“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.