The answer seemed to pop out onto his tongue, sharp as any thrown stone, so painful-true it was almost like he didn’t even need that other voice to confirm his suspicions—though it sure enough did hasten to, all the same.
He means you must make sacrifice, red boy, as you were once sacrificed; choose someone you care for, to die in your stead. For only thus can this place be brought back to the way it once was, when your Sheriff Love was a man only . . . a man with a town, a wife, a son. A man who, because he was willing to die for them, might allow himself to be killed.
As though they both understood and approved Chess’s realization, Ixchel and the Enemy nodded, in unison. Their not-voices overlapping, the rise and fall of waves on some awful sea.
Jaguar cactus fruit, jade earthquake ball, repository of thought and blood alike. Red cornerstone of all houses, centrepiece of all wheels, turning. The key to the Machine.
Chess swallowed, throat choke-full of vile juices. “I cut out somebody else’s heart and that puts Bewelcome to rights—that the idea?” A beat. “Like who?”
Now it was Ixchel’s turn to shrug. It hardly matters. All lives are forfeit, in the end.
Just as all lives are due to us, always, the Enemy suggested, idly. Or so we were always told—eh, sister?
I never saw you rush to repudiate those strictures, she replied. Not when your ixiptla mounted the steps at Tenochtitlan alive, playing his flute, to the adoration of all . . . and not when he came back down riding the high priest’s body, a mere skin suit with hands flapping loose at the wrists, his face a mask for glory.
The reality of it swelled up blunt behind Chess’s brows as that tumour’d killed one of Oona’s bunk-mates, back in San Fran—pushed her left peeper out ’til it near left the socket and she died raving, gaze permanently divided, each eye turned to a completely different pole. A thousand years of men just like him, cut down in their prime to keep these two greased and happy. Children girt with gold and chucked down wells to drown in the dark; gals kept virgin ’til the knife plunged in, a black glass blade their only lover. Once upon a time, their suffering would’ve made him chuckle, like the woes of everyone he’d killed in battle and the myriad more woes each death had sown in turn—weeping wives, desolate kin, mothers and fathers he’d never known, and spat on the very idea of.
But now he saw it straight on, for the dreadful tree it was: a tree of bones hung with flesh and watered on blood, growing up out of Mictlan-Xibalba’s sewer to breach this world’s skin and pull it wide, releasing every sort of horror.
This world’s a shit-pit, he remembered telling Rook, too matter-of-fact to be sorry over it. Just dogs fucking and killing, where the strong eat the weak and the weak get eaten. And for all that Bible of yours’s good for hexation-fuel, you know your own damn self how that “good God” you preached on’s nothin’ but a happy horse-crap lie.
Choose one to die, so Bewelcome could live. But which?
Songbird, her witch-wings clipped, lying in old Doc Asbury’s arms. Asbury, trembling like the rabbit-heart he’d always been, ’neath his hoity calculations. Pinkerton, or whatever monstrosity a dose of Songbird’s stolen magic had made of him. The slave-hexes who’d pulled his train, already run halfway to Hex City, if those things Chess’d called out of the canyon walls hadn’t done for ’em first; same for most’ve the Pinks, he reckoned, with what few still lurked amongst the rocks hardly worth his time.
Or Yancey, driven by revenge and sentiment alike, like he’d always been. The one thing in skirts he couldn’t call a bitch or a whore with a clear conscience, whatever that was.
Or Ed.
Turning a cold eye on Rook, and thinking: ’Cause that’s who you meant to point me toward, right, Ash? The tool that turned in your hands, lived long enough to cleave to someone else right in front of me, so you think jealousy’ll make me yearn to settle his hash. Which I might, if him and her weren’t the only living souls who ever helped me for no gain at all on their part, only loss and heartbreak. Who’ve stuck with me when no one else would . . . and why?
Goddamned if I know. Which must mean, in the end . . . it doesn’t much matter.
So simple, from one breath to the next: he saw things as they were at last, unimpeded by lust or hate, like everything else had dropped away—everything. Even himself.
Especially himself.
Chess looked at Rook, whom he’d once loved and did still, to his eternal foolishness; the two outrageous figures flanking him, one human-sized, the other anything but—remnants of one bloody age, turned harbingers of another. And as he did, it came to him how they all of ’em deserved to be defied, their grand plans laid waste to. Hell, they needed to be took down and knocked out loaded, laid so low they’d never get back up again.
Should be possible, too. ’Cause if their power and Love’s power and his own power really were just different brands of the same . . .well, Chess probably might not be able to kill them, any more than he’d been able to kill the Sheriff, no matter how diligently he’d tried.
But this much I do know: I can for damn sure kill myself.
“Oh, fuck all y’all,” he told Rook, sighing. “Think I’m gonna save myself at someone else’s expense, just ’cause you tell me it’s the only way? Like you know me so damn well? If you still think that, after all you’ve done . . . all both’ve us have done . . . then maybe we never really knew each other at all.”
Rook took what Chess remembered as a heartbeat to compose himself. “C’mon, darlin’ . . .” he began.
“No, you come on. Think I can’t surprise you? Watch this.”
He missed Hosteen’s knife, almost much as he missed the old Hollander himself. It’d’ve been so easy, that way: blade’s metal would only feel cold for a moment while crossing his throat, edge so sharp the sting would be rendered something faint, faraway, forgettable. And then the liquid heat would explode out and down as Chess closed his eyes in relief, savouring the triumph.
Still, it was like his hands knew what to do. Slip down, slide in, reach far as you can go . . . haul hard enough to prise the whole breastbone up like a lid, with a horrid, gelatinous crack, to let what little was left inside come spilling out.
He saw Ixchel and the Enemy both close their eyes at the same time—mouths hung open, tongues teeth-caught—while his precious blood went up like February firecrackers wrapped ’round with sweaty dynamite. Saw Rook go down on one knee with both arms out, mouth forming a mammoth No, God, Chess, NO!, and wanted to laugh out loud. But his mouth was blood-stoppered; his teeth ground together, frenzy-caught, gnawing into his own tongue like they’d been designed to tear it out by the roots.
All I wanted was my heart back again, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking. That’s all, Christ shit on it.
Such a weak-sounding whine of a final idea, given who it came from.
We all want something, grandson, that other voice said, without a shred of comfort. Now sleep.
So Chess Pargeter closed his eyes at last, feeling the pulse of a spell too vast to be undone bear him away, bodily, in every direction at once.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
So the little warrior can care for someone other than you, my husband. Truly there is no end to wonders. . . .
Yancey felt the time-slipspell without suspecting what it was, planet jerking sideways under her like a crashed train and the shadows snapping around. It was enough to jolt her free of her daze, blood- and soul-loss admixed; she tried to push herself up, but couldn’t—Ed’s weight too much to move, weak as she was. But she could twist herself sideways, just enough to bring the field of battle into vision.
And saw Chess dropping to his knees, chest one tremendous wound, as more blood spilled down out of him onto Bewelcome’s salted earth than it seemed one human being should be able to hold. While his hands lifted high, red-shining, fingers streaming fresh tissue. . . .
Oh sweet Christ he didn’t he didn’t he DID!
“Oh, shit, Chess!” Ed bucked awake as well, fought to gain his feet and failed with no more strength left in him than her, though it didn’t stop him trying. “Chess, what the fuck—”
Beyond, Sheriff Love whirled and stopped dead, his pole-axed look near-comical. He had only a moment to stare before the ground whiplashed again under all of them, a crack of force and heat exploding outwards; it knocked Love yards backward through the air, coming down so hard his salt-armour shattered, shelling itself in chunks. Yancey and Ed themselves were tossed like toddlers on a blanket, slamming heavily onto the ground some feet apart, shocked stupid. Yancey blinked up, black spots bursting in her tunnelling vision, wondering why the earth under her back felt so strangely . . . soft.
Then the sky turned green.
Morrow saw Chess’s silhouette etched sharp against the light-cataract pouring through him, before the radiance blazed up too bright to bear; shading his eyes with one arm, he braced the other on the ground, and felt it change: salt cracking, resolving itself to dust, and further. Until it became a moist brown soil, worm-full and slick, so rich it tingled.
Morrow jerked his hand back and saw fresh new grass boiling upwards, swallowing his palm print whole.
The green light was a warm wind stroking every inch of him, even through his clothes. Morrow yelled wordlessly as a spurt of burning pain corkscrewed through his arm, then turned to euphoric heat; viridian fire went crawling through the still-open sacrificial gash, sealing it over with pink new skin. The weakness washed away. Twisting, he saw Yancey sit up in another patch of spring-fresh foliage, goggling, as her own wounds’ slate was wiped similarly clean.
Following the blast’s path, grass bled outwards, ripping up through the salt crust and devouring it. The wave swept over Asbury and Songbird, leaving the China-girl’s leg suddenly straight and strong, the Professor’s cheeks blood-clean. Pinkerton, his hurts far less mundane, glowed fiercely alight a moment, as if lightning-struck, before the power sank inside; his often-altered form resolved once again to the mere man Ed remembered from that fateful train ride, two Novembers ago.
As for Love, meanwhile: white flakes and shards cracked off the Sheriff, crashing down, a snowstorm of grey and white rubble that uncovered flesh, skin, hair, patch by painstaking patch. The uneven pigtails Morrow dimly remembered from a pre-mortem sketch had given way to full, flowing locks: Love’s face, clean-shaven in its time-stopped revenancy, now bore a curly beard so matted it made Morrow’s own face itch to look at, while what semblance of clothes his undead salt-flesh presented had dissolved headlong, becoming mere rags and tatters. Before Morrow realized it, the transition was complete. Mesach Love stood reborn, gangly as a new colt—barefoot, bare chest heaving—amidst the wreckage, staring at his own long-fingered hands like he had no earthly idea what they could be.
And still Chess burned on, a verdant holocaust, pouring so much life into that ruined town it repaired every ravage it spilled over. Of the face-fallen statues choking Bewelcome’s town square, some cracked apart into shapeless piles, then flared up green, recapturing their original forms. Before Morrow’s stunned eyes, the salt literally burst off them and people emerged, staggering forth. Like Love, their clothes were frayed as if they had worn them all that time, hair and beards ridiculously overgrown, yet skin and eyes baby-clear. Cries of shock, wonder, joy began to rise. The eroded shapes of buildings sketched themselves anew in chartreuse lines, resuming their substance: beams and bricks, mortar-laid stone. Even those dwellings that’d been no more than canvas tents reared up, raised once more.
And all of it green-tinted in Chess’s backwash, but real, its own natural shades restored. Not a hint of salt’s awful greyish-white was to be found, anywhere.
The regenerative wave-pulse slowed, now, reaching the town’s borders, well outstripping the original zone of devastation. As it did, the green light faded, thinning, a reservoir nearing empty. Morrow turned back, squinting, trying to distinguish Chess’s form—only to catch sight of him just as he folded backward, collapsing bonelessly to the grass.
“Chess,” he whispered, lurching forwards. Strangers blocked his way, shouting questions; he shoved them aside. Some struck back in bewilderment and anger, and suddenly Morrow found himself seized by a dozen hands at once. He thrashed, grunting, too desperate for anger . . . until a woman’s voice rose above the crowd’s babble, so full of joy and anguish and disbelief it shamed everyone still.
“Mesach!”
“. . . Sophy?”
Yancey watched Sheriff Love push his way through, so tatterdemalion a figure she could barely connect him with his previous terrible aspect. Then his eyes lit on the one who’d screamed his name—a well-formed blonde with a dark freckle marking her wide brow, just off-set of centre, clutching a wailing, shawl-wrapped baby—and his face seemed to melt with joy.
“Sophy! Oh, my Lord Jesus, thanks and all praise be to Him and His Name—”
He ran to them, tails flapping, and seized them in an embrace so tight it seemed he meant to swallow them whole. They clung to each other, shuddering as they wept.
So young, Yancey thought, blinking away her own tears. I never saw how young he was. So young, so happy.
Like Uther was. Like I was too.
Still sobbing, Love’s woman pushed him back a bit, staring up into his face. “Mesach, how? How did all this, this . . .” She gestured vaguely round. “. . . come to be?”
Love hesitated, but was finally forced to admit, in all fairness: “Rook’s boy—Pargeter.” And turned away, to fix his gaze where Chess had fallen.
When Sophy Love saw what he was looking at, she actually screamed a little. Though the blood-sheet’s bulk had boiled away, fresh spurts still gouted, if ever more slowly and weakly, from the uneven V-shaped gash that traced Chess’s breastbone and ribs—one unhealing wound in this whole town. A mere man would have been long-dead already; in truth, Yancey could barely believe that even Chess could still be alive, let alone still able to rasp:
“Fuck. Fuh, fuh, fuh . . .”
Trailing off in another liquid burst of coughing, Chess tilted his head, eyes shifting to seize on Love’s approach. With Sophy at his side and the other Bewelcomers gathering adjacent, Love shook his head, slowly.
“What you did, Pargeter . . .” he said.
Chess’s face contorted, sneer and snarl at once. Spraying blood down his chin, he spat.
“Dih’nt . . . do ih . . . f’you,” he replied.
And then, the light went out. Chess’s head relaxed, horribly slowly, to one side. His limbs spasmed, insectile, locked in death’s final jitter.
“CHESS!”
Yancey twisted again, finally spotting Morrow where he lunged against a dozen Bewelcome men’s strong arms; struggled and bucked, to get only a punch in the gut for his pains. Another man struck him on the back of the head, open-palmed, yelling: “Let him rot, the little bastard! You know who that is, stranger?”
“Better than any of you ever will, motherfucker!” Morrow shouted back, thrashing. It got him another slug, this time ’cross the face.
Sophy Love, her initial shock gone, ignored it all, continually tracing her husband’s face, as if unable to keep from touching him. “Seemed—forever, an eternity. Like I was dreaming, save I couldn’t wake. What’s happened, Mesach?”
Love held her by both shoulders, smile boyish-wide. “You’ve been restored, girl; He saw you through, like I said He would. You were always so strong in your faith, Sophy—stronger than me, by far, and that’s what saved you. Saved all of us, to be together again at last.”
“Sheriff Love?”
Perhaps it was the almost toneless diffidence of the question that disarmed him; Yancey would never know if Love might’ve reacted more warily to anything louder. Simply that as he turned to fa
ce her, on sheerest reflex, she lifted one of Chess’s Colts—and put a shot neatly through his bare chest, just below the breastbone.
Yet again, Love plunged to fetch up on one knee, supplicant; Sophy shrieked, dragging a wail of fright from her babe along with howls of shock and fury from the watching crowd, all of which slid over Yancey like water off tarred canvas. Without haste, she walked to where he knelt, and placed the other gun against his forehead.
“Draw,” she said. Knowing full well he had nothing left to do so with.
Love gasped, paralyzed as his followers seemed to be, utterly aghast by the situation’s impossibility. Then the shock in his eyes gave way, like seasons turning over: Yancey saw fury, then memory, guilt, regret. Eventually, at the last, a bitterly sad acceptance.
“’S fair,” he managed. “Wasn’t . . . the True Lord at all, who aided me. I knew that. But since . . . I got what I wanted, I’ll . . . pay the price . . . gladly.”
“Glad or sorry, I don’t much care.” The coldness inside her had eaten everything, leaving this one last task to complete. “Goodbye, Sheriff.”
She pulled the trigger.
Yancey’s final bullet went in at an angle, came out the same way—took half of Love’s nice new skull along with it, from what Chess could glimpse. He’d’ve liked far more to see it done closer up, and taken his time enjoying the view. But he felt his spirits lifted just a tad by the shot’s echo, that oh-so-familiar refrain.
Little Missus Kloves served out her apprenticeship and joined the fraternity of shoot-to-kills, blooded herself in anger, leaving the table well-set for a nice long dinner of revenge served cold. Not too shabby, for some chocolate-box flit in skirts probably never expected to get ten miles out from that dust heap we found her in.
As though Chess hadn’t been just as much the death of that damn place, in far more direct fashion than even Sheriff Love himself. But it didn’t much matter now, he reckoned; enough that he knew the truth, and owned it. Wouldn’t be long, either way.
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