“See, Tony? Man, I told you there were dykes over here,” the tallest said, blond hair and Nazi-blue eyes.
Tristan and Darlene shut up and stepped out of their way. In the Celica, Byron and Walter paused in their own affairs, Byron up front alone and Walter in the backseat with a boy dressed like a deb from Hell’s cotillion; Spyder could feel their uneasiness seeping sticky cold through the windshield.
“Goddamn,” said the jock named Tony, and Spyder felt Robin shudder then, saw the frightened recognition on her face. “I guess you were right, man.”
The third guy, shorter and chunkier than his buddies, didn’t say anything, laughed and spit tobacco juice into a McDonald’s cup.
“All kinda freaks hang out down here,” the first guy said. “Half the time, you can’t tell the fuckin’ girls from the boys.”
“That was original,” Spyder said, speaking through the sudden playground memories of adrenaline and shame, and she felt Robin tense, maybe start to push away. “Did your daddy teach you that one before or after he taught you how to suck his cock?”
Shortest perfect silence, and then the guy took one step closer, “What did you say?” Surprise and disbelief and hardly any room left for the anger bubbling up between his words.
“You heard me. Bet your daddy told you if you acted like an asshole, nobody would know how much you liked his dick.”
And his friends laughed, stinging loud belly laughs.
“Digger, man, you gonna let this freak talk to you like that?” said the guy with the half-full McDonald’s cup and he laughed again.
“Let’s just go,” Robin said, her voice too shaky, like they’d never had to listen to this shit before. “I know one of these guys. They’re not worth it,” and she did pull free of Spyder’s embrace, slipped off the hood to the blacktop.
“What’s the matter, little girl? Don’t you think your bigmouth lesbo girlfriend here can take care of you?” Digger asked, but Robin was already opening the passenger side, getting in beside Byron and locking the door behind her.
“Why don’t you just leave us alone,” Spyder said, confused, more hurt by Robin’s retreat than anything these creeps could say.
“Is that it, lesbo? Think maybe you can talk like a man, but afraid you can’t fight like one?” And he leaned close, whispered loud so everyone could hear. “Bet you sure as hell can’t fuck like one.”
Chunky gales of laughter from the other two, and Spyder stared down at the scuffed toes of her boots.
“I don’t know ’bout that, Digger,” Tony said. “Bet she’s got one of them plastic strap-on jobs.”
“Is that true, lesbo?” and he leaned close enough that Spyder could smell him, sweat and sour alcohol, after-shave and sweet wintergreen snuff. “You got yourself a strap-on dick, lesbo? You fuck that weird little bitch with a big, hard strap-on dick?”
“Back off,” Spyder said, final useless warning murmured just for this one asshole, knowing that he wouldn’t, that this had already gone too far for either of them to simply back out now.
“Does it feel good, lesbo?” sneered Digger. “Does it make you feel like a man?”
“Digger, you are just too fine,” said Tony and slapped Digger on the back.
And then Spyder reached up, circled his neck with her strong arms, leather and the inky webs hidden underneath, and pulled him down, the cactus stubble on his cheek scraping at her smooth white skin.
“Let me show you how it feels, motherfucker,” and she opened her mouth very, very wide.
5.
Daria ran all the way across the street, across the wide parking lot, never more than a few steps behind Keith and her heart banging away like it meant to kill her. She screamed out his name one time, a wasted curse or warning, but the wind was growing stronger, raw and living without flesh or bone, and it had snatched her voice away in its icy fingers. And by the time she caught up with him, it was already too late to stay out of the bad shit going down around the rusty-guts Toyota, had probably been too late all along.
Keith had seized one of the bubbas by the collar of his jacket and was towing him backwards, away from the car. The guy backpedaled and flailed the air with his arms, mad pinwheeling arms, spilled the syrupy dark contents of the cup he was holding and lost his balance anyway, landed on his ass. His face was livid red, competing startled and pissed and embarrassed hues of scarlet, and when he started to get up, Daria kicked him in the ribs and he sat back down.
She looked up and there was Spyder, still sitting on the hood of her car and one of the guys bending down over her. Both her arms were locked firmly about his neck, her tattooed hands shimmering oily in the mercury-vapor light. Her mouth was pressed viciously against his left cheek, grinding; it looked like she was kissing him.
“Keith, wait a goddamn minute…”
But he’d already shoved the second bubba out of the way, grabbed the one leaning over Spyder by one broad shoulder and yanked hard; Spyder let go, and the guy stumbled, almost fell as he spun around to face Keith, clutching his jaw. Blood oozed black and wet from between his fingers, rouged Spyder’s chin and grinning lips.
“She bit me!” he squawked, his face going sickly pale in the yellow parking lot glare. “The dyke bit my fuckin’ face!”
“Get out of here, man,” Keith growled, tightening his grip on the bat, testing its familiar weight like he was stepping up to the plate for a fastball.
“Fuck you, buddy. She bit a hole in my face.”
“And I’m gonna knock your head off if you don’t get the hell away from her. Now.”
Daria moved in closer to Keith, nerves sizzling like bad wiring behind old walls, but she kept her eyes on the guy on the ground and the one Keith had pushed aside, the one holding a liquor bottle wrapped conspicuously in a brown paper bag.
“Oh yeah,” she whispered. “This is some mighty nice shit you’ve gotten us in tonight, Keith. Extra special shitty.”
Sudden footsteps, heavy and coming up fast behind them, but she didn’t have to turn around to know they belonged to Mort. A second more and he was standing next to her, wrapping her in his welcome reek of drummer-sweat.
“Tony, the bitch chewed up my face!”
“Don’t worry, Digger,” said the bubba with the liquor bottle, his eyes locked firmly on Keith’s bat. “We’re gonna mess her freak ass up real good.”
“Last chance, brother,” Keith said, smiling as he spoke, and Daria knew that he’d be disappointed if the guy did back down now, the days of empty black rage that would follow. She braced herself, glad for the weight of the tire iron, gladder for Mort at her side.
“Last chance.”
“Screw you, fucker. The bitch probably gave me fuckin’ AIDS-”
Spyder shrieked, a piercing and guttural cry like night birds or barbarian soldiers, rocked back and drove the heels of both her boots into Digger’s kidneys, pushing him stumbling towards Keith. The redneck howled, fresh pain and surprise, and threw a desperate, sloppy right at Keith’s head; Keith ducked the blow effortlessly, sidestepped and swung his silver bat, connecting hard with the guy’s right arm. Daria heard clearly the muffled thwump, the sick wet snap of living bone, and Bubba Digger crumbled to the pavement.
Bubba Tony took a single, hesitant step in Keith’s direction, and Daria heard the steel-soft click of Mort’s knife, the big folding lockblade he carried for cutting electrical tape and splicing cable. Tony saw the knife and stopped, free hand disappearing into his jacket, returning a second later with a snubby little handgun.
“Screw this,” he said and aimed the.32 at Keith with one unsteady hand. “Screw all this shit.”
The car coughed suddenly awake then, whined and hacking roar from its reluctant engine, and Daria noticed Byron Langly for the first time, crouched behind the steering wheel, bright panic glittering in his eyes as he tried to wrestle the car into first gear. The Celica lurched forward, and Spyder groped frantically for handholds that weren’t there, then pitched sideways into the win
dshield. Bubba Tony yelped, tried too late to jump clear before he was knocked sprawling to the ground. His bottle smashed loudly against the asphalt and the gun skittered out of reach, spinning butt over glistening black muzzle.
Spyder managed to hang on a second or two longer, hands spread flat for traction against smooth metal and smoother glass. Then the car bounced violently over a speed bump and she was tossed clear, rolled like a stuntman in a TV cop show. The Celica squealed and screeched out of the parking lot, fishtailing and burning precious rubber from bald tires, missing the van by inches.
And nothing else for a long moment, then, time like caramel and cooling wax, nothing but Digger sobbing incoherent threats and curses, and the sound of Spyder’s Toyota, the flight of the shrikes, fading into the distance.
“Jesus,” whispered Mort, and Daria realized that she’d been holding her breath, breathed out and inhaled deeply, and the air tasted like car exhaust and spilled whiskey.
The sound that tore itself from Spyder’s mouth dragged Robin immediately back down to the dreams, the creeping things that had followed her back from the peyote, up from the pit of Spyder’s basement. The angry screech of denied retribution, raging shadows and nightshade teeth, and she covered her ears, squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting any more of this, not understanding how everything had gone so wrong so fast.
“Open your door, Byron,” Walter said. “We gotta help her.” And when Byron didn’t move, didn’t say a word, Walter kicked the back of his seat. “I said open the goddamn door!”
Robin was busy trying to make safe pictures in the imperfect darkness behind her eyelids, trying not to believe that one of those Neanderthal fucks was the same Tony Falleta that she’d happily let maul and screw her once upon a time, the same asshole that had tried to rape her the night Spyder and Byron and Walter had taken her home with them. She tried to see herself back inside Dr. Jekyll’s, making fun of the wannabes and them not even bright enough to know. Still sitting safe in Spyder’s arms, two hits of ecstasy burning in her brain. Back in Spyder’s bedroom, the silent, watchful tanks and web-painted windows safe as a church, and their flesh bleeding sweat and reassurance and the smells of sex.
“Byron, open the fucking door!”
The words that Spyder knew that had made sense of all her terrors, whispered like a private talisman in her ear, and the warm tangle of sheets and fuzzy blankets.
“Open the fucking door!”
“Don’t you see it?” and Byron had sounded so small and alone, so far away, that she’d had to open her eyes.
“Can’t you see?”
And she did see it, the blackness unfolding itself from inside Spyder like her body was only a shoddy cocoon, the needle-tipped legs opening, stretching wide as the night, wide as the boundless emptiness that Robin had summoned to poison them all.
And then she saw the gun in Tony’s shaking, coward’s hand, and Byron started the car.
The scream from the parking lot had left a gooseflesh rash on Niki’s arms and Theo was swearing, trying to get the van to start. Keith had left the van idling, but Theo had killed the motor when she’d shifted out of neutral and had forgotten to keep her foot pressed firmly on the clutch.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck…” She turned the key and the van jerked and sputtered and was quiet again.
“I think you flooded it,” Niki said, sounding almost as useless as she felt, looking past Theo, through the driver’s-side window. She followed the silver arc of the baseball bat in Keith’s hands, that strange scythe, and the big redneck kneeled at his feet.
“It’s not flooded. It’s just a worthless piece of shit,” and that time it turned over, half-hearted piston taunt, and almost caught.
But then the brown car jumped, seemed to spring forward like a hungry, pouncing animal, and the white-haired girl tumbled into the windshield. The front bumper caught the only one of the rednecks still standing, knocking him down, as the car swerved past the triad of Stiff Kitten. Halfway across the parking lot, the white-haired girl lost her grip on the hood or windshield and was tossed off, rag doll rolled a few feet and lay very still.
Niki gasped, grabbed Theo’s arm; for a second she was sure the Toyota was going to plow straight into the van, but at the last possible moment the driver cut the wheel sharply to the left and the car squealed past, only inches to spare, vanished up Morris in a fog of its own exhaust. As they had passed, she’d caught a hurried glimpse of the faces inside, fear rigid and gaudy as cheap Halloween masks.
And then the van made a painful grinding sound deep in its internal-combustion belly, backfired again, and rattled violently to life. Theo cursed and wrenched the gear shift into first, bumped over the curb and into the parking lot. Another three seconds, and they were pulling up alongside Mort and Daria.
“Thank god for the cavalry,” Mort said, closing his knife and putting it into his back pocket. “Better late than never.”
Keith was squatted down beside the guy the car had clipped, prodded him with one end of the bat.
“Is he dead?” Mort asked, and Keith shook his head, “Nah. He’s breathing,” and he looked back at the first guy he’d put down, still sitting on his butt, holding his ribs. “Better call your buddies here an ambulance,” and he picked up the revolver, flipped open the chamber and dumped the bullets out into his palm. He threw the gun into the tall weeds by the railroad tracks and pocketed the five cartridges.
“What about Spyder?” Daria asked, sliding the van’s side door open as Niki climbed down from the passenger seat.
Spyder was lying on her back a few feet away, eyes open, staring blankly up at the clouds. Keith walked over and waved a hand in front of her face.
“Hey. Spyder. Are you dead?” he said, and Niki saw the white-haired girl’s lips move, but couldn’t make out what she said.
“Spyder says she ain’t dead yet, Dar,” Keith said.
Spyder tried to sit up, and Keith helped her to her feet. Niki ran over to them, gladly seizing any chance to do something besides stand around gawking; she slipped one arm around Spyder and helped her towards the van.
“I can walk,” Spyder said, but Niki helped her anyway.
“C’mon, guys. Move your pokey butts,” Theo yelled. “I think Bert called the cops,” and immediately she was answered by the not-distant-enough wail of sirens.
“I’m just surprised you didn’t do it for him,” Mort said, climbing into the cab beside her.
“It’s snowing,” Spyder said as Niki guided her past the pug snout of the van, and she looked up into the city-bright sky, felt the snow an instant before she saw it, huge sticky flakes spiraling lazily down like Walt Disney fairies.
Spyder opened her mouth, bloodsmear-ringed like smudged lipstick or the candy-apple halo around a little girl’s mouth, and caught a single flake on her outstretched tongue. It lingered there a moment, ice-water crystal on pink flesh, before it melted and Spyder swallowed what was left.
And Niki shivered as something warm and sharp passed through her, there and gone again almost before she even had time to recognize it, something she hadn’t felt since the last time she’d seen Danny Boudreaux in the French Quarter, five months and a thousand years before. And they stood there, her and the white-haired girl, in the space between the beams of the van’s headlights, watching the snow fall, until Theo finally honked the horn.
CHAPTER EIGHT
String Theory
1.
B yron was driving like an idiot, ignoring red lights and stop signs. From the backseat, Walter was cursing him, cursing himself for not having forced Byron to let him out of the car, for not having done something to help Spyder.
“She’s dead,” he said, finality and icing despair. “Yeah, god, you know she’s dead. You killed her, Byron. You fucking killed Spyder.”
The porcelain boy he’d been making out with sat very quiet, wide scared eyes, waiting to see exactly what he’d gotten himself into and how he was going to get himself back out again. Robin kept her e
yes off the road, watched the beautiful, frightened boy reflected in her outside mirror, his black Betty Page wig and magenta lips. And the snow, falling down on them like manna.
“Just shut up,” Byron said. “Just shut the hell up.”
He raced through another red light, and Robin heard tires squeal, desperate hot scream, horns blaring like pissed-off harpies, and then they were speeding south along a street she felt sure she’d seen a thousand times but couldn’t begin to recognize.
“She’s not dead,” Byron said.
“How the hell do you know that, Byron? Fuck. How the hell do you know?” and he punched the driver’s-seat headrest.
“You didn’t see it?”
“Man, I didn’t see shit, except for you running over Spyder with her own goddamn car.”
“Well, you just ask Robin, then. Robin saw. She knows.”
But she said nothing, watched the snow and the buildings slipping past as downtown turned into Southside, and everything outside was powdered soft and sugar-white. What she had seen, what she thought she had seen, and all the things she had or had not seen since that night in the basement, crept behind her eyes, interceding, keeping themselves between the world and her mind. The things that left shadows but never showed themselves, that passed between her and lights, lamps and headlights and candles. The watchers, the skitterers, that had come up, been sent up, after them.
“Tell him,” Byron said, begging her now, pleading for her soothing concurrence, her damning corroboration. “For god’s sake, Robin, tell him you saw it, too.”
“Why?” she whispered, a softer sound even than the snow. “He knows what you’re talking about.”
“No!” and Walter punched the back of Byron’s seat again. “I do not know what the fuck either of you are talking about!”
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