A Rope of Thorns (34 page)

They’ve done this
before, Yancey realized.
Fought things like this more than once—had to’ve done. Which means . . .

More dead than hers walked this land, now; anywhere the Weed had conquered, most likely. Which in turn made her think on just how far the Weed must have already spread, and feel sick. The horizon seemed to blur, sky gone tissue-thin.

Maybe these
were
Last Days, after all. Maybe Sheriff Love’s terrible cry of “
Judgement!
” had been only the rawest of truths.

Right in the path of one galloping horse, vines exploded up out of the earth to whiplash about its legs, snatching the screaming stallion to earth so fast Yiska had no chance to intervene. Cartwheeled through the air, its rider somehow managed to come down legs first, with spectacular agility—might even have survived if he hadn’t tumbled right into a good five or six of the Weed-things. They fell on him with the fury of starving wolves, all shambling lassitude utterly gone, and commenced ripping him skin from bone. His shrieks spurred two more warriors into a futile rescue attempt; they turned their mounts straight into the horde, only to go down too, creatures seizing at their belts, vests and weapons all at once. Blood burst over the frenzied melee, unleashing a cacophony of horrible tearing noises.

Yancey felt the rush of released power surge against her body, heading straight for its favourite recipient. She glanced back at Chess, and saw him swaying like a drunk, eyes narrowed until a green-glowing thread sewed his lashes together. Spilled blood was spilled blood, it seemed—no prayers necessary. Perhaps they never had been.

At Yiska’s shouted command, the circling braves broke rank, peeling back from the spreading tide of grue-gorged Weed even as its avatars marshalled fresh speed and strength. In the centre, Love stood tall once again, his unmarked face almost human to look at—always saving the blind white eyes which followed the riders’ path, of course, merciless as bone.

“They keep this up, they’re only gonna get themselves butchered,” Morrow said.

Geyer, preternaturally calm even in his fear, agreed wholeheartedly. “Yes. And I’d very much like to forestall that same eventuality in our own cases, Ed.”

Back on the ridge, Yiska hauled her mount to a stop and twisted to catch Yancey’s eyes again. That same tug wrenched at her mind, leapfrogging language:
We do what we can, dead-speaker, so you may do what you must. If the red boy is willing, tell him
—

But here
Chess’s own presence irrupted into the connection like steam-heat, hot enough it made Yancey want to gag.

Just tell me yourself, you snatch-lickin’ squaw
. Thick with blood-glut euphoria yet oddly calm, hazed by intoxication yet strong, so strong. Merely hearing it so close, with no particular effort invested, shot viselike pains through Yancey’s mind; she could feel them echo straight through, into Yiska’s.
Give
me
orders? You came here to help, then
help
.

As you say. But will you listen?

I’m listening now, ain’t I?

Challenge the salt-man once more; ask him to name a final ground. When he does, bring him there. We will follow, and quickly, for we know it already—the only place he may be beaten.

Yiska turned away, breaking the connection; Chess nodded, and let Yancey go as well, focusing his whole attention on the Sheriff. “Love, you too-dead shitkicker, you’re wasting both our time!” With a single stomp of his boot, the earth seemed to ripple, half-seen waves shocking the Weed-army rigid. “Care to settle this right now?”

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.
”

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—having 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 lead 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.