“Then don’t treat me like you do.”
A whole new note quivering at the very lowermost range of Chess’s voice now, plaintive with injured pride and barely masked need. It hit Rook in a dark stream pumped straight through the heart, and he rode its current without effort, fascinated by the ill strength of his own arousal.
Rook laid one huge hand on the younger man’s jaw-hinge, and turned his face ’til their eyes locked fast. “Look at me,” he ordered. “C’mere — sit a while. Be with me.”
Chess shook his head. “I got things to see to — ”
“What’d I say, Private? Come here.”
Rook wove the geas instinctively, fingers flexed like a mountebank’s, shuffling Fate’s card-rack. The gesture kicked up a fresh ripple of energy that drew Chess close enough so the Reverend could collar him by the shirt-neck and kiss him hard, suck down breath and soul-juice together, in a dizzying, drunken exchange which left Chess looking drained.
“God damn — ” was just about all Chess could say, once he had most of his breath back. “You work a hex on me, right then?” he demanded.
“Was that what it felt like?”
“What it felt, was . . .” Chess stopped a moment. “. . . like I didn’t like it, was how. You hear? Do any damn thing similar to me again, and I’ll — ”
Rook laughed out loud, needlessly cruel. Could’ve said, You’ll do what, little man? — just to add insult to injury — but in all fairness, he didn’t see the point.
So he crushed Chess’s mouth back to his, instead, before Chess could ev
en think to protest, flipped him prone and squirming with one hand shoved quick down the front of his fly, and worked him ’til Chess’s eyes rolled back. Lowered him onto the bed and rumpled him all over, not letting go ’til he was good and done with him.
There, Rook thought. That’s an end on it, for now.
In Calvary Cross, to cover their escape, Rook turned to Exodus once more, and sowed a rain of fire. It worked the trick, all right — then kept on falling for three more full days and nights, pinning them down into a humid, smoky and woefully over-extended billet with the staff and patrons of Ollemeyer’s Saloon. Knowing that fear of Chess’s guns and his own witchery were the only things keeping the company safe from night-slit throats, Rook put the two of them on rotating watch — six hours up, six hours asleep, with one ready at all times to spill blood, should any of their terrified co-residents make a move.
As early as the first changeover, Chess growled under his breath, as Rook got dressed: “Ten minutes, Ash. I could clear this place for good in ten. You could do it even faster, I bet.”
Rook pulled on his boots. “Might, at that.”
“Then why don’t you?”
“’Cause I’ve no clear idea when that — ” Rook nodded through a window at the dull red streaks lashing down outside “ — will be lettin’ up, and no great wish to share the roof with a score of corpses on the rot. Or to send one of our own out to die, trying to toss them out. ’Sides, you know well enough my work ain’t the equal of yours for precision . . . not yet.”
Chess snorted at that, and let him go with only a kiss, laying down to get what sleep he could. But as the hours wore on into days, Rook could see that unwillingly banked fire burning ever hotter in Chess’s eyes, an inner mirror of the fire-rain falling relentlessly outside.
Yet it still startled him when Hosteen caught him alone in the saloon’s rapidly emptying pantry, and told him what he hadn’t been awake to see: Chess, whetting Hosteen’s former buck-knife to a sharp edge right in front of Ollemeyer’s wife and children. Forcing the house pianist to play the same tune over and over again, at gunpoint. And checking, every few minutes — sure as clockwork — up the stairs to Rook’s room, as if his gaze alone could make the Rev wake faster.
“I thought you’d want to know,” said Hosteen. “That you already would know.”
“What is it you’re sayin’, Kees?”
“Look, he loves you. I know that. I just thought . . .”
“What?”
“. . . nothin’.”
But it wasn’t fear that silenced Hosteen, not alone. It was resignation. Doubt.
You wonder, sometimes, thought Rook, if I love him the same way he does me. And sometimes — so do I.
Thankfully, the rain of fire ran out before Ollemeyer’s pantry did, and never set the roof on fire. Even more thankfully, it ran out on Rook’s watch, not Chess’s. So it fell to Rook to get the rest of the gang up and moving, then haul Chess into the street — had him up on his horse, still groggy with sleep, and halfway out of the town long ’fore he was sensible enough to think about killing.
Nevertheless, it did worry him somewhat — not just that he was continuing to dictate gang policy around Chess’s offhanded murderousness, but that Chess’s bloodthirstiness seemed to be on the increase, generally. Like he never had recovered from Rook working a hex on him, that one time.
I always thought he was changing me, Rook thought, from the very beginning. But what if I’m changing him, just like I set out to? Only — not for the better.