A third and a fourth: Yxtabay, the Ensnarer; Tlazteotl, Defiler-Confessor, and for a moment Chess’s groin knotted with the lust of that horrendous ménage in Splitfoot Joe’s. Snarling, he swept those clouds away too, with a phantasmal force-burst. Reaching down farther than it seemed Ixchel’s body should allow him to, he found a final presence, and ripped it free; it coalesced into a swarm of dismembered limbs, a huge round pearlescently glowing face hovering above him. Coyotlaxquhui, Bells of the Moon, seemed to ring in silver notes in Chess’s ears. Then gone, gone, gone. It took the sudden silence for Chess to realize Ixchel had been screaming throughout; with her quiet now, too exhausted to do anything but pant, he leaped up from her, suddenly revolted beyond words. For he had finally realized what those half-melted wraiths, those once-goddesses, had been throwing off like heat as they passed into long-overdue oblivion: what was left of their damn souls, just like those Weed-puppets Mesach Love had made out of various Hoffstedt’s Hoarders, who’d welcomed their release at his, Yancey’s and Ed’s hands with similar spectral exhalations.
The resemblance, abhorrent as it was, buckled him at the waist; Chess retched, gave out with a clear spatter of bile — the Enemy hadn’t needed food to sustain his flesh, it seemed — then spat and straightened, glowering down at Ixchel’s feebly stirring form. “Christ,” he managed, disgusted. “You weren’t even you, in the end, were you? One more big slumgullion lie. Like that meat-puppet of Doc Glossing’s — roadkill in a halo, set to walking.”
Then, standing over her, he lifted one boot to graze her face. He’d used a fair bit of power to open her up, but she’d lost more; if he only drove down hard enough, might be he could burst her head like glass. To make his point, he showed her a hand sheathed in fire, and said: “Now give me back my heart.”
Weakened beyond belief, Ixchel rolled her head slowly to one
side . . . and fixed on Rook, standing by idle, impassive. One leathery, bone-and-sinew arm stretched out toward him, words ringing skull-struck, yet audible to all three:
I command you, by the bond between us. Do not forget your Oath.
To which Rook shook his own head, unsurprised in the least. And smiled.
Chess wanted to retch yet again, so powerful was the sudden spasm of fresh desire that smile bred in him. And after everything, too — all the pain and ruin, brought upon not just him but the whole world. Christ! Shit, Rook didn’t even look half so good as he once had: face lined, powerful neck loose-skinned and its stubble greying, stance indefinably broken. His very man-mountain hugeness seemed suddenly heavy, weary.
Then the hex-hunger stirred the base of his spine like a twisted knife, rendering him dry-mouthed, and Chess went abruptly cold. Right, he thought. ’Cause . . . that was always part of it, and I just never knew.
How much of them had been this thing, though, always waiting between them, this slow-fused grenade primed for inevitable detonation? Chess had to believe at least part of it would have been real all the same; to think anything else was madness . . . but he couldn’t know. Not all the way to the bone.
And then another hit still, like a smack from one of the Spider-Weaver’s mighty legs: the idea that Rook must have felt the exact same way, on learning of their fate from Grandma, barring the bargain that bought safety at the price of impotence — felt this exact same rush of dread, realizing that no matter what you did, something you couldn’t live without was doomed to pass away; that there was no certainty, no safety, not even in the most secret parts of your own heart. Whether that organ was present, it turned out, or not.
Oh, you Goddamned asshole, Chess raged silently, glaring at Rook. Don’t make me finally understand you now, after all of what’s gone by —
He hated Rook all the more fiercely, for losing him at least this one reason to hate him. And if some of the gut-wrenching want was mere brute power-appetite, as much or more was plain desire, not just for flesh’s ravaging penetration but for everything which came before, around and after: peace; warmth; trust; affection . . . love.
Maybe just because he’d read Chess’s face, Rook shook his head, gently. “Don’t disappoint me now, darlin’,” he said. “Been waiting a good long while to have this dance. So let’s step up.”
Chess drew in a shuddering breath, blew it back out. Rocked back on his heels, muscles drawing tight — ready to brawl, if not entirely willing.
“All right,” he replied.
Morrow came up gasping, to find Yancey already awake, holding her head. In front of them, Chess and the Rev were going at each other with everything they had, with what he could only reckon were the shattered remains of Ixchel lying jackknifed to one side. Rook threw text at Chess, and Chess flipped it aside; where it hit it drew blood, but Chess seemed not to mind. Just bent himself into it like a wind, and kept on coming.
“You’re no match for me, not one on one,” Rook told him. “Not without that god-power goin’ through you, or your heart returned, either — you’re runnin’ down already, darlin’, like a watch. Can’t you feel it?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Chess panted. “I’ll do for you, then I’ll do for her, just like I always said.”
“How, with your black angel not doin’ a damn thing on your behalf, anymore?” He glanced over where the Enemy’s enormity coiled and eddied, grinning, biding its time — for what, Jesus and itself only knew. “You’re a blunt instrument, Chess Pargeter. Never been a true sorcerer, for all you got hexation to spare. Not to mention how you don’t know one trick I didn’t teach you . . . and I didn’t teach you shit.”
Chess paused just a moment, face unreadable. “Oh no?” he asked, quietly.
Rook frowned, then roundhoused the smaller man right in the face, sending him staggering.
Chess spat blood and what looked like a piece of tooth, jaw immediately starting to bruise; the flame at his knuckles guttered, but didn’t go out. Saying, without much surprise, once his mouth was again clear for use — “So that’s how you want to play it, huh? Big man. And me without my Colts.”
Rook shrugged and punched him again, knocking him back further: one time, two times, three, ’til Chess was panting at his feet with his ass in the dirt, Rook towering overtop. Looking down dismissive, to taunt: “Never told you to give ’em away to the only skirt ever took your fancy, did I? And now there’s all your dreams of equality gone right down the drain, thrown out along with the bullets.”
“Screw you, you God-botherin’ bully.”
“Uh huh, ’cause if we were settlin’ this in bed, you might have a chance. But we ain’t — it’s on here, now, toe-to-toe, with me three times your size. And you still fight like a cathouse jade, son, just like your Momma showed you.”
Chess’s eyes narrowed. “Didn’t seem to dislike it before, not all those times you had your dick up my ass. So don’t you never call me ‘son,’ you house-sized shit-piece.”
Yancey, hearing herself mentioned — however obliquely — had bolted upright, fumbling for the guns in question.
But as she went to raise one, without even looking her way first, Rook spat out a verse — For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood — and sent it winging through the air to clip her ’cross the temple, slicing her scalp into a flap. Gore exploded free; she clapped a hand to stem it, yowling.
“You son of a bitch!” Morrow heard himself yell, feeling her pain like his own . . . could that be literally? With all the magic buzzing through the atmosphere, even mage-blind like he was, it was getting hard to tell. His own hand reached the stock of his shotgun, dropped in all the earlier excitement and half sand-buried, tightening on the grip, but hesitated; he suddenly found he couldn’t remember whether he still had one of Asbury’s hex-shells left, or not. Or whether, for that matter, the thing was loaded at all.
Chess kicked Rook high and hard, though not quite high enough to reach where he was aiming; Rook kicked back, catching him right in the stomach-pit, rolling him so’s his ribs were at a good angle
for further stomping. And then —
— things began to move fast and slow alike, the way they tended to, at the crux. It was like Morrow could see and hear it all, from every angle. How even as Rook pounded all the harder down on the man he’d once claimed to love so much he’d risk damnation to save him from harm, might be Chess was only letting him think he’d triumphed, fishing him in closer while gathering the last of his strength for some final assault. How there was something at the back of his head he was listening to: God, was that Yancey, playing through her pain to send him a blast of someone else’s voice — some other dead person, a woman, whose hoarse, Limejuicer-tanged tones Morrow well knew from that dim pit under Songbird’s long-demolished brothel?
’Ey, you idjit, it carped. Is this what I put myself to all that trouble for, Down Under? You t’lie back an’ take it, like the she-’e you told me you wouldn’t never be?
Chess, then, buckling under yet another hit and straining to get back upright: Got another suggestion, old woman, I’d love to hear it. If not, then get back to wherever you landed — some fresh Hell if there’s justice, Heaven if there ain’t.
Fink on what I told you, then, boy.
Christ, which part?
About Columcille — your Pa, that bastard. ’Is trick, and what it cost me. Remember that?
Though Morrow had no idea what she was on about, Chess sure seemed to — wracked his brains, visibly, letting Rook get in a few more licks as he did, vicious enough to make Yancey wince, even with her own blood in her eyes.
The spell stops a person from usin’ his own hexation, makes ’em same as everyone else again? Yeah, that’d be useful, right about now, and only what this fucker deserves, too — worst thing I could do to him, considering. But hell, you didn’t even know how he done it!
“English” Oona didn’t seem any more sympathetic in death than she’d been while alive, however, and Morrow could fair feel the curl of spite and temper, familiar as Chess’s own. Lashing him with her barbed phantom tongue, while telling him —
You’re ’is spawn, ain’t ya, same as you’re mine — and don’t we both see the mark of me in every bloody part of you, no matter ’ow much you’ve worked t’deny it? Then there’s gotta be some part of ’im in there too, you great flamin’ molly . . . so get up an’ dig ’ard, ’cause much as I know you like t’spend time on your knees, I somewhat doubt you crave t’die there — let alone for a third bloody time!
Chess coughed more spume, pink rather than red, which boded even worse — might be that last jab had broke a rib, even nicked a lung — and nodded, slightly. His hands were barely alight anymore, yet from where Morrow sat, it was as though some sort of flashpaper twist had ignited inside his brain pan; he braced himself as Rook hauled him up by the wrist, bone creaking awfully, other fist drawing back for a final knockout, a punch so hard it might well break Chess’s neck.
He don’t know how to do it, whatever “it” is, Morrow realized, horrified. But he’s sure gonna try.
From Ixchel — back on her feet at last, if in no way steadily, half-dead remnants of her dragonfly cloak and her still limp fall of knotted hair doing nothing at all to hide her shame — came the order, fishwife-shrill: Be done with him, I tell you, as you should when he first refused our offer. Finish! Do your duty, husband, as I command!
“Don’t make me do this, darlin’,” the Rev pled with Chess, at the same exact moment, like he wasn’t even listening to her.
While all at once, Morrow felt a great rush of wind, black and cold. Heard yet another voice — never anything like human, but familiar all the same — whisper, in the very smallest recess of his hex-staggered mind —
Now indeed, soldier . . . for just as these two dead women say, the moment has come once more, as it sometimes does. Luckily, I know you know the way already. So use that old man’s toys, just as with Pinkerton; help my brother work his will. Let what we call magic and what you call science combine, and watch what results.
Morrow’s finger found the shotgun’s trigger; he knocked it back together with a fast upward jerk, barrel trained straight-centre of Rook’s mammoth back, with no time for any sort of prayer. Just ready, aim — fire —
— and heard the hammers fall, with a feeble click-click, on empty chambers.
Yancey’s face crumpled. Morrow felt the gut-punch of it, a rage he was too weak to give voice to. Even Tezcatlipoca seemed bemused for once, caught off-guard by something as simple as a lost count.
At the sound, the Rev barely glanced around, raising one eyebrow in the mildest of surprise, like: Why, Ed Morrow — fancy meetin’ you here. Then shook his head, turned to Chess again, and drew his fist back once more.
A cordite-stink crack split the silence, pierced Rook’s shields with a flare of light and gouged a burst of red from his broad back. He was thick enough it struck deep but didn’t tear free, which Morrow guessed was good for Chess; still, he gasped out loud at the impact, watching smoke curl up from the barrel of Jonas Carver’s pistol, shaking in his hands where he stood maybe ten yards distant. At Jonas’s feet, the scorched and smoking form of Berta Schemerhorne huddled, leaned limply against him, half her clothes and most of her hair burnt away; her slow, harsh breaths were the very sound of pain.
Ah, said Tezcatlipoca, appreciatively nonchalant. But then . . . he is a soldier, too.
Grunting in shock and agony, Rook lost his balance and crashed full-force down into Chess’s hard little arms, so surprisingly strong for his size. Again, it was as though Morrow saw past and present superimposed. Rook held fast in Chess’s grip at the river after barely ’scaping Songbird’s clutch, taking the judgement his lover passed then on his own arrogance like the bruising kiss it was meant as, and not resenting a single word.
“It’s you makin’ me do this,” Chess told the Rev, simply, this time. And thrust his reignited hands up inside Rook’s chest.
Contrary to popular belief,seems instinct really does trump experience, far more often than many would like to admit, Chess was sure he recalled Rook telling him, at least the once. That’s been my observation thus far, at any rate — most ’specially whenever it comes to you, Private Pargeter.
So maybe it was that blood-curse Oona’s ghost had berated him into attempting to invoke, some phantom portion of the man he’d never known existed, yet somehow yearned for enough to choose himself an almost-double of to lay down his loyalty — his Goddamned, stupid love — for. Tall and strong and fickle, an educated bastard, full of fine words and passionate lies; kind of man you’d really think would know better, overall. Except for the fact that, in his heart of hearts, Ash Rook never had thought anyone else he met could ever prove one-tenth as smart as himself . . . or one-hundredth as ruthlessly deceitful, either.
This must be quite the double kick in the ass, then, Chess thought. Shot in the back and stabbed in the front at once — hell, I could almost pity him, I was somebody else.
Guided by forces that seemed as beyond his control as his own actions seemed unplanned, Chess felt his fingers plunge through muscle, bone, tissue, ether — groping blind ’til, with a wrench, they grasped the very outlines of that complicated, spiky thing he assumed might be whatever Rook considered his soul. One way or the other, it veritably oozed hexation, sparking-fine and savoury. Jesus, it was like Chess could taste it through his skin, so intensely did it make his mouth water and his guts convulse.
I can take this. I will. Block off them valves, one by one — snap your connections so it all goes through you like water through a reed, a cracked flowerpot full of mud and shit. You’ll never see the height of hexation you got right now again, you traitor, and you still won’t die from it, not ’less I want you to. No, that’s just what you’ll have to live with from now ’til your own sorry end, the high price for what-all you done in her name, and mine.
The answer came back to him then, rippling faint as a sigh up from under, with Rook’s mouth and throat barely stirring around its passage.<
br />
Saying, simply, sadly — mere dimming snatches, trailing away into darkness —
Do it, then, darlin’. . . .
(always knew I could count on)
(you)
And hard on its heels, two far more complete ideas, fine-chewed over, as though Rook had been saving ’em a good long while. Like he’d rehearsed ’em many times in his head without ever really thinking he’d get the chance to speak either, aloud or otherwise.
For this will be my apology, the only one that could ever matter. The last and greatest gift I could possibly give you, here at the End of Days.
Chess’s eyes went wide. Thinking, in his turn: Oh no, nonono. You tower of crap, you do not, on any account, get to LET me.
Too late, though. Because the very next heartbeat brought a rockslide of power, a fucking avalanche, pumping through him on a tide so high it set his hair standing straight. Rook’s weight was nothing, less than nothing; he shoved him aside, not even pausing to see where he dropped, and strode straight for Ixchel, grabbing her by her remaining mane’s thickest clump. Bent her back like a bow to holler, right in her rotting-meat face: “You give me up my heart, bitch, right Goddamn now! Come a heinous way, done a thousand bad deeds to get it, and I AIN’T ABOUT TO ASK YOU TWICE!”
For a split second, half a tick only, he almost felt her brace to spit his threats back at him, and take whatever come next.
But — It is over, sister. You know it. I know it. So let it BE over.
Please.
With those words, more sad than mocking, Chess felt the will go out of what was left of Ixchel Moon-Lady in a miasma, fetid-cold with deep regret.
As she replied, sadly: . . . yes.
Then added, to him — So take it, you little monster. Take it all.
Kissed him again, then, before he could think to stop her: bear-trap fanged and spring-hard, with just enough arcane force behind it to cough the thing he’d believed he wanted most back up into him through their fused mouths. Thrust it excruciatingly back inside his chest, with his wound as entry point; reward as rape, searing everything shut again in its wake, making him spasm ’til Chess fell back jackknifed in the dirt, hugging himself so hard he raised welts. Listening, lodged halfway between disgust and delight, as — slowly, unevenly, clogged with old blood and foulness, his heart, his, gods damn it all, themselves very much included —
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