CHAPTER NINE
Another few months flew by. In Solomonville, up near the New Mexico border, the gang’s object was the land office, where a fat payroll lay prepared for banking. Chess brought the company fast and hard — both guns already cross-drawn, guiding the horse with his knees — while Rook strode in front, hovering a yard above the ground and leaving no prints behind with a cloud of dust boiling out beneath him, like he was wearing Ten League Boots.
A dreadful flame lifted from his head, leaking out of every orifice, and whenever Rook blinked or spoke it guttered and danced, lighting up their way through the sandstorm-lively murk. By its baleful glare, Rook saw “good” people — parishioners much the same as his own, probably, once upon a time — scurrying from him and his in mortal panic, fast as their little legs would take them.
Fuck them all, he caught himself thinking, a grim smile curling his lips.
“No unnecessary casualties!” he roared down at Chess, who already had the land office manager in his sights; Chess brought his horse up short, reholstering, so he had both hands free to aid with his dismount. The manager just stood there trembling, too scared to even squirm.
“What-all do you men want?” he finally got out, through chattering teeth.
Chess returned Rook’s grin. “Fair question — ain’t it, Rev? What do we want, exactly?”
“Money’ll do, for now,” Rook replied. “That suit you?” he asked the manager. Adding, as if just struck by the thought: “Might end up bein’ blamed for all this, though, I suppose. For not puttin’ up an adequate defence of yours bosses’ funds.”
The manager coughed — a sound one-quarter laugh, three-quarters retch. “Ask me how much I care, long’s they don’t turn up here lookin’ like you.”
Rook smiled, yet again. Couldn’t help it, really. It was all just so funny. He could see his own teeth reflected in the man’s eyes as he did it, horrid little flickering red stars.
“Good man,” he said.
And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even dar
kness which may be felt.
And Moses stretched forth his hand toward heaven. And there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days:
As it turned out, the book of Exodus proved wonderfully fruitful quotation-fodder for far more than just Solomonville’s aftermath. Might’ve made it to an even ten, eventually, had Rook not decided that three plagues in a row were probably good enough.
News of their exploits ran ahead of them as they rode on into the dark, a dry and bitter wind. By the time they reached Total Wreck, a waiter-gal sidled by to show off their very first official “wanted” post-bill, slapping it down along with their drinks. Chess was — to put it mildly — unsatisfied with the crudely inept artistic renderings attached thereto, especially the one apparently meant to look like him.
Rook let out a raspy bark of laughter. “You’re peacock-vain, is all, Chess Pargeter! Don’t cherish the idea of anybody thinkin’ you’re a skinny little snip with wall-eyes and a beard like the Wanderin’ Jew, the way this seems to prove.”
Chess studied the thing one more time, then spat on it and crumpled it up.
“I ain’t so vain,” he maintained. “But I damn well know I look a sight better’n that.”
Rook nodded. “And every soul in here knows it, including me.” Voice dropping further: “Care for a demonstration?”
That night, Rook turned Chess’s many lessons in mutual pleasure back on him, and drifted off with the ragged sound of Chess’s breath coming and going straight into his open mouth, head like an echoing sea-cave. But when he opened his eyes once more, he found that the bed had somehow dropped away into darkness, and that the body in his arms was even smaller, far softer — a girl’s. Lady Rainbow, dead far longer than Rook’s former faith had existed, with her black hair spread out beneath them like a pair of wings carved from funeral jet.
This close up, Rook could see how each of her delicate ears was flared in fans of beaten gold, the rope of thorns heavy between her little breasts. Her gaze seemed both fixed and dead, sheened to a terrible lustre and unnaturally long-lashed at its lower orbits — ’til those lashes fluttered, and he realized she had painted false eyes upon the lids of her real ones, for what reason he couldn’t possibly stand to guess at.
If Rook really was twice Chess’s size, then he must be four times hers, yet she held him child-helpless with just a feather-light touch on either wrist. And beneath him, the jungle vipers which made up her skirt crept apart, rustling, to disclose the sticky lips of her hairless sex, then twined fast once more around them both, pulling them together: cock into cunt, feel of it already slightly unfamiliar — a flesh trap, snapping shut.
Desire laid lit powder up Rook’s spine, a spasm of pure betrayal. But when he tried to pull away, she simply laughed, and reached up to stroke the scar around his neck, twisting its painful residual energy ’round her fingers somehow, like haltering an invisible lariat.
This is mine, little king, she murmured, along with the rest — can you really have forgotten that, so soon? To give and to take . . . your death, your luck, your very life.
I don’t owe you a damn thing, you devil! Rook roared, soundlessly. With a shrug, she drew what Rook all at once knew was a stingray spine from her hair, licked quickly along its crabbed grey length (splitting her tongue crossways, to show meat within), and then — without even a wince — ran it through her bottom lip, piercing herself so deeply her chin slicked red, and the spine rang sharp against her teeth. She dragged him in so hard his neck cried out and smeared their lips together, laughing as he bit at her instinctively, the dew of her dripping straight onto his taste-buds, with all the kick of wine steeped in garbage.
There, she told him. You have tasted me, in honour of our marriage-pledge. Now — return the favour.
He shook his head. Then roared again as she slid the spine through his earlobe, freeing another hot spurt.
I have told you already, she said, as he clapped his palm to the wound, when I pulled you from the tree: you are Becoming, magician. You are the seed, the flower from the skull. So you will bend to me eventually, or go back down into darkness — under black waters, deep and deeper. Never to return.
Rook snarled back at her: You talk like I got no choice. Like I’m not still a child of God, free-willed from my mother’s womb, same as I was born from Original Sin into tribulation.