A Tree of Bones (Hexslinger 3)

“What he thinks is none of my concern, soldier. Though I take it you would prefer they go badly, rather than well, for a man who blinked not one eye before killing that child my sister covets, for the grand crime of being a potential inconvenience.”

Morrow snorted. “Say it again, why don’t you. And try to pretend like any of it means a damn thing, this time.”

“For a man so lacking in power, you accord me very little respect. Is this wise?”

“Hard to tell, t’be frank. I mean, I do fear you, if that counts for anything — same way I would a wild dog, or one of them poisonous snakes.” It almost felt like he was roaring drunk, this apparent freedom to insult something so powerful to its — Chess’s — own visage. But here he willed himself sober, stringently, before he made choices he maybe wouldn’t have time to regret; sat up straight and looked the Enemy in what passed for its eyes, only to watch it smirk back up, charmlessly.

“I know what you’re doin’,” Morrow told it. “Ain’t anything new, you know. Our Devil plays his cards just the same.”

It shook Chess’s red curls at him. “Yet again, I do not know this name, soldier. However many times I hear it spoken, from however many of your kind, the concept makes no more sense to me than it did the first time.”

“Yeah, well, I guess that kinda figures. Seein’ that’s just what we call the thing that passes close enough for you, as regards our own single-God creed.”

“Your All-Father’s rebel child, who lives under the earth and roasts dead souls on a fire pit, behaving in ways that would make my Lords One and Seven Death or Mictantecuhtli laugh? Yes, I have heard of him — how he tempts those not yet condemned to do ill by promising repayment, taking their afterlife as collateral. It is a pleasant fable.”

“I can see how it’d strike you that way. Point is, whenever Satan wants to get things goin’, he doesn’t ever really put himself out at all, not like we think — just shows whoever he’s after things that’re are happening already, then steps back and lets ’em draw their own conclusions, so he can see what-all they’ll do with the information.”

“Ah. And this, you believe, was why I told my sister’s secrets to your Mister Pinkerton . . . to find out what he was capable of, if he thought to gain some benefit.”

“You saying I’m wrong?”

“Not entirely. But let me show you something now, without asking a fee in exchange, and then see what might follow, after.”

Images flashed inside Morrow’s head, quick and flat, yet sticky red-rendered: Pinkerton as one of those curlicued Old Mex stone images, dipped in blood and printed on a wall, acting out all sorts of secret mayhem — having fresh-turned hexes brought to his tent each night when the camp was too asleep to come looking and sucking ’em down like oysters, or making do with energy siphoned off those defeated by the hex-handlers instead; anything for a fix, just like the junkie he’d never stopped being. And all of this conducted under Asbury’s auspices, with the ruined scientist’s connivance, going along to get along, since Asbury sure as hell knew he couldn’t hope to stop him.

Berta and Eulie, brought down like fleeing cattle, to be milked of their bounty at the boss-man’s convenience. Or maybe done away with entirely once he was finished with ’em, like that child they’d tried so desperately hard to save, by bringing her all the way to their chief persecutor’s camp — an object lesson in just how little Pinkerton cared for anybody outside of himself, these days, hexacious or not.

The “old complaint,” all right, which Asbury’d claimed to be ministering to, and lied right to Morrow’s face in doing so. He ain’t gettin’ better, Morrow thought, appalled. Oh no.

No indeed, soldier.

He’s getting worse.

Yes. Something should be done. So ask yourself: is that opportunity I spoke of earlier to be his, while my sister and I come to blows? Or might it be someone else’s . . . yours, perhaps?

“Shut your hole, you awful creature. I can’t trust you no more’n the Fallen One, or any other demon.”

Or Pinkerton, either. Better to trust yourself, then, and do as your conscience dictates, when the time comes . . . as I know you will.

“Think you know me that damn well, huh? I just might surprise you.”

It gave him Chess’s smirk again, and Morrow found himself gob-struck by the way that tiny flash of sharp black teeth travelled straightway to his groin, like a shock.

“Unlikely, I think,” it replied. “Now come closer; let me show you something to remember me by, before I depart.”

“Didn’t think you creatures got itchy in that same way.”

“Part of me is your red boy, soldier. And where he is now, he misses you — badly.”

The offer tugged at him, just like it was supposed to. But how much of Chess really could be left, inside there? Any, at all? Didn’t matter; regardless of how his gooseflesh might prick and his pants might tighten, Morrow wasn’t anything like fool enough to feel like taking a chance on finding out.

“Well, tell him I miss him too, then,” he said, finally, flushing to where his collar would’ve reached, had he been wearing one. “But not that bad.”

“I could show you your woman, then — Mictlantecihuatl’s handmaiden. Would you prefer that, as a gesture of my respect?”

“I’d prefer you not gesture my way at all, thanks. I’d prefer to sleep, alone.”

“Will you tell her what passed here tonight, when you do?”