The Hexslinger Omnibus

by A Book of Tongues; A Rope of Thorns; Tree of Bones; Hexmas; Like a Bowl of Fire; In Scarlet Town (Today) (epub)

  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 on
ce 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.

  You should listen to her, pelirrojo, the Enemy advised. For here is wisdom made only greater after death—and how I love you talking monkeys for this! You who remake yourselves, over and over, without any sort of ritual at all.

  Chess shook his head, trying to clear it—stole a glance over at Ixchel, who didn’t seem to’ve heard the first voice at all. And saw Rook rock back on his heels just a scootch beside her, like he recognized them both.

  Black, red, white . . . and one more, too, if I recall correct. But then that means there’s a Number Four, don’t it? Chess thought. The . . . blue, though damn if I know what he’s for. And him we ain’t seen, just yet.

  The Enemy smiled at that, or seemed to. Hard to tell, with no real lips to cover all those teeth.

  That is a fine city indeed you’ve made for yourself, my sister, he said to Ixchel, shrugging northwest. Though perhaps inexpertly founded, built as it is on sand. Do you yet recall the Doom that came to Tollan, for similar arrogance?

  Now it was her turn to shiver a tad beneath memory’s lash, and Chess couldn’t claim it didn’t warm his heart to see it.

  The blue Tezcatlipoca is Huitzilopochtli, that other voice told him, meanwhile, soft as shifting dust. He who was born from lightning in a ball of feathers, He Who Tore Apart the Moon. And his province . . . is war.

  Ixchel drew herself up once more, pale and full, lambent as a lit corpse-lantern. Throwing back—You lie, brother-son-husband, always; I am not frightened. You scheme and trick. What you cannot lay claim to, you wilfully destroy.

  Mmm, and I create, too. Nothing comes from nothing.

  Then build, with me. Build it all up once more—the right way. The way things were, and should be once again.

  The Enemy looked her full in the face then, with what almost seemed to be—sorrow? Amazement? An odd sort of affection, the kind which endures long after everything else—all the more violent emotions—is finally burnt away. Chess knew it to look at, having seen it often enough in the Goddamn mirror.

  Our time came and went, sister, he said, gently. Let gone be gone.

  She shook her head, hair falling to hide everything even vaguely human about her. Replying: No. This world will end, as all worlds do. What I have set in motion you cannot stop.

  I do not propose to.

  The fuck? Chess thought.

  Something kicked him ’tween the ribs, hard as a horse, making him suddenly so dog-tired over this hopeless slog of a conversation he wanted to weep out loud. These savage deities with their stupid rules, their endless high-button shoe courtesies! What was the Enemy fixin’ to do, jaw the bitch to death?

  Rook’d probably tell him asking a god’s favour was best done on bended knee—but Chess somewhat doubted it, given the god in question. So he rounded on him instead, hands sparking green, all pretence at politeness torn clean away.

  “Why’d you even come, then?” he demanded. “Just t’have fun at our expense? What kind of damn god you call yourself, exactly?”

  Not yours, obviously. So if you wish to interfere, that is on your head, not mine.

  “I’m any part of you, means it’s on your head, too. Or don’t it work that way?”

  It does, and yet . . . what you must understand is that I do not care what happens, overmuch, one way o
r the other.

  “And I do?”

  Now, yes.

  Never was raised to . . . care for nobody, his own voice murmured from memory, God alone knew how long a span of time previous—a year? Two? History folding back on itself, spindled at its core; how long ago since the camp and its gallows, the twister? Since the War itself ended?

  Standing naked in the desert with nothing but his scars for finery, smiling like a fool as he let Asher Rook draw him close; feeling his dick slap up ’til it left a hot smear of juice on both their bellies, biting into the bigger man’s lip like he wanted to make a hole large enough to fit himself inside, and knowing the days of lovelessness were over, for good or bad. For ever.

  “No,” Chess said, shaking his head, fighting hard to not cast a glance Ed’s way—or Yancey’s, either, damn it all. And knowing, as he did, the only one he was fooling was himself.

  Here came Rook himself, meanwhile, looming in deliberate, voice rumbling low: “Deific help set aside entirely, though, strikes me there might be a way out of the Sheriff’s clutches yet, for everyone. You need a hefty jolt of hex-shock in order to shake free from that back-and-forth the two of you got goin’, not these drips and drabs that Ed and his lady friend can afford to spare you. Something so big it’s impossible to stop—or take back.”

  Chess crossed his arms. “And just what the fuck am I supposed to take away from all this yammer, ’sides from you really do dote on the sound of your own voice? ’Cause frankly, I knew that already.”

  Rook flushed, aura snapping like a whip. “Now, listen here—”

  For once, however, it was Ixchel who put in, helpfully: He means that it is blood alone which pays for blood, little god-king—true currency of all worlds, one which can never be devalued. Which is why you must let it to get it.

  “Christ you ever stop t’hear yourself? You’re worse than a Goddamned fortune teacake.” To Rook: “What’s that s’posed to even mean?”

  Rook shook his head, gently. “Darlin’,” he said, “. . . you know what it means.”