A Rope of Thorns (Hexslinger 2)

Songbird said, “A god, yes. But which one?”

Love’s face tightened in a snarl. Perhaps only by contrast, he looked strangely more human than Chess had seen him, since—well, before.

“Any that’ll answer,” he ground out, eyes roaming from figure to motionless figure. A faint skitter of powdered salt blew harsh over the granulated crystalline ground. “This is my place. I raised this town. My people, my wife, my boy stolen from me, hand over fist—” His ash-and-grit voice almost broke, but not quite. “If such reckless injury was wrought upon Union Pacific, would you do less? No. So I will have full measure. I will have what I am owed.”

In front of him, the air shimmered. For a moment, Chess almost feared he was crying, and felt aghast—but no. It was more as though Chess could see time itself peel back, by five years, by ten. The town it had been, unpolished, but reared with dedication; Love and his woman Sophy, hugely gravid, laughing over their work; the empty plain of grey-green scrub and grass, waiting for Love’s arrival. And then . . . something else again, incomprehensibly old, a wild moonscape of shale and sandstone that knew no human footfall at all roared softly with a phantom slosh and moan, melting wax-cylinder imprint captured from the memory of some aeons-gone sea.

Over and above one another the images wildly slid like shuffled cards, the heart of this gutted place anchoring everything to its dead centre. Past overlaid present in bare, dark-on-dark fragments, atavistic shadows reared up behind muslin hung to dry, lizards bigger than grizzly bears that jostled and snapped at each other, with nothing on what passed for their minds but kill-or-be-killed carnage.

It was this place, itself. This place had always been weak, a sore in the world’s hide that never wholly healed, only broke open again and again beneath time’s ceaseless friction. The crack through which both light and darkness seeped in.

As Love turned to face him, Chess wondered whether the Sheriff had chosen it for that same weakness—knowing he heard his God so much clearer here, yet never thinking to ask why.

Or maybe it’d just been Goddamned shitty bad luck.

The laughter which exploded out of him caught even Chess by surprise, stopping Love flat in his tracks. Even Songbird frowned.

“Silence!” But Love’s cry was too cracked for real power, his clenched fists impotent. “You will not make a jest of this! His Judgement—” As Chess drowned him out with another helpless squall, the man’s bloodless face looked fit to explode. “STOP that!” he screamed.

“Muh . . . make me, ya fuckin’ puppet.” Chess had to brace his hands on his knees, whooping deep gasps. “Still think you’re some kind’a holy vessel? God’s Left Hand? Only if his Right don’t know what you’re doin’!” Eyes swimming, he forced himself to straighten. “You want payback, then take it in your own name, and spare me the God-botheration. Hell—” He grinned, and Love visibly recoiled. “I always figured whoever took me down, it’d be someone had good reason to be pissed—and you do, for sure. So just end it. Now.”

For half a second he thought Love might actually refuse.

The sheer unlikeliness of that idea turned to laughter once more—an uncontrollable gout of it—and Love’s expression changed, accordingly. The need to be morally in the right was gone. Only the need to hurt remained.

Chess watched with an almost euphoric detachment as a fourth spear-headed limb of salt burst up out of the ground, circling to orient its razor-sharp tip upon him. Come on, you bastard, he mouthed, come on, come on—

NO.

Yancey’s warning struck him like a slap; he spun, and her eyes met his, as angry as Love’s had ever been. I haven’t hurt him how he merits, yet, she complained, lips unmoving. So if you won’t fight of your own choosing . . . I’ll damn well make you fight!

And with that, the reckless bitch sunk her teeth into her own wrist.

“Jesus!” Morrow yelled out, as blood welled up and spattered down, soaking swiftly into the salt-crust, and Chess felt the power explode back into him, hitting every internal pleasure point at once. Head thrown back, he was unable to prevent the sheer brutal ecstasy of sacrifice from swirling into him; he felt green light flare from his pores, reflecting off every salt-crystal, as Love’s spear broke apart like icing sugar. And the feeling only got better when Morrow snatched out his knife, cut his own palm open and wrapped it ’round Yancey’s wound, a flesh tourniquet.

Up on the train, Pinkerton’s eyes caught that same green glare and drank it in, his unwieldy coat going up like tinder; heavy wool was scorched by green fire, crumpling away from Pinkerton’s body like parchment. Eyes wide, Songbird spat some incomprehensible Chink oath and lofted herself even further, safe out of reach, power-halo cocooned. And Chess just stared, understanding at last what he’d sensed all along—why that feverish power bleeding off Morrow’s ex-boss had felt so familiar.

Because . . . it was his.

That last moment of the Tampico confrontation came back, daguerreotype-sharp: cross-drawing his empty guns and firing all the same, loaded at a blink with nothing but spellcraft, and driven by the same instinctive rage Bewelcome had fallen to. Breaks outta me and busts through you like the ball I made of it—Chess could almost see it happening—then dashes itself to pieces, same as any other ordnance, leaving a shred of itself behind in the furrow . . . a seed.

Taking the top off the Scotsman’s ear had birthed an unnatural, gangrenous infection in its wake, eating into body and mind alike: Chess’s magic, worming its way into Pinkerton first as something fought, then embraced. Hexation treated with hexation, breeding a taste for the same. Thus making this—disease of his the issue, come to term in a storm of pure man-witchery.

From that one moment had come all the lunacy that followed: paranoid mistrust of his own underlings; support for Asbury’s projects, from mass-produced Manifolds to this train itself, driven by hexes chained up like Roman galley slaves; the mad determination to destroy any obstacle in his path. The obsession which had brought him here, setting him on a collision course with Ash Rook, the Rainbow Lady, Hex City.

All my fault, Chess thought, and Christ, he was so tired of that not-so-simple truth. Just like every other Goddamn thing.

Pinkerton’s coat was gone, the collar concealing his face burnt away. What lay beneath was awfully familiar, in both senses.

Chess remembered his Ma, droning away—Oh, the drip’s bad enough, Christ knows, or them itchin’ bloody warts, but the Germ? The French Complaint? Might as well save up for a bullet an’ shoot yerself, do yerself a friggin’ favour. ’Cause that’s one case where the cure really ain’t worse than the disease, by ’alf.

Lion-faced, lips and nose all blurred together with sores, an inward-seeking pit that ruffled with each breath; his spit welled up silver, like Pinkerton had taken the mercury dose already. Ore cinnabar rimmed his single nostril, furled bat-snout lips, the exposed top teeth. And those piggy little rogue-elephant eyes, so full of rheum and ire . . .

Asbury made the single most ridiculous sound Chess’d ever heard a grown man let fly, a squeak muffled behind both fists—all but threw himself back against

the railing, as if trying to push his way right through it. Seeing his reaction, Songbird whirled in mid-air, red skirts belling, and though she made no sound, her shock showed equal-fierce: her shield-aura blazed up, too bright to look at. Morrow took a stumbling step backward, jaw similarly slack; this time, it was Yancey’s turn to support him. To knit her hand with his, and let their blood fall where it might.

“Boss . . .” Morrow rasped.