“. . . shouldn’t I?” Chess’s glance cut sideways, to the dark woman-thing nearby, and blazed with fury. “Oh, ’course I should. ’Cause you been so damn nice to me, lately — you, and her. . . .”
Rook smiled. “Hex can’t stay true to hex, Chess. You saw me with Songbird — I paid her price, fair as fair does, and she tried to kill me anyhow. Just ’cause she knew damn well just exactly how nice it’d feel, if she did.”
“The fuck’s that . . . got to do with . . . you and me? I ain’t no — ”
“You are, darlin’. Always have been. Not awake like me, not yet — but you been wakin’ slow and sure these past years, and once you came to full flower, wouldn’t be nothing left for us but to feed. On each other. ’Til one of us was dead.” Rook’s voice roughened with sorrow. “’Cause that’s what hexes do.”
“You been . . . feedin’ . . . on me?”
“Since always, darlin’. I’d have left you a long time back, it weren’t so — and even now, I still want to eat you. So damn bad.”
“No.” Chess’s eyes went wide, all fear and desperation and rage. “I won’t hear this. You’re better’n me, always have been — you’re a good man.”
“Flattering, darlin’ — but in this case, I’m afraid, you’re much mistaken. Because — on this whole wide earth, there’s nothin’ worse than a bad man who knows the Bible.”
“You . . . think . . . I’m scared?”
At that, the gleam in Rook’s eyes showed itself after all: tears, runnelling down. “Never, Chess Pargeter. That’s what I like about you the most. You ain’t afraid to kill, or to die; you ain’t even afraid of pain.”
And here the Rev kissed him savagely, drawing power deep, so intense Morrow could see it swirl like inky water between them. “But don’t try to fight me, sweetheart,” he said, panting, when he broke off. “You ain’t strong enough for that, not yet.”
“Fuck off!” Chess writhed in his invisible bonds, unable to see his own aura surging black. “You’re a damn hex, you cheating motherfucker. I ain’t! I — ”
Rook, covering Chess’s mouth with his fingertips: “But . . . you will be.”
A blink, and the Lady was abruptly between them — pressing Chess down hard with both hands, all but grinding herself against him. Though Chess fought her, it did no damn good whatsoever, that Morrow could see.
She murmured, “My brother will ride you well, little warrior, once your flowers are brought to bloom. Husband of my husband, little light, little meat-thing.”
Chess spat. “Screw you, you hex-Mex hellbitch!”
Lady Ixchel simply crooned back at him, tutting slightly, stroking his fever-flushed cheek — and Chess melted under her touch, losing energy like she’d popped a spigot on his soul. Beside her, Rook had finally withdrawn the Bible from his inner pocket and stood flipping through it, searching (no doubt) for some relevant passage to soothe Chess with . . . but that was when the whole of it burst into flames in his hand, each page going up like flash-paper and vanishing, with not even ash — his namesake — left behind.
“You will need that no longer,” she told him. “We will write a new book together — a book in stone, and blood, and gold. A Book of Tongues.”
The phrase ran through Rook, Chess, even Morrow, in a silver skewer. They shivered and nodded, as one.
“Now . . . kill what you love.”
“Why?” Rook managed.
That is YOUR sacrifice.
Open your heart to me, darlin’. ’Cause there’s no more time, at all.
But it was Rook who opened Chess up, skin-first, blood spraying — and Chess who screamed at the feel of it, high and harsh and sounding far more in rage than pain, though Christ knew it had to hurt. His flesh went flying — and as Chess spilled his blood on the stone it began to shine, its image humping up by parts so each section peeled and tore itself free and added itself to Ixchel somehow, making her huge, terrible, inhuman. Rook plunged his axe-blade hand under his lover’s breast-bone, plucked out his beating heart like a dripping carnal jewel —
Jaguar Cactus Fruit, from which all of us will grow anew. . . . — and gave it over to Lady Ixchel, who chawed it down, ate it whole, smashing it against her mouth ’til her lips ran with his blood. Then kissed Rook right in front of Chess’s betrayed eyes — a kiss like clashing swords, like split skulls. A kiss with teeth.
“My little kings,” she said, beatific, fond as any other mother. “My . . . husbands.”
Screw all this for a game of Goddamn soldiers, Morrow thought, drawing his gun. And before Rook could maybe think to stop him — but would he even want to, seein’ what she’d made him do? — Morrow’d already fired directly into the back of that dark and bloody goddess’s head, blowing a gaping hole right where skull met spine.
But: The rest of her head spun ’round, a Satanic whipping-top, to roar full in his face, her mouth so wide, inside it a tangle of other tiny people screaming, rows on rows all red, and —
the earth quaked
the Moon Room walls rocked