seahorse groaned and slid toward the ocean in flames.

Spyder pushed into the flier’s cramped cabin, but Primo, in his exaggerated fighting form, was too big to fit through the opening. He crouched on the wing and held onto the canopy with his good arm as the flier dropped below the battle. And kept dropping.

“We’re too heavy,” said the pilot.

“There’s land ahead,” Primo yelled.

Through the breaking clouds, an island was spread out in the cold sea. The pilot struggled with the controls, circling toward a stretch of open beach. Spyder held onto Primo as best he could, while Lulu huddled against Shrike. The pilot yelled something, but all Spyder could hear was the white-noise hiss of the wind as it shrieked into the cabin. The beach came up fast. The pilot pulled back on the wheel. They bounced once and there was a snapping sound as the wings came off, taking Primo with them. The flier nosed down and dug into the sand and that was the last thing Spyder remembered for what felt like a very long time.