Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [81]
“They’d stolen important things,” she said. “Very important things. Treasures.
“They thought they’d put them places that even He would never find them. But they were wrong, and He sent His lieutenants and angel captains down to bring them back. And to kill the thieves.”
Outside, something had padded quickly by, hurried feet below the window’s sill, and Walter had jumped, wiped sweat from his forehead. “Goddamn dogs,” he’d said. “Doesn’t anyone around here keep their fucking dog on a leash?”
Spyder had looked up at the window for a moment, and then she’d continued.
“Some of the exiled angels, although they weren’t really angels anymore because God had taken away their wings and made them all mortal, mortal enough that they’d grow old and finally die someday, some of them got away and took a few of the treasures with them, spent thousands and thousands of years running from the loyal angels that hunted them down one by one. Until there were only three or four, and the only treasure they had left was a stone….”
“That’s just the stuff I told you,” Walter said, almost as much contempt now as fear, cheated, lost emotion like whiskey stink on his voice. “The stuff from that fucking book that Robin told me to read. You’re not even making this up yourself.”
And Byron had lunged at him, reached across the table, knocking over everything, ketchup bottle and hot pepper sauce and a dusty dry vase of dead roses. Had seized Walter by the collar of his Misfits T-shirt and slammed him down hard against the metal tabletop, held his head pressed down with both hands while the red bottle of ketchup rolled over the edge and broke on the floor.
“It doesn’t matter,” Byron said, loud and male and not sounding much like anyone he’d ever been before. Each syllable a lead weight from his lips. “It doesn’t fucking matter where she knows it from,” and then he’d smacked Walter’s head against the table again.
“Byron, turn him loose, now,” and when she’d said that, Byron had looked at Spyder like he’d forgotten precisely who she was.
“Make him shut up,” he said.
“He’s not gonna say anything else. He’s just scared too. Turn him loose.”
And he had, had slowly let Walter stand up, Walter almost a foot taller than Byron, but the blood running from his busted lips and nose, anyway. He’d sat back down in his chair, not a curse or a threat, one hand held over his wounded face.
“Don’t stop,” Robin whispered, desperation like dirty oil, and “Please don’t stop, Spyder.”
She’d waited only as long as it took for Byron to sink back into his own chair, only as long as she dared.
“Please…” Robin said.
“The only part of the treasure left was a stone,” and a pause then, maybe a sort of challenge to Walter, but he’d been watching the windows again, his own blood in his hands.
“A beautiful blue-gray stone full of God’s most beautiful and terrible secrets. And they knew that they’d been wrong, that there was no way for them to hide themselves or the stone much longer. Instead, they found a way to take it apart and put it back together again inside themselves. But they knew that still wasn’t enough, so they found men and women and fucked them, seduced them or just raped them, and that passed the things in the stone into innocent human beings that they didn’t believe He would ever hurt to take back his secrets.”
“But they were wrong, weren’t they?” Byron asked, asked like he already knew the answer, had known it all his life.
“Yeah,” she said. “They were wrong. The people that carried the things from the stone inside them disappeared from the World one by one, but some of them had children first, and their children had children, and little bits and pieces got away after all.”
They were hanging on her words, then, even Walter, salvation in these lies, waiting just beyond the last thing she’d said. And Spyder had strained to see the fetal lies in front of her, curled slippery as moss-hairy stones almost invisible