Morrow made his voice gentler. “Dreaming, Chess. Just the way you said.”
Those green eyes flared. “Dreaming of her, is what I said.”
“I think she somewhat started it, comes to that. But—yes.”
“That’s right. ’Cause, I mean . . . you don’t even want to be here, with me. Do ya? Not really. Not anymore.”
“I . . . don’t not want to.”
Chess sniffed, dismissively; gave Morrow’s dick a combination of flick and twist, running his nail ’round its uncloaked head just hard enough to hurt, yet still set it humming. “If you’re talkin’ ’bout this thing, I guess not. But don’t tell me you don’t wish I was her.”
Spoiling for a fight, ’cause that always was easier than talking things through—but Morrow wouldn’t be provoked. Instead, he schooled himself enough to answer, fairly amiably, “Which only makes us even, seein’ how you wish I was the Rev.”
Chess didn’t bother to deny it.
“True enough, Goddamnit,” was all he said, at last.
Thinking, so hard Morrow could trace the shape of the words: He put a hole in me, so deep—deeper than my chest, by far. And I only wish he’d done it with a bullet.
Once, Morrow’d thought it impossible for savage little Chess Pargeter to have a heart, let alone one that hurt him, even on occasion. Now that Chess was genuinely heartless, however, pain leaked from his every pore.
Morrow sighed, and opened his arms. “C’mere.”
“I can see inside your head, Ed. Don’t you dare try to pity me.”
“Just come here, you damn porcupine. Or take yourself back off on devil-godly business somewheres else, and let me get some sleep.”
Chess set his jaw, mutinous, before folding himself inside the larger man’s embrace. And Morrow hugged him fast, not holding back: all tight sinew, a contentious gift-box packed full of awful wonders. Or simply a man, fair and foul and singularly made, capable of great harm yet oddly innocent at the core; a man too young to have loved but twice and been sorely disappointed both times, to the cost of everyone else around him.
“It’s all changed,” he half-felt Chess say. “Used to be I was good at this, at least. . . .”
“I always thought so,” Morrow agreed, stroking the back of Chess’s skull. “And you still ain’t no outrager, for all you might’ve used hexation to work your will on me, that first time—hell, you gave me the chance to say no, and I didn’t. So don’t worry yourself about that.”
Chess shook his head. “We both had our fun, as I recall. It’s just . . .”
Here he fell silent, swallowed, as though he couldn’t widen his throat enough to let the conflicting flood of words out, or bear to make himself pick and choose between ’em. So, since he had the option . . . he opened his mind, instead, and let the whole tangled mass come sliding into Morrow’s, with a convulsive wrench.
Just I was out there for hours with my skin left behind, roaming ’round after Sheriff fucking Love, and after all that I still can’t find him, one dead man made of salt in the whole damn world, and it’s like he fell through a crack down into THERE, that place, oh Jesus I don’t want to think about it like someone’s hiding him from me, and who would that be, I wonder—
Not Rook, Morrow thought back, head pounding—Chess’s rageful fear hammering behind his eyes, the world’s worst hangover magnified thousandfold. And not her either, or you’d know, wouldn’t you? Three of you being bound at the neck like you are, in slavery-marriage to this world-wrecking plan of hers.
No, Ed, that’s right. Which means it must be—
—that other fella—
Black-faced and huge, hunched like a crossbones corpse, locust-grinning: The Enemy, Night Wind, He By Whom We Live, Smoking Mirror. And all of it underlaid with Yancey’s trance-took voice, sounding out the syllables of that alien name—
Tezcatlipoca
—that’d be him, yeah—
Thought so, Morrow made himself “reply,” throat filling up quick with bile, ’til his back teeth burned. Then added, out loud and hoarsely: “Think we could maybe switch back to talkin’ with our mouths, ’fore I have to puke?”
Okay, Christ! Pure jolt of annoyance, stomach-punch harsh, that everybody he dealt with couldn’t keep up on a playing field so un-level, it might as well be a cactus patch cut with horse-crippler. Followed by this frankly startling afterthought, given who it came from: “Sorry, Ed. Sometimes . . . I forget.”
“I know you do,” Morrow said, gulping acid, and held him closer.
Cold wind crept in over the sill, drying their sweat together tackily, while a great clumsy grey moth blundered past, in hopeless search of some candle to singe itself on. Out in the darkness lurked all manner of threats, momentarily invisible: Weed seeking to lay itself lovingly at Chess’s doorstep, itzapapalotl flocking, the widening crack down south and the gathering storm up north, with as yet undiscovered trouble no doubt massing to the east and west, to boot. Plus Hex City’s constant lure, casting baited hook-lines in Chess’s direction—power calling to power, tempting him same as any other devil.
“He’s always whispering at me, you know,” Chess said, of the Enemy. “On at me all night and half the day, ’bout all manner of mystic shit—stuff I am, stuff I owe, stuff we’re gonna have to do together. Like I even give a good Goddamn what happens so long’s I can hold that bastard Ash Rook’s beating heart in my hands, take a good big bite, and show him how it feels.”
A shiver moved through him, sickly uncontrolled, raising Morrow’s neck-hairs in sympathy. “What’re you really scared of?”
“Not one fuckin’—”
“Oh, enough!” Snapping, as Chess stared: “You can read my mind, right? That’s gospel. And guess what? You’re leaking like a sieve, same’s whenever you get riled—think I can’t hear? Sure, you’d rather die than admit it . . . but the fact is, this fear you feel ain’t for yourself at all.”
Chess bit his lip, clamping down hard on a swift That’s how much you know, motherfucker. . . .
Yet the images bled through nonetheless, etched in pure sensation: nightmare sketches of the valley scorched, Morrow dead with a hole ’twixt his eyes, Yancey and Geyer in similar poses; Joe took into custody or swung outright, his whole place burnt down. A flood of Pinks, Songbird pulling spells from the air like unpicking silk ’broidery, Asbury with his sparking pain-rope wires, Pinkerton’s maimed grin.
Or, if nothing else—Sheriff Love appearing, inevitably, over the same hill they’d climbed to get here. Hoffstedt’s Hoard again a hundred times over, a hundred times worse.
And each and every part of it consequential not just to what Chess’d done—’cause I’ve done a heap of shit merits killin’, Edward, before and after—but because of what he was: a walking plague, a cursed object. A God- (and gods-) damned hex.
“That was never anything you could’ve done something about, though,” Morrow said. “Not even if you’d suspected. Hell, you could’ve shot yourself in the damn head the minute Rook told you, and all that’d’ve done was bring it on the faster.”
Chess gave a long sniff, mouth twisting. “If you’re tryin’ to make me feel better, it ain’t working.”
“You’re not the worst thing ever happened, son, is all. No matter how you like to think different.”
“Tell that to the Marshal, that other Sheriff, those yokels from Mouth-of-Praise. To Y—that girl’s—damn Pa.”
“So you’re scared, like I said; no shame in it. You know that already, from the War—fear’s what keeps you upright, keeps you human.”
“Too bad I ain’t, though.”
“You ain’t not, either, fool. Not completely.”
“I can see how it’s going, even if you can’t,” Chess said, at last, his voice all but toneless. “It’s gonna be like the Hoard was, soon enough—ev
erything, everywhere, all ’cause of me. My own damn fault. And though I can do every other fuckin’ thing, I can’t do a thing about that. Can’t even start to know how to try. . . .”
He winced again, caught in another breath, curdled in his throat like a half-choked sob.
“No,” Morrow told him, simply. Then leaned in and kissed him, hard; wound Chess’s arms in his, pressed him back and down, felt him strive against it ’til familiarity took over, one last time . . . that struck tuning-fork tone echoing through both their bodies, opening Chess’s mouth, his legs. Rousing both their cocks like a carnal magic trick and fitting each to each, slick-sliding, stiff and ready to rut.
No, Morrow thought, this is nothing I could feel for a brother. Thank whatever Lord watches over such foolery, above or below.
They went at it with a will, chasing distraction hammer-hard ’til it finally surprised them both, drawing a mutual grunt and holler. And if either might’ve been picturing another at the peak, they knew each other well enough (at this point) to keep that fact a secret.
In the last few seconds before red faded fast to black, however, Morrow realized not only that he still hadn’t told Chess what Geyer’d let slip on Pinkerton, but that Chess—attuned to others’ thoughts though he might be—hadn’t sensed enough of that lingering echo even to ask.
No point in hurrying bad news, he thought, dimly. Always gets there too fast for comfort in the end, no matter what.
Chess, meanwhile, his most immediate hungers well-met, was already snoring.
Eventually, Kees Hosteen’s ghost came to stand a while by the rumpled bed’s side, watching their twined bodies sleep; some time after, he made a stroking motion over rather than through Chess’s curls, as though unable to accurately judge the distance between objects from the real world and wherever he was, no matter how close the one might impinge upon the other.
Then, as the sun began to rise, he bowed his head and let the various parts of him eddy away, leaving no trace behind.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It took what felt like hours for Yancey to find her way back to sleep, after her dream of Edward Morrow—the shreds of which, even now, flushed her skin hot and pounding—broke with a force that vomited her out into the darkness of her room, shuddering and sweat-soaked under her quilt. When fatigue finally stole back over her, she slid under with the dim thought that at least, with no chores to do, she could lie abed as long as she needed in the morning. But lifelong habit bred betrayal, and with the sun’s first light Yancey found herself wide awake once more, blinking at the room’s ceiling.
She lay still, only half aware of a soft rasping sound she finally identified as Mister Geyer’s snores; the ghost of an ache, more mental than physical, lingered in places she hadn’t realized could pain her. At length, she forced herself to her feet—stepping over Geyer where he lay rolled up in the moth-eaten rug, wadded coat pillowing his head—and went to the washstand to splash tepid water over her face.
The air had that same peculiar stillness as a thousand mornings in the Cold Mountain, making memory seize her throat and eyes like venom. She had to brace herself against the washstand, choking, ’til the burn of it subsided.
Presently, she wiped her eyes clear, wondering if there was some other source of fresh wash-water to be found, since she’d only doffed her boots and stockings for sleep, and her conjured clothes seemed the equal of any more mundane garb for soaking up sweat and dust. On the landing, a window showed a hut out back: obviously a coldhouse, from its planking’s thickness, the heavy tarring in every seam and condensation stains along its base. Beside it—thank Christ—a pump.
Continuing down into the main room, she found Joe behind the bar, recombining what dregs he could save from mostly empty bottles into new ones. “You do know that’s as surefire a way to spread fluxes, coughs and colds as you could ask,” she offered, noting he did at least make an effort to only mix spirits of a similar type.
Joe merely shrugged. “Folks like the all-sorts; crowd here’s pretty rough, and I ain’t got stock to waste. And spirits ain’t so contagious as you’d think. Hunting up a wash, am I right?” Nodding to the left, behind the bar: “Door out back. Screen and a bucket by the coldhouse, you want some privacy.” His mouth skewed oddly, yellow teeth shown in something she couldn’t quite read as a smile. “Anybody you don’t mind joinin’ you, they come a-lookin’?”
The dream slammed back into Yancey’s skull, face erupting with fresh heat, so she took refuge in dignity. “I hope, Mister . . . Joe . . .that you don’t think my current company is any indicator of my nature.”
“Hard to know what to think.” He began putting the newly filled bottles away on the shelves, pushing the empties aside. “Only know I ain’t never seen but one kind of person ride with Chess Pargeter: all monsters, one way or another.”
“Is that so.”
“It is.” He turned to contemplate her straight on. “Man ain’t right,” he continued, voice pitched low, no doubt for self-preservation. “Never was, not even back before, with no hexation in it. I know why that other fella cleaves to him—he’s sotted, same’s the Rev used to be. But you . . . you seem nice.”
Yancey swallowed. “Might be I’m not, though. Ever think of that?”
“Sure. Maybe you’re already broke past the fixin’, I dunno. But—” He sighed, and leaned against the counter. “Gal, I’ve seen a hundred men swear blood-revenge in here, for you-name-it. Half of ’em, it was just bluster over a bottle; half again got bored, or dead, ’fore they ever came near the ones they wanted. But some found who they were lookin’ for, and ended ’em. Men shot, stabbed in the back, throats cut.” His gaze flicked to Yancey’s feet. “Almost where you’re standing, I saw one get his belly sawed open, guts spilled on that floor like offal. Man who did that died himself three weeks later, in a botched robbery up Utah way.”
“If there’s a point to your discourse, I’d be much obliged, you were to arrive at it,” said Yancey, hating the way her voice quavered.
“Point bein’, ma’am—only men I ever saw didn’t come out the worse for takin’ revenge were like Mister Pargeter. The ones who were already as bad as they were gonna get.”
“Think that means you’ve seen me at my worst, Joe?”
Yancey whirled; Joe turned more slowly, his general sallowness now outright sickly. Chess leaned against one side of the doorway, arms folded, hat rakish—and while he too was smiling, the gleam in his eyes presaged nothing good.
“Means I’ve seen enough to know not to cross you,” Joe told him, voice admirably steady, “and that’s why I don’t propose to. So . . . what can I do you for?”
“Nothing. Young Mister Kloves, on the other hand . . .” Though Chess didn’t quite sneer, Yancey felt herself flush, all the same. “I’ll be needing you outside, missy.”
“If I might inquire—for what?”
Without hesitation Chess cross-drew—and tossed his sinister-side gun to Yancey, connecting straightaway with her upflung palm, an instinctually perfect catch. She stared at it, mouth open.
“Heard you might want to learn to shoot, is what,” Chess said, shrugging. “’Cause Joe’s fine words notwithstanding, there are men out there need killin’, and you’ve got as much claim as any to do it. So you may as well learn the trade right.”
“I need to clean up, first.”
Chess inclined his head. “I’ll be waitin’.”
When Yancey came out, hair still damp and clothes clinging, she found Chess lounging against the hob-rail used to tie up mounts, where a score of Joe’s empty bottles had been carefully set up. He raised one eyebrow at the gun in her hand, which she had chosen to carry by the cylinder, rather than gripping the handle. “Christ, gal, don’t you even know how to hold an iron?”
“Why would I have had cause to learn that particular skill, Mister Pargeter?”
Chess snorted. “What fool wouldn’t teach his kin to shoot, out here? A dead fool, that’s who.” At Yancey’s look, he rolled his eyes. “Aw, don’t take on; dead Pa’s the human condition, far as I can see. Ed’s got one—Rook, too. Hell, mine’s probably dead, for that matter.”
“The plain fact that you don’t know makes that a singularly useless statement.”
Chess laughed. “Uh huh. Now get over here, and show me what I got to work with.”
As Yancey crossed to his side, Chess took her arm, guiding her to a stance some thirty feet away. “Most fights blow up inside ten yards,” he said, without preamble. “So if you can hit a target this close, you’ll be good for all manner of shindigs. First thing, hold it proper—straight out from your shoulder. Keep it up there, long as you can.” He stepped back, and watched.
Minutes passed; Yancey’s arm began to tremble, but something in Chess’s eyes warned her against relaxing. Finally, he leaned in without warning, grabbing the gun back. She gasped and let her arm fall, rubbing at her wrist.
“Not bad,” he said. “You’d let it drop, I’d’ve pasted you a good one, just to learn you different.” Chess gave her a shrewd look. “Or did you pick up on me planning that?”
“No—I didn’t think to.”
“Maybe you should. You got an advantage. Use it.”
Yancey nodded. “True. But all that was about the gun’s weight, wasn’t it?”
“Get you trained to how heavy it feels—that’s absolutely right.” He touched her arm, causing her to start; fatigue vanished in a greenish flicker. “Ready to go again?” When she nodded, he put the piece back in her hand, turning her toward the bottles. “Now. This here’s Colonel Colt’s 1861 six-shot Navy Revolver, thirty-six calibre, and if you put a ball from it most anywhere in a man it will drop him. Got a kick like a mule and makes an almighty noise, so brace yourself.”
Yancey gritted her teeth, selected the left-most bottle as her target, lined up the barrel’s sight and tried to squeeze the trigger, which took a startling amount of effort; she ground her finger tight, tighter . . . then relaxed, lowered the gun, eased the hammer down, and after a second’s examination found the loading switch that let her break the weapon open. Wordlessly, she held it up before Chess’s face, showing empty chambers.
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