Love turned to look, Yiska and her braves immediately forgotten. “If you’re so inclined.”
“Then you name your place, and we’ll finish it—together.” Chess spread his empty hands, green light-haloed. “Just you, just me.”
Your word’s no good with him, surely, Yancey thought; he’ll throw the offer right back in your face. But apparently, this was a day for surprises.
“Bewelcome,” Love named, without a second’s hesitation. “The very centre of your iniquity, Pargeter. As you’d already know, were you but honest.”
The response came so quick that Yancey knew, with utter certainty, how Love had all along sought to herd Chess back to the scene of his crime, so’s the Sheriff could take proper vengeance. Had all her suffering been nothing but a gambit? Her life, and theirs, no more than pieces sacrificed in some unspeakable game?
But Grandma knew as well, she reminded herself. So . . . might be you’ve already done yourself a disservice right there, you bastard.
Chess laughed, low in his throat. “Well, dead man, if you’re itchin’ to get your ass beat there twice, then come on.” He glanced back over his shoulder, half-saluting the poor, hex-belaboured drink-groggery behind him. “Thanks for the booze, Joe. Don’t expect I’ll be back this way again.”
A dim holler, from inside: “Suits me!”
Chess laughed again, then raised one hand, twirling it elaborate. Immediately, the wind kicked up heaven-high, dust and stones flying fast. Yancey hunched instinctively into the shelter of Morrow’s body, both unable to tear their eyes from Chess, or from the twister taking shape above his head.
Morrow had to bellow to make his voice audible. “So—what’s the plan? We gotta . . .”
Chess shook his head. “Not ‘we,’ Ed.”
“Chess—”
“I said NO!” The yell left Chess red-faced enough he switched to thought-talk halfway, with a pissed-off shake of his head. Wanted me to care—well, this is that, God damn you. I’ve cost you enough already, and I don’t aim to run my tab up further. So now I kill him or he kills me; either way, he’s done, and you’re safe.
Tears poured down Morrow’s face, torn from him by the wind, along with a bafflement so deep, Yancey’s heart twisted at the sight. “Chess, you stupid son of a—”
What’d I always say, Ed? Truth’s no insult. I know what she was. And I think— Chess glanced at Love, then back. —I know what I am, now. Or what I can fix to be.
He lifted his hand, palm out, an unmistakeable command. Stay, the both of you. Ride’s been fun, but it’s over.
Chess closed his eyes, cyclone’s roar intensifying, staggeringly loud; the air itself began to warp, writhe, and tear apart above his head. At the same time, Love approached, false clothes untouched. They locked stares, equally unimpressed: green kill-flash against level cataract-pale, two halves of one incomprehensible sum, inexplicably balanced. The moment hung, then broke as Chess hauled down hard, as if pulling a rope.
Blackness ripped open at the base of the twister’s cone, a lightless void. Chess stepped toward it, Love at his side. Together, they lifted their feet over the threshold . . .
. . . as Yancey lunged forward, one arm hooked ’round Morrow’s waist, for once. But found him already on the move, as though he’d read her intent, without knowing it.
They both grabbed hold of Chess’s purple sleeves at once, holding tight. And the twister’s fury skirled sky-bound, a vast hand made of air and anger which caught all four of them up in its palm, shaking them invisible.
The tornado unspooled itself, dissolving as it went; where it touched down, the Weed mounded high about fallen revenants and Kiowa alike, trembled, then collapsed. Dead flesh shrank and withered, sucked dry in an instant. Within moments, the battleground was nothing but a sea of gently pulsing Weed, what few remains could still be spotted ancient-looking, as if left over from some long-gone, unremembered tragedy. Geyer stared first at it, then back to the air-hung rift which was only just beginning to narrow closed, with dreamlike slowness.
A rapid clattering canter brought Yiska and her surviving band to his side, jumping the Weed incautiously as though it were mown hay. Yiska looked down at Geyer, who—ridiculously enough—had to work like a demon to keep his eyes from wandering to those unstrapped breasts of hers, one brown nipple poking careless through a rent in her blouse.
“Feeling wounded, Pinkerton man?” she asked, in English hoarsely accented, yet crudely accurate. “Sad, I mean—to be abandoned?”
He shook his head. “Happy to be alive, more like.”
“Well, the sun has not set.” Yiska grinned, so broadly Geyer found himself smiling back. Then she, too, glanced at the rift. “To ride the Bone Channel leads to death, in our stories.”
“Always?”
“For someone. And yet—” the grin flickered back, lightning-quick “—there are few better ways to die than as legend.” She gestured at a horse which wandered off to one side, its rider lost. “Mount up, Pinkerton man, if you dare travel in bad company!”
Geyer hesitated. The impulse to follow was near-irresistible. But he had other duties, long neglected during this side trip with Pargeter’s haphazard crew, and now found himself freed—at last—to return to them.
You’re my friend, Ed, always, he thought. But you got friends of your own—and I think you maybe like ’em better than is useful, at this juncture, to the interests I seek to serve.
The choice weighed painful enough on him that he said nothing, but Yiska seemed to read his decision anyway. “So, and so, and so. Hiyaaah!” This last cry went over one shoulder, to the others; they yodelled back, and she kicked her mount forward, plunging straight into that ever-closing Hell-smile, seeming to vanish even before the darkness covered her. One by one, the others galloped after her, hooting and hollering and waving their bloodied weapons, like boys racing each other to the best sport in all the world.
As the last of them barely got through, the air knit itself closed, fading away. Geyer stood alone, shaking his head in wonder.
A strange age, he thought, that’s for damn sure. And only bound to get stranger.
Minutes later, he caught up with the wandering Kiowa steed, gentling until it seemed calm enough to mount—clumsily, without a saddle—and begin guiding it northward.
Chess and the others were borne by competing currents, snatched and mouthed, torn headlong from one moment to the frenzied next—then expelled at the other end as if shot from a cannon, plummeting face-down into Bewelcome’s town square. To every compass-quarter silent figures flanked them, hands upraised in unheard prayer, worn faceless and contorted. The wind moaned through broken walls, and a few sticks of what had once been the church where Sheriff Love hoped to preach his fiery Nazarene sermonage still flung, broken bone-sharp, to scratch at a blackened sky.
Yancey retched up a mouthful of salt. Beside her, Morrow crouched with both hands to his gut, like he’d just been nut-kicked by God’s own boot. But Chess lit feet-first, like the cat he so resembled, and found Love already planted likewise upright, as though he’d grown there. Which, in a way . . . he had.
“Okay, then,” Chess told him, trying to ignore the two idjits at his feet. “You ’bout ready to get it done? Or did you want to pray a bit, ’forehand?”
Love shook his head, neck grating slightly in its socket. And might have got around to answering, had a fifth—most unexpected—voice not rung out, from an entirely different direction.
“Gennnnnlemehn,” it began, Scots burr blurred to the point of slurry incoherence. “’Tis main guid tae sheeee yeh, boath, e’en in thessse unforrrrtunate, ehhhh . . . ciurrrcumstances.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Allan Pinkerton, self-elected king of all Diogenes Boys, stood at attention on his hex-powered train-car’s back deck, with Songbird at one elbow, Asbury at the other—hav
ing made far better time than Chess or Love, probably for lack of distraction. With his unseasonable fur coat buttoned high enough to mask the bottom half of his face and a short-nosed pepper-box revolver in one hand, he loomed like some Russian bear drilled to stand on its back heels: a bit unsteady, a bit ridiculous. Completely threatening.
Songbird, predictably, seemed to glean both thoughts at once, plucking them deft as any pickpocket from Chess’s ill-shrouded brain. And gave that crack-toothed little grin of hers, at his discomfort—same one made him want to slap her hard enough she’d lose a matching set of choppers on the other side, kiddy-moll or no.
“We have been waiting here for you, English Oona’s boy,” she told him. “This fool—” and here she nodded at Doc Asbury, who hung on Love’s and Chess’s every move with equal fascination, happy as a kid on Christmas, “—tracked you easily, plotting a course from that village you helped level. We did allow you some time to recuperate in between, at least . . . though, knowing you as I do, I do not expect gratitude.”
“Apparation,” Asbury murmured to himself, at the same time. “Transit of objects from one place to another, through willpower alone . . . but not within the confines of some Spiritualist séance, no. And across miles, not mere inches.”
Chess ignored them both, instead tracing the train’s path with his eyes—a long trail of parallel gouges, scoring the earth like giant twin fingers drawn idly across a child’s sandbox, which led back from the vehicle across the white salt flat, the scrubby ground beyond, and out of Bewelcome’s canyon-set valley entirely. For all Chess knew, they led straight back to the Pinks’ home nest in Chicago itself, though he couldn’t see this floating nightmare rolling down some fancy Eastern city street. Under the train’s wheels, the gouge-tracks ended in sprays of sand and salt, pushed aside by some faint shimmer that twisted the eyes; the original wheels were still set inside, blurred as if by liquid glass. Chess’s skin itched, watching it; had a tone, like a chigger-whine gone so high it could only be felt, not heard.
Six cars, and none of them an engine: a passenger carriage, black Pullman dining car, plus four rust-and-brown boxcars, the latter three padlocked tight. Chess could feel the power packed dense within these, cramped as contortionists wedged into an impossibly small space, invisibly a-smoke with misery. Around the fourth, meanwhile, a full squad of armed and uniformed Pinks had deployed themselves, shotgun and rifle muzzles levelled steady. It said something for the sick and fevered menace that boiled around Allan Pinkerton, where he stood on the train’s caboose, that these men—Chess’s favourite prey from childhood on—were one of the last things he’d noticed.
A moment later, he realized, with so little dismay it was a shock in itself: Aw, hell. They look like Ed used to. He tried to summon the old hot hatred—a hundred tales of authority abused, slight well worth killing over—but felt it slip right through his fingers, and soon found that even that failure wasn’t enough to spur him on to new fury.
God damn, he raged to himself, don’t I get to keep anything I used to love doin’?!
All the frenzied activity and panicked flight, all that forward-seeking heat and dust and motion, all the destruction left behind, and this was all it got him, faced off like he’d been in that Tampico hotel room six weeks ago, with the exact same suspects: Pinkerton, the Chinee bitch-witch, that idjit tinkerer with his gadgets. And poor Ed for collateral, along with young miss Yancey—would one of ’em go down, like Hosteen had? Both?
This was different, though; bone and blood told him so. The light itself seemed scarred, imparting a skew to everything, making the salten ground under his feet ring fragile as a canvas scrim. All of it tilted somehow, threatening to tear clean through.
I shouldn’t be here, he thought. Then surprised himself by following that already surprising statement up with: Nobody else should, either.
“Mister Pinkerton.” Ed staggered to his feet, bringing Yancey up with him. “You’ve no reason at all to credit my word, not now—but if you stick your oar in here, it’ll cost lives don’t need to be lost.” He turned to Songbird. “And you, lady . . . you must’ve seen what went on in Mouth-of-Praise and the Hoard for yourself, in your scry-mirror; you need to tell ’em what they’re facing. Before—”
“What we face, Mister Morrow,” Pinkerton’s tar-and-gravel voice boomed out, making an obvious effort to regain intelligibility, “is renewed war wi’ Mexico, over the devastation of their capital by yuir invert sorcerer allies! Do ye no’ ken how fierce President Johnson is tae avoid another conflict, wi’ our own nation still in tatters?” Pinkerton leaned forward, febrile eyes ablaze. “I’ve been given carte blanche to deal wi’ them as I see fit—to purge this hexslinger-birthed rot from American soil. The garrison at Yuma has already been ordered in, plus a full detachment of the Treasury’s Secret Service Division; the Army’s strength is mine, too, for the asking. We’ll start here, and then move on tae Rook’s hex-haven, razing as we go.”
“Johnson? The man’s a fool and a double-crosser, as you well know, from his conduct during Wartime!” Though Morrow aimed his words at Pinkerton, Chess could tell he meant them for the men below, whose eyes had begun to flicker sidelong, looking for certainty in their fellows, and not finding it. “Don’t let yourself be used, sir. Don’t throw yourself—your men—away.”
From Pinkerton, no response at all; from Songbird, only a delicate yawn. But from Asbury—a slackened jaw, cut with dismay. Chess watched him look Pinkerton up and down as if truly seeing him for the first time, and saw that dismay deepen.
“A man might truly believe ye meant only the best for us, Edward, after all,” Pinkerton scoffed. “But then again, seems ye’ve found an innocent of yuir own tae protect.” The collar shifted, hidden smile beneath rendered awful by exclusion, as his regard fell on Yancey.
Songbird snorted. “No innocent, this one, Pinkerton-ah. She has her own minor witchery, steeped in Pargeter’s taint. Not that it is any match for mine.”
“I don’t recall giving you permission to speak for me, little girl,” Yancey told her, coldly. To Pinkerton: “Experiance Kloves, sir; widow to the Marshal Uther Kloves, of Hoffstedt’s Hoard, who gave his life against—that thing, over there.” She indicated Sheriff Love, who just stood there with fists clenched, fuming at the interruption. “So I think I’ve as much right to a say in this matter as any of you.”
Pinkerton’s brows might have lifted just a notch, while Asbury’s cheeks reddened further. “We . . . we deeply regret the suffering visited upon you, Madam, as on all unwittingly placed in the path of this chaos,” the Professor said, weakly. “But surely, that only shows you how Messrs. Pargeter and Rook must be contained, before they cause more of the same, to others.”
“Aw, name of Christ Jesus, stop lumpin’ me in with Ash Goddamn Rook!” Chess shouted. “We ain’t joined no more, at the hip or elsewise! I’d spill his blood sooner than any of you!”
Pinkerton, with high disdain said, “Yuir arrangements are of nae interest tae me, Pargeter. Will ye cooperate peaceful, or must we assert oursel’s? An answer is all I require.”
But it was Love who replied, finally roused to action.
“Then I believe you’ll all just have to wait your turn, to get it,” the Sheriff said, and whipped eel-quick to the front of the line, past Chess, Yancey and Morrow alike; his passage’s gust whipped up salt-crystals in every direction, drawing blood and breath, while Chess and his companions just stood fast.
’Cause we’re used to it, Yancey thought, with grim humour.
“We’re taking Pargeter in, Sheriff,” was all the prime Agent replied, however. “That is the fact of it.” Adding, as if he’d only that moment remembered: “And we’ve a raft of charges tae append to you as well, while we’re at it.”
“I’m surprised you use my rightful title.”
“Why not? They’ve no’ elected anyone else in your stead, sinc
e Pargeter and Rook laid ye low.”
“No, ’cause there’s none left to vote on the matter. And where was this private army of yours when Satan’s minions made sure of that, I wonder?”
From Asbury, hastily: “Mister Pinkerton can’t be expected to maintain a presence in every homestead, surely, Mister Love! Besides which, it was your own . . . misfortunes which caused him to send to the Department of Experimental Arcanistry, leading to the engagement of my services.”
“To do what? Take reckonings, measurements, while my flock wears away by degrees?”
Asbury blanched, unable to keep his eyes from jittering to a nearby triplicate entanglement of what had once been men, uppermost of whom Chess thought he recognized: Same fucker’d held him down and broke his nose for him while the others laid on the boots, before Rook finally joined the party. Now he was missing half his own beak, left-hand eye socket hollow. And the oddity of it was, though Chess would usually have had to kick himself to rouse even a semblance of sympathy, he now found he felt . . . quite the opposite.
Like I’d have to work hard not to care ’bout what that sumbitch brought on himself, he thought, panic rising in his empty chest.
“No’ our charge,” Pinkerton threw back, unmoved. “From all reports, I’d’ve supposed ye a man well capable of looking after yuirself, let alone yuir kith and ki—”
“You shut your damnable mouth.”
The sound slid in, so low Chess felt it in his joints and skull-plates, a sickeningly deep roar. Without thinking, he put forth his own power, rooting himself to the ground; Morrow and Yancey, not similarly anchored, clung together, swaying. The hex-run train jolted, cars sent crashing up against one another; thin-voiced cries skirled out from inside locked boxcars. Pinkerton gripped the caboose railing hard as Asbury lurched beside him, wide-eyed. Songbird, meanwhile, merely lifted off, scarlet-lacquer parasol shifting neatly to block the sun as she hovered mid-air a few inches above the planks, staring down.
The Hexslinger Omnibus Page 54
