Murder of Angels

by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  Dead on my feet, she thinks and laughs out loud.

  “What’s funny, Niki?”

  “Nothing. Nothing’s funny. But I gotta sit down now.”

  “Not much farther, I promise.”

  And Niki realizes that it’s getting easier to see, the stairwell brightening by slow degrees, and now there’s a little light coming from somewhere below them, somewhere besides Spyder. A faint green luminescence like moonlight shining through the surface of an algae-covered pond, a muted absinthe light that seems the slightest bit brighter with every step she takes.

  “I feel like I’ve walked a hundred miles,” Niki says.

  “No, not a hundred. Not quite that far.”

  “Well, far enough. These damned stairs better end soon, or I’m not going to make it.”

  “Look, Niki, we’re here. We’re at the bottom.”

  She blinks, squinting into the soft green light, and is surprised and startled to see that Spyder’s telling her the truth, and they’re standing together on a wide landing built of planks gone almost as gray and weathered as the decaying catwalk leading from the Palisades to the village. The landing at one corner of a vast chamber, and the stink of fish and mold is so strong here that her eyes water, and she has to breathe through her mouth. That way she only tastes it, rot-sweet aftertaste like the seas have all drained away, seven Chinese brothers swallowing the ocean; a million squirming things, dead and dying, lying trapped in the solidifying muck and seaweed beneath a blazing sun.

  Past the landing is a sprawling, pick-up-sticks jumble of sagging piers and platforms, teetering shelves crowded with aquarium tanks—some clean and bubbling, others stagnant and choked with algae—books and scrolls and great glass jars filled with dark liquid and darker things floating inside. Here and there are places where wide openings in the wooden floor reveal inky pools of seawater, draped in mesh tents of fishing nets and lobster pots. There are long tables cluttered with medical instruments and microscopes and cruel-looking contraptions that Niki can’t identify. And at the very center of it all, a stone dais rising from the seafloor, and then Niki notices the walls.

  “My God. It’s water. It’s all water,” and Spyder nods her head.

  “Esme is a very skilled hydromancer,” she says. “That’s how she was able to open the portal to bring you across.”

  “A hydromancer,” Niki whispers, and she stares up at the high and shimmering walls, a dome carved somehow from the sea itself, a gigantic bubble far below the floating village. And she guesses that explains the stairs as well, as much as it explains anything at all. The stone dais sits at the very center of the dome, beneath its highest point, and now Niki can see that the green light comes from a sort of chandelier or candelabrum hanging directly above the dais. Except there are no candles or electric lightbulbs, no gas jets, but, instead, light spilling from glass pots and bowls of living things hung from the rusted iron frame of the fixture. The walls of the dome glisten, revealing black and impenetrable depths, revealing nothing much at all.

  “Well, I never thought we’d see you again,” someone says, someone standing directly behind Niki, and she turns to find a young man. He’s long-limbed and rail thin, a gaunt wraith of a man, his straight, mouse-colored hair pulled back in a tight ponytail.

  “Is he talking to me?” she asks Spyder, and the man sits down on one of the bottom steps and winks at Niki. He’s wearing a leather motorcycle jacket and blue jeans so worn and faded that they’re hardly even blue anymore.

  “She’s a pretty one,” he says, talking to Spyder but keeping his piercing, close-set eyes on Niki. “I’ve always said no one can question your taste in quim, Weaver.”

  “Or your manners,” Spyder replies, and he laughs.

  “Old Eponine said you’d come back to us, but I thought she was just having another one of her fits. We heard from Tirzah that the jackals caught up with you at—”

  “Are you disappointed, Scarborough?” Spyder asks him, and the man grins and shakes his head.

  “Are you kidding me? Hell, when we got the news, I cried for three days straight. I couldn’t even eat or take a shit, I was so damn distraught.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “A fact or close enough. I mean, a man gets puking tired of moldy books and starfish, day in and fucking day out. I need a little variety, now and then,” and he winks at Niki again. “And I know we can always count on you for variety, Weaver. Is she really supposed to be the Hierophant?”

  “That’s what everyone keeps telling me,” Niki says and moves closer to Spyder.

  “Well, you’re not exactly what I expected,” he says, and stands up, brushing at the seat of his jeans. “Vietnamese or Korean?”

  “Vietnamese,” Niki replies uncertainly.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. See, I spent a couple of months in Ho Chi Minh City before I—”

  “Where’s Esme?” Spyder asks impatiently, and the man named Scarborough frowns and motions past them, towards the labyrinth of shelves and netting and work tables.

  “Oh, I’m sure she’s around here somewhere, unless she’s somewhere else,” and he points at one of the open pools. “Lately, she’s been spending an awful lot of time with a certain octopus. You ask me, she’s got quite the unhealthy fixation on that old mollusk.”

  “But they didn’t ask you, did they, Mr. Pentecost,” a woman says with a voice like a frozen stream, and Niki turns to face the shimmering chamber again. And this must surely be the fish augur, Esme Chattox, a tall and willowy spectre standing on the dais, a thick leather-bound book tucked beneath her left arm and a large squid drooping lifelessly from her right hand. She wears flowing, layered robes that glimmer faintly beneath the living, phosphorescent chandelier, and Niki realizes that they’re sewn from a crazy-quilt patchwork of fish hide. Her skin is a sickly green-gray color, like aged cheese or something drowned, and her stringy soot-black hair hangs down past her shoulders in sloppy corkscrew curls. She stands up straight and beckons Spyder and Niki to come closer.

  “It’s true, Weaver,” she says. “We’d all given you up for dead. Or worse. Tirzah and the ghouls down in Weir all scryed your fate. They aren’t often wrong.”

  “It was kinda touch and go for a while,” Spyder says, and then she leads Niki down a long, crooked aisle, between shelves that stink of formalin and dust, until they’re standing at the edge of the dais. Esme carefully lays the thick book and the dead squid on a stone lectern and then stares down at Niki.

  “The Hierophant,” she says approvingly, her voice as ageless as any Niki has ever heard. “You’ve done well, Weaver. Please forgive me for ever doubting you.”

  This close, Niki can see how large and perfectly black Esme Chattox’s eyes are, no distinction between iris and pupil and sclera, and when she smiles she reveals rows of razor-sharp teeth, a shark’s teeth set in cyanotic gums. Her fingers end in long nails that may as well be claws, and there are thick webs between them.

  “You don’t look well, Hierophant.”

  “I don’t feel very well, either,” Niki replies. “And my name’s Niki. Niki Ky.”

  “She’s in a bad way,” Spyder says. “She needs food and rest, and her hand—”

  “Yes, her hand, indeed,” Esme says and kneels down on the dais in front of them. “The ghouls saw that as well. A part of the Dragon has found its way into her. And that means it knows where she is, Weaver. That’s not something we can afford to take lightly,” and then to Niki, “Do you have the philtre, child?”

  “The what?” Niki asks, trying not to wince or make a face or cover her nose, but the fish augur’s breath is the worst thing Niki’s smelled since she and Spyder started down the spiral staircase.

  “The philtre,” Esme says again, more emphatically than before. Her black eyes flash and grow a little wider as she leans nearer to Niki, bathing her in chilly waves of that brine and beach-rot breath, and this time Niki does cover her nose and mouth.

  “I don’t know what you’re ta
lking about.”

  “She means the ball bearing,” Spyder says to Niki and then smiles nervously for Esme. “I’m afraid she doesn’t. The jackals came too soon.”

  “Oh,” Esme says and stands up, and now Niki notices the four bloodred slits on either side of her neck, beginning just beneath her chin, the feathery gill filaments exposed whenever the fish augur takes a deep breath. “Without the philtre we are lost,” she says to Spyder. “You know that, Weaver. Without the philtre, she’s just another useless…” and Esme hesitates, glaring at Niki while she searches for some particular word. “Just another worthless pilgrim,” she finishes.

  “You know, I didn’t ask to come here,” Niki says, glaring back up at the tall woman in her scaly robes, meeting her empty eyes and those sharp white teeth.

  Esme wrinkles her nose and turns back towards the lectern. “Hold your tongue, child, or someone else may soon be holding it for you.”

  “Don’t threaten us, Esme,” Spyder says and steps between Niki and the dais.

  “But I wasn’t threatening you, dear Weaver. No, you know that I’d never threaten you.”

  “She’s here because of me. You threaten her and it’s the same thing as threatening me.”

  “This is tiresome.” Esme moans. “Will you still protect her when the jackals find us because she could not perform such a simple task? Will you keep her safe then?”

  “I don’t remember asking anyone to protect me,” Niki says, and her hand is hurting so much that she really doesn’t care who or what she pisses off, who’s threatening who or promising to keep her safe. “I asked Daria to find the ball bearing for me. When I was…when I was dying, I found her on an airplane and asked her to find it.”

  Esme Chattox cocks one thistleback eyebrow and looks down at them again. “What’s she talking about? Who’s this Daria?”

  “Daria was my lover,” Niki replies before Spyder can answer for her.

  “And she’ll do this for you? Find the philtre?”

  “I think she’ll try.”

  “You think she’ll try. That’s not terribly reassuring, Hierophant.”

  “I told her where to find it. I told her to take it to Spyder’s old house in Birmingham.”

  “And what do you have to say about this, Weaver?” the fish augur asks and starts picking at the dead squid with her sharp nails. She pulls loose an eye and sets it aside.

  “Esme,” Spyder says, and she sounds tired and irritated, “we need to tend to her wound first. She needs rest. We can talk about these things later.”

  “You may soon find that there isn’t very much later left us. The Dragon knows where she is, and without the philtre there’s absolutely nothing to stop him from killing us all. That’s what I’d do, were I him. I’d strike now,” and Esme plucks the other eye from the squid. “Strike now and be done with it, once and for all.”

  “Then we hide her,” Spyder says and quickly climbs the low stone stairs leading up onto the dais. The fish augur turns and frowns at the intrusion, the disembodied squid eye still hooked on the end of her left index finger. “I know enough spells without your help. When she’s well enough to travel, I’ll send her across to Auber and the Weir. Madame Tirzah—”

  “Wants nothing of this girl,” Esme Chattox growls. “She has to think of her people first. The Dragon has no quarrel with the ghul.”

  “The Dragon has a quarrel with everything alive,” Spyder replies. “If Tirzah thinks it has any plans of sparing her or anyone else, then she’s an even bigger fool than you, Esme.”

  “Daria’s gonna find the ball bearing,” Niki cuts in. “I mean the philtre. If it’s still there, she’ll find it. If she can,” and then she sits down on the damp boards at the foot of the dais, because she can’t stand up any longer. “Now please,” she says, squeezing her eyes shut against the pain in her hand, the nausea and exhaustion crowding out her thoughts, “just stop fucking yelling at each other for five minutes.”

  Esme grunts and drops the second squid eye onto the lectern, then begins digging out the beak hidden among the limp white-pink tentacles. “I know you, Weaver,” she says, pushing the words out between her gritted, serrate teeth. “I doubt you told this child half of what you’ve gotten her into.”

  “You can say that again,” Niki murmurs and wishes that she weren’t too tired to get her backpack off. “No one’s told me jack shit.”

  “Then I suggest you remedy that,” the fish augur says to Spyder. “As soon as she’s rested and fed and a surgeon has seen to that hand. I suggest you tell her exactly where we stand and what’s to be expected of her.”

  “I’d settle for a bed,” Niki says and lies down on her side. With her ear pressed against the mildewed, fishy-smelling boards she can hear the sea sloshing gently against the timbers. It sounds like sleep, the soft rhythm of those waves hidden just beneath the wood.

  “Eponine will show you to your room, and Scarborough will be back with a doctor within the hour. I have matters here that must be properly completed, or I’d attend to it myself.”

  Niki opens her eyes and sees that Spyder has come down off the dais and is standing over her. She looks worried, and the gem between her eyes has stopped glowing.

  “I’m okay,” Niki whispers, but Spyder doesn’t look particularly convinced.

  “We’ll get you fixed up good as new,” she says and helps Niki to her feet, puts one strong, tattooed arm around her waist to keep her from lying down again.

  Esme stops picking at the mangled squid and stands with her head bowed, her hands gripping the corners of the lectern. Niki watches the red slits on her throat, opening and closing, opening and closing, red gashes that almost hurt to see.

  “We have placed our lives in your hands,” she says, and Niki isn’t sure if she’s talking to Spyder or to her. “We have placed our world in your hands.”

  “It isn’t over yet,” Spyder says. “Not by a long shot. You’re the one who told me never to give up as long as there’s the smallest hope. You’re the one who taught me never to despair.”

  “I have not yet despaired, Weaver. But I am afraid, as I’ve never been afraid before.”

  Spyder doesn’t say anything else, as if there’s nothing else left to say. She leaves Esme Chattox with her dissection and helps Niki back across the shimmering chamber, all but carrying her, and slowly, painfully, they make their way upstairs to the house again.

  Almost all the way to the end of Highway 24 before Daria would let Alex stop somewhere, and every time the speedometer dropped below seventy-five or eighty she’d start drumming her fingers on the dashboard and looking nervously over her shoulder, out the rear windshield, at the night-shrouded road stretched out behind them. She talked and chewed aspirin and Tums while he drove, telling him all the things she’d sworn she’d never talk about with anyone, not friends or shrinks or even Niki. The secrets she’s carried since Birmingham, what she saw in Spyder Baxter’s house when she went in after Niki, all those years ago. And Alex listened, and drove, and didn’t say a word.

  Finally, a mile or so outside Limon, a mile or so left until 24 merges with I-70 West to Kansas, they pass a billboard—GAS-FIREWORKS-CIGARETTES-GEOLOGICAL MUSEUM-GAS—and Daria doesn’t argue when Alex says that they’re stopping. The tank is almost on empty anyway, the needle sitting on the red E for the last thirty miles or so, and it’s a wonder they haven’t wound up stranded somewhere.

  “I need a drink,” she says, as the Saturn bumps across the rutted, unpaved parking lot towards the pumps, raising dust and throwing gravel.

  “Sure, fine by me,” Alex replies, pulling up next to the self-serve regular, and he cuts the engine.

  “I’m not going to get drunk. I just need a drink. Just a beer would do.”

  “Just a beer sounds bloody brilliant,” he says and kisses her on the forehead before getting out to pump the gas. She sits in the car a moment, staring at the shabby, whitewashed front of the gas station lit by halogen lights so bright they hurt her eyes aft
er the long darkness of the highway. There are Halloween decorations and a large plywood sign propped near the door, an amethyst geode painted on it, purple and white and brown—WONDERS OF CREATION—and she silently prays to whatever gods might be listening that this isn’t a dry county. The smell of gas is filling up the car, because Alex left his door standing open, the acrid, sour-sweet smell to make her stomach even worse, so she gets out and shuts her door.

  “Go on ahead,” he says. “I’ll be in as soon as I’m done here.”

  “I can wait. I’m not sure I’m up to seeing people.”

  “You’re fine. There’s no sense you standing out here in the cold. I’ll be right behind you.”

  “Cross your heart and hope to die?” and she smiles and wipes her runny nose.

  “Whatever you say, love.”

  “I say what time is it?”

  Alex glances from the digital display on the pump to his wristwatch. “Coming up on nine thirty,” he says, and that’s not nearly so late as she’d thought.

  “You really ought to get something to eat, too,” he tells her, and Daria looks back at the grimy windows half hidden beneath cigarette and beer ads and paper jack-o’-lanterns.

  “There wouldn’t be beer ads if this was a dry county,” she says.

  “No, there wouldn’t,” Alex agrees. “Now either get your ass inside or get back in the car before you freeze to death.”

  “Yeah,” she says, and heads for the front door, buttoning her pink and gray cardigan sweater and imagining how good a beer will taste. Any beer at all. At this point, a fucking PBR or Budweiser would be heaven, ambrosia sent down from Olympus to soothe her nerves and stomach, to take a little of the sting off the last few hours—the escape from the hospital in Colorado Springs, then almost getting her ass run over by a fucking semi because she was having a conversation with a monster, all the crazy, secret shit she’s told Alex. Niki’s suicide. All of it.