A Tree of Bones (53 page)

Rook nodded. “You’d think. But then again . . . maybe they all just got tired enough of your company to risk it, just the same.”

Fury distorted Ixchel’s skull bones and face-hide, making them groan and snap like warped wood; she raised her crooked fingers at him, protruding bones sharp as claws. “
You —
”

But here the air between them darkened, as Tezcatlipoca transposed himself, massive as a storm. Murmuring, in Ixchel’s barely attached ear:
I believe you may have a more pressing problem to deal with, sister.

Chess looked where the thing he’d had to evict from his flesh was pointing, and laughed outright.

“Seems like,” he agreed. “’Cause — that bitch of yours? She don’t look happy.”

For it was true: something had shifted, not only inside Hex City but inside Clo’s star-demon form, as well. And while everyone else stood transfixed by the spectacle of an entire fortress’s unannounced departure, Clo had writhed in the throes of a very different sort of epiphany — the sudden release of everything Ixchel’s curse had robbed from her. Now she was giving Ixchel full benefit of the same rage-mask face she’d shown so many others, earlier today. And though her eyes and joints still flared, blood-splattered jaws split by too many teeth and hair a mane of foulness with her hands poised for tearing, a spectral vulture’s talons, she nevertheless looked much more like the buxom Irish lass Hank Fennig first introduced Rook to than she had for . . . hours, now. Hours, only.

Made sense, for all it wasn’t like Rook’d calculated on it happening. Since Ixchel had pirated the whole City’s power to bring Clo over as
tzitzimihtl
, it followed that when the City absented itself, that bond she’d fashioned would disappear right along with it. Most ’specially since (as proven, time and time again) magic’s true “logic” was purely metaphorical: this for that, this into that, this as that. Professor Asbury — whom he’d glimpsed on his way down, bird-dogging the proceedings with a look on his face that said
Oh, if I only had my instruments!
— would probably explain it much better, Rook was sure; might even write a monograph on the subject, if they all survived the next few minutes.

Jesus
, Rook thought.
What amazing Goddamn damage we’ve wreaked on this world, Herself and me, in such an amazingly Goddamn short time.

“Why do you regard me thus, daughter?” Ixchel asked Clo, toneless.

Only to have her spit blood at her feet — her own and others’, well-admixed. And snarl, in reply: “Ye pinch-faced hoor! You killed my babe, or good as . . . made me kill my
Hank
. You made me
eat
him.”

“But that was only your new nature, asserting itself,” Ixchel said. “The
tzitzimime
devour everything, as only befits sisters of the First Sacrificial Knife — they tidy the universe’s leavings, ushering us all to our end, and these are Ending Times. Another world grows, and beckons; you have become one of the mechanisms which will take us there. A great honour! Can you not feel it, even now?”

Clo heaved a long sigh, packed full of every sort of sorrow. The sound swept through Rook, plucking at strings he’d thought gone dead; hell, even Chess seemed to feel it. Yet Ixchel stood like untouched as a stone in the midst of that flood, ’til Clo lifted her head once more, face scarred by her own tears, and whispered — in a voice that could have stripped not just paint but probably stone, as well —

“
. . . yes.
”

An instant later, she had already swept by her unsuspecting maker in an all-blade storm, stripping one side of Lady Rainbow’s defective vessel to the bone almost too fast to properly perceive; peeled her like a fruit and anatomized the rest, deeper than any textbook. The result was horror laid atop of horror — Ixchel threw up a hand only to watch the bones of it hurl free, no longer strung together by tendons, or even gristle. At the sight, her remaining eye fair started from its socket, while the raw hole on the other side matched it for roundness, if not for expressivity.

You
dare
—

Clo’s rabid slaver-grin turned actual smile, just for that moment — full of snap, the way a young girl’s should be, dead and damned or no.

“Oh, I do that,” she returned, striking up a pose for the next go-’round. “Aim t’rob
you
of all you did me, if I can, though I doubt it’s possible — not since you never loved no one in your whole existence, you gutter-trod rag of a Devil’s saint. But if nothin’ else, it’ll do me some small good t’
try
.”

An exhalation, then: one breath between breaths, poisoning the air between ’em with decay’s purest perfume. Rook knew it came from Ixchel without having to look — had sampled it himself a time or two, between engagements. From what he’d gathered, it meant she’d reached a decision.

And after all the trouble you went to!
he thought, mouth curving bitter.
Woman — creature,
thing
, woman-shaped like you are — were I one tenth only of the man I used to think I was, might be I’d even pity you.

Right there, within ten feet or three good strides, Chess stood once more corporeal and destruction-bent, watching carefully for his opportunity; Rook ached all over to touch him, just for the pleasure of getting slapped. Still, there’d be plenty of time for that later — since, at Chess’s back, he could already see the Enemy lean in close (having shifted positions sometime within the last few seconds, like some sort of ink-shrouded octopus) to hiss some more advice its “little brother’s” way.
Wait and see
, maybe.
This is your chance
, probably.

Kept close tabs on its game pieces, did the old Night Wind, especially while in play — and Rook had already done
his
duty. No need to send any more attention his way, when Chess made for a perfect substitute.

Gods or goddesses, you just can’t trust ’em. Cheatin’ Goddamn creatures.

And thus it was here, now: giving her trademark steam-whistle shriek, meanwhile, Clo came back in with everything she had, bound and determined to break the rest of her formerly beloved “mother” down for parts.

And Black Rainbow Ixchel, Mother of Hanged Men, Moon Lady, Gods-Eater, Long Black Hair of Death — six-in-one and a half-dozen of the other, risen up from Mictlan-Xibalba’s clammy depths on will alone, to carve the world that’d forgot her back into her own reflection —

— struck down her own best handiwork with one black blast that left her crisped whole, an ash sculpture whose very momentum was enough to break it apart, irreparably, on the wind. A stinking fog hot with rageful pain crashed over them all, stabbing deep into nose and eyes yet clearing almost immediately, without ill effects. And when it did, there was nothing at all of Clo to be seen anymore, not even the smallest particle.

As might only be expected, such a lavish expenditure cost Ixchel dear. Rook saw the after-shock take her right in the stomach, the throat, the ribcage she’d grown extra-thick with more bones than any human needed, just to keep Chess’s stolen heart from eating itself free and taking off running. She cracked open entirely all ’cross the boards, wounded side first, a seedpod spewing awful pollen — then twisted at the waist like someone was crumpling her, wringing her out from the inside.

Hamstrung, Ixchel fell to her knees, shattering one, and vomited, long and loud: not food, obviously, nor blood. Not even hex-stuff — this was something far worse. An endless, coring stream of
matter
that oozed and writhed, taking on shapes only to lose them again, like wax in a fire. The bulk of her hair fell forward, struck limp, only to be snared by this boiling mess; the seized locks shrivelled and split, changed,
degraded
.

With each fresh retch, Ixchel herself seemed to thin, all over — to lose heft, substance. Rook found he could glimpse the spine through her skin, that filmy imitation of clothing she wore worn away, leaving her naked. Then something else, in the dip between her stunted-wing shoulder blades — something familiar, though he himself had only ever heard it described by a dead man — a dapper young New York cynic who’d lived carefully opportunistic almost to the last, yet nevertheless somehow managed to die for love.

Cannibalism, theophagy . . . that’d be why she has a hole she can’t fill, no-how and with nothin’. ’Cause takin’ a bite out of them took a bite out of her.

Again, Rook found his eyes pulled over to Chess, like they were on strings. And watched the Enemy’s mouth move, knowing in his heart what it was it must be saying.

As I told your soldier and that man of yours likewise, little brother, so I now tell you — this is your moment. Do as your instincts tell you, and get what you want most.

“Better be talkin’ ’bout my heart, is all I’m gonna say.”

Certainly I am. Yours, along with the hearts of many others, all kin to she and me. And you have only to do the work . . . reach in, reach deep, and . . . pull them
out
of her.

It all came down to instinct, for Chess, in the end — gunplay, love, magic, life itself, he’d blundered through them all on reflex and intuition, because (he’d always believed) when a second’s hesitation got you dead, it was quicker and easier just to move on from your screw-ups than to waste time tryin’ not to make ’em in the first place.

As Ed might have observed, though, if he’d been awake:
There’s a word for a man won’t take time to do a job right, ’cause he don’t feel like owning up to it if he does it wrong.
And if the hell Rook and Chess had both made of their lives had taught Chess anything at all, it was that those weaknesses you
wouldn’t
admit were the very things bound to get you, in the end.

Smoking Mirror’s (never entirely well-meant) advice aside, therefore, when Chess took five quick running steps and leaped onto Ixchel, he hadn’t
entirely
trusted instinct to guide him. He’d timed his assault not for the moment she’d lain most helpless but to catch her in the second she began to
rise
from that pool of greyish-black hex-vomitus, because he knew through long experience how
that
was the moment when a human body — something he wagered Ixchel had never quite remembered how to live in — was most off-balance. Must’ve been the right choice, after all, for he bowled her over easily, cutting her outraged cry off by driving her face back down into the dirt.

If she’d been mortal, or he’d still had Kees Hosteen’s knife, he’d have punched her naked ribs at that point, ’til something gave or he got thrown off. But that instinct was pointless too, and he threw it aside. Even the now-familiar hex-hunger, that ravening vacuum in his gut which longed to batten on lamprey-like and
suck
, he denied, since trying to take her power that way would only open him up to her again. Instead, he brought his right fist back, then drove it — index knuckle extended slightly to concentrate all its force, along with his own hex-power, onto one point — straight down between her shoulder blades, just to the right of her spine.

The awful
crunch
his fist made as it penetrated almost made him want to retch himself. Skin and bone broke like sugar; when Chess yanked his hand out, a double palm-width of rib and hide flipped off along with it, bursting to dust the ground. The goddess wailed, a piteous, ear-scraping sound. But there was no mercy in Chess now, not even anger — only determination, ruthless and inexorable, to see this
done
.
Over
with.

He reached in, fingers blazing with hexation; grabbed something that felt like a handful of cobwebbed lace twined with sickeningly moist, hot sinew and hauled, with all his strength.

What came out was more heat-shimmer than substance, flickering in and out of being. Chess thought he saw a woman’s face rippling in it, dead and still, a rope around its neck, while alien sigils whose meaning he understood all the same burned briefly into his eyes:
Ixtab, Rope Woman
. Then it dissolved, and was gone. Snake-quick, Chess dove in again, tore out another handful, producing a second ghost-cloud:
Chalchiuhtlicue, Jade Skirt
, this one named itself, shining green for one brief moment, before it fled likewise.

A third and a fourth:
Yxtabay, the Ensnarer
;
Tlazteotl, Defiler-Confessor
, and for a moment Chess’s groin knotted with the lust of that horrendous
ménage
in Splitfoot Joe’s. Snarling, he swept those clouds away too, with a phantasmal force-burst. Reaching down farther than it seemed Ixchel’s body should allow him to, he found a final presence, and ripped it free; it coalesced into a swarm of dismembered limbs, a huge round pearlescently glowing face hovering above him.
Coyotlaxquhui, Bells of the Moon
, seemed to ring in silver notes in Chess’s ears. Then gone, gone, gone. It took the sudden silence for Chess to realize Ixchel had been screaming throughout; with her quiet now, too exhausted to do anything but pant, he leaped up from her, suddenly revolted beyond words. For he had finally realized what those half-melted wraiths, those once-goddesses, had been throwing off like heat as they passed into long-overdue oblivion: what was left of their damn souls, just like those Weed-puppets Mesach Love had made out of various Hoffstedt’s Hoarders, who’d welcomed their release at his, Yancey’s and Ed’s hands with similar spectral exhalations.

The resemblance, abhorrent as it was, buckled him at the waist; Chess retched, gave out with a clear spatter of bile — the Enemy hadn’t needed food to sustain his flesh, it seemed — then spat and straightened, glowering down at Ixchel’s feebly stirring form. “Christ,” he managed, disgusted. “You weren’t even
you
, in the end, were you? One more big slumgullion lie. Like that meat-puppet of Doc Glossing’s — roadkill in a halo, set to walking.”

Then, standing over her, he lifted one boot to graze her face. He’d used a fair bit of power to open her up, but she’d lost more; if he only drove down hard enough, might be he could burst her head like glass. To make his point, he showed her a hand sheathed in fire, and said: “
Now give me back my heart.
”