Murder Of Angels Part 37

"Your friend has a sort of thoughtless courage, Hierophant. But it won't save him, if he speaks again."

Niki turns to Scarborough and holds a finger across her lips, shushing him, and he looks up long enough to roll his eyes at her.

"The Weaver can't die, not so long as she's here," the red witch says. "Only in the world where her existence began may it be undone. Would that it were otherwise. Our a.s.sas-sins would have killed her years ago."

"But if I don't have this philtre, then I can't do what she wants me to do. I'm useless to her."

336.

"No, you are still part of her key, and you still have a choice to make," and the women in the temple begin to talk among themselves again, louder than before. Niki looks to Scarborough, but he's turned his back on her.

"You must understand what lies before you," the red witch says, and when Niki looks again, the triangular fire pit has vanished completely, and in its place is a circular table made from the same gray stone as the rest of the temple. The top of it is a sort of three-dimensional map, rugged mountain ranges and deep river valleys and oceans chis-eled from the rock and painted so realistically she almost believes that if she reached out and touched an ocean her hand would come back salty and wet.

"This is our world, Hierophant," Pikabo Kenzia says, and Niki realizes that the table's much more than just a map, that it's a globe, a globe for an impossible hemispher-ical world. She listens while the witch points out the craggy rim of the Palisades stretching the entire circ.u.mference of the globe and shows Niki the catwalk road through the mists to Padnee. At intervals, the globe is divided into bands, each one narrower than the one before it, bands which make Niki think of the nested circles of Dante's Inferno. And she understands that, unlike the equator or the Tropic of Capricorn, these divisions are not imaginary.

"The wheels turn," Pikabo Kenzia says, and the globe seems to respond to her voice, so that each circle begins moving to the raw sc.r.a.ping of stone ground against stone.

The outermost band, which includes the Palisades and the wide blue ocean called the Outer Main, turns clockwise, and the next band in turns counterclockwise, and the next clockwise, and so on to the still center of the globe. The hub, Niki thinks, recalling what the red witch has said, and she recognizes the Dog's Bridge spanning a blistering sea of molten lava.

"Nesmia, where we are, is here," Pikabo tells her and points at the globe, "well inside the third wheel, beside the river Yarin. Even by the Serpent's Road, it's a long journey to the halls of the Dragon."

337.

"It doesn't matter how far it is," Niki replies. "I'm not going there, not if what you've told me about Spyder is true-"

"You're still not listening to me, Hierophant. Whether you go or not, she will open the portal."

"How can you know that?"

"Because I have seen the things she's done. We have nursed the victims of her war-" and Pikabo Kenzia's eyes flash with some cold, inner fire, and she spreads her arms wide to include all the women in the chamber. "But first she will come looking for you. And we can't stand against her."

"And you think I can," Niki says doubtfully, looking at the tortured maze of canyons and volcanoes at the center of the globe.

"I'm saying that you have a choice. There is a way that you can defeat her, Nicolan Ky," and the sound of her name from the red witch's lips makes Niki look up from the table's lunatic geography. All the women along the walls have fallen silent again, and there are dark and b.l.o.o.d.y tears streaking Pikabo Kenzia's cheeks.

Daria stands alone in the night filling up the house and listens to the wind whistling through the trees, across tar-paper shingles, and around the eaves and sagging, leaf-gorged gutters.

She left the rental car in the Tutwiler's parking lot and took a taxi back to Cullom Street. An old Ford station wagon painted lemon yellow for a taxi, and the burly Mexican behind the wheel mumbled things in Spanish that she couldn't understand. After the dream, after she awakened in the dark hotel room and sat for almost an hour, smoking and listening to the comforting rhythm of Alex sleeping beside her, she got dressed as quietly as she could and managed to slip out without waking him.

She left a note on her pillow, hastily scribbled on a sheet of hotel stationary. "I love you," she wrote, "and I will come back, if I can." There wasn't anything else she could 338 think of to say, or at least nothing she had the time to write down, and so she decided that would have to do.

She had the Mexican drive her to an all-night Western Supermarket on Highland Avenue, where she bought another pack of Marlboro Reds, a bottle of cheap Merlot, and a small flashlight. The flashlight was an afterthought, and she finished half the bottle of wine before they reached the abandoned house at the end of the street. Standing at the edge of the driveway, she paid the driver and tipped him ten bucks; he grunted something grateful in Spanish and then drove away. It didn't surprise her when she found the front door standing open.

The wind sounds like voices, a lot more like voices than it sounds like wind, dozens of lost children muttering to themselves all at once. And she wonders again if coming here was suicide, if she's come here to die and maybe she's not so different from Niki after all.

All these empty, dusty rooms, without a single stick of furniture, devoid of life or even the trappings of life: a foyer and living room, the dining room and kitchen, a short hallway connecting the bathroom and two bedrooms, the one that had been Spyder's when she lived alone, and the one that she and Niki shared after Niki had moved in. And the trapdoor concealing the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs. For a long time, Daria has stood watching that varnished rectangle of pine, a bra.s.s handle bolted at one end, wondering what, if anything, is waiting for her down there.

She switches on the flashlight and plays it slowly across the trapdoor. There are handprints in the thick dust, and she supposes some of them must belong to the two cops.

She finishes the bottle of Merlot and sets it on the floor near the wall. The wine has left a gentle, welcomed buzz inside her, and a sc.r.a.p of courage, though she knows it's only the smallest fraction of what she'll need.

If anyone's around, she thinks, they can hear me. If anyone's here, they must know I'm here, too.

But she doesn't call out, because she isn't that brave, not 339.

half that drunk. She eyes the empty bottle, wishing she'd bought two.

When the b.i.t.c.h is ready for me, when she wants this game to end, the b.i.t.c.h can come find me, and Daria goes to the smaller bedroom, the one that had been Spyder's before Niki came to live with her, and she sits in a corner, facing the door. She switches off the flashlight, because she isn't sure how long the batteries will last, and she'd rather not have to confront the bas.e.m.e.nt without it. Outside, the sky is cloudy, so no moon through the bare windows, and only a little streetlight reaches her through the backyard gone wild and choked with kudzu vines.

She wonders if Alex is still asleep, or if he awoke, needing to take a p.i.s.s, and found himself alone. If he found her note, and maybe he's on his way right now, speeding through the deserted Birmingham streets in the rented Honda. She switches on the flashlight long enough to read her wrist.w.a.tch and then switches it off again. Almost four A.M., and she's starting to think the dream was only a dream, that the call in the airport was only a prank, and there's no one named Archer Day. In a few hours, the sun will rise, and that will be the end of it, and she can go home.

Her a.s.s is beginning to go to sleep, the floor's so cold, so G.o.dd.a.m.ned hard, and so she shifts her weight, lifting herself up with both hands just long enough to restore blood flow. A floorboard beneath her left hand pops loudly, and she almost loses her balance and topples over.

Outside, there's a sound like a dog rooting about in the bushes, a dog snuffling along the edge of the house, and Daria sits very still listening to it and looking at the loose board and wondering why her heart is beating so fast.

Something Niki told her on the way to Boulder, before they stopped talking about Spyder Baxter, something that she'd almost forgotten. That Spyder sealed off this room after Robin broke in to steal the dream catcher.

There were things in there, Niki said, secrets, parts of herself no one else was ever meant to see.

340.

Outside, the snuffling sounds stop, and Daria hears something trotting away through the tall brown weeds.

She nailed sheets of plywood over the door and filled the cracks with epoxy. She didn't ever want anyone going in that room again.

Daria pries away the loose board, tearing spiderweb veils and disturbing a large black beetle that makes an angry, clicking noise and races away across the floor. She turns on her flashlight again and shines it into the narrow s.p.a.ce the slat concealed.

She even boarded up all the windows. And then she hung that f.u.c.king dream catcher on the door, like a warning, and Daria remembers the way that Niki said "dream catcher,"

like someone uttering the name of a devil or the single most potent word in a curse. And the beam of the flashlight shows her more spiderwebs and dust, another black beetle with sharp, pinching jaws, and the warped and mildewed wedge of an old spiral-bound notebook.

Parts of herself no one else was ever meant to see, Daria thinks in Niki's voice, as she takes the notebook from the hole in the floor. The cover's in bad shape, but she can tell that there was once a picture of the Pink Panther printed on it. She lays it on the floor and opens it carefully, but a lot of the pages are stuck together, and mold and insects have eaten away most of whatever was once written there.

A child's handwriting, gray words printed neatly between blue lines, and at the top of the first page Daria can make out "My Stories by Lila Baxter" and in the upper right-hand corner, "August 7, 1976."

"My G.o.d," Daria whispers and slowly turns another page, imagining all the summers and winters this notebook has lain here in the darkness, how many years must have pa.s.sed since the last time Spyder put it back into the hole and covered her hiding place with that loose board. Maybe not since she was a child, and Daria does the math in her head, trying to guess how old Spyder might have been in 1976.

There's page after page after page of her handwriting, the paper filled from top to bottom. Most of it's too far gone to 341.

read, just bits and pieces of fairy tales, from what Daria can see, a hash of make-believe names, magical amulets and trolls and witches.

She turns another page, then has to set the flashlight down so she can tease it free from the page before it, and the two separate with a dry crackling and a puff of dust and mold spores. There's very little writing on this page, but there's a drawing made in colored pencils. Daria picks the flashlight up again, revealing a sketch of a beautiful, dark-skinned woman holding some sort of glowing sphere in her hands. On her shoulder is a white bird with scarlet eyes, and behind her are the forms of other women, all dressed in long red robes. Over it all, a fearsome dragon hovers, its bat-wings spread wide against a blazing sky. At the very bottom of the page is a single line of text: The Hierophant Leading the Red Witches into Battle.

"Oh Jesus," Daria whispers, "Jesus f.u.c.king Christ," sudden understanding like fire behind her eyes, and she reaches into the pocket of her leather jacket, and her fingertips brush the ball bearing from the truck stop.

And then there are footsteps in the hallway, and when Daria looks up from the notebook, a lean and haggard woman is standing in the doorway, pointing a pistol at her.

The woman's face and clothes are streaked with dirt and what appears to be dried blood.

"The wheels do turn," she says and smiles a weary, sleepy smile. "They sure as h.e.l.l got that part right."

C H A P T E R E L E V E N.

Wishfire Niki bends over the globe, studying the sculpted forests and marshes and ancient battlegrounds, the hills and lakes, the varicose network of roads and rivers; rotating circles held within rotating circles, like the vision of Ezekiel. She's counted the circles several times and is certain that there are only twelve, beginning at the Palisades and moving inward to the Dragon's hub. And maybe twelve means something, something that she should understand, and if she did, then everything could go another way. But she doesn't understand, if there's even anything there beyond the random languages of this cosmos.

All the red witches have gone now, except Pikabo Kenzia. She wanted Scarborough sent away, because men are not permitted in the towers, but Niki insisted that he stay.

"He stays, or I go with him," she said, and Pikabo didn't argue. "And I'll need to ask him questions," Niki added, "so you'll have to let him speak."

"Our rules are old," Pikabo Kenzia protested. "They were handed down to us by the thralls of Dezyin before the first stones were laid at Yarin."

"Is that thing there supposed to be Dezyin?" Niki asked her and pointed at the idol, and the red witch nodded her head. "Well, no disrespect, but unless Dezyin's going to come to life and deal with this c.r.a.p himself, Scarborough 343.

stays, and he gets to talk whenever I need him to. No, whenever he feels like it."

And once again, Pikabo Kenzia relented, but Niki could see there was a limit to her ability to make concessions and perhaps it had been reached.

Niki traces the Serpent's Road with the index finger of her good hand and tries not to notice the way the wound in her right has begun to throb again. The road starts at the edge of a line of steep, wooded hills not far from Nesmia Shar, but that would still leave nine bands she'd have to cross before reaching the hub.

"It would take you months," Pikabo Kenzia said when Niki asked, "if the bridges were all with you. If they were against you, it might require years, and do not forget, Hierophant, the jackals are abroad, and the angels, who hold their reins. You'd never make it."

Niki looks over at Scarborough, who's sitting on the floor a few feet away. "What do you know about numbers?" she asks him.

"You mean like mathematics?"

"No, I mean like numerology."

"A little. More than you might think."

"Then impress me. Tell what twelve means."

Scarborough frowns and makes a derisive, snorting noise. "Vietnam, the lady's already told you, there's only one way to get your a.s.s from here to there quickly and in one piece. You're grasping at straws-"

"Does twelve mean anything?"

Scarborough Pentecost shrugs and stares up at the strips of fabric suspended overhead. "Twelve means lots of things, in our world. It's the zodiac, twelve signs on the house cusps. There are twelve members of the Dalai Lama's council, and Jesus and Mithra both had twelve apostles. The Hebrews say there are twelve fruits growing on the Tree of Life and twelve gates into the Heavenly City. Herodotus wrote that there were twelve G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses on Olympus. Do you want me to keep going, or are you starting to get the picture? And anyway, you've got 344 thirteen levels there, not twelve. You have to count the hub."

"Then what does thirteen mean?"

But this time Scarborough only laughs at her and shakes his head.

"I have shown you the only way," Pikabo Kenzia says firmly. "Soon, the Weaver will have discovered where you are, and once she arrives-"

"There has to be another way," Niki mutters and goes back to the map, as if she could somehow close the distance between the third band and the hub by force of will alone. "I won't accept that someone has to die to get me there. You've already killed one woman, to get me here."

"There is no other way," the red witch replies, "not in the time remaining. And if the Weaver finds you, if the portal is opened, the number of people who will die because of you is beyond reckoning."

"Why don't you just f.u.c.king do it?" Scarborough asks the red witch, but she doesn't respond, stands glaring down at him, and the look on her face like she would kill him this very minute if she could. "You didn't need her permission when you s.n.a.t.c.hed us off that ship, so why the h.e.l.l do you think you need it now?"

"Shut up, Scarborough," Niki tells him, wishing she'd never insisted that he be allowed to speak, and then she walks around to the opposite side of the globe, turning her back on Pikabo Kenzia.

"Twelve," she whispers. "Thirteen. Twelve and thirteen.

There has to be something here that I'm missing."

"Yeah," Scarborough says, "the obvious."

Pikabo Kenzia goes to Niki's side and rests a hand on the shoulder of her blue fur coat. "We're almost out of time, Hierophant. The Weaver must be very near."

"What about twelve and thirteen," Niki asks Scarborough, ignoring the red witch. "What do they mean together?"

"Twenty-five," Scarborough replies unhelpfully.

"There's no other way," Pikabo Kenzia says again, and 345.

now she grasps Niki firmly by both shoulders and turns her away from the stone globe until they're standing eye to eye. "We're reaching the end, and we must accept the costs of taking the one option which has been left to us."

"You said that it's my choice," Niki snarls and pulls free of the red witch's grip, surprised at the woman's strength.

"That's what you said. That it had to be my choice."

"How you face the Dragon and the Weaver, that's where your choice lies. Perhaps you misunderstood-"

"No. You will not force me to let some woman be sacrificed to this Dezyin b.a.s.t.a.r.d just so I get an express ticket to h.e.l.l. I'm not f.u.c.king worth another life."

"No," the red witch agrees, "you're not." There are thick blood-tears gathering at the corners of her eyes again, and Niki watches as the frustration drains swiftly from Pikabo Kenzia's purple irises and realizes too late that what has replaced it is decision.

"You're just gonna have to forgive me for this, Vietnam," Scarborough says, and then his hand comes down hard across the base of her skull, and there's an instant of pain, and then, for a while, only the unacknowledged peace of oblivion.

In some silly horror movie, Daria thinks, she might have fought Archer Day for the gun. Or they could have struggled on the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs, and maybe Daria would have pushed her, or she might have fallen on her own. In a horror movie, she might not have handed over the ball bearing the first time the woman asked for it. And in a horror movie, Alex would be pulling into the weedy driveway at the end of Cullom Street with the police right behind him.

But she knows this isn't a movie, and this time it isn't a dream, either, and she stands in the unreal blue light filling the s.p.a.ce below the house, the pistol's barrel pressed to her spine, and watches as the wet and mewling thing tears itself free from the black coc.o.o.n on the ceiling.

"Daria Parker, meet Theda," the woman says. "Theda, this is the Hierophant's b.i.t.c.h-d.y.k.e wh.o.r.e, Miss Daria 346 Parker, who came here-all the way from California-just to save the world. h.e.l.l, you know what? I bet Theda here has all your records," and she pushes Daria nearer the circle drawn on the cellar floor.

"Where's Niki?" she asks, trying not to look at what's inside the circle.

"Oh, so far away from here, my lady," Archer Day chuckles and jabs Daria in the ribs with the gun. Then she begins to sing in a high and hitching voice, " 'Far, far away is my love of yesterday, She's gone, gone, gone, gone, from me, from me-' "

"I f.u.c.king gave you what you wanted. I gave you what you f.u.c.king asked for."

"Yeah, you did, and just look at how well that's working out for you," and then she starts singing again, an old Roy Orbison song that Niki used to ask Daria to play when she was still just doing bars and nightclubs. Far, far away is my love of yesterday, and something, or everything, about Archer Day's voice makes her sorry that she ever believed Niki was insane.

"You're not telling me because you don't know."

And Archer Day tangles her fingers in Daria's short hair and jerks her head back sharply so that she's staring directly into the eight, unblinking ebony eyes of the thing writhing on the ceiling. Daria feels cold metal behind her right ear, the pistol pressed to the soft flesh of her neck, and Close your eyes, she thinks. Close your eyes so you won't have to see it.

"Personally, I think poor Theda's getting a lot more than she bargained for."