by Gemma Files
Yiska — company comin’! Her psychic shout spiked through both Morrow’s temples, and he bit down on a yelp; judging by Yiska’s wince, it hadn’t been ticklesome for her, either. Gotta get through that gate first, and fast!
Yiska nodded, turning back to Songbird and Sophy Love. The three put their hands to the spider’s shell, Gabriel’s clasped in his mother’s — and while no light or sound ensued, nothing Morrow could feel, Yancey abruptly shuddered head to toe, while Berta, Eulie and Carver yelled out as one. The spider wrenched itself ’round, ignoring its wounds, and cannoned straight at New Aztectlan’s granite walls.
The forest, however, was still not quite defeated. Less than a score of yards away from impact, one of the largest ceibas of all physically tore itself out of the ground, cracking its trunk into twin obsidian scissor-blades and shearing off the spider’s right foreleg at the lowest joint, with enough force to shatter itself. The spider lurched rightward into a sharp turn, stumbling parallel with the wall, ruined leg curling up useless as colourless mucus gushed out.
This violent and sudden dip brought Morrow level enough with those atop the walls to watch shock equal to his own race ’cross their faces — all but the Enemy, that was, who just gave an appreciative little nod.
Though Morrow wasn’t sure if such things felt pain the way humans — or even animals — did, the spider did seem peeved to find itself thus crippled, for all it had seven other legs to work with. Which might be why it presented those horrible mandibles like a pair of ox-horns, and let loose with a spray of smoking poison all down Hex City’s barricades. Hexes and small-folk alike jumped back, some with not quite enough alacrity to avoid being spattered; screams rose up, prompting the Lady to swear in Old Mex and “shout” over at Clo, who was presently engaged in playing hawk-on-doves with the first line of the Mexican charge — her mind-voice a desert wind whipped loud enough to dry everyone else’s thoughts up in their skulls.
To me, daughter! I need your aid!
Mother, yes: I come again, and gladly, for there is little sport for me out here, with these puling men and horses. Give me epic blood to shed, I beg you.
Will ichor do?
Oh Jesus: and here she came, blazing the sky, fatal as any comet.
“Agent Morrow!” yelled Berta, scrabbling across the spider’s back toward the edge while Carver and Eulie followed, both aghast. “I’ll distract Clo, while you and Missus Kloves get Pargeter in place! As for the rest, you three — ” she nodded at Yiska and her mates “ — get in however you can, and find the Moon Court; Herself’s probably got all her Mex-slaves there, charging her up. Eulie, I’m trusting you to guide ’em in.”
Eulie nodded, eyes tearing. “I’ll do it, honey. For you.”
“For all of us, you mean. Hank, too. And what’s left of Clo, likewise.”
“Yes, sissy. I love — ”
“Me too.”
With a quick kiss to her “sister’s” brow, she turned, crouching to leap — only to be hauled rudely back by the ankle, on her first attempt; Private Carver shouted into the wind, holding tight, perhaps trying to suggest alternatives. But Miss Berta, floating free above, only laughed.
“You’re sweet, Private,” she called back, loud enough so’s all could hear — then dove in to kiss him too, a short, intense buss which set him on his heels, blinking. Adding: “If I can, I’ll see you after!”
“And if you can’t?”
“Then I won’t.”
Without anything further, then, she was gone over the side in a flap of petticoats, hurtling fast toward death or glory. Eulie dashed salt water from both cheeks, and told Morrow, voice strained near to breaking: “Best get goin’, then, Goddamnit. Take him, her — ”
“I heard, gal. Jonas! Keep this one safe.”
Carver, still staring after Berta, drew himself up. “I aim to, Ed,” he replied.
Yiska shouted commands in her own tongue, and as the spider hauled itself up — flung its entire massive bulk straight at the gate — Morrow took hold of Yancey, who took hold of Chess, who took hold of them both. The world thundered, roaring with the crash of fractured stone and splitting wood, screams of men and women, crack and gush of broken chitin.
As one, they closed their eyes, and jumped.
And let this be a lesson, Fitz Hugh Ludlow thought, disjointedly, as he drew up his lathered, panting mount at the plain’s edge. There’s some men don’t need spit and polish to prove their
discipline . . . or courage.
Captain Charles Farris, with Thiel at his side, had rallied the Texican cavaliers more quickly than Ludlow would have believed before seeing it, bawling orders that got them into what seemed a mere semblance of a line — but one that never stumbled over itself, or slowed, even while following the spider’s apocalyptically destructive trail. Sergeant Alvarez found mounts for Ludlow, Geyer and Asbury, giving none of them any chance to beg off before they too were caught up, swept along in the wake of far more expert riders; in what seemed like minutes, they were almost level with the creature’s rearmost shadow. Clinging haphazardly to his horse’s back, Ludlow strained to take notes in his mind even as he urged his steed to a gallop. None would ever believe his account, after all, if he could not tell it proper — but then again, this tangled cascade of events would probably defeat most readers, no matter how it was organized.
The arachnid behemoth, one leg foreshortened and useless, half-climbed, half-crushed the City’s main gates, cracking the big wooden doors off their hinges in several pieces. Its legs flailed for a moment before several minuscule figures took to the air above — Ludlow thought he saw the blue tunic of the Chinaman named “Honourable,” though he spotted neither Ixchel or Huitzilopochtli’s nightmare figure — to fling lashes of power down on the spider’s towering mass, blasting it so badly it slipped and belly-flopped atop the mound of collapsed rock. And then, as it staggered back, the death’s angel shape of Clodagh Killeen fell burning out of the sky, straight for that narrow join where thorax met abdomen.
Half an instant before impact, a ribbon of light lassoed Killeen’s ankle, just sudden enough to re-stave the star-demon’s trajectory into the ground; she struck with a thud Ludlow swore he could feel where he sat, spurring old reflexes — he rummaged in his bag, hauled out his spyglass and opened it, almost jabbing one eye out in his haste. Back-tracing this latter hex-work back to its originator, he saw Missus Fennig Number Two, Berta Schemerhorne, drift sky-high over the spider, tapestries of shimmering air trailing from her fingers. Back down, and there was Killeen again, rising unhurt from the pit she’d carved on impact, fang-forested jaws yawning in hungry fury to pay blow for blow, hurt for hurt.
NO! Though Ludlow could see Ixchel nowhere, that voice — spectral, inhuman, enraged — was unmistakeable. KILL THE BEAST! THIS ALONE MATTERS!
Clo screeched in reply and changed course again, dropping back down onto the spider — then commenced ripping and shredding its back open with both clawed fists, efficiently as she’d torn wide Asbury’s Ironclad. The spider reared, shrieking, and overbalanced; fell upturned with a terrifying crunch, all its legs flailing at the air at once.
But now it was Berta’s turn to hawk-plunge, stooping on Clodagh like some crazed embroiderer set to undo all her life’s stitchery in a night. She threw out hooks and nets, razor-edged, which sliced through Clo’s shroud of flame to take off hands, lower legs, and in one strike chop off an arc of skull, as if opening a hard-boiled egg. Clo’s only response was to slap her own amputated limbs back on, squashing them into place like potter’s clay, seeming more inconvenienced than hurt. But Berta’s spells kept coming all the same, tangling Clo up in knots of power, slowing her progress. The spider, forgotten, righted itself, and went stumbling for the wall again.
Suddenly, Ixchel burst into existence in the air above Berta, flinging a boulder-sized sphere of flame at her. Though Berta dodged, the missile erupted, flashing the sky scarlet; back-punched by the blast, Berta’s spread-eagled form could be glimps
ed hurtling away into the City itself with her burning hair trailing smoke, ’til she arced down to vanish amongst the buildings.
A second lash of hexacious might shredded the spell-webs entangling Clo, freeing the demon-girl to fall upon the spider again. Within seconds, she had bitten through and burrowed wholly inside the monstrous creature’s shell, vanishing from sight. At the same time, Ixchel twisted in the air and disappeared into herself, likewise gone.
“Gonna stand there gawping all day?” Geyer’s yell went off practically in his ear. Ludlow nearly screamed, dropping his spyglass, while the former Pink reined up beside him, Doctor Asbury gasping miserably behind. “C’mon, scrivener — wall’s down. We need to get in there.”
“What in hell for?” Ludlow shouted back.
“Stop American citizens dying, for a start! Not to mention if it was Chess Pargeter riding that beast, then Ed Morrow’s surely here, too; Missus Kloves as well, I’d bet. So I’m not leaving friends to lay their lives down alone, ’specially if might be I could help.” He gave Ludlow the stink-eye, cold and sidelong. “Now, you can be a man and stand with us, or you can be a vulture and hang back to make your living off the ruin — you decide.”
Not waiting for a response, Geyer snapped his reins; with a whinny, his chestnut gelding plunged down the slope. Asbury shot Geyer a helpless shrug, then followed. Ludlow watched them go, clenching his fists.
Hell, he thought. To be shamed into foolishness, and at my age.
Swearing, he kicked his heels into his horse’s sweat-lathered sides and rode after, leaving his dropped spyglass to gleam brassily in the dirt behind.
Too Goddamn familiar entirely, this queasy, weightless feeling of falling to earth in the grasp of something mostly air and wishing. Clutched to Chess by both arms, Yancey and Morrow touched down just inside the walls of New Aztectlan, hitting the ground just north of where a swathe of spider-bred rubble had crushed half a dozen adobe-bricked huts; the farthest still stood mostly intact, and Morrow lunged into it the instant his boots touched earth, dragging Yancey and Chess after him. He pulled them in and ducked down, eyes kept fixed on the hexes atop the walls, as they battered the spider back by degrees.
Any inclination Yancey might’ve had to carp about being manhandled vanished on making contact with the ground. The twisting cramp that knotted her stomach, pain-vise clamping her head simultaneously, dragged out a startled groan; Chess caught it, quick as ever, and scowled.
“Wondered how this place’d take you, you finally got here,” he said. “Can you stand it?”
Yancey braced her hands on a fallen pile of bricks — they held her weight, but felt queerly thin to touch, like spun sugar — and fought to winch her shields back up. “Christ in Heaven, feels like if I jumped up too high, I’d fall straight through the ground coming down. Can’t they sense how torn up it all is, here? How can they even breathe? There’s . . . almost nothing real left. Anywhere.” She cringed, as more screams and explosions echoed from outside.
“Feels like tryin’ to swim a tub of molasses,” Chess agreed, jaw clenched — then added, with a half-grin: “When I’m in over my head. And it’s boiling.”
“None of us got any Oath protecting us,” Morrow suggested. “For me, that don’t matter. You two, though . . .” He trailed off, clearly unable to think of any ending didn’t make him unhappy. Chess moved forward to join him, hunkering down behind the pile of rubble, then rabbit-rising to squint over the top.
“Anyone see us?”
Morrow shook his head. “Think we got away with it. Not that that’s gonna make a difference, in a minute.” He slipped the knife from his belt. “If I’m getting to understand this shit at all, seems like the minute we start this, Herself’ll know it — and her big brother, too. How much time are we gonna have before she shows up, to make her point about it?”
Yancey shrugged. “She can get to us pretty much instantly, wherever we are; don’t expect it matters, aside from we’re within the walls.”
Chess nodded. “’Sides which, we want ’em to come, don’t we? So I can put an end to this, if I can.”
“Yeah, if,” Morrow muttered. For which Chess couldn’t blame him.
“We’ll have as long’s we have, Ed,” he concluded. “Let’s just get it damn well done.”
Yancey nodded, and held out her wrist, matching Morrow’s gaze with her own. From outside came another mighty crash — some other part of the walls going down? With a quick look, Morrow directed Chess to stand between them; Chess obeyed, gallows-grim, then watched as Morrow took Yancey’s arm in his, a parody of hand-fasting, and laid her main veins open: a fiercer, more painful wound than any they’d dared before, liberating a gush of blood so strong it ate the fount of Yancey’s strength almost instantly. It struck the earth under Chess’s ghost-feet, pooled for a moment on the surface, before sinking in.
Next second, Ed had cut himself just as deep, the blood-stream doubling, rich red liquid puddling up until that whole same crimson store combined leapt upward, suffused itself throughout Chess’s shadow-shape, deepening his colour and inflating him toward opacity: became the rich plum of his coat, the red of his hair. He flung out his arms and gasped, sucking in air, substance, power all together. Yancey felt that parasite hex-hunger of his latch on, draining them out with terrifying speed, pulsing gore-drops actually flying mid-air in all defiance of gravity’s laws to enter him.
No prayers needed, this time: their sacrifice was free and willing, made right where the Crack in the world rendered all incantations meaningless. Within seconds, Chess had become almost solid, only the deep crimson flush of his skin betraying his fragile grasp on materiality; his body steamed in the cold air. As he opened his eyes, they glowed green as absinthe louched and lit.
At that precise moment, the roof blew off the hut, walls shattering outward — and Ixchel came descending, dragonfly cloak swarm-flapping to scour the sky. From below, simultaneously, the ground writhed and split, Weed spilling upward like maggots escaping a caved-in corpse; the Enemy stood atop, re-envisioned as Chess’s blue-skinned reflection, naked but for barbaric graveyard ornamentation.
Staring at this pair, Yancey dimly knew she ought to be frightened — terrified, even. But . . . she was tired, so she folded gently to ground instead, which felt only slightly colder than she herself did. Reached for Ed’s hand, feeling her slit tendons flap, her nicked bones grate uselessly together. Soon, she reassured herself, they would get up and run. In a second, perhaps . . . just after they’d rested only a scant tick, or two . . . .
Someone was shouting, but she couldn’t tell who. Her eyes skewed sidelong, turned up, rolled ’til she could almost glimpse the dark inside her own skull. Then closed.
She was gone.
Outside the City’s breached wall, the spider lunged up in a titanic final spasm, rising to stand almost vertical, palps and mandibles stretching skyward. Red light bloomed in its eyes, brightened until — with a sodden explosion — all eight of ’em simply burst and Clo Killeen’s immortal remains came rocketing up out of its forehead, scorched but triumphant, a penetrating stink of boiled mucus trailing her in a venomous cloud. She screamed in triumph, flipping dolphin-gleeful, then slid back down to spew gloating yet incomprehensible Irish jibber-jabber at the mortally wounded monster.
It was her undoing. The closest foreleg — whipping down, in a movement perhaps half spasm, half vengeance — caught her by the waist even as its owner tilted backward, describing a slow, dreadful, inexorable arc. Curling inward, the beast’s immense bulk crashed down, smashing a second immense breach open in what was left of the wall before bursting open on impact like a piñata, spilling a vast tide of indistinct black, wriggling forms — were those guts? Organs? Or something . . . living? — both into and out of the City.
Over where the gates had once stood, the Honourable Chu and his Indian had rallied the last of the city’s defenders, fighting to stave off the Emperor’s soldiers as they attempted to force their way in. The hexes’ sup
ernatural might and desperation balanced the Mexes’ guns and numbers, and Farris had taken advantage of the stalemate to rally his Texican cavalry into a wedge, hoping to take the Mexes in the back. But before they’d covered more than half the distance, the spider’s death throes broke New Aztectlan’s last inch of morale. Even at this distance, and without his spyglass, Ludlow could see the City’s small-folk start to break and run.
Spurred by what they thought was victory, the Mexes whooped like Apache, pouring in over the wrecked gates after them — but a second later, when they got a close-up look at exactly what was flooding from the destroyed spider-beast’s wreckage, their cries turned from revelry to panic.
“Hold the line!” screamed Captain Farris, waving his sabre for emphasis, too far back to see what the Mexes were cringing from. “Hold the line, and ride them down! Ride, boys! For the Forty-Seventh!”
Geyer yodelled in answer, as did dozens of others, all around. Ludlow clung onto his horse and prayed.
Then the wedge closed with that foul, onrushing horde, and if Ludlow had had anything left in his stomach, he would have retched it up now. As if the giant spider had been nothing but a single titan womb on legs, the things it had released to scuttle in every direction around them were minuscule copies of itself — minuscule to their progenitor, but the size of Clydesdales to everyone else, except with twice the legs for twice the speed: spiders small enough to rope and ride, every bit as quick and vicious as the original.
Poor Captain Farris split one’s head with a savage swing, only to be taken out of his saddle by another’s leap, and brought down in a tangle; Ludlow watched his body swell with venom, skin separating at the joints, before the next row of horses came galloping over them both and foundered, screaming.
Gunfire rippled on all sides. Geyer blasted one spider away with a well-placed rifle shot, sending it flipping arse over thorax, ichor spewing, like it weighed no more than a tumbleweed. He dropped his muzzle to reload — and was immediately targeted by two more, who wasted a moment or so tussling with each other. Ludlow took advantage of the break to shoot one through what he could only think might be its brain pan with a gambler’s derringer he kept up his sleeve, but the other reared back and spat a sticky web-string from its hindparts, snaring hand and gun fast. Then set in to pull, hard.