For an instant Cloud saw them, curling and hissing like two hairs held above a lit candle. Then the sidewinders burst into flame. A searing blast, a smell like burning leather—and they were gone, vaporized as cleanly as though they’d been tossed into a furnace.
“Oh, man.” Cloud shivered helplessly. “This is some shit.”
Angelica brought her hands to her face. She clapped, just once, and took a single backward step.
“Eisheth!”
A hissing, as when hot metal plunges into water. Then the thing that stood within the flames walked toward Angelica. Cloud made a groaning sound deep within her throat.
It was like a man or woman made of fire. Light rippled about it like leaves thick upon a tree, but as it moved from the flames its bright skin faded to ruddy bronze. Its hair fell about its broad shoulders in tangled brassy strands. From its shoulders sprang two immense folded wings. While it made no sound, there was a heaviness to its tread—it moved like a creature formed of the same stone as the buttes and mesas. Its hands were crossed tenderly upon its breast. It held something there, but Cloud could not see what it was.
“Eisheth,” whispered Angelica.
The creature lifted its head, and Cloud nearly cried aloud for the sheer mad beauty of it. It had a long angular face, with high, planed cheekbones and slanted eyes, a strong jaw and jutting chin. But there was something feminine about it as well, something soft in the wide mouth and rosebud lips, the enormous eyes and arching brows. Its pupils were almost without color, pale and icily prescient, like those of a malamute. Its skin was the color of thick cream, ivory tinged with yellow, its body smooth and hairless as an infant’s.
It had wings.
“Eisheth,” Angelica repeated.
“Yes,” the thing replied, its voice a whisper. A girl’s voice, or a boy’s before the change. Its arms remained crossed; whatever it held neither struggled nor cried out.
“Do you know me, Eisheth?”
The thing bowed its head very slightly. “I do, Mistress.”
“And you have brought what I commanded you to bring me?”
“I have, Othiym.”
Othiym, thought Cloud. She dug her nails into her thighs to keep from crying out. Othiym, it called her Othiym—what is this shit?
“And the other naphaïm: they have done as I asked? They are heeding when they are called?”
“They are.”
“And they do as my priestesses bid them?”
“They do, Othiym.”
Cloud’s knees shook uncontrollably.
Othiym. Angelica was calling herself Othiym. And this other—thing, whatever the fuck it was—it was calling her Othiym, too!
The two of them were barely fifteen feet from where Cloud squatted. Behind her, past more ocotillo and the deactivated electric fence, stretched the gravel road that led to the highway and open desert. If she took off now, she could be out of sight in moments. Cloud knew she could outrun Angelica—all that personal trainer stuff was great for keeping your stomach flat and your thighs taut, but it didn’t do shit for your stamina.
But was this Angelica? And could she outrun something with wings?
“Let me see him, then.” Angelica’s voice was impatient. Cloud forced herself to look up again.
Behind the naphaïm, the fiery wall had died away. There was only the pool, still and calm as before, though streaks of lavender and green occasionally flickered across its surface.
“Now!” demanded Angelica.
The naphaïm’s wings spread into a shimmering tent of gold and bronze and black. It opened its arms. From them something staggered, something pathetically small and frail-looking. It took a few steps, stumbled, and clumsily got to its feet again.
“Hey.” The figure looked around slowly. “This isn’t the bus station.”
Oh, shit, thought Cloud.
It was a kid. A boy, no more than sixteen or seventeen. He wore standard street gear—baggy pants cut off at the knees, a paisley shirt once brightly colored but now faded to grey tears. Busted-out boots with no socks, filthy bandanna, bruised knees. Kind of a sweet face, sunburned pink where it wasn’t grey with dirt. Blue eyes, freckles: basic Midwest issue. Probably hadn’t seen a shower in a month. His hair was blond and very dirty, hanging limply to his shoulders. What Cloud could see of the rest of him was dirty as well.
“Hello,” murmured Angelica. Almost imperceptibly she gestured at the naphaïm. “Eisheth—go now.”
The boy lifted his head, blinking. Behind him the naphaïm took a step backward. Its wings shuddered, beating the air. There was a sound like thunder. For an instant the air grew darker, as though a cloud had swept before the moon; but of course there was no moon. The boy covered his head, like he expected to see something bearing down on him, crazed eagle or renegade jumpjet or some other desert weirdness. After a moment he lowered his arms, gazing stupidly into the empty air and then at the ground, where a single feather trembled, as long as the boy’s arm and the deep crimson of fresh blood.
“Hello,” Angelica said again.
The boy’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open.
“Who—oa,” he breathed.
Angelica smiled. One hand flicked playfully at a lock of hair falling into her eyes, a fleeting motion that for an instant made her look more human. So that, Cloud thought, maybe—like if you were this kid and hadn’t had a hot meal in a week and were homesick and heartsick and probably sick with other things as well—just maybe you could imagine she was something like a normal woman. He was gaping like a gigged frog, running one hand nervously through his stringy hair and staring at Angelica—beautiful, unearthly, naked Angelica—like he didn’t know whether she was real or just some hemp-fueled vision.
“What’s your name?”
Angelica stepped toward him, still smiling. It was all so crazy and horrible and yet so real, and of course the only sane thing for Cloud to do was to run, get the hell away from there as fast as she could. But Cloud was paralyzed.
“Russell,” said the boy, his voice cracking.
“Russell,” repeated Angelica. “How old are you, Russell?”
“Uh—seventeen.”
Her necklace cast a delicate silvery glow across his face, so that for a moment you could see that he really was a nice-looking kid, but definitely younger than seventeen—Cloud thought fifteen, tops. He closed his mouth and swallowed, unable to tear his gaze from Angelica. The amazement in his eyes flickered into something else. Confusion, a certain wariness.
Fear.
“You must be awfully hot—would you like to go swimming?”
Angelica’s hand rested lightly on his shoulder. Cloud hadn’t seen her move to touch him, and apparently the boy hadn’t either. He jumped, then shook his head.
“Uh—no—I mean, I don’t have like, a bathing suit or anything? I was trying—I was trying to get to the bus station…”
He frowned, looking up at Angelica, then peered into the darkness behind her as though searching for someone. Cloud’s heat pounded. Surely he must see her crouching there amidst the thorny scrub, he’d point and say something and Angelica would turn and then—
“No?” Suddenly Angelica’s voice was exasperated: she might have wasted hours talking with him, instead of minutes.
One hand lay upon her breastbone, fingers spread to cover the silver crescent. Bluish light streamed between her fingers. As Cloud stared Angelica’s hand tightened about the pendant. “Well then, Russell—”
She pulled the necklace over her head, held it with both hands, her fingers curling over its curved points. The boy stared at her, his expression frozen between surprise and disbelief. Before he could move she was upon him.
A streak like the moon through a shuttered window. The boy’s hair fell across his face. His mouth yawned hideously. Cloud saw Angelica’s hand snatched backward, the silver crescent a swath of darkness, blood flowing in its wake. The boy’s head flopped onto his chest. Cloud glimpsed his eyes, wide and startled
, his mouth brightly crimson as though lipsticked.
“Ah,” he said.
There was a glistening darkness where his throat had been cut, a net of red covering his face and hands. Very slowly his body crumpled, until he lay on his side like a sick child, his dirty hair fallen across his face.
Above him stood Angelica. She held the crescent before her, its silver tarnished black and crimson. Smoke threaded between its two prongs. Her upturned gaze was beseeching yet triumphant, her voice like hail hammering against the desert floor.
Haïyo Othiym! Othiym Lunarsa!
From distant hills and canyons her voice was thrown back—
Haïyo Othiym! haïyo haïyo haïyo…
—voices dying, dying, dying…
With a yelp Cloud bolted from the underbrush. Thorns tore at her legs, she could feel blood spurting onto her thigh but she didn’t care, she didn’t give a fuck about anything as long as she was gone. Beneath her soles stones scattered like marbles. She slipped, catching herself on a barrel cactus and crying out as the thorns pierced her hand. From the corner of her eyes she glimpsed Angelica standing above the corpse of the boy she’d killed, her face twisted with rage.
“Mellisœ agevahe! Oye Mellisæ!”
“Fuck you!” gasped Cloud. She leapt over a prickly pear and landed on the smooth surface of the drive. And fuck Melissa, too!
She hurtled up the driveway. Ahead of her, she could just make out the tall posts with their sagging loops of electrified wire strung between, the crossties of the weathered gate that opened out onto Fire Road S3. Her heart was like a brick slung inside her chest, her shins ached from pounding the rough ground, but it was only a few more yards, she could feel where wild grass and sedge were poking up through the loose dirt beneath her feet and all she had to do was reach the gate and she could—
“Shit!”
Pain erupted from a spot above her knee. She slapped at her leg, felt another agonizing stab at her palm. Still running, she drew her hand up, saw a glistening red spot on the fleshy part of her thumb. Blood.
She shook her hand, trying to dislodge the shining droplet. But then the drop upon her thumb moved, coalesced into a gleaming bead of crimson with black legs and two bright black beads for eyes. Its jointed antennae twitched furiously, its swollen body thrust upward so for an instant she glimpsed what protruded from its abdomen, a black splinter like another thorn. Before she could slap it away another burst of pain lanced her shoulder, her leg, her breast; then another, and another. She glanced down and screamed.
She was covered with bees: a living shroud of bees, so many she could hear the pattering of their legs as they crawled over each other, trying to find purchase on her exposed skin. Thousands of them, each with its blaze of agony like a tiny blade drawn through her flesh. She shrieked and slapped at them, lurching across the stony ground, but it was like trying to outrun the rain. Her mouth opened and one darted inside; she gagged as she felt its legs, and then a horrible bolt of pain as it stung the back of her throat. She fell to the ground, clawing at her tongue.
Her throat was swollen shut; she couldn’t see for the bodies swarming across her eyes. They were crawling into her nostrils, she could feel them burrowing into her ears, their spent stingers a pelt of soft black hairs across her tongue and cheek and lips.
A few more minutes, and you could not tell that there had ever been a person there at all. The swarm covered a mound that could have been a large stone or dead animal, vaguely human-shaped. The bees crawled atop each other, coupling, feeding, moving their abdomens in vicious thrusts, squeezing their eggs from their bodies to lie beneath the girl’s skin, before it grew too stiff. When nearly an hour had passed, they departed. In long skeins like thread spun from a spindle, they lifted and sang off into the night, their humming growing fainter and fainter until it died.
From a few yards away a figure watched, silent, unmoving. Upon her breast glowed a swollen moon. It gave forth beams of splintered light as she raised her arms and chanted in a clear strong voice.
Oye Mellisæ! Haïyo Othiym, oye Thriæ…
I have crowned you, Bride of the thunder:
Your breath is on all that hath life, you who float in the air
Beelike, deathlike, a wonder…
And now that the bees had gone she summoned their sisters:
Oye myrmidon, oye!
—and the ants came, the voracious red driver ants named eciton that lay waste to vast areas of the rain forest, devouring anything in their path. They were like a shadow creeping down the hillside, like a ragged hem of darkness falling across that small still form. As quickly as the bees had found Cloud, the ants foamed across the barren desert and onto her corpse. Their feet made a whispering sound as they climbed upon her, her limbs and face bloated with venom. They darkened her skin like a bruise, crept beneath her loose clothing so that the fabric moved with a soft undercurrent of sound, a rustling that grew into a sort of tearing noise, like shears being drawn through thick canvas.
The noise continued for a long time. An acrid smell filled the air, released from glands near the ants’ mandibles. As they fed, other creatures crept up from the tiled veranda to watch: a pair of soft slow tarantulas and the elfin kit fox. But when they detected that bitter smell the tarantulas raised their front legs defensively and stalked back into the darkness. The kit fox’s ears flattened against its skull as it whined, then fled into the shadows. Only the bats whistled overhead, now and then sweeping down to carry off one of the winged sentries that hovered above the corpse.
When finally they had fed, the ants moved on. Like water poured onto the desert floor, the dark cloud spread; then disappeared into countless unseen cracks and crevices. Only their scent remained, a smell like bitter melons, and a glistening assemblage of bones and skull, a torn black shirt and khaki shorts like the flag of a fallen army sunk between loops of ivory.
It was Martin who found her early the next morning, out on his dawn run. He recognized her clothes, and also the three tiny gold rings he found caught in the curve of a finger bone, alongside the shivering crystal wedge of an insect’s wing.
“Oh, my god,” he whispered, and raced back to the house.
“What is it?” demanded Angelica, as she met him at the door.
“Stay inside, just stay in here,” commanded Martin, and he dialed 911 with shaking hands.
A short while later the police and ambulance arrived, but of course there was nothing they could do. The dogs they brought, sturdy cheerful German shepherds trained in tracking lost children and hikers, sniffed at the sad array of bones and then bellied miserably onto the ground, pawing at their muzzles and whining.
“The coroner’s on his way, and Dr. Sorrell from up at Flagstaff,” the chief of police told Angelica. He was pale as he scratched a few notes onto his clipboard. By the pool Martin was comforting the hysterical Kendra, who had, despite orders from Angelica, run to the top of the ridge and seen what was there. Sunday was talking excitedly to a reporter, telling him about the puma she’d seen months before. “He says fire ants have killed folks in South Texas but that was more of an allergic reaction. This just seems like some kinda crazy freakish thing—”
“I can’t believe it, I just can’t believe it,” murmured Angelica. She shook her head and stared out the open front door. Three police cars and the coroner’s car and an ambulance were in the drive, along with the pickup trucks of two local reporters, all parked every which way, some with their doors still hanging open. As she stared a plume of yellowish dust rose from between the jaws of the wooden gate at the top of the hill. A moment later a Jeep came bouncing down the drive.
“Who’s this?” asked the chief of police.
“My son,” Angelica said softly. “He’s been driving back from college—”
The Jeep slammed to a stop. Its door flew open and a tall figure jumped out. He paused and stared at Martin and Kendra on the patio, turned to gaze in disbelief at the policemen and ambulance and the howling brace o
f dogs caged in a police car.
“Mom?” he yelled, running up the sidewalk. He ducked through the front door, glancing around frantically until he saw her. “Mom!”
“Dylan,” she said, and opened her arms to embrace him. “Dylan—”
“What happened, Mom, what’s—”
“Shhh,” she said, raising her hand to stroke the long hair from his eyes. “Shhh, don’t worry, it’s okay—
“Just something bad, that’s all. Something bad that happened to Cloud.”
CHAPTER 13
Other Echoes
WHEN I CALLED THE Beacon I got Baby Joe’s voice mail, his soft sleepy voice followed by a few bars of the Bernard Herrmann score for Jason and the Argonauts. I left a message, then went to clear my head.
Outside on the Mall, the Aditi was in full swing. Raga music, wailing flutes, fire-eaters and magicians and puppet masters, all obscured by the duck smoke of frying samosas and the dust raised by thousands of passing feet. Already the grass had been trampled into a dirty greenish mat pleached with cigarette butts and trampled hot dogs and broken balloons. You could see the heat shimmering from the sidewalks and the flow of traffic on Constitution Avenue. In front of the National Gallery of Art, water arced from a line of sprinklers and children ran shrieking in and out of the rainbow spray. A woman in a stained sundress rummaged through a trash bin.
It was the second of July. Tens of thousands of tourists had descended on the city, and they all seemed to be right here, mingling with the dancers and fakirs and weavers imported from India at the expense of Winesap, Inc. I watched a family in full American tourist drag staring at a Bengali mother in tissue-silk sari and gold bracelets and her children, as they watched two young men angle a pair of fighter kites across the sky. In the background the Capitol glowed like a huge white cloud, its perimeter ringed with flags and the concrete bulwarks set up over the last few years to guard against terrorist attacks. The kites swooped and dipped, delta chips of green and yellow. Their strings had been coated with broken glass, so that when one suddenly dived at the other, the tail of the second kite was severed. It went into a stall and crashed. The victor reeled in his kite, smiling; then the two warriors gathered their reels and arm in arm walked to a Good Humor wagon.
Waking the Moon Page 34
