A Rope of Thorns (8 page)

Rook shook his head, chuckling again. “Ed, Ed! And you the one who pointed out to
me
how Chess’ll do any damn thing at all, the moment he thinks somebody expects the opposite. Oh no, believe you me, ‘Agent’ Morrow—” The smile faded. “He
will
turn on you, sooner or later, like he does everyone else. Won’t even be able to stop himself.”

“I think that’s yourself you’re thinkin’ of, Reverend.”

“We’ll see.”

Morrow felt a rush of something unfamiliar spill up from inside him, hot like bile, and only realized at the last possible instant it must be rage not on his own behalf, but on Chess’s.

“As for me actin’ Chess’s John the Baptist, or what-have-you,” he went on, refusing to be drawn, “I ain’t done all too much to spread that bloody gospel of yours as yet, if you’ve been watching.”

“Noticed that, yes.” A dark grin: “Feelin’ guilty?”

“Not as such. You . . . feelin’ mad?”

Rook fixed him again, longer this time, like:
Not as such.

“There’s one or two things you can’t know, Ed,” was all he had by way of an answer. “And ’fore you ask, what I mean by that is—you can really only see half the show, from where you’re sat.”

Morrow’s heart stuttered, just a bit. “And Chess . . . how much can
he
see, exactly?”

Rook shrugged again. “More than he wants to, I’m sure. But less by far than he knows he needs to.”

Morrow took a deep breath, mind whirring like Asbury’s shattered Manifold. “What is it you want, Ash Rook?”

Rook sighed, and suddenly the sky was black as his coat, star-studded, cold. Blue fire flickered like heat lightning along the horizon. “Something’s comin’, and nothing of mine, or my Lady’s. More to do with that Enemy of Chess’s, I reckon.”

Which one?
Morrow thought, confused.

“’Course, for all you know, I
could
just be spinnin’ you more tales.” Rook spread his hands. “But like I said—ain’t as big a difference between the two of you as it used to be. Or all three of us, for that matter.”

From somewhere else, Chess Pargeter screamed out loud.

And here was where Morrow rocketed straight back up into the debatably real world, only to find it deformed by yet another nightmare. Across the dead campfire’s smoking blister, Chess thrashed and kicked beneath an undulating blanket of amorously seeking Weed that’d obviously followed them ’cross the desert, tracing Chess’s delicious spoor, and now snuggled against him from every angle, stroking him with its many tendrils. In far too many spots to count, Morrow saw its meaty red-green furls broken up with dull ivory bone fragments which must’ve swum up through the dirt to get there, drawn by a similar hopeful hunger. These fought against each other like puppies at the teat, desperate to bury ’emselves once more
inside
him.

“Jesus!” Chess cursed, his voice skewing frighteningly high, scrabbling them away with both fists while they leaped and snapped in successive waves, quotidian, inexplicable. “You filthy little bastards—Goddamn fucking
magic
! Motherfuck damn Hell shit-ass
Christ
!”

Without thinking, Morrow caught one of Chess’s flailing hands between his palms; he hauled ’til his shoulder popped, bracing his boot against the fire pit’s rock-set rim. At last Chess came slithering free with a juicy rip, right into Morrow’s embrace. The vine-bone mélange turned, seeking eyelessly, and swarmed its way after; when Morrow stomped a few of the tendrils into muck, the others hissed at him, spitting acid that made his boot-tips smoke.

Now upright, Chess had already slipped behind him, using the bigger man’s bulk as a shield. “
Do
something!” he demanded, as Morrow whirled and swore.

“Hell,
you
do something!” Morrow swung his duster off his shoulders and used it to lash at the Weed, whipping it back. “Make it go away, like before—”

“‘Begone’? That’s exactly what I
been
telling it! It just don’t damn well listen!”

And this,
an amused voice said, inside both their skulls at once,
is what your priest-king spoke of, little brother, when he warned you that you must learn a better way to deal with such matters or suffer the consequences . . . along with everyone else.

Who said that?
Morrow thought. But Chess’s eyes had already flicked straight to the left, and Morrow followed them, automatically. To see something looming there in the dark beyond, born from it, birthing it—something grinning, bigger than a house, a pitch-smeared hulk whose brow leaked fire and mouth leaked smoke. Whose teeth, like the interior of the Rainbow Lady’s perforated head when Morrow’d shot her in the Moon Room, were a wailing forest of tiny red faces, generation on generation of those killed to keep her all-fired Blood Engine going.

Oh,
this creature said, admiringly,
so you
can
think.
Then he does well to keep you by him after all, soldier.

Under its gaze, the Weed had pulled back, finally, and now lay cowering in a lop-shaped circle, all a-tremble like pilgrims at the Rock. Morrow swallowed, mouth suddenly so dry he could barely taste his own tongue.

“You . . . you’d be that Enemy the Rev was talkin’ ’bout, wouldn’t you?”

I would.

“Same one we call Satan, that it? Or is that somebody else entirely?”

The hulk shook its grinning, smoking head, just once, with surprising dignity.

I do not know this name,
it told him.
But you and I
have
met before, albeit only briefly; certainly, you have heard my progress through the dark, if nothing else. Remember? Like
this
.

It straightened, spreading great columnar arms and more, as the thing’s ribs swung back as well, charcoal-hued glass doors gaping wide into nothingness: the hole, the crack, a wound between reality and Hell. For a second it yawned, then clapped shut, a club smacking home against bone, hard enough to fracture.

Unfolded, in a gust of freezing wind; clapped shut:
whoosh-crack! Whoosh-craaack!

He
had
heard this before: in a Tampico hotel room, heralding Rook’s appearance in the mirror before Morrow went in to face Chess. But no, even further back still—that shuttery pounding, a massive wood-slat heartbeat keeping time all the way up from Mictlan-Xibalba, dragging what he’d thought was Chess’s denuded corpse up through that endless tunnel, the cold, wet, impossible dark.

Aghast, Morrow suddenly realized why the feel of the power boiling off this thing was so familiar. He twisted to stare back at Chess. “Rook wanted to make you into . . . into
that?
”

Partly only, little meat-thing, to both your benefits.
The Enemy gestured at Chess.
For this
is the aspect of mine which loves to breed, to grow, to make things rise out of life and death alike. It loves, as well as hungers. It kills, but with a smile. Everything yearns for its embrace.

An almost diffident stroke along Morrow’s instep made him jerk, provoking a squawk. Under cover of the Enemy’s presence, the Weed had inched its stealthy way back toward the object of its adoration, now massed ’round him and Chess both to near a foot deep. Noticing almost simultaneously that he was once more surrounded, Chess cried out again, and started dancing, crushing the red blossoms wetly beneath his boot-heels while Morrow whipped his duster left and right.

Insulted, the Weed set up a general hiss. A stray shard of bone raked the back of Morrow’s hand, spraying blood; he cursed it, volubly.

Over Morrow’s shoulder, meanwhile, Chess yelled back, irreverently: “Goddamnit, then—if I’m part’a you, or you me, get off your bony ass and
help
us!
Or was
that
all bullshit, too?”

The Enemy cocked its head, unmoved.
Perhaps . . . I only want to see what
you
will do.

“Aw, you useless
son of a bitch
—”

So childishly outraged, so flat-out helpless and just plain
fed-up
; how
young
Chess was, after all! More stuck on his own idea of himself than even the Bible-bound Rev had once been, before the drop. And here, as if summoned, came that rumbling voice once more, lapping at Morrow’s inner ear:
Spread the Skinless Man’s word, Ed, ’fore perdition takes hold. Tell folks the only way is to . . . let blood. In his name.

Well,
Morrow thought, abruptly calm, as he looked down on his spurting cut.
No point wasting a perfectly good wound.

Chess was still ranting on, scraping the Weed from arms and shins. “—damn Rook, damn
men
, Goddamn GODS, you ain’t none of you worth a shit in a sandstorm! Fuck
all
y’all!”

My power does not yet flow directly into this world, little brother
, said the Enemy, grinning horribly.
Anything I do will only widen the crack between our worlds further. It widens, even now.

“Well, that ain’t—” Chess spat, bit at a tendril. “—
my
fault!”

No fault at all, merely fact. How much of this world must die, however, before you allow yourself to care?

“This
world’s
a shit-pit anyways! So it burns now, or it burns later—what’s the damn difference?”

Morrow laughed, the sound wild and startling enough to silence even Chess’s fury; the pistoleer stared at him, as Morrow turned his way. “No difference at all, right? So
why not
save it, just for fun? Might as well hang for a sheep as for a lamb, Chess—saviour or destroyer, you’re still Chess fuckin’
Pargeter
, so
shut this down.
While you still can.”

Ah, but nothing comes for nothing
, the Enemy pointed out.
Were you truly never taught to pray correctly?

I
was, at least,
thought Morrow grimly. And held out his wounded hand to Chess, canted sidelong, to let the blood flow even more freely.

Chess blinked, bewildered—until he saw the Weed recoil, writhe, twisting toward Morrow as the blood fell upon it, turning brown even as it thirstily drank of the crimson moisture. Some current of self-destructive desire seemed to ripple through the green strands, up along Chess’s skin and straight into both his eyes; a hot green pulse went thought-quick from iris to iris, the kill-flash’s distant cousin.

Then Chess grabbed Morrow’s hand and fastened his lips to the wound, sucking like a babe at the teat.

The Enemy made a deep, rattling sound, laughter’s furthest cousin.
Man’s dew, juiced from bright heart’s fire,
it mused, in far too familiar fashion.
Aaahhh, precious blood,
so
flowery. So—

(bbbbeeeaaauuuutiful)

Morrow grimaced. It hurt, but not badly; what was worse was that sense of
pulling
, like Chess had grabbed a loose thread of his very being, unravelling him compulsively. It couldn’t be hex-power he was gulping at, not from Morrow—something far more vital, perhaps? Less easily renewed?

Or was this stinging, slimy feeling nothing but Morrow’s own fear and disgust writ large, a swarm of insects set crawling on his soul’s tender places?

Weakness invaded him; not fatigue, or blood loss . . . more like dread, or despair. A deep, dizzying urge to crumple up and hide his head, to—

—
fall on your knees, lowly dog, grind your own face into the dirt in worship. As is only proper before the Night Wind’s red aspect, He By Whom We Live, We Are His Slaves
—

It took everything Morrow had just to stay on his feet. But whatever was being taken, it was working; Chess’s frenzy had faded, the writhing Weed settling to the earth. The two swayed now almost in rhythm, as if equal-drunk on the same thing.

Me
, Morrow thought.
Drunk on
me
.

Asbury’s voice in his head, half-imagined, half-recalled, pedantic as ever:
No, Mister Morrow. Drunk on sacrifice freely offered, all “gods’” only true food. For even the Almighty can save no soul without that soul’s consent.

A wave of power, half-visible, similarly green, suddenly rippled out from Chess, and the mound of red-flowered Weed collapsed, flattening in every direction. Chess released Morrow’s hand with a small belch, lips crimsoned, eyes a-glow like candled glass. He licked greenish saliva roughly along Morrow’s wound, sealing it shut in one hot stab; favoured Morrow with a look up through his lashes and a goony, purring little smile, a cat stroked from every side at once.

Morrow’s pulse leapt in sudden quickstep under a wave of gum-mouthed arousal, jerking him a half-pace forward—’til he felt the texture of the ground beneath his boots change, that was. Which sent him jolting back with a startled yawp—eyes gone wide, heart hammering only with fear.

Sometime during Chess’s vampire indulgence, the sky had begun to pale, the east going indigo, then grey. Predawn light fell across the plain, showing how ground that had once been stony Arizona desert was now, for near fifty yards in every direction, a rich, thick, rolling grassland. Even as Morrow stared, more leaves from no plant he recognized came pushing up out of the soil, bursting into blossom with a puff of soporific perfume—the verdant scent of springtime, run rampant.

Onward and outward the greenery crept, freshly brilliant, utterly alien. And how the Enemy grinned to see it go, as ’round its skeletal feet the foliage rippled and grew, strange trees shooting up like fountains, hideously animate. Life, wrenched sap-dripping raw out of dead earth—but
wrong
, core-down and further, for all its vivid wonder. While dawn light slowly brightened on the spreading field of green, Morrow could almost hear a general phantom choir screaming in each new breath.

“Oh, shit, Chess.” He found he’d buried both his hands in his hair, yanking painfully, as if hoping the pain would clear his head. “What did we do? Christ, what did we
do
?”