Murder of Angels (21 page)

“Listen, Dar. I have to be absolutely sure you understand me, because I can only do this once,” and now Niki’s speaking with an urgency that makes Daria want to shut her eyes and wake up. Back in the hotel or on the plane to San Francisco, either one, as long as it means she doesn’t have to hear whatever Niki’s about to say.

“When we left Birmingham, when we were on our way to Boulder—”

“That was a long time ago.”

“—one morning, we had breakfast at a truck stop, the same day we made it to Denver, the first time we ever saw the mountains.”

“We were always eating in truck stops,” Daria protests and takes her arms from around Niki’s shoulders. She turns back to the window and the moon and the clouds.

“This one had a jackalope.”

“They all had fucking jackalopes, Niki.”

“You’re not listening. You have to listen and let me finish this.”

“I’m not stopping you,” she says, wanting a drink, wanting a cigarette, wanting to wake up.

“I gave Mort the rest of my waffles, and you asked me if I was feeling okay.”

“Niki, how the hell do you expect me to remember breakfast in a truck stop ten years ago? I have enough trouble remembering breakfast yesterday morning.”

“You
have
to remember this,” Niki says quietly, just a little quieter and she’d be whispering, and Daria looks at her again. Niki’s almond eyes sparkle wet in the dark cabin, in the reflected light from the movie screen. “You have to remember because I can’t get back there myself. I thought I’d be able to, but there wasn’t enough time. There’s never enough goddamn time to do things the right way.”

“Okay, so there was a jackalope,” Daria says, because she doesn’t want Niki to start crying, even if this is just a dream, doesn’t want a scene and someone trying to help but only making things worse, one of the flight attendants or someone seated across the aisle or in the row in front of them. “We were having breakfast at a truck stop and you gave Mort the rest of your waffles.”

“You asked if I was okay,” Niki says, wipes at her eyes and blinks. “I said I was, even though I wasn’t. I said I was going to the restroom, but I went outside instead, and you followed me.”

“I don’t remember any of this.”

“Then just listen to me, and maybe you’ll remember later. I didn’t go to the restroom, I went outside instead. It was cold. It was really cold, but you followed me, anyway. I walked across the parking lot and through some grass and cactus to a place where there was just dirt. I buried something there.”

“Wait,” Daria says. “Oh, shit. Yeah,” because now she
does
remember, all of it rushing back at her—the smell of greasy diner food and the freezing late December morning, the stunted cacti and strands of rusted barbed wire she stepped over to follow Niki.

“I took a ball bearing from my coat pocket. You asked me what it was.”

“And you wouldn’t tell me,” Daria says, and then there’s a sharp pain in her chest, a red flower blooming suddenly behind her sternum, and she gasps and reaches for Niki. “Oh, God,” she whispers. “Oh, Niki. You wouldn’t tell me what it was. You just buried it there and never told me what it was.”

“You never asked me after that. I never thought it would matter.”

Daria gasps again and digs her fingers into the Play-Doh-blue fur of Niki’s coat sleeve. In the secret, wet cavity of her rib cage, in the hollow of her heart, the pain flower doubles in size, triples, blood petals and ventricle sepals unfolding, tearing her apart, driving the breath from her lungs, and Niki only sighs and looks down at her folded hands.

“You have to find it for me, Daria. You have to find it and bring it to the basement of Spyder’s house.”

Daria opens her mouth to say something, something she has to say because she doesn’t think she could ever find the ball bearing, not after a decade, but there’s only the pain, eating her alive, picking her to pieces, and then Niki is gone, and a white bird is perched on the back of her seat, instead. It watches Daria with beady crimson eyes, and she wants to scream.

“Do not fail her,” the bird says grimly. “The Hierophant will need you, at the end,” and it dissolves in a small shower of yellow-orange sparks.

“Oh God,” Daria wheezes. “Oh Jesus fucking god,” and when she opens her eyes—when she opens them all the way and knows that the dream’s finally over and done, that she’s awake and
this
is real, as real as anything will ever be—there’s a frightened stewardess beside her, loosening her clothes. And the pain in her chest, that’s real too, the demon flower slipped out of the nightmare with her, and, in another second or two, it will burst from her chest and she’ll die.

“Be still,” the stewardess says. “There’s a doctor in first class. He’s coming.”

And then Daria sees the blue strands of fake fur clutched in the fingers of her right hand, and the single feather, white as snow at the top of the highest mountain peak, caught in the stewardess’ hair, and she lets the pain have her.

“Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her, and to wonder what was going to happen next.”

“Open your eyes, Niki,” Spyder Baxter says, and she does, even though she thought they were open all along. “You gotta watch that first step,” and Spyder smiles. “It’s a bitch.”

And she’s so beautiful that Niki doesn’t know if she’s breathless from the plunge or the sight of her. Not the Spyder she knew so many years ago, that sullen girl wrapped up in all her leather and bull-dyke defenses, and not the uncertain, unreal Spyder from her dreams and the fiery place before the Dog’s Bridge. Maybe the most beautiful woman that she’s ever seen, Spyder as some Pre-Raphaelite painter might have imagined her, Spyder reborn as something the gods would envy. She’s still holding Niki’s backpack.

“Are you okay?” she asks Niki Ky. “Say something.”

“Daria’s sick,” Niki says, because she’d almost forgotten, seeing Spyder like this, and the roar of falling water is so loud in her ears. She wonders how they can hear themselves over the sound of it.

“Yes, Daria’s sick. But that can’t concern you now,” Spyder says. “Maybe later on, but not now.”

Niki starts to take a step towards Spyder and realizes that she’s kneeling, on her knees on cold, mist-slicked stone. She blinks, then rubs her eyes, but it’s all still there, radiant Spyder with her white hair—not Spyder’s dark hair bleached white, but hair that grows as white as doves and milk and snowfall all on its own—Spyder in her gown that looks like something sewn from starlight, and the scar on her forehead has become a teardrop gem, the deepest ruby red, set into her skin. The water roars all around her, and overhead the sky is dusk and tempera sunset clouds in brilliant shades of tangerine and goldenrod and violet.

“Am I dead?” Niki asks, and Spyder smiles again and helps her to her feet. Niki’s legs are weak, and her stomach rolls like she’s just had three or four rides on a roller coaster, one right after the other.

“It’s not exactly that simple.”

“That’s not an answer,” Niki says. “I just jumped off a bridge for you, and now I want an answer.”

“You didn’t jump for me. You jumped for you.”

“Whichever,” Niki replies. “Am I dead or not?”

Spyder’s smile fades, and she brushes Niki’s long bangs from her eyes. “Yes, in the world where you were born, you died. They’ll find your body. You’ll have a funeral. You’ll be buried.”

“Cremated,” Niki corrects her.

“Same difference.”

“And I can’t go back. Not ever.”

“Not the way you mean,” Spyder says, then turns and begins walking through the gathering mist, across the slippery gray-green rocks.

“So, is this Heaven?” Niki calls after her, trying to keep up and trying not to fall on her ass at the same time.

“Not even close,” Spyder shouts back. “Anyway, I didn’t think you believed in Heaven.”

“Is it Hell, then?”

“Everywhere’s Hell, Niki, if that’s all you can manage to make of it.”

“Goddamn it,” Niki says and stops, almost slides on a patch of mossy-looking slime, and sits down. “No more fucking riddles, Spyder. Tell me the truth or—”

“Or what?” Spyder asks her, looking over her shoulder. “You’ll go
back
?” And she points an index finger towards the Technicolor sky. “I’m afraid you’re just going to have to be a little bit more patient. I’ve been here a long time, and I still don’t understand the half of it.”

“Can you at least tell me where the fuck I am? I don’t think that’s asking too much. If I’m dead, and this isn’t Heaven and it’s not Hell, but I’m not on Earth anymore—”

“No, it’s certainly not Earth,” Spyder agrees and then turns to face Niki again. The mist swirls eagerly, nervously, around them both, like it wants answers, too, like it’s hanging on every word they say. “This is another place.”

“Another place? You mean another planet?”

“No, Niki. I mean another
place
.”

“Like another universe?”

“Another place, Niki. I think we should just leave it at that for now.”

“And right
here
?” Niki asks, and pats the rock with her left hand.

“We’re at the Palisades,” Spyder replies. “And we really shouldn’t stay here much longer. There are safer places to be. You’ll need dry clothes, and I need to look at your hand.”

My hand,
Niki thinks and holds it up. The bandage is still there, dirty and coming unwound, but she didn’t lose it in the fall. It still hurts, now that Spyder’s reminded her, still burns and aches and itches, and she glances up at Spyder.

“If I’m dead, then how come my hand still hurts?”

“I said that you died, Niki. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re dead now.”

“Christ.” Niki sighs and laughs, laughing because she’s scared and worried about Daria and so glad to see Spyder, everything pressing in at her in the same instant, and she doesn’t know what else to do.

“What’s funny?” Spyder asks and gives Niki the backpack. She unzips it and is surprised that everything’s still inside, and that it’s all still dry.

“Nothing,” she replies. “Or lots and lots of things. I’m not sure yet. Ask me again later. So, what are the Palisades, anyway?”

Spyder peers through the mist and chews thoughtfully at her lower lip a moment before answering. And once again, Niki’s struck by the perfect, simple beauty of her.
Have I changed, too?
she thinks.
Have I become that beautiful?

“The Palisades,” Spyder says. “You know back when most people still thought the world was flat, and that if you sailed too far in any direction you’d fall right off the edge? Well, if those people had been right about the world where we were born, then the Palisades is sort of like the place they were afraid of sailing over the edge.”

“That figures,” Niki mutters half to herself, zipping her backpack shut again, and she slips it on over her left shoulder. “The ends of the earth.”

“More or less,” Spyder says. “Now come on, Niki. I wasn’t kidding when I said we shouldn’t hang around here too long.”

“The jackals?” Niki asks, but Spyder shakes her head, scattering light through the mist and across the rocks, her dreads like the phosphorescent tendrils of a deep-sea creature.

“Here,” she says. “you’re going to have a lot more things to worry about than the jackals. They might be the worst of it, but there are other things that can kill you just as fast.”

“Is that supposed to be the good news?”

“Maybe,” Spyder replies, and the tone in her voice to tell Niki she isn’t joking, that the fall from the bridge was just the start, that she’s tumbled out of the frying pan and into the fire.

“Before we leave, there’s something I want you to see,” Spyder says. “Just so you know it’s not all monsters and wicked witches.”

She helps Niki to her feet, and they walk together through the twilight mist, through the drowning roar of the Palisades, to a wide plaza carved directly from the stone. The plaza and the bottom landing of a staircase leading up a very steep cliff face. Niki looks at the wide steps, then the cliff itself, searching in vain for the place where the stairs end somewhere far overhead. “I just came from up there,” she says and frowns. “I hope to God I’m not about to have to walk all the way back.”

“You’ll see,” Spyder whispers. “You’ll see.”

By the time they finally reach the top of the winding granite staircase, Niki is out of breath and dizzy, and her left side hurts. Twice, she slipped on the wet stone and might have fallen, might have broken her neck or worse, if there’s anything worse than breaking your neck. Harder things to fall on here than San Francisco Bay, harder things than the welcoming sea, and she leans against the low balustrade and waits for her heart to stop pounding. Above them, the last rays of the day have been smothered by the advancing night, and stars burn bright and cold in a sky that might have been stolen from a Van Gogh painting. And she knows it’s real, because a whole boatload of crazy girls couldn’t dream up a sky like that, those brilliant, glistening colors, the wild swirl of a billion distant suns.

“I never get tired of looking at it,” Spyder says, not the least bit winded by the long climb, and she’s leaning far out over the balustrade, the wind blowing through her white hair. “I never will, because it’s always like the very first time.”

The stairs have ended in a small balcony, rough-hewn half circle and a tall statue near the center that reminds Niki of a griffin, though it’s really something altogether different. She stands next to Spyder and stares up at the Van Gogh sky, and then down at the abyss stretching away beyond the ragged edges of the Palisades.

“Some people say that’s the way to Paradise,” Spyder tells her. “And other people say it leads to an endless black sea filled with demons.”

“What do you think?” Niki asks her, unable to look away, beginning to think she’ll never be able to look away.

“I think I don’t ever want to find out.”

A mile or more beneath them, an ocean drains over the side of a world, a churning, roiling cataract as far as she can see to the left or the right, north and south perhaps, unless there aren’t directions in this place. And she can also see that the balcony is perched near the top of one of the countless barren islands scattered out along the rim of the Palisades, a spire of mist-cut rock rising like a crooked, skeletal finger.