A Rope of Thorns (36 page)

Taking the top off the Scotsman’s ear had birthed an unnatural, gangrenous infection in its wake, eating into body and mind alike: Chess’s magic, worming its way into Pinkerton first as something fought, then embraced. Hexation treated with hexation, breeding a taste for the same. Thus making this—disease of his the issue, come to term in a storm of pure man-witchery.

From that one moment had come all the lunacy that followed: paranoid mistrust of his own underlings; support for Asbury’s projects, from mass-produced Manifolds to this train itself, driven by hexes chained up like Roman galley slaves; the mad determination to destroy any obstacle in his path. The obsession which had brought him here, setting him on a collision course with Ash Rook, the Rainbow Lady, Hex City.

All my fault
, Chess thought, and Christ, he was so tired of that not-so-simple truth.
Just like every other Goddamn thing.

Pinkerton’s coat was gone, the collar concealing his face burnt away. What lay beneath was awfully familiar, in both senses.

Chess remembered his Ma, droning away—
Oh, the drip’s bad enough, Christ knows, or them itchin’ bloody warts, but the Germ? The French Complaint? Might as well save up for a bullet an’ shoot yerself, do yerself a friggin’ favour. ’Cause that’s one case where the cure really
ain’t
worse than the disease, by ’alf.

Lion-faced, lips and nose all blurred together with sores, an inward-seeking pit that ruffled with each breath; his spit welled up silver, like Pinkerton had taken the mercury dose already. Ore cinnabar rimmed his single nostril, furled bat-snout lips, the exposed top teeth. And those piggy little rogue-elephant eyes, so full of rheum and ire . . .

Asbury made the single most ridiculous sound Chess’d ever heard a grown man let fly, a squeak muffled behind both fists—all but threw himself back against the railing, as if trying to push his way right through it. Seeing his reaction, Songbird whirled in mid-air, red skirts belling, and though she made no sound, her shock showed equal-fierce: her shield-aura blazed up, too bright to look at. Morrow took a stumbling step backward, jaw similarly slack; this time, it was Yancey’s turn to support him. To knit her hand with his, and let their blood fall where it might.

“Boss . . .” Morrow rasped.

“
This
is what yuir comrade made of me, Edward.” Gluey decay permeated Pinkerton’s voice, yet it rang with good cheer, as though abandoning any attempt to still sound human was purest relief. He was bigger than he’d been, too, shirt all but buttonless, braces strained over swollen shoulders. “Dinna fret, though—it’s no’ nearly so unpleasant as it appears. I barely sleep; my perceptions are clearer, keener. And I’m strong now, Edward—
so
strong, it beggars belief!” Ham-hands closed on the ironwork railing before him, and tore it out of the caboose’s frame with a screeching snap. Contemptuously, he cast it down, then hopped out after it. With one fist, he smashed the base of the nearest salt-spear; it burst like cheap porcelain, gone to dust and powder in an instant.

Sort of behaviour’ll sure change your image of a man, no matter how “good” you reckon ’im
, Chess mused, seeing how the salt-trapped Pinks’ eyes bulged, on finally glimpsing their leader in the altogether.
Or maybe ’specially so, you were dumb enough to think that well of anybody, in the first damn place.

Love stepped forward. “Thought as much,” he spat. “You wish him kept alive because his Devil’s might sustains
you
; you crave it all, for yourself. By God, that shall not be!”

Pinkerton laughed, gooily. “I’ll concur with Mister Pargeter in one thing, Sheriff: God plays nae part in these proceedings. And so . . .”

Faster than Chess would have believed such a bloated, heavy thing could move, Pinkerton’s bunched fist swung at Love’s jaw—only to slap cold into Love’s upflung palm, and stop. Green lightning billowed, backlashing into Pinkerton, who roared in agony; surprise flattened his already truncated visage into something truly ludicrous. As Love clamped down with all five fingers, the salt that was his substance flowing halfway up Pinkerton’s arm, his opponent’s mass began to shrink, collapsing. In turn, Chess felt that awful pull in his own guts, as Love’s dead essence drank up the power of Ed’s and Yancey’s blood with greedy delight.

Instinct took control, prompting a near-fatal mistake: Chess flung out both his own hands, double gun-stance style, and spasmed as the power-drain’s ripping agony only redoubled. Love turned, slow as minerals forming—ground-salt rippling upwards along his body, coalescing into plates and spikes that sheathed him like whitish-grey slabs of armour, a lime-crusted stalagmite grown head-high in seconds—and smiled.

“Foolish,” he remarked, probably to both of ’em. “Yet not unexpected.”

This loss of contact seemed to snap their link; the lightning died, and Pinkerton dropped back onto his ass with a grunt. Chess buckled to all fours, gasping for breath. At once, every ounce of strength was gone from his limbs; it took all the effort he could manage to keep from simply falling flat on his face. He felt the ponderous, trudging steps as Love came closer, ’til two encrusted boots finally placed themselves before him. Even as he watched, their salt and the ground’s flowed into each other, eddying back and forth.

If there was any sympathy at all in Love’s dead voice, Chess was deaf to it. “Here is your sin, Pargeter—all around you. Bitter shall be your portion.”

Those too-long fingers passed over Chess’s face, stroking scratchily along his lips. A sting struck his tongue, and suddenly he was heaving so hard he couldn’t breathe. Black and stinking blood, sparkling with tiny crystals, splashed over the ground in a foul flood, hollowing him out. He spewed and spewed, vision darkening.

It felt like another tornado, suction-rush tearing strength out of Yancey in hot spurts, each surge of weakness matching one of Chess’s. No sense to it, especially since the ragged bite she’d taken out of her wrist was already closing over, not losing near enough blood to provoke such a sense of shock. But this could never be about mere flesh; it was something in the place, working against her, sucking at her like a sink-hole. A quicksand of salt.

She was on her knees before she knew it, fighting not to get up but to keep from keeling over, tongue ragged, tasting blood. So cold.
Not in front of Love
, she prayed.
Don’t go letting him see you falter.

And then Ed Morrow’s strong arm encircled her, warming her, if only for a second. He bent close, contorted face all a-blur, though she couldn’t tell if the water was in her eyes, or his. “Yancey, honey,” he whispered, “you gotta cut free of this,
please
.”

She shook her head, waved a feeble hand at the knot of monsters triangulated upon each other, kitty-corner at all angles of Bewelcome’s disaster-emptied main square. “’M . . . part of it, like them . . . all together.
Linked.
” So clear to her now, the warp and woof strung between all three men: power, immediate and inevitable. A literally fatal web. “So maybe this’s . . .
s’posed
to happen.”

“Not you.” It came through grit teeth. “Goddamnit, not
you
, too!”

“Let it ride, Mister Morrow,” said Love, of all people, only his face still showing semi-human through a wealth of salten plate; he tossed his head at Chess, like he still had even one pigtail worth flapping. “She chose her end, by standing with
this
monster. It’s time for you to walk away.”

Morrow said nothing; his face didn’t even change. But Yancey
felt
his decision, a punch to the heart—tried to grab at his arm, but slipped her purchase. At the same time, Morrow’s knife slashed down, twice over: once to rip the sleeve, once to lay open the big vein in the forearm. More blood, steaming fresh, to water this unholy ground.

And what crop might yet grow, thus irrigated?

He raised his voice, then, too—and Yancey knew she must be close to crossing over some final threshold, because it seemed she could hear
other
words beneath his, not even in English. Yet clear enough, for all that . . . clearer by far than the tumult gathering ’round her, massive swirl and grind of some salt-sandstorm looming up between sky and ground, blocking the sun so it shrank pinhole-dim.

Without wondering how, she knew the words were pouring into Ed from elsewhere, and that he did not care. She felt the land beneath the salt rouse to Ed’s sacrifice with ten times the strength it had for hers—unsurprising, really; she’d spilled blood for spite and fury, to drive Chess into battle, while Ed’s had been for love and grief, out of a determination to save lives.

(Balance, granddaughter.)

The ground quaked, juddering them both painfully. Dull reports echoed, crack of dry ground, stone fracturing, snapping. With crashes like dropped clay pots, the salt cells binding the Pinkerton agents broke; to a man, they bolted, shouting as they fled.

A wall of green thrust up, vine and Weed-tangle slamming through the valley’s topsoil. It blossomed in a perfect circle, tendrils twining frantically inward but unable to cross the salt-lip, straining to reach Chess ’til its overspill latched onto Pinkerton’s hex-train—probably the largest other source handy—and began drawing fiercely on
its
power. It swarmed monkey-quick over the carriages, kicking up sparks and bursts of lightning like a firework show gone all askew. The train shuddered and crunched down, its enchantment-driven wheels suddenly gone the way of all spells.

All dignity forfeit, Asbury screamed like a colicky baby. In turn, Songbird let loose with a furious kettle-shriek, terror only thinly overlaid with anger. The force-grown crackle of leaves nearly drowned the Weed-flowers’ chitter, a flock of maddened birds intent on devouring whatever might be unlucky enough to lie in its path.

Yancey felt Morrow pushing harder, pouring all of his determination to save her—and Chess—into the sacrifice. The potency at work painted everything in ghost-shapes; all she could do was knit her grip with Ed’s and haul all the harder, throwing a last whisper of thought Chess’s way:
God damn you, you irritating little man, get
up
.

No response—not audibly. But amidst the dead white glow of the salt, her spiritualist’s lens showed her Chess, bright green and red with blood, his shoulders shaking. And she knew that he was laughing.

Seconds later, the entire Weed-mess let fly a mutual blast of pollen, every seed pod rupturing at once and hurling its cargo into Bewelcome’s air. Chess sucked in a deep gasp, swallowing it down like burning whiskey. Thus sustained, he plunged his hands down, tearing into the crust of salt, rendering bloody meat-gloves of them in moments, though the hurt of it seemed to register only briefly before he found raw soil, and buried them to the wrists.

As with the best of Chess’s black miracles, a soundless pulse went off in all directions, turning his whole skin the pulp-green of a cut stalk. Love’s remaining spear-pillars shattered under their own weight, while great gouts of crackling lightning came off the train’s locked boxcars; the wood split, heavy planks splintering like balsa, iron chains gone to rust and dust in an instant.

Yancey couldn’t quite make out the figures who spilled from the wreckage—some alive, some grievously injured, some beyond all pain—but she knew what they were: hexes, trapped in some unimaginable way, kept from feeding on one another by Asbury’s black science and forced to drive Pinkerton’s train where he would, defying geography. Those who could rabbited fast as the Pinks before ’em, stumbling toward the mouth of the valley, earth still a-rumble beneath their feet: more screams rose up, weak with despair. Beneath them, pounding thuds, growing steadily louder. Nearer.

But moments before the first of the escapees reached their goal, he came skidding to a stop, backpedalled frantically, urging those following behind off. Because of this concern for his fellows, or perhaps because he stood (all unknowing) on the edge of a sheer and sudden drop, whoever-it-was couldn’t see the monstrous shape which reared up right where his eyes had formerly rested ’til it darted its huge head down and
bit him in half
, snuffling him up like a dog with a bit of cheese.

“What . . . ?” Morrow breathed.

To each side of the valley’s entrance, great beasts pulled themselves free of the stone like downed birds from mud, aeons-dead bones clothed anew in flesh, albeit incomplete and rotting. Green fire outlined their eye sockets. A dozen of them? A score? Yancey felt their tremendous weight pound the earth beneath her. Reptilian, elephantine, creatures of an older sun, these thundering lizards hammered toward Bewelcome’s heart, their horns and teeth all set for Sheriff Love.