A Book Of Tongues

CHAPTER TWENTY

Cramps racked Chess and pitched him back onto the bed, doubling him over. He managed to roll far enough to get his head over the edge and retched up onto the floor. No stranger, that particular feeling . . . almost comforting, for sheer normality. Until he cracked his eyes open again and saw what lay steaming on the floorboards: a wide, scarlet puddle of blood, with insects all a-wriggle in it, wings buzzing. Blood fell away to reveal rainbow glitter and huge crystal eyes.

Dragonflies.

They took to the air, filling it with a skin-crawling buzz. Several seemed to have been vomited up mid-bugfuck, careening awkwardly ’round in pairs, their black segmented tails still fused. Mouth open, Chess followed their flight and then froze, eyes locked on the corners of the bed’s headboard, where two dark reddish rings of powdering metal hung broken from bright new chains. Like a score of years had passed in a night, making wrought iron shackles into useless rust, easily shattered with the flick of a wrist.

Two at the head, for his arms. Two at the foot, equally decayed, for his new-freed ankles. A folded set of duds on the nightstand, drab but serviceable. And — his guns, laid out neat, polished and repaired. With his belt and holsters coiled next to them.

How his hands itched to strap those back on, and draw! But there was no way that wasn’t some sorta trap, same as the ring of Chink scrawl drawn ’cross the floor beneath — circling him with a net Chess couldn’t seem to fight free of, no matter how hard he instinctually rammed and thrashed against it.

Heart trip-pounding, eyes wide and wild, ricocheting back and forth and back again: door, bed, floor, guns. Door, bed, floor, guns guns guns guns —

The door itself banged open, freeing Chess Pargeter to gladly obey his oldest and swiftest instincts — to snatch both sidearms up by their barrels, flipping them mid-way, and thread indexes through triggers like a damn magic trick. Thumb-cock the hammers, low and level, and train them both on whatever — whoever — was revealed.

Ed Morrow, as it turned out. Agent Ed Morrow, that was. And looking none the worse for his trip Down Under, either.

“Chess . . .” he began, then stopped short, the very sight of him apparently enough to drive a man’s words out of his head entirely. “. . . I, uh — see you’re awake.”

“Uh huh. Figure that out all by yourself?”

“Um . . .”

Squinting hard at Morrow, Chess abruptly discovered that the additional buzzing he was “hearing” (above and beyond that of his sicked-up companions, who were already starting to die off, perhaps over-weighted down with a double payload of blood and impossibility) must be that of Morrow’s actual thoughts, which almost immediately began to blunder through Chess’s own skull. A goddamn offputting thing, not least since it made him inevitably wonder if Rook had always been able to read his, all along. . . .

The thoughts jumped forward, clarified and blew up hurting-large: himself staring back, looking somehow older, even tougher than before — both less and MORE attractive in a strange way, even with a FIREARM POINTED STRAIGHT ’TWEEN MORROW’S EYES —

— aw shit, God DAMN that stings!

“You . . .” Chess said, slow, and shook his head. Coughed again, wrackingly. “You’re a goddamn Pink.”

“Chess, it ain’t like you think it — ” But here Morrow seemed to register Chess’s blood-slicked chin for the first time — along with the raucous, hovering debris of his recent supernatural up-sick — and stopped again, transfixed. “ — just what the hell did you let Rook do to you, you damn crazyman?”

Chess scowled at him, drunk with pain and fatigue and fever. He couldn’t keep both guns up any more, and let the left one drop to the bed, while the right one wavered. “Well — are you, or ain’t you?” he demanded.

“That’s neither here nor there. What did he do?”

Chess didn’t glance down, though his other hand brushed automatically against the raw-to-touch skin where his scars should lie but didn’t, stroking it.

“Cut out my heart, fool,” he snapped back, annoyed by Morrow’s incredulity. “Just like you saw.”

“Literally?”

“You were damn well there, weren’t you? Pinkerton man?”

Morrow sighed again. “Look . . . it ain’t what it seems.”

“Yes it is,” Chess said, and pulled the trigger, which clicked hollowly against nothing. Enough of a surprise to make him pop out the barrel and gape at the empty chamber, thus allowing Morrow time to both roll his eyes and snatch the gun away with one sharp yank.

“I took the bullets out three damn days ago,” he snapped, though he knew Chess wasn’t listening (and Chess knew he knew, in a completely distinct way from how he’d’ve once meant that sentence — Jesus, this shit was weird). “Just left the guns so you wouldn’t pitch a fit, if you woke up and found them gone. Now c’mon — you’re sick. Get back in bed.”

“Sure. Gonna try and hold me down?”

Morrow flushed, and Chess knew, precisely, to the last little drop — as if gauging the mix of a favourite drink — how much of that flush was memory, equal parts arousal and embarrassment, versus how much was exasperated anger . . . with something else lurking lower yet, gobsmacking in its urgency, its stark truth: fear. Of Chess — no surprise there. But also — for him.

Shuddering, Chess pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “I’m worse by far’n just sick, Morrow,” he said. “Sick people don’t heave up bugs, or puke cooked blood — and better still, when people ain’t got a damn heart in their chest, sick or not, they usually go on and die. Not to mention how there’s no sickness I ever heard tell of lets you fuckin’ well hear what someone else is thinkin’ — ”

But that was a mistake, ’cause the instant the words were out, Morrow paled, and Chess swayed under the cold blast of his fear before he threw it off with a jolt that rocked both of them: No no no shit, get your head out of my head you sumbitch!

Silence and numbness slammed down. Chess stared hard at Morrow, who stared back — then sighed. And replied, “Sounds like hexation, right enough . . . ’cause you’re a hex, Chess. That’s the sad truth of it.”

Morrow crossed to the nightstand, flipped the plain denim clothes at him. They fell on top of the bed. “You don’t wanna sleep, fine. Put those on, at least. We got business to discuss.”

And I could stand not havin’ to watch your tallywhacker jig free under there, while we do it.

Oh get out, get out, get GODDAMN OUT!

“I don’t see how there’s any sorta business left ’tween you and me, exactly — ” Chess started.

But here Morrow whirled on him — faster than Chess had ever seen him move, ’cept maybe in the occasional gunfight.

“Inside this circle Songbird’s done up here, you got no more mojo than I do, Mister Pargeter,” Morrow snarled, his sideburns fair to bristling with the righteously angry effort of it. “There’s enough men to fill a whole goddamn state would wanna kill you, they found you like this — and I might even be one of them, too, if I didn’t already have bigger shit to worry about.”

Initial rage expiated, he stood back up again, but his glare didn’t lessen. “You spent one half your whole life thinkin’ you were dirt, but the next thinkin’ you were a man above all other comers, just ’cause you could draw faster and shoot better’n any of the rest of us. But ain’t nobody gets to call himself a man who don’t clean up his own fucking messes.”

The new door in Chess’s brain swung open a moment. Immediately, Chess was submerged, still and breathless, under a bitter surge of anger, frustration . . . contempt, marrow-stunned with the hurt of it, the shock. Maybe because of its sheer inside-out impact, if nothing else, for to be loathed, looked down on, was certainly nothing new. But — Morrow’s rush of disgust, temporary as it might prove, had nothing to do with the truths-turned-insults flung out. No. What riled Morrow ran far deeper — was the sheer perversity of Chess’s own nature, that unbreakable wilfulness he’d always revered in himself, as sign and source of his innate freedom. His stark refusal ever to be bound, to obey aught but his own whim and want.

Because while he could walk free and hold a gun, Chess Pargeter answered to no man — no man, no law, no damn body, motherfucker. No ideal, no cause, no force but sheer chaos, bound and determined to move unimpeded and burn for the sake of burning. To never submit himself to ghost or hex or priest or even God, ’less he damn well wanted to.

No man except Ash Rook, that was — for a time. And after this last betrayal, from now on . . . not even him.

’Course not, Morrow’s anger spoke back, unimpressed by Chess’s well-tuned inner litany. That’s ’cause you’re nothing but a brat who never grew up — a skillet-hopping little hot-pants who knows everything ’bout killing and nothing at all ’bout living. Who spits on friendship, duty and honour not ’cause he’s above them, so much, as ’cause he don’t know what they even mean — same way you don’t really grasp how anything’s real, ’cept if you want it, or it hurts you. And that’s why you ended up givin’ everything you had to a man who skinned you alive, then left you stranded down in Hell — ’cause he was what you wanted, and Christ forbid Chess Pargeter ever admit what he wanted was a goddamn bad idea. You made it easy for him, Chess, you damn fool. ’Cause you couldn’t believe you deserved anything better. And me? I’d never do that to you, or anyone. Never.

The door between them slammed shut once more, leaving Chess alone in his own head, wrung out with surprise and confusion. And Morrow — he didn’t seem to have even noticed their momentary communion. Just folded his arms, jaw set, and repeated: “So get dressed, I ain’t gonna tell you twice. There’s more goin’ on than just you — and for once, you’re gonna help fix it, instead’ve doin’ every damn thing you can to make things worse.”

And me wearing guns, Chess thought, amazed. Of course, Morrow had gone ahead and emptied the damn things first.

Chess knew he should be spitting mad, going on history alone — but it seemed more effort than it was worth. Still equal bone-tired from his long sleep and sharp awakening, he unfolded the shirt slowly, barely able to pry its buttons apart. Morrow evidently saw his fatigue as well; after a moment he huffed impatiently and stepped over the pictographs Chess could barely stand to skirt, bracing himself to help Chess dude up.

Damn, when’d you get so nice? a voice from the past said, in Chess’s ear. But Chess brushed it away, like it was one of those dying dragonflies.

Boots now firmly wedged on, Morrow got his shoulder under Chess’s arm and lifted him to stand. Freshly rendered decent, Chess felt the shirt and pants grate all scratchy-stiff against his skin, yet managed to force at least half a smile. Asking, “No pomade?”

Morrow snorted. “This ain’t no Presidential Suite, Chess. Just have to wait ’til you’re back on American soil for the little amenities, I — what the shitfuck Sam Hill?!”

Came so out-of-nowhere quick it almost made Chess bust out laughing, ’til he caught a snatch of his own shirt-sleeve going by. The plain denim was simply gone, replaced by his clothes — same rig he always bought, no matter where, or from whom: purple shirt, near-black trousers, burgundy-bottle vest, all clean and fragrant, as if fresh-laundered and pressed. Even his gunbelts were back around his waist, guns neatly holstered. And the boots were the exact ones he’d broke in months ago, no matter he knew they and all the rest were still lost somewhere outside this entire world.

“Oh, shit, Ed.” He looked back up at Morrow, mouth open in dismay. “I’m a damn hex.”

“All but indubitably, Mr. Pargeter.”

As Chess’s eyes went to the door, Morrow stepped smartly back over the circle, realigning himself with those who had just entered. So they told ya don’t come in here, Chess thought, and filed it away.

Songbird came first, her all-red rig pretty much the same as when he’d last seen it, except for wearing her too-white hair down rather than up. Still as elegant and finely dressed as a bleached-out baby whore could be.

She met his eyes full-on and threw him an evil little smile, murmuring: “Ni hao, English Oona’s boy — so nice to see you once more, even after all the trouble you made for me, back at Selina Ah Toy’s. But very much especially so, now that we both know each other . . .” For what we actually are.

That last part “said” extra-loud and direct, a spike punched straight through to his brain’s own stem, the way most hexes probably joshed with each other — ’cause they damn well could, and get away with it.

Allan Pinkerton, on the other hand, he knew from posters — a big, burly, check-suited man with a full bushy beard and a bowler hat. And then came a third figure, the man who’d spoken — some white-haired, bespectacled old fool, looked like the dimmer sort of medicus you sometimes found taking refuge from parts Eastern or Northern. Or would have, if his washed-out blue eyes hadn’t held the most keen regard of all.

Chess tensed. He’d expected fear, smug triumph, stupid dismissal — all the old touchstones — and there was more than enough of all of them in Pinkerton’s and Songbird’s eyes to go ’round. But the old fool’s gaze was different — clinical, passionate with fire Chess barely understood. As though Chess was the walking answer to some riddle gone unsolved all his life, a living quizbook ripe for reading. Or maybe a vivisection-bound (in)human curiosity, all fit to get strapped down and cut into.

It pissed Chess off — and spotting Hosteen hangdogging in back, like the bastard didn’t have enough nerve to push past these strangers stink-eyeing Chess, only made him angrier. Guess this here’s the sorta situation where you’re finally apt to be more careful ’bout your own skin than mine, for once, old man? You hypocrite —

But then a strange thing happened. Hosteen squinched shut his eyes, fast as if Chess had actually pasted him one ’cross the chops with the above, rather than just thought it at him. Held his head, morning-after skull-ache style, and stared at Chess with wild, wounded eyes. At which point Songbird turned, silks flowing, to look first at Chess, then to Hosteen, then once more to Chess — like she’d just caught him at something, and it was making her happier than a shit-dipped hog.

With a tiny little smile, she raised one finger and wagged it back and forth, approving-reprovingly. Then whirled the finger and yanked, sharpish, as if first wrapping, then snapping some invisible thread.

For half an instant, Chess saw something — a flicker of light, a shimmer of heat — ripple up from the circle around him. A stinging chill came both down and up him at once, a giant pair of tailor’s shears, cutting the air between Chess and Hosteen. Chess had no idea what, hadn’t even known it was there, ’til it snapped back into him.

He staggered, grabbed the bedpost and glared at Songbird, who only shook her head with that same tiny smile: Ah-ah-ah-ah, gweilo!

Oh, that is fuckin’ well it.

Chess felt it rush into him with a tingle, an ill-summoned current of power sent flooding outwards to prickle in both palms, which he clenched into fists. Almond eyes narrowing, Songbird’s lip lifted in a snarl — and just as suddenly, a heat-haze crackled between the two.

“Doctor,” said Pinkerton, low but urgent, to — the white-haired man, who’d been staring in open awe and delight, but now came to his senses with a shake of the head. Swiftly, he popped that odd timepiece of Morrow’s from his own weskit-pocket. Morrow frowned to see it but said nothing.

Old Doc Whoever flipped it open, releasing its usual frantic clicking and clattering into the air. From another side-pouch, he drew a reel of dull, silvery-looking thread, spun off a length and snapped it free. He wound its middle once ’round the watch’s fob and threw the end out the window, deftly swift, like he was laying a fuse. Chess followed it all only from the corner of his eye, barely truly clocking it, gunfighter-poised to meet whatever Songbird was conjuring with the hardest possible return strike he could muster. That he had no idea either what he would do or just how to do it didn’t matter, not right then.

But that was when the doctor tossed the other end of the thread forward into the circle, to land squarely between Chess and Songbird. And that, that . . . was when shit commenced to hurt.

Compared to what-all he’d suffered down Mictlan-Xibalba way, ’course, this agony was second-rate at best. But for sheer surprise alone, it nonetheless took most of Chess’s will to keep his teeth together as his body locked up, and all that freshly accessed hexacious firepower came sliding greasily out of him.

Songbird was far less sanguine. She threw back her head and screeched, indignant, as pinkish-white-green lightning arced from her and Chess both straight to the silver thread’s end.

“Ai-yaaah! Zhè shì shénme làn dongxi?”

Which meant something like what is this garbage? — if Chess recalled his Chink insults aright. Though damn if he didn’t almost feel he could “hear” it in its entirety, red-on-black-lettered inside his own skull, with the part she hadn’t said at all — only thought — as an echoing aftertaste: Kewù de lao bàojon (horrible old bastard), hao le ma (that’s fucking well enough, okay?) — or was that maybe huàile (shit on my head)?

Meantime, the symbols she’d inked upon the floor turned black, smoked, and melted into char as twisting, writhing arcs of power leapt from them too, lashing down the thread, through Morrow’s device and out the window. Light flashed outside with deafeningly sharp cracks, the sound of a revolver emptying its chambers right shy of your ear. Followed by silence but for echoes, Chess all a-sway with his part-blinded eyes blinking, feeling light-headed and horribly empty.

Faint tendrils of steam curled up from the silver thread, snake-ghosts dissipating slow on the heavy air. Chess stared at them like the thread itself was a king rattler with its warning beads took off, bare inches from his naked heel.

“Private Pargeter, as was,” said Pinkerton, his voice gone distant and buzzy in the racket’s wake. “Seein’ we all already know your reputation, I’d like to introduce Joachim Asbury, late of Columbia University’s division of — what’s the formal name, Doctor?”

“Experimental Arcanistry,” supplied Asbury, with a smile both unsteady and forced. It came to Chess that Asbury maybe hadn’t expected quite so violent a reaction himself. Then again, from the glare she was sporting, neither had Songbird.

So this ain’t nearly as picture-perfect planned an operation as you-all want me to think, is it? Left hand and right not talkin’ much?

“Though Mr. Pinkerton flatters me with the term ‘division,’” Asbury continued, voice gaining strength. “With some experimental proof of my theories, however, I’m anticipating considerably more interest in the cross-application potential of individuals such as yourself, Mr. Pargeter — and you, of course, Miss Songbird — ”

“Potential?” Songbird snarled something else in Chinese. “Cong míng de, chùsheng xai-jiao de xiang huo!” (Very clever, animal fucking bastard.)

Then whipped her hand backwards in Asbury’s general direction, all five fingers tiger stance-clawed — and spasmed again, letting fly another yowl of pain admixed with sheer disbelief, as whatever hex she’d formed broke apart and crackle-sparked down into the silver thread on the floor, vanishing out the window once again. Rubbing her hand, Songbird glowered at Asbury with eyes full of furious venom.

“Unkind,” she managed, eventually. “And . . . impolite, given our current alliance.”

“As any wire of iron or steel grounds the galvanic energies of lightning, or similar phenomena,” said Asbury smugly, “so a certain alloy of silver, iron, and sodium in its metallic form serves to ground magical energies where they manifest, conducting them away to discharge harmlessly elsewhere. Which is why any further active hex-working in this room — young lady, young sir — ” he bowed to both Songbird and Chess, who shared an equally enraged glance at the inappropriate familiarity of being thus linked, “ — will be neutralized in the moment of its launching.”

Active hex-working? Chess had no idea what that meant. A hex was a damn hex, far as he was concerned. But he could still feel the smugness coming off Asbury as the man droned on — and only all the keener, now, with Songbird’s far more sophisticated spellbinding self-evidently pulverized by the same device. With narrowed eyes, Chess forced himself to focus in on it, willing himself to relax and open up rather than lash out.

All at once, the smug buzzing transmuted, with shocking suddenness — same way Songbird’s Chink-to-English inner babble had, into genuine words: A lifetime’s worth of unexpressed hexation, and more. Clearly this young man has no idea of just how powerful he could be . . . already is. And so we see why Reverend Rook chose to usher him through his transition with such overblown violence. Because doing so would allow him to keep control, stay the dominant partner in this invert ménage of theirs, thus avoiding the sort of overt conflict which might end in his own destruction. . . .

Chess couldn’t help but shy at the feel of it, so thumb-in-the-eye pointed as it rung, fair bruising his skull’s bony confines. His gaze whipped over to Pinkerton, hoping for respite. But the crack only widened further, damage irreparably done — he plunged headlong into a burred Scots stream of words and images combined, oft times so close-knotted as to be barely coherent.

Sly little sodomite/catamite, properly, if Morrow’s reported right/ wouldn’t trust him so far’s I could heave him, and that’d be some distance/ killer’s eyes/take what readings you need and fast, doctor, then distract him/a bullet in the pan ought to do nicely/Madam Songbird’s hex enough for our purposes, and you already have to keep her leashed/a mad dog/ for all your curiosity, can’t think even you’d be foolish enough to let this monster live.

Mouth open, Chess turned to Songbird again and slapped up against an invisible barrier, hurting-hard — she’d locked down, no doubt feeling his intruding thoughts creeping loose through her brain. But after only a second’s concentration, he began to make out shadow-show silhouette-cutter shapes moving behind those shields, coming abruptly into clarity with black-edged focus.

Big man in a flowing coat, shredding under a stream of flying shapes . . . Ash?

Same man, standing atop a mountain with a web of black strands tying him to a hundred, a thousand different figures everywhere, a great dark shadow rearing high behind him . . .

Ash, yeah . . . binding every hex in Arizona to him, maybe, like he’d said. And was that her, now, in the back? Or . . . Smoking Mirror?

A bearded man and a balding one, sinking down, with black blood flowing from their mouths. . . .

Pinkerton and Asbury, snared fast in whatever revenge Songbird had planned for their double trespass, their malfeasance toward her.

Oh, you stuck your damn hands in the hornets’ nest for sure, boys, cuttin’ a deal with that one . . . but then again, maybe that’s why you ain’t too inclined to want to do the same with somebody like me, anytime soon.

He slammed the door shut himself, cutting off the triple influx of soul-talk at its root. Jesus Christ, was this the sort of shit Rook’d had to deal with all the damn time? How’d he stood it? Panting, Chess made himself straighten. It all seemed to have gone by far faster than actually hearing the same “words,” out loud. Indeed, Asbury himself was still talking, clearly having noticed nothing amiss at all.

“. . . how the scientific study and deployment of your powers would offer vast benefit to our war-weary nation. Not to mention, of course, the spectacular opportunities for profit, for yourself. . . .” Asbury gave him what was clearly meant to be a sly, coaxing smile. Chess met it grimly. Nobody ever really got that it had never been about the money, did they?

I did what he wanted, and he returned the favour, in spades. ’Cause that’s what a marriage of true minds is: loyalty. To hold fast and stay true.

Wasn’t though, was ’e? that other voice murmured, far too deep down inside to ever be shut out. Not really. Not when it bloody counted.

But they’d settle that little point of difference later, when he’d caught up with Ash Rook once more. When he and that Mexican ghost-bitch’d had their fun, and the score’d been settled rightwise. When Chess finally had his boot laid right on that big bastard’s rope-scarred throat, ready to stomp and grind the End-of-the-World Bible-foolery right out of him. That, or go down fighting, whichever way the chips might chance to fall.

One way or the other, he was never gonna throw his hat in the Pinkertons’ slimy ring — a damn gang like any other, for all they had that staring sleepless eye-totem to watch over them, and drew their cheques at the same government trough as the Bluebellies. No matter how nice one particular agent might feel while all up in a man’s business.

Here his bitter train of thought derailed. The true pain of his situation rushed back in, pouring him brimful with soreness and futility. Like getting your goddamn heart cut out by the same bastard you thought’d finally proved Ma wrong, who’d taught you love did exist, that you really were worth something more than a blow-job for a bullet, an extra gun at a knife-fight, or any other sorta flyin’ fuckin’ fuck. . . .

Think you can pull my strings with greed, gentlemen and “lady”? Think there’s any tune whatsoever you can play will make me dance? Think there’s a thing on this whole damn earth you can tempt me with, now the one damn thing I ever wanted is gone forever?

He snorted, loud and harsh, and saw Asbury frown, Pinkerton redden. Songbird’s ghostly eyebrows lifted in an odd sort of respect . . . which frankly only made him want to punch her all the harder.

You got nothin’ I want, the none of you, he thought, knowing at least one of them could hear him. So fuck you kindly, very kindly — or rather, not. Fuck all y’all.

To Asbury, with a smile so sunny it gave the lie to itself, curdling atop the acid ill-hid in every syllable: “Got something you maybe want to ask me, doctor, under all that syrup and sociability? Then I suggest you do it straight out, ’cause we’re burning daylight.”

Asbury coloured, thrown off his born pedant’s stride. “Mister Pargeter,” he began, stiff and direct — before slipping sidelong again into inquiry: “By the by, is ‘Chess’ your entire given name, or . . . a mere sobriquet, perhaps?”

“What exact part of ‘get the fuck to it’ was it you didn’t understand most, mush-head?”

“Sir! I must protest, volubly — ”

A brief flash from Morrow: Jesus Christ, please don’t, with a side-order jolt of nasty amusement — from over Songbird’s way.

“Mister Pargeter, if you please,” Pinkerton amended, laying in thick with his battle-captain’s knack of making his voice fill a room without seeming to shout. “For all you may find Dr. Asbury’s methods a tad, eh . . . offputting, I think we’ve still one offer you might find of interest, nevertheless. Would you care to hear it? Given what seems to have occurred during your sojourn down in Hell’s belly, for the good of America, if not the whole world — we aim to destroy the Reverend Asher Rook. And . . . we want your help.”

“Need it, you mean,” Chess snapped back, without thinking.

Pinkerton didn’t much like his tone, that was clear — would’ve been no matter what, even without the accompanying in-rush of damned puppy/queerbait bastard invert/how DARE . . .

And — didn’t it scare Chess, somewhat, how used to that he was getting?

Pinkerton, cold but calm: “Need, then. If you’re willing to give it.”

“Why would I be?”

“The way he’s betrayed you, humiliated you, torn you stem to stern and then left you behind, for your worst enemies to pick up? Why wouldn’t you, would be my question.”

“Why indeed,” Chess repeated. “But . . .”

Was that Morrow at the back of his head, now, slicing in all of a sudden from behind him, and probably not even thinking he was doing so? Showing Chess himself, slant-viewed, in ways he’d never previously dreamt on. How he maybe wasn’t quite as black as he was painted, not even now, with Smoking Mirror’s pitch-smeared face lookin’ down over his mental shoulder.

Ask yourself why Chess does so much of any damn thing, overall, and it’s always pure contrariness — Oh, you think you KNOW me? Think you know what I’m capable of, which way I’ll jump? Think the fuck again! — That’s what Pinkerton don’t care to understand, and Asbury just ain’t even halfway equipped to reckon. Though Songbird probably knows it, or I’d be much surprised.

Jesus, Chess thought, head swimming, and we only lay down together the once, too. Who knows what-all the Pinkerton son-of-a-bitch might’ve found out, Rook’d only stayed away a few nights more?

He buckled without warning, eyes wide, and puked another splatter of hot and coppery blood that hissed as it struck the char-smeared wooden floor. Songbird’s mouth tightened in distaste — then slackened, as Asbury gasped and Pinkerton’s eyebrows rose, when the thickened mass inside the blood stirred, pushed upwards, swelled into a floral bud of the same carnal colour. In the silence of astonishment, the faint cracks of roots working their way into the floorboard’s grain was clearly audible. Leaves unfurled along the stem. the bud grew further, spreading out red petals. With a dancer’s grace the blood-flower revolved to face Chess, opening wider as it did, as if yearning for the sun.

Its central petals irised apart, revealing a bell lined with lamprey teeth that pulsed and tensed, a swallowing and hungry throat.

“My . . . good God,” breathed Hosteen.

Chess made a sound too sharp and harsh to be a laugh. “Oh, you think, Kees?” He rounded on Asbury. “Fuck your money, Doc, and fuck your mission too, Pinkerton. I’ll find Rook, all right — but not for you. He’s mine. ’Cause . . . that’s just the kinda bitch I am.”

Songbird leaned slightly in Asbury’s direction, and murmured: “I told you so.”

Pinkerton drew himself up to his full height, mind hardening and darkening. Behind Chess, Morrow tensed. The two currents met queasily in Chess’s midsection. “You’ll not earn the dignity of a second chance from me, Pargeter, if that’s your only answer.” Then his scowl skewed to puzzlement. “What in God’s name is that?”

His eyes went to the nightstand. Chess turned — to see the thing he’d always thought was Morrow’s pocket-watch (Asbury’s famous Manifold, he plucked forth — all unsummoned — from that same gentleman’s over-hot brains), the device now eating all trace of magic from the air, come alive once more with its trademark chatter-whirring, ramping up ever louder and faster. More thought-stamps followed — from Morrow, a new surge of alarm and fear. Asbury’s mindstink cloud had frozen up too. Chess could taste the old man’s slimy terror in his own throat, bile mixed with blood.

“Agent Morrow.” None of Asbury’s fear was in his voice, unless that flat evenness was itself the fear. “What — exactly — did that . . . woman . . . say she wanted to do, with Mister Pargeter?”

“Sacrifice him, as I recall it.” Equally flat, equally controlled. A voice Chess had never heard from Morrow. The Manifold clattered and buzzed, the pitch of its gears winding higher and higher. “Make him some kind of a — skinned god. A god . . . who dies? Like Christ Jesus, I s’pose. Only — bloodier.”

Asbury turned away, paced frenetically back and forth, unable to keep still in his ferocity of thought. “Sacrificial re-enactment,” he breathed, slapping his fingers against one palm. “The role of the avatar, rendered literal — yes, yes, with sufficient power directed upon it, bolstered by the faith of the worshippers . . . it could happen!” He stopped, excitement flash-flooding into dismay and horror, so vividly and powerfully Chess felt it strike everyone at once, for just that moment. “Oh, good Lord . . .”

“What is this, Doctor?” asked Pinkerton, low and the more dangerous for his own fear. “What the hell did we take into our fold on your say-so?” He spun to Morrow, abruptly shouting. “Morrow, what did you bring us?!”

Songbird, meanwhile, overtop — her mind’s voice shattered glass and smoke: KILL him, fools, while he’s distracted, kill him NOW —!

Hell, Chess thought, and me with empty guns.

The Manifold screamed on, a miniature steam-engine running at breakneck full-throttle, derailment-fast.

Asbury panicked. Chess felt it happen, more than saw it — the shattering of every ounce of vaunted rationality in one thoughtless burst. Knew, even as the old man scrabbled for Hosteen’s gun, what he was going to do. Lifted his hand helplessly as Asbury wrenched Hosteen’s pistol from the startled outlaw’s holster, cocked it, spun to aim it at Chess’s breast.

And then, right at that same instant: the crimson flower on the floor swivelled around and struck, lamprey-teeth closing fast on the silver thread-end beside it.

A double-flash of light blinded the room, one carmine, one actinic white, as the flower vapourized, the thread liquefied instantly, and the Manifold burst with a flat sharp crack that buried smoking shrapnel in every wall. Battle instinct saved Morrow and Pinkerton, both of them dropping to the ground when they saw the flower move. Songbird’s shields had already snapped on, deflecting flying shards around her every which way, a jagged metal-and-glass halo. But Asbury yowled and fell to his knees, hands pressed to a long, bleeding gash traced all along his cheek.

Hosteen swayed slowly in the doorway, one hand wandering up to his neck, where a thick red flow drenched collar, shirt, and vest as it spattered onto the floor. He subsided against the doorframe and slid down it, without haste. Chess gaped at him, barely able to see for the flash-blindness blurring his vision.

The old Dutchman didn’t have enough strength left for a smile, but Chess felt the last of his thoughts curl around Chess’s own: Made you a damn . . . god, huh? Well. Always knew . . . you’d matter. To him . . . to me . . . always . . .

His eyes went flat and fixed. A terrifying emptiness yawned for a moment inside Hosteen’s skull. Then — nothing. The thing in the door might as well have been a wax sculpture, for all the resemblance it bore to a man Chess’d fought beside and cared for.

He glanced over at Morrow, met the man’s eyes, and was startled to find them equally stricken.

Footsteps thundered up nearby stairs, down the hall. Pinkerton lunged to his feet. “Stay back!” he roared. “For the love of Christ, stay clear!” He whirled and drew his own piece — which promptly lofted out of his grip and clattered against the wall. Songbird lowered her hand with a look of deep disdain.

“Silence from you, gweilo,” she ordered. “This is a matter for your betters, now.” Turning to face Chess, lightning crackling in her hair, as her own power — newly unshackled — puffed her like a windy sail. “Well, boy? Shall we finish at last that conversation we started, back in Selina Ah Toy’s?”

Chess clambered to his feet, feeling power surge along nerves and muscles, electrifying and painful with his fury. Magic welled out from him, pushing back the inflood of thought and leaving him blissfully alone in his own head once more. “Sure you wanna do this? Seein’ what I am, I mean.”

On nothing but sheer impulse, he swept his hand, palm-out, ’cross the air in front of him. felt an invisible flame spill down into the floorboards, wrenching them up and apart as a decade’s worth of vines and ivy grew in an instant, mounding up six inches high, curved before him in a tiny wall.

Heat-shimmer rippled up between them from the vegetation, distorting Songbird’s face to a monstrous grimacing mask — but she just shook her head, and replied: “Oh, you are powerful, yes. But I — I know more.”

She moved a mere finger in a minuscule yet complex pattern — and in an instant, the power flowing from Chess into the vine-fire wall simply went snap, a rotten log cracking in two. The barrier vanished, ivy withering. Energy backlashed into Chess, convulsing him with a startled yell of agony.

“Prince of flowers,” Songbird scoffed. “Does your new skin chafe? Perhaps we will cure that itch by taking it off for you, once more.”

“Get the hell offa me, you kinchin dollymop bitch!” Blindly, Chess spat more blood at her — only to watch it sizzle redly through midair, vitriolish. Songbird flipped her left hand up, a half-second too late. The hasty ward stopped all but one droplet, and she shrieked as it coursed down her face in a steaming red runnel, like she’d been hit with acid. By the time she mustered hexation enough to wipe it away, it had left a weeping, smoking scar near four inches long behind, running right down one perfect cheek.

Disbelievingly, she touched the wound with diffident fingers, tracing its path. Took them away to look at the blood. Then looked up at Chess — and all sense vanished from her face in a mindless demonic scream of fury as she threw herself upon him, the air between her fingers a-pop with ball-lightning, blue and vicious. “Aiyaaah! Lotus-boy ch’in ta, uneducated gweilo whoreson bastard!”

With absolutely no idea how to shield himself from her vengeance, Chess switched right on back to his old tricks, and punched her full in the face — a round-house haul-off, nothing fancy but nothing pulled, worthy of any given ball-house tap-room brawl. Songbird’s front teeth cracked across with a sound that filled the room as she went down, forehead-first, right at Pinkerton’s boot-tips.

As it turned out, Pinkerton packed more than the one gun. Which wasn’t much of a surprise, really — though hellish inconvenient, ’specially now he was brandishing the damn thing right in Chess’s face.

“I knew this was a mistake, from the very get-go,” Pinkerton told him, levelly. “Mad dogs should be put down, not catered to, no matter what other tricks they’re capable of. So here’s a proper end to it.”

Chess held himself in some pride for not even flinching. Wasn’t like he hadn’t always thought this was the way he’d go out, after all.

“Better go on ahead, then,” he said, “and drop your damn jawin’ — ’cause my only regret’s I didn’t kill a sight more of your men while I was at it, Mister King Shit Almighty Pinkerton. And if these guns of mine were loaded, I sure know where I’d start.”

“A fine thing for me that they’re not, then.”

Yeah, too damn bad, Chess thought — then whipped his head ’round, as he heard almost the exact sentiment echoed from behind him.

“Too bad, yeah,” said Morrow. “But still — ”

Songbird looking up, at the same time, her mouth’s pain a spike through the tongue: What is that in your mind, gweilo?

“Still what, agent?” Pinkerton demanded, as Chess and Morrow locked gazes.

To which Morrow answered, slow but distinct, “Still, occurs to me . . . since you are a hex, Chess, with at least as much juice as Rook, if not more . . . just what the hell’s it matter, anyhow?”

Pinkerton opened up his jaws, drill-sergeant quick, like he was just about to bark at Morrow to shut his mouth — but it was too late. As though just giving the idea voice, however obliquely, had turned a key in Chess’s gut, filling him back up top-to-toe with a virulent force that suddenly made all things possible.

Chess grinned, wolfish. “Always did like you, Ed,” he said.

And cross-drew, fulfilling every outlaw’s dream in one fell swoop with two impossible shots — that of shooting Allan Pinkerton in the face — or close as made no never-mind, clipping the Scotsman ’cross one ear-top as he swerved and went down ass-backwards, biting his own tongue so badly Chess could see the glinting muscle — with no ammunition but a spell.

He heard Asbury cry out. Heard Songbird laugh, even through her own pain, in sheer delight.

The bedchamber door heaved and sprang from its hinges, and a flood of agents spilled in, all blazing-ready to defend their sire. Chess turned to meet them head on, automatic, his guns already up. Only to have Morrow grab him up under the arms and sling him headlong through the white-curtained window, bursting out onto the first-floor roof in a spray of glass. He rolled and fell to the dusty street below, turning mid-air to find his feet like a cat.

Following hot on his heels, Morrow landed far heavier, with a yelp and a curse — jerked up and started limp-loping down the street, yelling back over his shoulder: “Jesus Christ, Chess, they’ll be on us in a minute — you comin’, or what?”

Chess shook his head, but only to clear it. There’d be choice words ’tween him and Morrow later on, obviously regarding — various issues. For now, however . . . he turned, reholstering, to make better speed.