Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [75]
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 windshield. 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