Alex comes out of the bathroom and sits down on the love seat across from the bed. He yawns once, burps into his hand, then begins flipping through an Atlanta phone book.
“You think we can get some sushi delivered?” he asks, and she shrugs, but doesn’t answer.
“I could fucking kill for spicy tuna rolls and unagi right about now.”
“Call the concierge,” Daria says and deletes a third message from Jarod Parris, telling her he’s just learned that Michael Stipe’s going to be at the show, and would she rather meet him before or afterwards.
“Those stupid fuckers never know where to get good sushi,” Alex mutters. “They never even know where to get good pizza.”
“Hey, Jarod says Michael Stipe’s going to make the show tonight.”
“No shit,” Alex says and goes back to flipping through the Yellow Pages. “Do I bow or do I curtsy?”
The cell phone beeps twice, then informs her that the final message was left at 5:17 P.M. There’s a sudden, painful burst of static through the speaker, and Daria curses and holds the phone an inch or two farther away from her ear. A moment later, a man begins to speak in a low and gravelly voice she doesn’t recognize, a voice that’s neither old nor young, a voice like cold fingers pressed against the back of her neck.
“You’ll remember me,” he says, “later on. You’ll remember the night I tried to warn you about Spyder, the night in Birmingham when I told you Niki was in danger.”
“What about Thai?” Alex asks. “Here’s a Thai place that delivers—”
“Shut up a second,” Daria hisses, and he does, sits staring at her, the phone book lying open in his lap.
“It’s finally coming to an end,” the man on the phone says, and there’s more static before he continues. “She’s calling us all back to the start. She’s already found Niki. I think she’s shown her the way past the fire, across the Dog’s Bridge.”
“Who the hell is it?” Alex asks, and she shakes her head and shushes him again.
“Listen to me, Daria Parker. It really doesn’t matter if you don’t believe or understand what I’m saying. You will. Niki’s on her way back to Cullom Street. She’s received the mark. You’ve seen it, on her hand. Niki Ky is becoming the Hierophant, and she’ll open the gates. She’ll unleash the Dragon.”
Alex closes the phone book and sets it aside.
“We have to be there to stop her. All of us have to be there to stop her. All the worlds are winding down. All the worlds are spinning to a stop. Find her, Daria, before the jackals do. Before I do. If I find her first, I have to kill her, and I’ve killed too many people already.”
There’s a last wave of static before the computerized recording asks whether she wants to press 7 to delete the message or 9 to save it.
“Christ, Dar, what’s happening? Who is it?”
But she doesn’t answer him; she shakes her head and presses 9. “Message saved,” the computer says in its measured, androgynous voice. “You have no new messages.”
If I find her first, I have to kill her…
Daria’s unsteady fingers linger a moment above the keypad, then she enters her home number, the ten digits that are all that stand between her and Niki, and waits for Marvin to answer the phone.
…I’ve killed too many people already.
On the fourth ring, the answering machine picks up, and a recording of Marvin’s voice repeats the number she’s just dialed, then asks that she please leave her name and number, the date and time. “Wait for the tone,” Marvin says, “then speak your mind.”
Daria hangs up and enters five digits, then a sixth, then presses cancel.
“Goddamn it!” she growls and almost throws her Nokia at the hotel wall. “Alex, I can’t even remember her number. I can’t fucking remember the number for Niki’s cell.”
“Just hold on,” he says, reaching for Daria’s purse on the table beside the love seat. “You’ve got it in your PDA, right? So just calm down and tell me what the hell’s going on before you give me a heart attack.”
“I don’t know,” she replies, crying now, and she wipes furiously at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I think something’s happened to Niki. I think something terrible’s happened to Niki.”
And there’s a sound like the battered silence after thunder, or the moment before a train whistle blows, and she looks up at the balcony beyond the open drapes. A dead man wearing Keith Barry’s face is standing on the other side of the glass, watching her. She can see that both his wrists are slashed, and he turns away and points at the sky. Above the city lights, a falling star streaks across the darkness and is gone, a single white shard of Heaven torn loose and hurled burning to earth.
And Daria Parker shuts her eyes, and she falls, too.
CHAPTER FIVE
Pillars of Fire
Almost twenty-four hours now since the hospital, and Niki isn’t on a plane to Colorado, or Birmingham, or anywhere else. She’s sitting in a hotel room—because she wouldn’t go back to the house on Alamo Square—staring at the lights on the Bay Bridge, the glittering lights of Oakland laid out across the black water. Like stars come down to earth, like grounded, fallen things, and that’s how she feels, sitting at the big window looking out, the television talking to itself so she won’t feel so alone. It isn’t working, because she is alone, even though Marvin’s lying there on one of the twin beds behind her, pretending to watch a Jimmy Stewart movie on TV. She knows he’s really watching her, can feel his eyes, his exhausted, nervous attention.
“Well, it’s definitely infected,” the doctor said and frowned, the doctor who finally saw her after Marvin found her unconscious on the restroom floor, after she’d crossed the sea of fire and lava on a bridge made of bones, after she’d talked to Spyder and then had to come back here, as if here and now could ever possibly matter again.
“You should have been more careful with those sutures,” the doctor said. “You fool around with something like this and you can wind up losing a hand. I’ve seen it happen.”
Marvin glared at her, his sharpest, most merciless I-told-you-so glare, but he didn’t say anything. He took a deep breath, instead, and let it out very slowly, the air whistling softly between his front teeth.
“So I’ll live?” Niki asked, and the doctor nodded his head and reached for a syringe.
“You’re very lucky, Ms. Ky,” he said. “You don’t seem to understand that. This could have been a lot worse.”
Oh, don’t you worry, she thought. It will be. It’ll be a whole lot worse, and there’s not anything you or anyone else can do.
Under the bright lights of the examination room, the hole in her right palm was the too-ripe color of strawberry preserves, and she didn’t bother asking the doctor if he could see the tranparent bit of something wriggling about at the center. He’d have said so if he could.
“A few more hours and there’s no telling how bad this might have been.”
Marvin made a disgusted sort of noise and laughed.
“Do you know how long we sat in the waiting room?” he asked. “Did anyone tell you we were sitting out there two hours?”
The doctor apologized and mumbled something about staff shortages and working double shifts; Niki could tell from the tone in his voice that he spent a lot of time apologizing. He cleaned the wound and sewed it shut again, sewing shut the door to her soul, the door that the wriggling thing had opened, then gave her a stronger antibiotic and wrapped her hand in fresh white gauze.
It itches and aches, and she pretends not to think about it.
“I should try to reach her again,” Marvin says.
“She doesn’t want to talk to you, Marvin. Why do you think she’s keeping her phone turned off?”
“She’s got to turn it back on sometime. She’s got to check her messages sooner or later.”
Niki taps at the glass with the middle finger of her left hand and shakes her head. “She said that she’d call when she got to Atlanta. She promised me sh
e’d call.”
“Daria’s under a lot of stress, Niki. I don’t know how she keeps going the way she does.”
Niki taps the glass and watches the lights. There’s a boat passing beneath the bridge, something small, and she imagines that it might be a tugboat. She thinks about standing on the listing deck, the cold and salty wind stinging her face, tangling her hair, blowing her soul clean again. And if she looked up, the steel-girder belly of the bridge would be there high above her, a wide black stripe to hide the brilliant sky. In a moment, the boat will be clear of the bridge, chugging north past Treasure Island. She closes her eyes and tries not to hear the television.
After the Dog’s Bridge, there was no sense in airplanes, no sense left in any of her plans, and when the doctor was finished, she told Marvin to find them a hotel with a view of the bay. After that yawning abyss of flame and smoke, she needed to see water, the cold comfort of the Pacific lapping patiently at the ragged edge of the continent.
“I know she’s fucking Alex,” Niki says.
“What?” Marvin asks, and she can tell how hard he’s trying to sound surprised, like that’s the very last thing in the whole world he ever expected her to say. “Niki, what the hell are you talking about? That’s not true.”
“Yes, it is. I’ve known for a long time.”
“You’re just angry—”
“No. I’m not angry, Marvin. I’m not angry at all,” and that’s the truth. She might have been angry about Daria and the Brit guitar player, a long time back, months ago, when she thought there was still hope for her and Daria. But now it only makes her a little sad, and she’s tired of pretending she doesn’t know what’s going on.
She opens her eyes, and the little boat’s just a speck in the darkness.
“She loves you, Niki,” Marvin says, and she stops tapping at the glass.
“Yeah. I know she does. That’s the worst part of it, I think. It would be easier if she didn’t.”
“But you still love her.”
“Do I?” Niki asks, asking herself more than she’s asking him. “I thought I did. Just a few hours ago, I was pretty sure I did. But now—”
“Now you’re tired and confused and need to get some sleep.”
Niki turns around in her chair and stares at Marvin for a moment. His eyes are bloodshot, and there’s stubble on his cheeks. He probably hasn’t slept since Saturday morning, and now it’s Monday night, and he’s still trying to stay awake because someone has to watch her.
“I’m not confused,” she says. “I’m very tired, and my hand hurts, but I’m not confused. I’m crazy, Marvin, but I’m not a child. And I’m not stupid, either.”
Marvin sighs and rubs his eyes.
“Let’s both get some sleep, and then we’ll talk about this, okay? I can’t even think straight anymore.”
Niki glances back at the window, but there’s no sign of the little boat now. For all she knows, the bay has opened up and swallowed it whole.
“I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch to you,” Niki says.
“Come lie down,” he says, and switches off the television with the remote control, so there’s only the restless sound of the traffic outside, the murmur of people on the street, the wind pressing itself against the walls of the hotel. “Lie down, and we’ll talk about it in the morning. Your meds are on the bathroom counter by the sink.”
“That girl who saw the wolves, that wasn’t your fault, what happened to her.”
“No,” he says, then sighs and switches the TV on again. “Of course not. I know that,” and the box springs squeak, like a handful of captured mice, so she knows without having to look that he’s sitting up.
“You did everything you could,” she whispers, then begins tapping her finger against the window again. “Everything anyone could have done.”
“Niki, what are you trying to say?” he asks, but then his cell phone starts ringing, and she doesn’t have to think of a way not to answer the question.
When Niki finally reached the far side of the Dog’s Bridge, there was someone waiting for her, the same someone who waits for anyone who crosses the span. He sat on his haunches, crouched at the base of one of the great stone piers, where the intricate weave of bone and wire was anchored forever to the inconstant, volcanic earth. When he saw her coming, the creature stood up, joints popping loudly, stretching his long arms and legs like he must have been sitting in that same spot for a very long time. Standing up straight, he was at least a couple of feet taller than Niki. The creature yawned once, showing off sharp eyeteeth the color of clotted milk, scratched his chin, then blinked his crimson eyes at her. In the dim, shifting light from the soot and ash sky, his smooth skin glistened black as coal; he was naked, save for a battered derby perched crookedly on his narrow skull.
“You certainly took your own sweet time,” he growled and licked his thin lips.
“It was a long way,” Niki said, wishing there’d been no one at all on this side of the bridge, except maybe Spyder, but certainly not this scowling, ribsy creature with its red, pupilless eyes. “I came as fast as I could.”
“Are you kidding? No one ever crosses that bridge as fast as they can,” he replied. “They pick their way across, inch by goddamned inch, as though their lives depend on every single step. They dawdle, and they gawk, and—”
“I didn’t dawdle,” Niki protested.
“Oh, yes, you did, sweetheart. I watched you. I listened. You’re no different than all the rest of them.”
“I never said I was.”
“You didn’t have to,” the black thing grunted and sat down again. “By now, every thistle and scorpion and grub-worm on the hub knows your name. Round these parts, you’re the new It girl and the black guard has your number. But personally,” he sneered, “I don’t see what all the fuss is about. You wouldn’t make a decent mouthful for a starving rat.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was at the hospital, and I went to take a piss—”
“Yeah. Sure, sure, sure. I read the papers, child. I got the skinny. But the only thing matters to me is how you’re mucking everything up by starting at the end, when you haven’t the foggiest where the beginning’s at. Do you have any idea the sort of ripples that causes?”
Niki turned and looked back at the bridge, the tops of its high, misshapen towers lost in the low clouds.
“Spyder sent me across,” she said and swallowed, her mouth as dry as sand, dry as dust, and thought how good a glass of Marvin’s limeade would be.
“Of course she did. That one, she does whatever the hell she likes and protocol be damned. But, you mark my word, the black guard’s gonna catch up with her ass one day, too. Way things are headed, maybe one day real soon.”
“What’s the black guard?” Niki asked, not really wanting to know and starting to wonder if maybe she should have stayed on the other side, and she sat down on the rocky ground in front of the tall thing.
“Oh, you’ll find out soon enough. Those cheeky, conniving fuckers. They come skulking round here, making me promises, offering—” and he paused and sniffed at the sulfurous air a moment. Behind them, the sea of fire belched and heaved and bubbled, and the Dog’s Bridge creaked in the scorched and parching furnace wind.
“—offering me things,” he continued. “Sweet things. Things I haven’t tasted in centuries, mind you. And all I have to do is hand them your pretty head on a pike.”
“Is that what happens next?” Niki asked. “Are you going to kill me and cut off my head?”
The tall thing looked offended, rolled its red eyes and snorted. “This is still my bridge, Hierophant. My fucking bridge, and my rules, and as long as you know how many steps it took you to get across, I got no beef with you. I’m a bridge keeper, not a merchant. I don’t make deals.”
“Your bridge?”
“Damn straight, girlie. My bridge, for as long as it’s been standing, and it’ll be my bridge until those fires finally burn themselves out, or I get bored
with it, whichever comes first.”
“Then you’re the dog?”
“Do I look like a goddamn dog?”
“You don’t look much like anything I’ve ever seen,” Niki replied, and the creature rolled its eyes again.
“I didn’t name the stinking bridge,” he said, and licked his lips. “And I’ll wager there’s a whole lot of things you ain’t seen yet. Way I hear it, though, that’s all gonna change, moppet. Way I hear it—”
“I don’t care. My hand hurts, and I’m tired of listening to you.” She got up and dusted off the seat of her jeans with her good hand.
“Then give me the number, and fuck off to wherever it is you’re bound,” the creature snarled and leaned back against the pier. “You think I don’t have better things to do than sit here yacking with rabble like you all day long?”
“The number?” Niki asked, and the bridge keeper leaned forward, perking his ears, grinned wide and smiled an eager, hungry smile.
“How many steps, girlie. That side to this side. The number. Else I get something sweet, after all. Surely, she must have told you—”
“Yeah, she told me,” Niki said quickly and took a couple of steps back from the black and grinning thing, caught one heel on a piece of slate and almost tripped. “My hand hurts, and I’m thirsty, that’s all. I just forgot for a second. I didn’t know what you meant.”
“So stop wasting my time,” the bridge keeper said. “Stop getting my hopes up. Spit it out.”
“What happens then? Do you send me back?”
“I don’t send nobody nowhere, lady. I watch this here bridge. That’s all. Do you have the number or not?”
Niki opened her mouth to tell him, “Four thous—” but then he sprang to his feet, faster than she would have guessed, and one hand clamped tight across her mouth. His skin tasted as bad as the air smelled.
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