Butcher Bird

Lulu grabbed Spyder and pulled him and Shrike to their feet. "Let's move. We're attracting a crowd. More of those hangin' around dead folks."

Spyder didn't need her to tell him. He could hear them coming, crunching lightly across the beach toward them. Their voices were like whispers drifting through a long ventilation duct-flat, distant and insistent. Spyder stumbled and went down on one knee, cutting his hands on the sharp shells. Lulu and Shrike started to help him up, but other hands were there, pulling him away, purring and cooing and desperate.

"Blood. He's alive!"

"Please wizard, do me a service in Hell and I'll tell you where to find a great treasure back on earth:"

"Take my place in the Inferno and your heirs will rule a vast and wealthy kingdom!"

"So pretty. The red. Life."

"Save me, my lord. I am a virtuous woman:"

There were so many lost souls on this side of the Bone Sea, and they were much more aggressive than the souls who'd refused to make the crossing. None had much individual strength, but their combined desperation had Spyder pinned within their massed presence. It was like being slowly crushed under a ton of feathers. Spyder felt his leather jacket rip and his shirt come apart. The souls gasped and fell back.

"His skin marks:"

"L'homme peint:"

"A warrior:"

Their hands were on Spyder's back, and running over his arms and face. So many of them, he couldn't breathe. They pulled his hair and clawed at his cheeks. He tried to push them away, but it was like pushing at air. Fingers slipped under his blindfold and into his eyes. The souls' fingertips glowed inside his eyeballs like eerie deep-sea creatures.

"Get back!" Spyder yelled.

The weight of the souls instantly left his body-but a second later a hand swept across his face. Among the faint gasps and wails, Spyder heard the distinct sound of laughter. He turned toward it and was shoved down hard onto his back. The fall knocked the wind out of him and Spyder slowly opened his eyes. It took his mind a few seconds to register that the streaks of gray and white he saw weren't ghostly fingers in his eyes but the bone beach. When his eyes focused, the first thing he saw was the dim, colorless souls crowded around him, then Hell's rough, black cavern walls. They seemed to go up forever.

"Back off!" Spyder screamed as he scrambled to his feet. He heard the sound of laughter again and spun toward the sound, pulling Apollyon's blade from his belt. When the sound came again, Spyder swung the blade at the nearest specter, a big man dressed in the leather and iron of an ancient Roman soldier. The knife passed through the soul as if through smoke, but the knife tore him as it went. The soul clutched at the bloodless wound, trying to hold himself together. Too late. He split apart completely, like fraying cloth, and vanished with a breathy sigh. The remaining souls scattered down the beach.

Off to his left, Spyder saw Lulu, laid out on her back, her mouth open in a kind of silent scream. A crowd of souls had her pinned to the ground and seemed to be examining her wounded body. Dead fingers probed her eye sockets and surgical scars. Spyder slashed through the crowd, scattering terrified souls, and pulled Lulu up. She buried her face in his chest, but didn't make a sound. She just clung to him and shook.

Further down the beach, Shrike was holding another group of souls at bay with her sword. She'd used her magic to cover the blade in fire, but the gesture wasn't really stopping the souls, just distracting them. Spyder got Lulu to her feet and pulled her over to Shrike. Some of the group must have seen him dispatch the other souls, because they ran away as he got close.

"Shrike, it's me," Spyder called, and she lowered her blade.

"Lulu?" she asked.

"She's here with me. She's pretty shaken up."

"How did you find me?" Shrike's hands were up searching for him. "You can see me?"

"Yeah."

Shrike found Spyder's face with her hands and felt for where the blindfold should be. When she didn't find it, Shrike sagged against Spyder and kissed him lightly on the lips.

"Damn," she said.

"That pretty much covers it."

"Ooo, a little group action. I like that," came a hissing voice. "Or is this some platonic expression of relief? What a bore. Lust is all that's amusing about talking meat. The faces you make and the all squishing sounds."

Spyder lunged with the Hell blade, jamming it under the chin of the demon staring at them from atop a black obsidian boulder.

"Don't hurt me with that thing!" it cried.