Murder Of Angels Part 15

Alex frowns and pulls the silver flask out of his leather jacket. She gave it to him for his thirty-fifth birthday, almost three years ago now, back when the money was still something new, and it still felt good to give people expensive things. She screws the cap off, and there's rum inside; she hates rum and Alex knows it. Daria tips the mouth of the flask to her lips and tries to ignore the sugary taste.

Who really gives a s.h.i.t what it tastes like, anyway, as long as it makes her numb.

"I didn't think you liked rum."

"f.u.c.k you," she says, and takes another drink.

"I don't think there's time before the show," Alex says and smiles, but she doesn't laugh.

"I have a headache. I've had a splitting headache all G.o.dd.a.m.n day long."

"Do you have your pills?" he asks.

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"They make me sick to my stomach."

"I think that's why you're only supposed to take them with food, love."

She screws the cap back on the flask and tries to remember the last time she ate-a bite or two of the dry room-service toast Alex ordered her for breakfast, and a handful of salted almonds on the plane from San Francisco. There was Marvin's avocado and cheese sandwich, but she didn't even touch that.

"How long does it take to starve to death?"

"Don't know," Alex replies. "I've never tried."

"I think it takes a really long time. At least a month."

"Are you hungry, Dar?" he asks hopefully. "You want to pick something up? I could tell the driver to-"

"No," she says. "I was just wondering, that's all. I'll eat something after the show. I promise."

"I'm gonna hold you to that," he replies and slips the silver flask back into his jacket. "Don't you start thinking that I won't."

Daria rests her head against the window and takes another drag off her cigarette.

"This is where it happened," she says.

"This is where what happened?"

"Where Keith killed himself. It was down here somewhere. I don't remember the street name. h.e.l.l, I'm not sure if I ever knew the street name."

"Oh," Alex says and holds her tighter. His arms feel good around her, safe as houses, and she closes her eyes because she knows there's no danger of falling asleep, no danger of dreams. Her head hurts too much for sleep, her head and her stomach, and, besides, in another five or ten minutes they'll be back at the hotel.

"All I can remember is it was in some alley near Peachtree. He used his pocketknife."

"I know how it happened," Alex says, and she feels him pull away an inch or two, his embrace not as certain as it was a moment before.

"He was still alive when the cops found him. Just barely, 129.

but he was still breathing. They said he might have lived, if he hadn't taken the pills."

And he releases her then, slides across the leather up-holstery to his side of the wide backseat, and Daria opens her eyes. Her cigarette has burned down almost to the filter, and she puts it out in the little ashtray set into the back of the driver's seat, then lights another. Alex isn't looking at her, is busy pretending to watch the traffic, instead. The car crosses a short bridge, and a reflective green sign reads PEACHTREE CREEK. If there's actually a creek down there, Daria can't see it, nothing but impenetrable shadows pooled thick beneath glaring billboard lights.

"Jesus," she hisses. "Is everything in this city named after a f.u.c.king peach tree?"

"I couldn't tell you."

Daria turns and stares at Alex for a minute, a full minute at least, waiting for him to turn towards her, waiting for some sort of explanation for this sudden shift in his mood, but he keeps his eyes on all the other cars rushing past outside.

"Are you p.i.s.sed at me about something?" she asks, and he shakes his head, but still doesn't look at her.

"No, I'm not p.i.s.sed at you, Dar. I'll just never understand the irresistible gravity of a.s.sholes."

"What are you talking about now?"

"a.s.sholes. They suck you in, and you never get away again."

"You mean Keith?"

"Yeah, I mean Keith. I mean the way he's all you can think about, when the junky son of a b.i.t.c.h has been dead for more than a decade. How many times did you think about Niki today? How many times did you think maybe you should pick up the phone and see if she's okay?"

Daria presses a b.u.t.ton, and her window opens silently, letting in the chilly night air; it feels good against her face, feels clean even though it stinks of carbon monoxide and diesel fumes. The wind whips at her hair, invisible fingers to scrub away the filth that seems to cling to her no matter 130 how often she bathes. She flicks the cigarette out the open window, and the wind s.n.a.t.c.hes it.

"That means a whole h.e.l.l of lot," she says, "coming from the man who screws her wife every chance he gets."

Alex grins and laughs softly and drums the fingers of his right hand impatiently on his knee.

"One day I'm gonna learn to keep me mouth shut," he says. "One day, I'm gonna learn not to b.u.t.t heads with you."

"One day," she whispers and presses the b.u.t.ton on the door, closing the window again, shutting out the cold wind and the oily, mechanical smells of the autumn night.

WWR: As an artist, what would you say scares you most?

DP: Waking up in the morning. Because I know that one morning, sooner or later, I'm going to open my eyes and all this will have been a dream, and I'll be back there in Birmingham, or maybe Boulder, if I'm lucky, playing for pennies and working in coffeehouses. It'll all be gone, just like that (snaps fingers). And I'll be a failure again. That's what scares me the most.

Back in the hotel room, Daria sits cross-legged in the middle of the bed and listens to the messages that have backed up on her cell phone. A call from Jarod, asking if she'd like to make an appearance at a local nightclub after the show; a message from Lyle, her piano player, saying he was going to have a few drinks with an old friend before the show, but not to worry, he'll make soundcheck on time; a last minute request for an interview; another call from Jarod, to say maybe that particular nightclub wasn't such a good idea after all and he'd get back to her. All the usual c.r.a.p, the sizzling white noise before the storm, and she listens to each in its turn, then presses delete, watching the city through the wide gla.s.s balcony doors, the dizzying maze of buildings and 131.

streets glittering red and green and gold, arctic white and glacier blue.

Alex comes out of the bathroom and sits down on the love seat across from the bed. He yawns once, burps into his hand, then begins flipping through an Atlanta phone book.

"You think we can get some sushi delivered?" he asks, and she shrugs, but doesn't answer.

"I could f.u.c.king kill for spicy tuna rolls and unagi right about now."

"Call the concierge," Daria says and deletes a third message from Jarod Parris, telling her he's just learned that Michael Stipe's going to be at the show, and would she rather meet him before or afterwards.

"Those stupid f.u.c.kers never know where to get good sushi," Alex mutters. "They never even know where to get good pizza."

"Hey, Jarod says Michael Stipe's going to make the show tonight."

"No s.h.i.t," Alex says and goes back to flipping through the Yellow Pages. "Do I bow or do I curtsy?"

The cell phone beeps twice, then informs her that the final message was left at 5:17 P.M. There's a sudden, painful burst of static through the speaker, and Daria curses and holds the phone an inch or two farther away from her ear.

A moment later, a man begins to speak in a low and gravelly voice she doesn't recognize, a voice that's neither old nor young, a voice like cold fingers pressed against the back of her neck.

"You'll remember me," he says, "later on. You'll remember the night I tried to warn you about Spyder, the night in Birmingham when I told you Niki was in danger."

"What about Thai?" Alex asks. "Here's a Thai place that delivers-"

"Shut up a second," Daria hisses, and he does, sits staring at her, the phone book lying open in his lap.

"It's finally coming to an end," the man on the phone says, and there's more static before he continues. "She's 132 calling us all back to the start. She's already found Niki. I think she's shown her the way past the fire, across the Dog's Bridge."

"Who the h.e.l.l is it?" Alex asks, and she shakes her head and shushes him again.

"Listen to me, Daria Parker. It really doesn't matter if you don't believe or understand what I'm saying. You will.

Niki's on her way back to Cullom Street. She's received the mark. You've seen it, on her hand. Niki Ky is becoming the Hierophant, and she'll open the gates. She'll unleash the Dragon."

Alex closes the phone book and sets it aside.

"We have to be there to stop her. All of us have to be there to stop her. All the worlds are winding down. All the worlds are spinning to a stop. Find her, Daria, before the jackals do. Before I do. If I find her first, I have to kill her, and I've killed too many people already."

There's a last wave of static before the computerized recording asks whether she wants to press 7 to delete the message or 9 to save it.

"Christ, Dar, what's happening? Who is it?"

But she doesn't answer him; she shakes her head and presses 9. "Message saved," the computer says in its measured, androgynous voice. "You have no new messages."

If I find her first, I have to kill her . . .

Daria's unsteady fingers linger a moment above the key-pad, then she enters her home number, the ten digits that are all that stand between her and Niki, and waits for Marvin to answer the phone.

. . . I've killed too many people already.

On the fourth ring, the answering machine picks up, and a recording of Marvin's voice repeats the number she's just dialed, then asks that she please leave her name and number, the date and time. "Wait for the tone," Marvin says, "then speak your mind."

Daria hangs up and enters five digits, then a sixth, then presses cancel.

"G.o.d d.a.m.n it!" she growls and almost throws her Nokia 133.

at the hotel wall. "Alex, I can't even remember her number. I can't f.u.c.king remember the number for Niki's cell."

"Just hold on," he says, reaching for Daria's purse on the table beside the love seat. "You've got it in your PDA, right? So just calm down and tell me what the h.e.l.l's going on before you give me a heart attack."

"I don't know, " she replies, crying now, and she wipes furiously at her eyes with the back of her hand. "I think something's happened to Niki. I think something terrible's happened to Niki."

And there's a sound like the battered silence after thunder, or the moment before a train whistle blows, and she looks up at the balcony beyond the open drapes. A dead man wearing Keith Barry's face is standing on the other side of the gla.s.s, watching her. She can see that both his wrists are slashed, and he turns away and points at the sky.

Above the city lights, a falling star streaks across the darkness and is gone, a single white shard of Heaven torn loose and hurled burning to earth.

And Daria Parker shuts her eyes, and she falls, too.

C H A P T E R F I V E.

Pillars of Fire Almost twenty-four hours now since the hospital, and Niki isn't on a plane to Colorado, or Birmingham, or anywhere else. She's sitting in a hotel room-because she wouldn't go back to the house on Alamo Square-staring at the lights on the Bay Bridge, the glittering lights of Oakland laid out across the black water. Like stars come down to earth, like grounded, fallen things, and that's how she feels, sitting at the big window looking out, the television talking to itself so she won't feel so alone. It isn't working, because she is alone, even though Marvin's lying there on one of the twin beds behind her, pretending to watch a Jimmy Stewart movie on TV. She knows he's really watching her, can feel his eyes, his exhausted, nervous attention.

"Well, it's definitely infected," the doctor said and frowned, the doctor who finally saw her after Marvin found her unconscious on the restroom floor, after she'd crossed the sea of fire and lava on a bridge made of bones, after she'd talked to Spyder and then had to come back here, as if here and now could ever possibly matter again.

"You should have been more careful with those su-tures," the doctor said. "You fool around with something like this and you can wind up losing a hand. I've seen it happen."

Marvin glared at her, his sharpest, most merciless I-told- 135.

you-so glare, but he didn't say anything. He took a deep breath, instead, and let it out very slowly, the air whistling softly between his front teeth.

"So I'll live?" Niki asked, and the doctor nodded his head and reached for a syringe.

"You're very lucky, Ms. Ky," he said. "You don't seem to understand that. This could have been a lot worse."

Oh, don't you worry, she thought. It will be. It'll be a whole lot worse, and there's not anything you or anyone else can do.

Under the bright lights of the examination room, the hole in her right palm was the too-ripe color of strawberry preserves, and she didn't bother asking the doctor if he could see the tranparent bit of something wriggling about at the center. He'd have said so if he could.

"A few more hours and there's no telling how bad this might have been."

Marvin made a disgusted sort of noise and laughed.

"Do you know how long we sat in the waiting room?" he asked. "Did anyone tell you we were sitting out there two hours?"

The doctor apologized and mumbled something about staff shortages and working double shifts; Niki could tell from the tone in his voice that he spent a lot of time apologizing. He cleaned the wound and sewed it shut again, sewing shut the door to her soul, the door that the wriggling thing had opened, then gave her a stronger antibiotic and wrapped her hand in fresh white gauze.

It itches and aches, and she pretends not to think about it.

"I should try to reach her again," Marvin says.

"She doesn't want to talk to you, Marvin. Why do you think she's keeping her phone turned off?"

"She's got to turn it back on sometime. She's got to check her messages sooner or later."

Niki taps at the gla.s.s with the middle finger of her left hand and shakes her head. "She said that she'd call when she got to Atlanta. She promised me she'd call."

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"Daria's under a lot of stress, Niki. I don't know how she keeps going the way she does."

Niki taps the gla.s.s and watches the lights. There's a boat pa.s.sing beneath the bridge, something small, and she imagines that it might be a tugboat. She thinks about standing on the listing deck, the cold and salty wind stinging her face, tangling her hair, blowing her soul clean again. And if she looked up, the steel-girder belly of the bridge would be there high above her, a wide black stripe to hide the brilliant sky. In a moment, the boat will be clear of the bridge, chugging north past Treasure Island. She closes her eyes and tries not to hear the television.