by Gemma Files
And me wearing guns, Chess thought, amazed. Of course, Morrow had gone ahead and emptied the damn things first.
Chess knew he should be spitting mad, going on history alone — but it seemed more effort than it was worth. Still equal bone-tired from his long sleep and sharp awakening, he unfolded the shirt slowly, barely able to pry its buttons apart. Morrow evidently saw his fatigue as well; after a moment he huffed impatiently and stepped over the pictographs Chess could barely stand to skirt, bracing himself to help Chess dude up.
Damn, when’d you get so nice? a voice from the past said, in Chess’s ear. But Chess brushed it away, like it was one of those dying dragonflies.
Boots now firmly wedged on, Morrow got his shoulder under Chess’s arm and lifted him to stand. Freshly rendered decent, Chess felt the shirt and pants grate all scratchy-stiff against his skin, yet managed to force at least half a smile. Asking, “No pomade?”
Morrow snorted. “This ain’t no Presidential Suite, Chess. Just have to wait ’til you’re back on American soil for the little amenities, I — what the shitfuck Sam Hill?!”
Came so out-of-nowhere quick it almost made Chess bust out laughing, ’til he caught a snatch of his own shirt-sleeve going by. The plain denim was simply gone, replaced by his clothes — same rig he always bought, no matter where, or from whom: purple shirt, near-black trousers, burgundy-bottle vest, all clean and fragrant, as if fresh-laundered and pressed. Even his gunbelts were back around his waist, guns neatly holstered. And the boots were the exact ones he’d broke in months ago, no matter he knew they and all the rest were still lost somewhere outside this entire world.
“Oh, shit, Ed.” He looked back up at Morrow, mouth open in dismay. “I’m a damn hex.”
“All but indubitably, Mr. Pargeter.”
As Chess’s eyes went to the door, Morrow stepped smartly back over the circle, realigning himself with those who had just entered. So they told ya don’t come in here, Chess thought, and filed it away.
Songbird came first, her all-red rig pretty much the same as when he’d last seen it, except for wearing her too-white hair down rather than up. Still as elegant and finely dressed as a bleached-out baby whore could be.
She met his eyes full-on and threw him an evil little smile, murmuring: “Ni hao, English Oona’s boy — so nice to see you once more, even after all the trouble you made for me, back at Selina Ah Toy’s. But very much especially so, now that we both know each other . . .” For what we actually are.
That last part “said” extra-loud and direct, a spike punched straight through to his brain’s own stem, the way most hexes probably joshed with each other — ’cause they damn well could, and get away with it.
Allan Pinkerton, on the other hand, he knew from posters — a big, burly, check-suited man with a full bushy beard and a bowler hat. And then came a third figure, the man who’d spoken — some white-haired, bespectacled old fool, looked like the dimmer sort of medicus you sometimes found taking refuge from parts Eastern or Northern. Or would have, if his washed-out blue eyes hadn’t held the most keen regard of all.
Chess tensed. He’d expected fear, smug triumph, stupid dismissal — all the old touchstones — and there was more than enough of all of them in Pinkerton’s and Songbird’s eyes to go ’round. But the old fool’s gaze was different — clinical, passionate with fire Chess barely understood. As though Chess was the walking answer to some riddle gone unsolved all his life, a living quizbook ripe for reading. Or maybe a vivisection-bound (in)human curiosity, all fit to get strapped down and cut into.
It pissed Chess off — and spotting Hosteen hangdogging in back, like the bastard didn’t have enough nerve to push past these strangers stink-eyeing Chess, only made him angrier. Guess this here’s the sorta situation where you’re finally apt to be more careful ’bout your own skin than mine, for once, old man? You hypocrite —
But then a strange thing happened. Hosteen squinched shut his eyes, fast as if Chess had actually pasted him one ’cross the chops with the above, rather than just thought it at him. Held his head, morning-after skull-ache style, and stared at Chess with wild, wounded eyes. At which point Songbird turned, silks flowing, to look first at Chess, then to Hosteen, then once more to Chess — like she’d just caught him at something, and it was making her happier than a shit-dipped hog.
With a tiny little smile, she raised one finger and wagged it back and forth, approving-reprovingly. Then whirled the finger and yanked, sharpish, as if first wrapping, then snapping some invisible thread.
For half an instant, Chess saw something — a flicker of light, a shimmer of heat — ripple up from the circle around him. A stinging chill came both down and up him at once, a giant pair of tailor’s shears, cutting the air between Chess and Hosteen. Chess had no idea what, hadn’t even known it was there, ’til it snapped back into him.
He staggered, grabbed the bedpost and glared at Songbird, who only shook her head with that same tiny smile: Ah-ah-ah-ah, gweilo!
Oh, that is fuckin’ well it.
Chess felt it rush into him with a tingle, an ill-summoned current of power sent flooding outwards to prickle in both palms, which he clenched into fists. Almond eyes narrowing, Songbird’s lip lifted in a snarl — and just as suddenly, a heat-haze crackled between the two.
“Doctor,” said Pinkerton, low but urgent, to — the white-haired man, who’d been staring in open awe and delight, but now came to his senses with a shake of the head. Swiftly, he popped that odd timepiece of Morrow’s from his own weskit-pocket. Morrow frowned to see it but said nothing.
Old Doc Whoever flipped it open, releasing its usual frantic clicking and clattering into the air. From another side-pouch, he drew a reel of dull, silvery-looking thread, spun off a length and snapped it free. He wound its middle once ’round the watch’s fob and threw the end out the window, deftly swift, like he was laying a fuse. Chess followed it all only from the corner of his eye, barely truly clocking it, gunfighter-poised to meet whatever Songbird was conjuring with the hardest possible return strike he could muster. That he had no idea either what he would do or just how to do it didn’t matter, not right then.
But that was when the doctor tossed the other end of the thread forward into the circle, to land squarely between Chess and Songbird. And that, that . . . was when shit commenced to hurt.
Compared to what-all he’d suffered down Mictlan-Xibalba way, ’course, this agony was second-rate at best. But for sheer surprise alone, it nonetheless took most of Chess’s will to keep his teeth together as his body locked up, and all that freshly accessed hexacious firepower came sliding greasily out of him.
Songbird was far less sanguine. She threw back her head and screeched, indignant, as pinkish-white-green lightning arced from her and Chess both straight to the silver thread’s end.
“Ai-yaaah! Zhè shì shénme làn dongxi?”
Which meant something like what is this garbage? — if Chess recalled his Chink insults aright. Though damn if he didn’t almost feel he could “hear” it in its entirety, red-on-black-lettered inside his own skull, with the part she hadn’t said at all — only thought — as an echoing aftertaste: Kewù de lao bàojon (horrible old bastard), hao le ma (that’s fucking well enough, okay?) — or was that maybe huàile (shit on my head)?
Meantime, the symbols she’d inked upon the floor turned black, smoked, and melted into char as twisting, writhing arcs of power leapt from them too, lashing down the thread, through Morrow’s device and out the window. Light flashed outside with deafeningly sharp cracks, the sound of a revolver emptying its chambers right shy of your ear. Followed by silence but for echoes, Chess all a-sway with his part-blinded eyes blinking, feeling light-headed and horribly empty.
Faint tendrils of steam curled up from the silver thread, snake-ghosts dissipating slow on the heavy air. Chess stared at them like the thread itself was a king rattler with its warning beads took off, bare inches from his naked heel.
“Private Pargeter, as wa
s,” said Pinkerton, his voice gone distant and buzzy in the racket’s wake. “Seein’ we all already know your reputation, I’d like to introduce Joachim Asbury, late of Columbia University’s division of — what’s the formal name, Doctor?”
“Experimental Arcanistry,” supplied Asbury, with a smile both unsteady and forced. It came to Chess that Asbury maybe hadn’t expected quite so violent a reaction himself. Then again, from the glare she was sporting, neither had Songbird.
So this ain’t nearly as picture-perfect planned an operation as you-all want me to think, is it? Left hand and right not talkin’ much?
“Though Mr. Pinkerton flatters me with the term ‘division,’” Asbury continued, voice gaining strength. “With some experimental proof of my theories, however, I’m anticipating considerably more interest in the cross-application potential of individuals such as yourself, Mr. Pargeter — and you, of course, Miss Songbird — ”
“Potential?” Songbird snarled something else in Chinese. “Cong míng de, chùsheng xai-jiao de xiang huo!” (Very clever, animal fucking bastard.)
Then whipped her hand backwards in Asbury’s general direction, all five fingers tiger stance-clawed — and spasmed again, letting fly another yowl of pain admixed with sheer disbelief, as whatever hex she’d formed broke apart and crackle-sparked down into the silver thread on the floor, vanishing out the window once again. Rubbing her hand, Songbird glowered at Asbury with eyes full of furious venom.
“Unkind,” she managed, eventually. “And . . . impolite, given our current alliance.”
“As any wire of iron or steel grounds the galvanic energies of lightning, or similar phenomena,” said Asbury smugly, “so a certain alloy of silver, iron, and sodium in its metallic form serves to ground magical energies where they manifest, conducting them away to discharge harmlessly elsewhere. Which is why any further active hex-working in this room — young lady, young sir — ” he bowed to both Songbird and Chess, who shared an equally enraged glance at the inappropriate familiarity of being thus linked, “ — will be neutralized in the moment of its launching.”
Active hex-working? Chess had no idea what that meant. A hex was a damn hex, far as he was concerned. But he could still feel the smugness coming off Asbury as the man droned on — and only all the keener, now, with Songbird’s far more sophisticated spellbinding self-evidently pulverized by the same device. With narrowed eyes, Chess forced himself to focus in on it, willing himself to relax and open up rather than lash out.
All at once, the smug buzzing transmuted, with shocking suddenness — same way Songbird’s Chink-to-English inner babble had, into genuine words: A lifetime’s worth of unexpressed hexation, and more. Clearly this young man has no idea of just how powerful he could be . . . already is. And so we see why Reverend Rook chose to usher him through his transition with such overblown violence. Because doing so would allow him to keep control, stay the dominant partner in this invert ménage of theirs, thus avoiding the sort of overt conflict which might end in his own destruction. . . .
Chess couldn’t help but shy at the feel of it, so thumb-in-the-eye pointed as it rung, fair bruising his skull’s bony confines. His gaze whipped over to Pinkerton, hoping for respite. But the crack only widened further, damage irreparably done — he plunged headlong into a burred Scots stream of words and images combined, oft times so close-knotted as to be barely coherent.
Sly little sodomite/catamite, properly, if Morrow’s reported right/ wouldn’t trust him so far’s I could heave him, and that’d be some distance/ killer’s eyes/take what readings you need and fast, doctor, then distract him/a bullet in the pan ought to do nicely/Madam Songbird’s hex enough for our purposes, and you already have to keep her leashed/a mad dog/ for all your curiosity, can’t think even you’d be foolish enough to let this monster live.
Mouth open, Chess turned to Songbird again and slapped up against an invisible barrier, hurting-hard — she’d locked down, no doubt feeling his intruding thoughts creeping loose through her brain. But after only a second’s concentration, he began to make out shadow-show silhouette-cutter shapes moving behind those shields, coming abruptly into clarity with black-edged focus.
Big man in a flowing coat, shredding under a stream of flying shapes . . . Ash?
Same man, standing atop a mountain with a web of black strands tying him to a hundred, a thousand different figures everywhere, a great dark shadow rearing high behind him . . .
Ash, yeah . . . binding every hex in Arizona to him, maybe, like he’d said. And was that her, now, in the back? Or . . . Smoking Mirror?
A bearded man and a balding one, sinking down, with black blood flowing from their mouths. . . .
Pinkerton and Asbury, snared fast in whatever revenge Songbird had planned for their double trespass, their malfeasance toward her.
Oh, you stuck your damn hands in the hornets’ nest for sure, boys, cuttin’ a deal with that one . . . but then again, maybe that’s why you ain’t too inclined to want to do the same with somebody like me, anytime soon.
He slammed the door shut himself, cutting off the triple influx of soul-talk at its root. Jesus Christ, was this the sort of shit Rook’d had to deal with all the damn time? How’d he stood it? Panting, Chess made himself straighten. It all seemed to have gone by far faster than actually hearing the same “words,” out loud. Indeed, Asbury himself was still talking, clearly having noticed nothing amiss at all.
“. . . how the scientific study and deployment of your powers would offer vast benefit to our war-weary nation. Not to mention, of course, the spectacular opportunities for profit, for yourself. . . .” Asbury gave him what was clearly meant to be a sly, coaxing smile. Chess met it grimly. Nobody ever really got that it had never been about the money, did they?
I did what he wanted, and he returned the favour, in spades. ’Cause that’s what a marriage of true minds is: loyalty. To hold fast and stay true.
Wasn’t though, was ’e? that other voice murmured, far too deep down inside to ever be shut out. Not really. Not when it bloody counted.
But they’d settle that little point of difference later, when he’d caught up with Ash Rook once more. When he and that Mexican ghost-bitch’d had their fun, and the score’d been settled rightwise. When Chess finally had his boot laid right on that big bastard’s rope-scarred throat, ready to stomp and grind the End-of-the-World Bible-foolery right out of him. That, or go down fighting, whichever way the chips might chance to fall.
One way or the other, he was never gonna throw his hat in the Pinkertons’ slimy ring — a damn gang like any other, for all they had that staring sleepless eye-totem to watch over them, and drew their cheques at the same government trough as the Bluebellies. No matter how nice one particular agent might feel while all up in a man’s business.
Here his bitter train of thought derailed. The true pain of his situation rushed back in, pouring him brimful with soreness and futility. Like getting your goddamn heart cut out by the same bastard you thought’d finally proved Ma wrong, who’d taught you love did exist, that you really were worth something more than a blow-job for a bullet, an extra gun at a knife-fight, or any other sorta flyin’ fuckin’ fuck. . . .
Think you can pull my strings with greed, gentlemen and “lady”? Think there’s any tune whatsoever you can play will make me dance? Think there’s a thing on this whole damn earth you can tempt me with, now the one damn thing I ever wanted is gone forever?
He snorted, loud and harsh, and saw Asbury frown, Pinkerton redden. Songbird’s ghostly eyebrows lifted in an odd sort of respect . . . which frankly only made him want to punch her all the harder.
You got nothin’ I want, the none of you, he thought, knowing at least one of them could hear him. So fuck you kindly, very kindly — or rather, not. Fuck all y’all.
To Asbury, with a smile so sunny it gave the lie to itself, curdling atop the acid ill-hid in every syllable: “Got something you maybe want to ask me, doctor, under all that syrup and sociability?
Then I suggest you do it straight out, ’cause we’re burning daylight.”
Asbury coloured, thrown off his born pedant’s stride. “Mister Pargeter,” he began, stiff and direct — before slipping sidelong again into inquiry: “By the by, is ‘Chess’ your entire given name, or . . . a mere sobriquet, perhaps?”
“What exact part of ‘get the fuck to it’ was it you didn’t understand most, mush-head?”
“Sir! I must protest, volubly — ”
A brief flash from Morrow: Jesus Christ, please don’t, with a side-order jolt of nasty amusement — from over Songbird’s way.
“Mister Pargeter, if you please,” Pinkerton amended, laying in thick with his battle-captain’s knack of making his voice fill a room without seeming to shout. “For all you may find Dr. Asbury’s methods a tad, eh . . . offputting, I think we’ve still one offer you might find of interest, nevertheless. Would you care to hear it? Given what seems to have occurred during your sojourn down in Hell’s belly, for the good of America, if not the whole world — we aim to destroy the Reverend Asher Rook. And . . . we want your help.”
“Need it, you mean,” Chess snapped back, without thinking.
Pinkerton didn’t much like his tone, that was clear — would’ve been no matter what, even without the accompanying in-rush of damned puppy/queerbait bastard invert/how DARE . . .
And — didn’t it scare Chess, somewhat, how used to that he was getting?
Pinkerton, cold but calm: “Need, then. If you’re willing to give it.”
“Why would I be?”
“The way he’s betrayed you, humiliated you, torn you stem to stern and then left you behind, for your worst enemies to pick up? Why wouldn’t you, would be my question.”
“Why indeed,” Chess repeated. “But . . .”