Blind Shrike | Page 2

of magic armor. His
tattoos, even the stupid ones, made him feel bullet-proof.
He was one of those lanky Texas boys you see working on cars in
oil-stained driveways, a cooler full of Coors, his only concession to the
summer heat. A perpetually messy mop of black hair and long arms
covered in grease working on the transmission of a vintage Mustang of
questionable ownership.
"Split open, your organs torn out with hooks and replaced with red hot
coals," he said.
Lulu leaned in close. "Strapped to the front of a burning boat and
driven through a mile and a half of electrified razor wire in a Tabasco
sauce hurricane."
They both broke up in drunken laughter, spitting and slamming their
hands on the bar.
"You're both wrong," said a woman sitting to Spyder's right. He and
Lulu turned to look at the woman. She was small, with fine features
and the smooth grace of a dancer. The woman was drinking red wine
and was wearing sunglasses. In her right hand she held a white cane,
the sort used by the blind.
Lulu called over Spyder's shoulder, "Okay Stevie Wonder, what's the
worst way to die?"

The woman finished her wine and stood up. "To be betrayed by the one
you love."
She turned on her heels and swinging her cane in small arcs in front of
her, pushed her way through the crowd and out of the bar.
Spyder watched the door as it closed behind the woman. Lulu took a
drag off her Marlboro. "Stupid bitch," she said and dropped the butt
into the woman's empty wine glass.
Two
The Great Divide
The Earth was born in a furnace. When the world grew strong enough,
it crawled into the dark void to cool and heal itself. Soon, however, it
grew too cold and shivered with ice.
The Earth looked around and found a small star to warm it up.
Deciding it liked the neighborhood and the climate, there the Earth
stayed.
Life appeared across the Earth, splashed in the water and glided on
thermals through the sky. It didn't take life long to grow so abundant
that it began preying on itself.
Crows, bats and eagles, the lords of the air, scooped up fish from the
seas and dumped them in the desert until the dry lands were piled high
with their bones. These carcasses became the Earth's first mountains.
Other animals learned to climb the trees and attack the birds as they
hunted for food. The land dwellers decorated the bare trees with the
birds' feathers and painted the ground with their blood. The gray earth
suddenly had color.
Every creature who lived in the sea--the fish, the whales, the seals, the
crabs, the squids and the rays--met in the South Seas and beat their fins,
claws and tentacles, and raised an enormous tidal wave. The wall of

water shot across the earth, drowning millions of the land and air
beasts. This is how the many rivers and oceans of the world were born.
After an eon or two of mass murder, when the surface of the Earth was
a stinking slaughter house, the lords of the different realms of life met
at the ancient human city of Thulamela to see if they could end the
butchery. This wasn't all that simple, since the many different creatures
of the Earth were going to have to live on the same planet, but give
each other plenty of room.
They divided the world into three Spheres, with each Sphere being
invisible and out of the reach of the others. Humans and the most
numerous animals of the land, sea and air were given one Sphere.
A second Sphere was home to the rarest creatures--the phoenix, selkies,
vampires, barbegazi, corrigans, tengus, lamias, rompos, sylphs,
gorgons, volkhs, wyverns, trolls and other exotic beasts.
The last realm was left to the most glorious and dangerous inhabitants
of the planet: angels and demons.
So it was that each of these groups lived and grew old and died in its
own Sphere, inhabiting the same time and space as all the other
Spheres, but rarely touching--unless a creature was powerful or clever
enough to learn the spells of crossing over. Because the town meeting
that divided the world had taken place in a human city, cities became
the places where the creatures who moved from Sphere to Sphere
would meet up to talk, joke, eat, exchange spells and news, make love
or commit the occasional genocide.
Over the next few thousand centuries, the creatures who dwelled in the
second and third Spheres struck a kind of dŽente. Unfortunately for the
beasts of in the first Sphere (which included ninety-nine percent of
humanity), they forgot about the other Spheres completely and only
glimpsed them in their dreams.