“I don’t, except that my word not be taken lightly. So stand down.”
“Make me.”
“Think I can’t?”
“Oh, I know damn well you can! You think that makes me apt to trust you anymore? Who knows what-all else you mighta made me do, when I wasn’t lookin’?”
“Nothing. Not one single friggin’ thing, ever . . . that you didn’t already want to.”
They were outright yelling at each other, now, right in front of the appalled eyes of everyone, Chess’s kill-to-be very much included. And though Rook wasn’t exactly sure how things had gotten quite this far out of hand in quite so short a time, he did know they weren’t going any further.
“Put up,” he growled, slapping Chess’s piece away from the barfly’s face so the man fell to his knees like his hamstrings’d been slashed, then scrabbled crabwise ’til his back hit the nearest wall and stuck there. Pissed beyond measure, Chess swung his other gun ’round, only to have Rook grab that, too.
“Let Goddamn go, Goddamnit!”
“Chess — ” Rook said, warningly. Then: “C’mon, darlin’ — you know you’re outmatched, so don’t be an idiot, for Christ’s sake. Least . . . not where folks can see you.”
Provoked beyond endurance, Chess dropped both guns outright and lunged straight for Rook like a rat-killing dog, all ten fingers hooked into claws. Without planning it out at all, Rook flung Chess’s weapons down and caught him by the neck, lifting him neatly off the ground.
“That how your Momma taught you to fight, boy?” he demanded, voice almost too low to recognize himself.
Chess tore a laugh out through his rapidly bruising throat. “Yuh, wuh — works pretty well, don’t it? ’Sides which . . . my Ma could’ve wiped the floor with any one’a these fuh . . . fuckers, and she don’t even pack a gun.”
Rook hauled him closer. “Don’t make me do something we’ll both regret, Chess.”
“I’d like . . . tuh . . . see that. . . .”
A darkness seemed to fall between them, ecliptic. Barely noticing how fast the Sisters had already cleared out, Rook let Chess fall momentarily free — doubled up and hacking — before pinning his arms from behind and hauling him upstairs parcel-style, virtually tucked under one tree-limb arm. With that same charge flashing back and forth between them, energizing and exhausting, all the while: each touch a dry powder-burn, a branding iron’s kiss.
And here was where he truly knew it, for the first time — how with every touch, he was sucking something out of Chess. Gulping it down, the way a gut-shot man will drink ’til he bleeds out and dies, regardless of the gaping hole where his belly should be. The darkness rising in him spurred a similar darkness in Chess, rendering him ten times as dangerous as usual to everything around him (himself very much included). And though Chess fought it tooth and nail, exhausting himself, he also fought to cleave to Rook just as hard, if not harder.
Rook had been the true trap. And now Chess was caught, fast as any fly in amber.
Reaching the second floor, Rook kicked in the first door he saw, popping it clear off its hinges. Then threw Chess down on the bed, face down, and let the unnatural take its course.
After, he felt bad — as bad as he’d felt so all-fire good, just a hot, gasping moment previous. The hurt and injustice of it crashed over him in a wave, sticking him chest-first to Chess’s spine, and he buried his face in the nape of the smaller man’s trembling neck, hugging him fit to bruise. Chess stiffened for a moment, mouthed at Rook’s wrist like he wanted to bite, then curled back into him, with a little sighing sob.
“I ain’t just yours, you know.”
“I do.”
“You’re mine, you witch-rode ox.”
“I am, Chess, yes. I — surely, surely am.”
The things I’d do, to keep you safe, little man, Rook thought, tongue gone abruptly cold and sour in his own mouth. What I’d do . . . you can’t imagine.
Thankfully.
CHAPTER TEN
“You got to take the fight to him,” Chess said. “Don’t wait for this bastard Love to come lookin’ — they don’t know what they’re dealing with, which puts them to a disadvantage. And even if you don’t know what you’re dealin’ with either, half the time, you still got good tricks to pull out, long as you can control the field of battle.”
“So you think I should count coup on Love in Bewelcome itself, right where God and everybody can see.” Rook looked at Chess, genuinely curious. “That what you would’ve done? Back in the War?”
Chess snorted. “Hell, no — I’d’ve snuck in under his lines, waited ’til he was asleep, then cut his damn throat. But I’m guessin’ you probably want to make more of a splash than that — send a message. Am I right?”
“Maybe.”