Such ideas can never work efficiently, little king . . . at least, not when left to mere humans’ administration. Then, cheerfully: But we shall fix all that, you and I . . . while my brother watches, and your paramour is driven by hungers he cannot fathom to soften the land before us, whether or not he thinks he wishes to do so.
Rook nodded, slightly, watching her close for any sign that the pressure of supporting such a massive, complex binding was distracting her — which it was, increasingly, the spell itself a choir of iron bells and stone gears all set drainingly a-clank, louder and louder and louder. Loud enough to drown him out when he finally allowed himself to think, soft yet clear, beneath the tumult of cemeteries blooming fresh from sea to shining sea — oh, goody.
Remembering that moment down in Mictlan-Xibalba, when Morrow’s bullet hit Ixchel’s brain — that unholy snap, throwing him clear for one cold instant from his warm bath of predestinate fate, that fine, slickly impenetrable shell of need to get this finished, worry ’bout the cost later. When he’d looked down and seen nothing but the horrid meaty undeniability of what he’d caused to be done — fuck that, what he’d done, himself, with his very own reeking hands.
Chess, and the awful damn mess he’d made of him, with all his bad intentions. Chess, dead and split open, staring vacant, when all he’d ever told himself was that he wanted him kept alive, kept running: a hundred times magnified, saved and salvaged, eternally rendered powerful, beautiful, unstoppable.
And now Rook knew the result — had seen it himself, albeit through Morrow’s eyes. But that wrench persisted. It wasn’t enough, and never would be.
Made a mistake, I know it now. Need for you to set it right, ’cause . . . I just can’t.
For the first time since her death, he found himself ruminating a bit on Grandma. It occurred to him only now that maybe the reason she’d faced him alone hadn’t been predatory at all. Or at least, not mainly so. For Injun hexes seemed to favour working in bunches with true shamans, the preachers of their kind. Them as were human, yet able to tap a-purpose into something far larger than themselves, perhaps that same force he’d felt boil from poor Sheriff Love’s Word-struck pores.
From that angle, Grandma might actually have thought she was protecting her people by going hand-to-hand with Rook solo. Old and crafty as she was, she’d have known Rook’s p
roximity would rouse her hungers and smother her honour — put her at the mercy of her power-thirst, like any “normal” magician. And then her people would’ve been caught in the overspill, her focus torn, forcing herself to care about making sure they came out okay.
Faith could produce miracles, no question. But hexes, perhaps because they bred miracles automatically, seemed to have no access to faith’s power, unless they could somehow become gods, themselves.
Human sacrifice was the key, Rook thought — the worst taboo of all, worse than rape, patricide, or cannibalism. Gods fed and bred on the death of others, spiked higher-than-high with two parts suffering to three parts ecstasy, mirroring the blood-echo of their own. The God Who Dies . . . but not a milkwater Hebrew messiah, content to overspend his coin-flesh in others’ service ’til He was good and broke. No, this was a shell-game god whose hungers ebbed and flowed in earthquake-driven tidal waves, meeting out glorious, cyclical destruction. Like Ixchel and Smoking Mirror.
Like Chess.
Chess, whom Rook had held, watched sleep. Chess, who fit in his arms as if he was made for it. Chess, who’d kill him, if he could . . . and very well might, when all was said and done.
But no such godhood for Rook, never; that boat had good and sailed. Only the vague sense that while he couldn’t right now conceive of anything to do for Chess, for Morrow — he still knew himself at least willing, when the time for it came ’round, to at least try.
His palms still red and sore, even in her coldly imperative, power-soaked double-grip, where the Bible had burnt him.
My guilt talkin’, that’s exactly what that was — stand-fixed, as ever, on how I don’t deserve to use His Word. How I never did.
But she’d the right of it too, he knew — the Good Book had been just a crutch for him all this time, and one without which he could get along perfectly fine, as their current spectacular working all-too-well proved.
Still, he couldn’t say he didn’t miss it. Almost as much as he missed — other things.
Ah, but which parts of your Word do you miss most, Ash Rook? whispered a voice like Chess’s, if only a little, in his inner ear. The part says repentance brings forgiveness? Or the parts that tell how Vengeance Is Mine?
The spell was winding down, resolving itself reel on reel, a wound-back thread from the world’s force-ravelled cloak. Ixchel’s gaze came back to him, re-possessing his Judas heart and argumentative Satan’s mind, eating him alive. Yet Rook stood free a moment more, idly considering his hands in the sunset’s glow, as though they were still gloved wrist-high in the cooling red of Chess’s insides.
And for once, something came to him that wasn’t from the Bible at all: something unbidden, new, slipping sidelong into his head. Shakespeare again, The Tempest, which he’d seen performed once back in Crickside, albeit heavily bowdlerized. Gonzago the shipwrecked Venetian courtier, of his boatswain: I have great comfort from this fellow. Methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him; his complexion is perfect gallows. Or the vengeful magician Prospero, or savage witch-boy Caliban — two points on the same compass, inalienable: This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.
To which Caliban, his myriad sins found out, replies, “. . . I shall be pinched to death.”
Rook said it aloud — trying it on his tongue, weighing it like it came lozenge-sized, while little miss Snare-and-Trap Ixchel just stared at him, her flat black eyes particularly empty.
Replying, after a moment — “I do not understand.”
Rook shook his head. “Wouldn’t expect you to.”
. . . darlin’.
In the cemetery, things were growing just as dark. From beyond the gates, scattered throughout shrouded Tampico, Morrow heard screams begin to rise. He laid a tentative hand on Chess’s shoulder, only to find it shaking.
“Christ, oh Christ, what is this?” Chess choked out, liquid, scrabbling at his eyes. “I’m cryin’ fuckin’ blood, here. I’m . . . back to coughin’ up Goddamn flowers. . . .”
Remembering what’d come along with those last time, Morrow almost shied away, but half-hugged Chess instead, for all the smaller man’s frame was so tense it hurt and sweaty enough to stick. “Should prob’ly get a move on, come full nightfall.”
He broke off as Chess gave an inarticulate cry of frustration, punching both fists straight down into the dirt. There was a pulse, barely visible, and a sound of innumerable mice scrabbling. Bare seconds later, bones began pushing their way out around them, driven upside by a glut of vines and roots: whole, fragmentary, unidentifiable shards and crania with some skin attached, clacking jaw-harnesses, chittering unstrung teeth. They skittered around, circling Chess desperately, seeking a guiding will from a god too new to know what that might be.