A Rope of Thorns (38 page)

“
By their own hands shall they perish,
” Love quoted, to himself. “Glorying in iniquity, they shall be hurled from the window like Jezebel, and eaten by dogs.”

Asbury said, “Perish? Now, see here—”

Love swung ’round—but the old man was already struck dumb, mouth stoppered by Songbird’s unmaimed hand; the girl glared up, seeming to will him quiet. And Asbury bowed his head, gaze dropping: became prim, meek as any small desert creature playing dead, to ward off predation.

Love’s faith-burnt eyes turned in Chess’s direction next, locking fast. And right that moment was when it struck Chess how Mesach Love might be weary of all this foofaraw as Chess was, if not more. Even the hatred he could still feel burning at Love’s core had guttered, while what remained around it was . . . worn thin as the walls of this place, bleached like bone left too long in the sun. As if all the power he’d consumed, from Chess and Pinkerton and Songbird alike, had done nothing but flood straight through him, wearing him away as it gushed back into the black, where something shrouded in dark fire grinned.

You know, don’t ya?
Chess thought.
Came back as a puppet, and that’s all you’ve ever been, all this time—an’ not one doin’ your Lord’s work, neither. Never His. Never even your own.

He cocked his head. Asked Love, out loud: “Was I worth all this, just for a measure of payback? Think hard.”

Love considered. “Were our places changed,” he said, after a moment, “how would you answer?”

Hmmm. Good point.

Chess must’ve smiled somewhat at that—grimly at best, but enough to make Love’s ashes flare up one more time. ’Cause the next thing he knew, he was blindsided by a salt-slap, pressed down face-first with the Sheriff’s sodden-grainy boot hollowing itself ’round his neck.

Love leaned in close, hissing: “Time to get ready, Pargeter. To die, at last—alone, forsaken, while my wife and son watch every last hurt play out, if only from Heaven’s gate. For where’s your beloved ‘Reverend,’ now he’s most needed?”

Like Songbird before him, Chess breathed in salt and coughed out bile. Tried to say:
Hex City, dumb-ass—where’d you damn well
think
?

But he couldn’t, and hadn’t really expected to. Everything got gun-barrel narrow, and he found he felt—not resigned, as such, nor exactly content . . . never had been yet, after all. Not even in far less onerous circumstances.

But he did find himself wishing Asher Rook was somewheres nearby, if only to see how dying twice wasn’t really so bad, when you didn’t give a good Goddamn. Or maybe just so he could spit blood his way one last time, hoping it went deep enough to sting.

Crazy thing was, though—he almost thought he could hear him. Saying, amused,
Aw, c’mon now, darlin’. You don’t really think I’d let matters ’tween you and me close out like
this
, did you?

Look up, my husband’s husband. Rise.

And suddenly, crazily . . . he found he could do both.

The sun’s fire seemed to darken, filtered through smoked glass. The air felt molasses-thick, dragging on him as he turned to take stock: Songbird sat motionless, one white hand still over Asbury’s mouth, while the Professor’s blood sat unflowing on his gouged cheeks, filmy eyes saucer-wide. Though Love’s alien stillness seemed no different, at least, the space beneath his boot where Chess had lain was empty—and the boot itself
still curved
, like it rested on something mid-vanishment. Pinkerton was a wax sculpture stretched limp on the chalky ground, Ed and Yancey lying prone too, nearby—and how long had it been since he’d last seen either of them move, anyhow?

What time is it?
Chess thought.
Don’t know how long we’ve been—shit, this light, can’t hardly see no more. Salt’s eating it, like dust. It just—it looks so, damn
—familiar.

He looked down, hazily, head swimming; looked up again. Saw the sun pop like a pinhole, bright white against grey. Saw it waver and blur, colours spectrum-skipping. Yellow sun in a black sky. Black sun in yellow.

Water lapping up at his heels, cold, gelid. The shadows of knives falling, like unclean rain.

As his left hand rose to wipe his brow, mouth painfully dry, he all at once saw something set down on it—narrow, bright, its head all eyes, both fixed and fragile wings glittering with speed, so fast they gave off a buzz. A dragonfly.

Of fuckin’ course.

For way off in the distance—but growing ever closer, like cream turns under a witch’s stink-eye—a whole hissing cloud made from more of the same was on the convergence: devil’s darning needles loud as locusts, swirling like faceted snow. Numberless wings dirtying the sky, the ground, thinning the skein between Above and Below ’til Mictlan-Xibalba itself peeked through. ’Til a shape like a massive seed-pod humped up from its very centre, far too large to hold only one occupant—first one hand out-thrust, then another, pulling the swarm aside like a pair of living curtains. Left hand slim and fine-fingered, burnt sienna-toned, with black-flushed nails and a spattering of tattoos ’cross its palm; right one square and manly with a reach put Pinkerton himself to shame, big enough to hold a fellow down by his throat while the other worked its will on him, probing hot and sweet and evil from head to Goddamn toe.

“Neatly done, darlin’,” the Rev observed. “Why, that was almost . . . strategic.”

The flush of seeing him enfleshed once more ran Chess’s length like ball-lightning, shameful-invigorating. But all he said was: “So it
is
you—late, like always. Somewhat wondered if you were even comin’.”

Rook smiled back down at him, like he was too happy to see him to trust himself to speak. While by his side, arm threaded possessive through his elbow’s crook, stood dread Rainbow Lady Ixchel with her long hair blowing and her snake-skirts a-ripple ’round her ripe hips, scales rattling dry as dead leaves. Blood ran from both bare teats, streaking her belly like war paint, to drip dark spots on Bewelcome’s salted ground.

The sheer raw force of her was dismaying, as ever—but now Chess could peer beyond that force, or into it; see how the mortal substance of the vessel she wore was eroding, slow but inexorable, Bewelcome’s thinness straining under her weight. And Rook looked little better, his long black coat dusty, collar frayed to a wisp, face both harsher-carved and looser at the jaw-points than Chess remembered it, with marks of worry, strain and weariness cut deep.

And to think how easily all that might’ve been avoided,
Chess thought,
if only . . .

Rook gave a tiny shrug, the movement hardly visible. “
If only’s” a fruit lamentably easy to cultivate, darlin’, though it travels badly. I mean, it ain’t like you’d really accept any apology I tried to make, is it? However grovelling?

I might, at that—if you was to just go ’head and try me, you smug sumbitch.

At this, Rook looked taken aback, like he almost wanted to answer. But it was her voice spoke instead, making Chess’s muscles twitch in fury: lilting, mock-affectionate, each vowel etched in the stone knife-sharpening sounds of a long-dead world. A voice he mainly knew from nightmares of being rode hard and put away wet, without even what little pleasure he might’ve got from the process left behind, in recompense.

Then consider it said,
she told him, smiling her sharp green smile.
It is your time, after all, little year-king. You have seeded plentifully, marking a trail for others to follow, a net of power trawling New Aztectlan’s territories for due tribute. But your reign is done, and here we are, to collect. Now comes the time . . .of harvest.

“I wasn’t talkin’ to you,” Chess told her, knowing she’d ignore him. Switching over to Rook: “Hey, Reverend—what is this we’re in here, some sort’a time-hex? You slip us ’tween seconds on a watch-face so’s we’d have the chance to jaw our mutual complaints out, that it?”

“Something like that, yeah. For them, this’s an eye-blink—less than. For us—”

—an eternity, if need be. Until our matters are settled.

Chess laughed. “Hell, we could do that now, you pitiful damn rag-’n’-bone show object. I already spent the whole damn day so far fightin’—bit more won’t make no never-mind, unless you got something I never seen before hid up that skirt of yours.”

Her eyes narrowed.
You truly believe it would be so easy?

“What, ’cause you’re a god? The hell you think you made of me, bitch?”

Something of the sort, yes—but only in its season. And your season is almost up.

They bristled at each other, air ’round them both starting to twist and crackle ’neath the strain, ’til Rook sighed, raising both his hands. “No need for all that, is there? Not yet. ’Sides which—Lady, have you ever seen Chess here take the easy way out? Even back ’fore he knew what he really was?” She looked away, one bare foot stirring the salt impatiently, toes raking up its crust like claws. “Well, then.”

He looked back to Chess. Said, quiet: “I am glad to see you, though. ’Cause in the end . . . there’s no one else on earth I’d rather get myself killed by.”

“Yeah? Well, there’s no one I’d rather go down tryin’ to kill, myself.” A jerk of his head toward Ixchel: “’Less we fold in your Missus over there, ’course.”

At that, both Rook and Ixchel, grinned like their mouths were tied to the same puppet-strings. “Wouldn’t expect it any other way,” said Rook.

Unable to face that smile, Chess took in the scorched earth of Bewelcome township once more—salted inhabitants, wreckage of the Pinks’ train; Love, Pinkerton, Asbury and Songbird; finally, Morrow and Yancey. The sight of his own guns, still holstered on Yancey’s belt, warmed him, if by no more than a jot.

But it was Morrow he looked at, as he voiced the question he’d sworn never to ask: “Why’d you do it, Ash? And spare me the bullshit ’bout savin’ me from Hell, for Christ’s sweet sake. . . .” He sent a glare Ixchel’s way, over his shoulder. “I know what
she
wants—some grand rollback to when she and hers ruled the roost—but how is
this
shit supposed to help?”

Rook sighed again. “Chess, this world that’s coming . . . it ain’t a place where ‘why’ holds much water. We do what we do because it’s what we do, and that’s all there is to it—like askin’ why the sky’s blue, or water’s wet, or things fall down, not up. You spread chaos and the chaos
itself
is the point, like you spread the Weed to show the people what the new world runs on: spill blood, and prosper; hoard it, and die. You . . . and Ed, for that matter . . . just did what it was in both your natures to do, and the rest followed naturally on.” Looking at Love: “Though to tell the truth, I never would’ve expected you’d keep a personal grudge ’gainst anyone other than me goin’ quite so long. I’m almost jealous.”

“Oh, you ain’t got cause to be—you’re top of my kill-list still, that makes you happy. But don’t think to use my given name again,
Reverend
.”

He’d thrown the words out thoughtlessly, as ever, only to feel a painful gut-clench of angry regret roil up from deep inside Rook, as they landed. Still, he shrugged it off, vising himself tight around his own hurt. If Rook thought Chess weak enough to forgive him, just ’cause
he’d
suffered too . . .

But Ixchel was laughing, skin-crawl silent, effortlessly recapturing his rage-focus.
As you wish, Our Lord the Flayed One—for that is most truly your title now, in any event.

“And who asked
you
, exactly?”

Ungrateful!
she exclaimed.
And after we came such distances, froze Time itself to save you? Unchecked, the White Christ god-babbler there would have left nothing of you for the vultures. But there will be time enough to defeat him once we three have undone what the One he serves has made of this world.

Chess snorted in disdain. “Shows all
you
know.” To Rook: “What d’you think that is inside Love, eatin’ up everything I throw at him like chuck? Sumbitch got hold of some portion of my power, without me even feelin’ it!”

Rook scowled. “From who? Sheriff don’t truck with any but God, as I recall. . . .” But here he trailed off, sniffing the air, frown deepening. “What . . . what
is
that?”

Ixchel’s face went dead, as if her incarnation had never been more than a lie, badly told. And the word whispered out from her, like a hot wind.

Him
, she said.

Something else stirring in the not-darkness, a fourth point to the triangle, rendering it square; a certain . . . obscurity crossing the day’s face, scarring it to artificial twilight. Something turning on a dime, impossibly huge, showing itself to have been there all along, only biding its own sweet time. Huge as a house, thin as crossed bones, pitch-black . . . and
smoking
.

Come out now, brother
, Ixchel told it, with surprising respect.
Husband, son, all—everything, and nothing, my only woken equal. I acknowledge and invoke you.

Yet you still hesitate to name me, sister-mother-wife
, the Enemy’s too-familiar voice replied.
Why would that be, I wonder?

Blue fire blossomed over Love’s statue-still head and shoulders, billowing up and up. Beneath it, the smoke-like form the Sheriff had taken on in order to destroy the revenant thunder-lizards swelled out of him ’til it stood free, grinning. And that bone-shutter pulse filled the literally timeless silence, thrumming up through Chess’s boots like rail on a rotten bridge, unsafe at any speed.

You have always had . . . so many names
, Ixchel said, finally.

Yes. And I did not even have to eat my own kin, to gain them.

Four faces in one, always changing
, that other voice at the back of Chess’s skull supplied—some old lady’s voice he suspected might be the same one that’d called him “warrior” and “boy,” not too long previous.
The black Tezcatlipoca, Smoking Mirror himself: a ghost, a skeleton, a dog with human hands, as we see him. The red Tezcatlipoca, Xipe Totec, who raises up the corn and is ground down to make more; that would be you, little red-hair, ’til your next sacrifice. And this new
bilagaana
Bible-worker, in his salt coat: he would be the white Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl. The other God Who Dies, waiting to play out his part . . . but only once you play out yours.