A Tree of Bones

by Gemma Files

  You dare —

  Clo’s rabid slaver-grin turned actual smile, just for that moment — full of snap, the way a young girl’s should be, dead and damned or no.

  “Oh, I do that,” she returned, striking up a pose for the next go-’round. “Aim t’rob you of all you did me, if I can, though I doubt it’s possible — not since you never loved no one in your whole existence, you gutter-trod rag of a Devil’s saint. But if nothin’ else, it’ll do me some small good t’try.”

  An exhalation, then: one breath between breaths, poisoning the air between ’em with decay’s purest perfume. Rook knew it came from Ixchel without having to look — had sampled it himself a time or two, between engagements. From what he’d gathered, it meant she’d reached a decision.

  And after all the trouble you went to! he thought, mouth curving bitter. Woman — creature, thing, woman-shaped like you are — were I one tenth only of the man I used to think I was, might be I’d even pity you.

  Right there, within ten feet or three good strides, Chess stood once more corporeal and destruction-bent, watching carefully for his opportunity; Rook ached all over to touch him, just for the pleasure of getting slapped. Still, there’d be plenty of time for that later — since, at Chess’s back, he could already see the Enemy lean in close (having shifted positions sometime within the last few seconds, like some sort of ink-shrouded octopus) to hiss some more advice its “little brother’s” way. Wait and see, maybe. This is your chance, probably.

  Kept close tabs on its game pieces, did the old Night Wind, especially while in play — and Rook had already done his duty. No need to send any more attention his way, when Chess made for a perfect substitute.

  Gods or goddesses, you just can’t trust ’em. Cheatin’ Goddamn creatures.

  And thus it was here, now: giving her trademark steam-whistle shriek, meanwhile, Clo came back in with everything she had, bound and determined to break the rest of her formerly beloved “mother” down for parts.

  And Black Rainbow Ixchel, Mother of Hanged Men, Moon Lady, Gods-Eater, Long Black Hair of Death — six-in-one and a half-dozen of the other, risen up from Mictlan-Xibalba’s clammy depths on will alone, to carve the world that’d forgot her back into her own reflection —

  — struck down her own best handiwork with one black blast that left her crisped whole, an ash sculpture whose very momentum was enough to break it apart, irreparably, on the wind. A stinking fog hot with rageful pain crashed over them all, stabbing deep into nose and eyes yet clearing almost immediately, without ill effects. And when it did, there was nothing at all of Clo to be seen anymore, not even the smallest particle.

  As might only be expected, such a lavish expenditure cost Ixchel dear. Rook saw the after-shock take her right in the stomach, the throat, the ribcage she’d grown extra-thick with more bones than any human needed, just to keep Chess’s stolen heart from eating itself free and taking off running. She cracked open entirely all ’cross the boards, wounded side first, a seedpod spewing awful pollen — then twisted at the waist like someone was crumpling her, wringing her out from the inside.

  Hamstrung, Ixchel fell to her knees, shattering one, and vomited, long and loud: not food, obviously, nor blood. Not even hex-stuff — this was something far worse. An endless, coring stream of matter that oozed and writhed, taking on shapes only to lose them again, like wax in a fire. The bulk of her hair fell forward, struck limp, only to be snared by this boiling mess; the seized locks shrivelled and split, changed, degraded.

  With each fresh retch, Ixchel herself seemed to thin, all over — to lose heft, substance. Rook found he could glimpse the spine through her skin, that filmy imitation of clothing she wore worn away, leaving her naked. Then something else, in the dip between her stunted-wing shoulder blades — something familiar, though he himself had only ever heard it described by a dead man — a dapper young New York cynic who’d lived carefully opportunistic almost to the last, yet nevertheless somehow managed to die for love.

  Cannibalism, theophagy . . . that’d be why she has a hole she can’t fill, no-how and with nothin’. ’Cause takin’ a bite out of them took a bite out of her.

  Again, Rook found his eyes pulled over to Chess, like they were on strings. And watched the Enemy’s mouth move, knowing in his heart what it was it must be saying.

  As I told your soldier and that man of yours likewise, little brother, so I now tell you — this is your moment. Do as your instincts tell you, and get what you want most.

  “Better be talkin’ ’bout my heart, is all I’m gonna say.”

  Certainly I am. Yours, along with the hearts of many others, all kin to she and me. And you have only to do the work . . . reach in, reach deep, and . . . pull them out of her.

  It all came down to instinct, for Chess, in the end — gunplay, love, magic, life itself, he’d blundered through them all on reflex and intuition, because (he’d always believed) when a second’s hesitation got you dead, it was quicker and easier just to move on from your screw-ups than to waste time tryin’ not to make ’em in the first place.

  As Ed might have observed, though, if he’d been awake: There’s a word for a man won’t take time to do a job right, ’cause he don’t feel like owning up to it if he does it wrong. And if the hell Rook and Chess had both made of their lives had taught Chess anything at all, it was that those weaknesses you wouldn’t admit were the very things bound to get you, in the end.

  Smoking Mirror’s (never entirely well-meant) advice aside, therefore, when Chess took five quick running steps and leaped onto Ixchel, he hadn’t entirely trusted instinct to guide him. He’d timed his assault not for the moment she’d lain most helpless but to catch her in the second she began to rise from that pool of greyish-black hex-vomitus, because he knew through long experience how that was the moment when a human body — something he wagered Ixchel had never quite remembered how to live in — was most off-balance. Must’ve been the right choice, after all, for he bowled her over easily, cutting her outraged cry off by driving her face back down into the dirt.

  If she’d been mortal, or he’d still had Kees Hosteen’s knife, he’d have punched her naked ribs at that point, ’til something gave or he got thrown off. But that instinct was pointless too, and he threw it aside. Even the now-familiar hex-hunger, that ravening vacuum in his gut which longed to batten on lamprey-like and suck, he denied, since trying to take her power that way would only open him up to her again. Instead, he brought his right fist back, then drove it — index knuckle extended slightly to concentrate all its force, along with his own hex-power, onto one point — straight down between her shoulder blades, just to the right of her spine.

  The awful crunch his fist made as it penetrated almost made him want to retch himself. Skin and bone broke like sugar; when Chess yanked his hand out, a double palm-width of rib and hide flipped off along with it, bursting to dust the ground. The goddess wailed, a piteous, ear-scraping sound. But there was no mercy in Chess now, not even anger — only determination, ruthless and inexorable, to see this done. Over with.

  He reached in, fingers blazing with hexation; grabbed something that felt like a handful of cobwebbed lace twined with sickeningly moist, hot sinew and hauled, with all his strength.

  What came out was more heat-shimmer than substance, flickering in and out of being. Chess thought he saw a woman’s face rippling in it, dead and still, a rope around its neck, while alien sigils whose meaning he understood all the same burned briefly into his eyes: Ixtab, Rope Woman. Then it dissolved, and was gone. Snake-quick, Chess dove in again, tore out another handful, producing a second ghost-cloud: Chalchiuhtlicue, Jade Skirt, this one named itself, shining green for one brief moment, before it fled likewise.

  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 —