A Rope of Thorns

by Gemma Files

  Aw, horseshit, Chess cursed.

  Love snarled. He fisted his hand in the ground, salt coagulating ’round it like it was wet clay, and pulled it free—then threw it hard, straight up. Magic-sink that it was, it passed straight through Songbird’s shields and smacked her ’cross the face, sealing her stillborn scream shut.

  A half-second’s suffocation was all it took. Chess saw her resolve snap, smug sorceress collapsing back into a hysterical girl. Panicking, she clawed at the rigid mask, lost all control—plunged like a rock, hitting the ground at Asbury’s feet with a crack that meant the fall’d cost her at least one limb.

  The binding-spell stuttered, then snapped outright. Chess roared and doubled over, power-drain opening up again—and this time Songbird, too, was set thrashing in its grip, magic leaping from her in streaks of pink-green lightning to vanish into Love’s body, just like Chess’s hex-blasts. She’d brought her own power into the circuit, and now it had closed once more she was trapped, ’long with the rest of them. Her body smoked and steamed; a horrid flush swelled the edges of her face, puffing ’em ’round the mask, like it was eating its way inside.

  Chess swayed, everything he had left bent on keeping upright. Damned for his sins he might be, but he’d be damned twice over if he died on his knees.

  The only warning was a jewellery-latch click, followed by some massive, indeterminate flare—instantaneous, blinding. Then the power-circuit burst apart, every mote of hexacious might flung away into the air, concussion knocking the train-cars on their sides and Love down too, back-first. The cyclone winds went slack, airborne dirt and rock pattering ground-wards. Songbird’s salt-mask poured off, leaving her to whoop a great gasp, double over and puke more salt into Asbury’s lap; her white hair, released from its confines, hung down like a second veil. And the Professor held her all the while, tender as though she were his own granddaughter.

  “Oh, my dear,” he told her, with pleased relief, “do you know? I wasn’t entirely sure that that would work.”

  It took Songbird a few seconds to regain awareness, after which she tried to stand but cried out, falling back into Asbury’s arms. Twitching the robe back, the injury became plain: her leg was indeed broken, bent where no joint should be. With a snarl, she contorted her hand arcanely over the injury, Chink-speak spilling from her lips.

  Nothing happened.

  Face shocked blank, she repeated the spell, again to no result; a third time, a fourth, faster and faster. Similarly amazed, Chess only noticed the trinket responsible at almost the same time she did: a silver-coloured bracelet of interwoven metal rods, closed over her wrist. Songbird froze, staring.

  “What have you done?” she whispered. Then, twisting to face Asbury: “Old idiot, what have you done? Put it back! Put it back!” She clawed at the bracelet futilely, but it seemed locked in place: too tight to slip off, too strong to break. “Release my ch’i, gweilo bastard!”

  “It was the only thing,” was all he whispered, in reply. “The circuit had to be broken, and . . . you were there, nearest to hand. The only one on whom I knew this would work.” He gazed at her, imploringly. “I meant to save your life—!”

  Songbird screeched, and clawed him ’cross the face, screaming again at the jolt to her leg. Spent, Asbury made no attempt to get back up but merely lay blinking, gouges trickling thin red down both cheeks while she dragged herself close enough to do more damage, bracelet-side hand clenched in a tiny fist, like she was fixing to hammer this frail old man to flinders. And Asbury, regret-paralyzed, might just have let her—had Pinkerton not grabbed hold instead, hammer-sized grip encircling Songbird’s wrist completely.

  He pulled hard and clenched, cracking metal like tinsel, then stuffed the bracelet-shards headlong down his own gullet, swallowing hard; pink-green lightning burst from every pore, rimming him head-to-toe. His skull flared, briefly visible inside his skin, free-swung jawbone clear as day. Then the light grew so blindingly fierce, even Chess had to shade his eyes—and when he could look, he found Pinkerton changed, yet again.

  All final traces of corruption gone, face intact, healthy, flushed with life; even his bulk had tightened, fat sloughed off to reveal a leaner, more muscular build. And the great height he’d kept, with that moose-sized beanpole Love—feet regained—only coming up to his shoulder. Shirt and shoes and stockings had burned away, only the barest tatters of his check trousers preserving any semblance of decency. Pinkerton’s chest rose and fell, a pure delight glowing in his grin, as he turned to look down at his now-crippled former comrade.

  “Never did quite grasp yuir taste for this,” he remarked—and hell if even his voice wasn’t healed, clear and resonant once more. “Damnable heathen cannibalism, ’specially when practised on yuir ane. But now. . . well, madam.” The grin widened. “I can only hope ye enjoy never havin’ tae worry o’er anyone doin’ it tae yeh again!”

  Songbird rolled her face in the dust, giving out a funereal keen: “Ohhhhh, thieving wu ming shao jiu scum! Yet I will regain my power, all of it, now that trinket is removed; I will! And then, we will see—”

  Pinkerton shrugged, grin vanishing. “Maybe, maybe not . . . but one way or t’other, ye’d do best tae gie it a rest.” He turned to Love, slapping his hands together. “Now. Where were we?”

  For all that look of bemused wariness was probably near as Love could come to fear, nowadays, it was still oddly heartening to see. “Nowhere, Mister Pinkerton, my quarrel not being with you. You remain entirely irrelevant.”

  Deliberately, the Sheriff turned his back—but the king of Pinks couldn’t leave it at that, obviously. He half-raised one fist, already ghost-fire-rimmed, only to see Love deflect the result with a single palm contemptuously raised over one shoulder, not even bothering to turn around. The blast caught Pinkerton himself on the rebound, knocking him unconscious. Asbury squawked; Songbird, too exhausted to laugh, showed her teeth in malicious glee.

  “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.