A Tree of Bones (Hexslinger 3)

Gravity seemed to slow. They stepped through, touched down over the threshold, the lintel between. And just as promised by that first glance, all that rose to meet them was nothing: an absence, delicious in its way, airless and sere.

There was something under their feet, though, if noiseless and unforgiving — something making bleak walls on either side, too, with scarce enough room for Chess’s shoulders to pass between, his arm turning in its socket to lead Oona through in turn. He felt a wrench of panic at the idea that they might forge forward only to find themselves trapped in a gradually narrowing space, eventually lodging too fast to go either way, and for a bare second, the still-open portal back into Mictlan-Seven Dials shone like sanctuary.

Oona’s fingers clutched at his palm, waxy-cold, sticky with sweat. Not looking so much to comfort her as simply to hurry her up a bit, he shifted his grip to her thin wrist and pulled, hard enough to feel the bones grate.

“Let’s get a move on, old woman,” he told her, not looking back. And set his teeth, stepping straightaway into a blast of pressure that blew neither hot nor cold but horizontally, bruisingly stiff. Yet though the force of it rattled his teeth, flapped his lips askew and numbed his tongue, he bladed through setting heel to toe, heel to toe, snarling soundless, indomitable. Dragging his mother along with him until they broke free with an audible snap, a broke-pelvis crunch, into someplace entirely other yet again.

Dust on dust, a wilderness of it, buff and granular. And light, too, for all Chess couldn’t tell where it came from — sifting down or welling up, extruding through the walls’ pores, slicking everything with distinction. On either side, a doubled fall of what might be curtains receded, muslin-thin, static, aside from those shadows flickering intermittently behind.

“Chess — ” Oona began, pressing against him.

“I see ’em, Ma.”

“What are — I mean — are they followin’ us, them fings? Or just followin’ along, general-like? I’m tryin’ t’see ’em clear, but I, I . . . can’t . . .”

“Me either, Ma, and I’m sure they’d like to keep it thus. Hush up, now.”

Got no real weapons to fall back on, nothing but myself, and her. So might could be we’ll just have to think our way out of this, as well . . .

Years since the War now, but all the various instincts of fight-flight-fuck ’em all came ratcheting back in a single skipped breath. Chess pulled Oona along at a rapid, semi-hunched lope which ate ground steadily, angled even further sideways. Concealment being out of the question, he thought it best to opt for speed; the pursuing shadows had a bestial feel to them, a carrion heat like the breath of battlefield-scavenging dogs — running outright would only mark them as prey. To left and right, meanwhile, a twisty skein of grey un-walls stretched out endless, growing ever dimmer as the no-light failed.

Fifty steps on, marking the shadows’ encroaching rate of advance, Chess dropped to his knees, pulling Oona down along with him. He pitched his voice low yet urgent, sibilants slurred for quiet, demanding: “Can you see it still? The Call, that thread?” She kept on staring back, eyes wide, rigid; Chess gave her a shake. “Listen to me, Oona: I need you mean and sharp, like usual. I need the bitch who raised me.”

Blinking, she searched the dust. For a second, he found himself making study along with her, as though some clue might leap out at him, he only squinted the fiercer. This thing which supposedly came with his name attached, an invisible invitation, but one he had to rely on her to track. . . .

“There,” she said, finally.

“Get in front of me, then.”

“Oh, you fink? Chance’d be a fine bloody — ”

“Oona! I ain’t got time to jaw on it. Something’s afoot, and one of us needs to have the way out scouted, you take my meaning?” He pushed back, deliberately opening a way between her and the nearing threat. “Or would you rather fight?”

Her answering swallow was so quiet it might’ve gone unnoticed, he hadn’t been listening.

“. . . believe I’ll watch the door, fanks ever so,” she decided.

“Thought as much.”

All at once, Chess jumped upright and turned, hands coming alight. Dark pressed hard ’gainst the blaze, force balancing against force before the sheer mass of it began to overwhelm, pushing him back. One fist Chess held braced against it while he simultaneously side-stepped, knotting the other into the no-wall so it rucked up like heavy silk. In the light’s backspill, he thought he could see black shapes thundering toward them, low-slung and brutish.

Before they could reach them, however, he’d already heaved with all his strength, ripping what lay between like a rotten curtain. Piercing shrieks rose up all ’round, blind and senseless as the wails of dying bluebellies, crushed beneath Captain Coulson’s artillery. Shutting them out, Chess hauled the ruptured membrane across the passage and slammed it straight into the other wall, sealing them off. A forge’s worth of sparks showering from both hands now, he ran his palms up and down the seam, fusing the wall together.

In seconds, it was done. Chess backed away, watching the membrane distort, throbbing and bulging under the thudding blows of whatever now lay trapped behind.

“Didn’t know you could . . . still do fings like that, down ’ere,” said Oona, from his elbow — impressed, despite herself. He could kick himself for the way his spirit lifted, just to hear it.

“Me neither,” Chess admitted, panting. And looked over to see her stock-rooted again, with that white, strained look around the eyes; was like the woman’d never been under fire in her life, he thought.

With an irritated jerk of his head toward what he could only assume was their destination, he reminded her: “Oona? Exit?”

“Right,” she repeated, collecting herself, and turned back, eyes on the ground. Now it was her turn to lead, she made the most of it — and as she pulled him on, the seal-wall shuddered as their pursuers continued to slam themselves into it. By some paradox of the light it was still visible, if distant, when Oona at last turned to the left and stopped by a particular point, indistinguishable from any other. “This’s the ticket — now open it, ’fore they catch back up.”

“Ain’t gonna have to cut my hand to shit again, am I?”

“Don’t fink so, just . . . yeah, ’at’ll do it. Press ’ard, ’ere.” With a crooked grin, Oona slipped her fingers between two folds of mist-curtain, lifting ’em back like one of the hangings on Selina Ah Toy’s walls. Smoky red light stirred and breathed beyond; Oona gestured, a grand ballroom sweep. “After you.”

Chess might have hesitated, if the air behind ’em hadn’t just that second given off with an awful tearing sound, nauseatingly fleshy. He whirled ’round just in time to see upright shapes pouring through a torn gash in the seal, coursing down the passage toward them: a thick wave of shadow with long, cowled forms mounted on the same dark flood, mouths open so wide as to unhinge their jaws, rattlesnake-style.