Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [73]
But I finished untying the knot. I always do. I always have to see for myself just how bad things can be.
As the string fell away I put my thumbs under the uppermost flaps, aware of Howie’s shallow breaths. I realized belatedly that I’d brought a lot of shit into his life lately and resolved to let him know that I was grateful for him putting up with it, just as soon as I’d gotten through this. I took a deep breath and flipped up the lip of the box.
Something shot out of the hole and straight up to the ceiling, a squawking explosion of movement and odor that sent me backward in shock. Howie muttered “Fuck” quietly and took a step backward of his own. The object had ricocheted moistly off the ceiling and crashed back down again before I’d had a chance to even begin working out what it was. When it hit the surface of the desk it stopped, turned what I realized was its head, and stared at me. After I’d stopped blinking in surprise, I stared cautiously back at it, half-expecting it to lunge for me.
It was a bird, of a kind. A bird or a cat, either way. It was featherless, but stood a foot tall on spindly jointed legs; its face was avian but—like the body—fat and dotted with patchy, molting orange fur. Two vestigial wings poked out of its sides at right angles, looking as if they had been unceremoniously amputated with scissors and then recauterized. Most of the creature’s skin was visible, an unhealthy white mess that appeared to be weeping fluid. The whole body heaved in and out as it sat, as if laboring for breath, and it gave off a smell of recent decay—as if fresh-minted for death. The eyes focused on me, making me instantly, and its beak opened. The hole this revealed looked less like a mouth than a wound, and the eyes, though vicious, were faltering.
“What the fuck is that?” Howie whispered.
“You got me,” I said, though I had my suspicions. The bird tried to take a step toward us, but the effort caused one of its legs to break. The top joint teetered in its socket and then popped out. The creature flopped onto its side. The skin over the joint tore like an overripe fruit, releasing a gout of matter that resembled nothing so much as a heavy period mixed with sour cream.
It was not, all in all, a very beautiful creature.
“He knows,” said a voice behind us, with a chuckle, and I sighed inwardly without turning.
“Who is that?” I asked Howie, knowing I’d walked into a trap.
“I’m sorry, Jack,” he replied, voice breaking. “He said he’d kill me if I didn’t, and he said he wouldn’t kill you if I did.”
I turned to see a man standing behind us in the doorway. It was the man from the bar the previous night, the guy into whose head I’d placed a bullet. A man, in short, who really shouldn’t be standing there with a gun pointing at my head.
“I lied,” he said. “Get your hands up.”
I raised them, noticing that his right temple bore faint traces of an entrance wound. Reassuring, because for a moment I’d considered the possibility that I’d lost my mind. In a metaphoric sense, rather than in the more physical manner which now seemed to be inevitable.
“Who are you?” I asked him, surprised at the level-ness of my own voice. Howie stared at me from the sidelines, face awash with guilt.
“Friend of Yhandim’s,” the man said, grinning his trademark grin. “But you know that. We met before.”
“Why didn’t he come himself?”
“’Cos that’s the whole point, Mr. Man. Yhandim be at your lady friend’s now, picking up what we came for.”
The shock must have showed on my face, because his grin broadened. The movement caused a drop of lymph to ooze out of the wound in his head and run slowly down his cheek. “We got you out the way first with the help of Mr. Howie here, just to make sure the mission ran smooth. You been known to get in the way.”
“Very clever,” I said. “What