Suddenly, Ixchel burst into existence in the air above Berta, flinging a boulder-sized sphere of flame at her. Though Berta dodged, the missile erupted, flashing the sky scarlet; back-punched by the blast, Berta’s spread-eagled form could be glimps
ed hurtling away into the City itself with her burning hair trailing smoke, ’til she arced down to vanish amongst the buildings.
A second lash of hexacious might shredded the spell-webs entangling Clo, freeing the demon-girl to fall upon the spider again. Within seconds, she had bitten through and burrowed wholly inside the monstrous creature’s shell, vanishing from sight. At the same time, Ixchel twisted in the air and disappeared into herself, likewise gone.
“Gonna stand there gawping all day?” Geyer’s yell went off practically in his ear. Ludlow nearly screamed, dropping his spyglass, while the former Pink reined up beside him, Doctor Asbury gasping miserably behind. “C’mon, scrivener — wall’s down. We need to get in there.”
“What in hell for?” Ludlow shouted back.
“Stop American citizens dying, for a start! Not to mention if it was Chess Pargeter riding that beast, then Ed Morrow’s surely here, too; Missus Kloves as well, I’d bet. So I’m not leaving friends to lay their lives down alone, ’specially if might be I could help.” He gave Ludlow the stink-eye, cold and sidelong. “Now, you can be a man and stand with us, or you can be a vulture and hang back to make your living off the ruin — you decide.”
Not waiting for a response, Geyer snapped his reins; with a whinny, his chestnut gelding plunged down the slope. Asbury shot Geyer a helpless shrug, then followed. Ludlow watched them go, clenching his fists.
Hell, he thought. To be shamed into foolishness, and at my age.
Swearing, he kicked his heels into his horse’s sweat-lathered sides and rode after, leaving his dropped spyglass to gleam brassily in the dirt behind.
Too Goddamn familiar entirely, this queasy, weightless feeling of falling to earth in the grasp of something mostly air and wishing. Clutched to Chess by both arms, Yancey and Morrow touched down just inside the walls of New Aztectlan, hitting the ground just north of where a swathe of spider-bred rubble had crushed half a dozen adobe-bricked huts; the farthest still stood mostly intact, and Morrow lunged into it the instant his boots touched earth, dragging Yancey and Chess after him. He pulled them in and ducked down, eyes kept fixed on the hexes atop the walls, as they battered the spider back by degrees.
Any inclination Yancey might’ve had to carp about being manhandled vanished on making contact with the ground. The twisting cramp that knotted her stomach, pain-vise clamping her head simultaneously, dragged out a startled groan; Chess caught it, quick as ever, and scowled.
“Wondered how this place’d take you, you finally got here,” he said. “Can you stand it?”
Yancey braced her hands on a fallen pile of bricks — they held her weight, but felt queerly thin to touch, like spun sugar — and fought to winch her shields back up. “Christ in Heaven, feels like if I jumped up too high, I’d fall straight through the ground coming down. Can’t they sense how torn up it all is, here? How can they even breathe? There’s . . . almost nothing real left. Anywhere.” She cringed, as more screams and explosions echoed from outside.
“Feels like tryin’ to swim a tub of molasses,” Chess agreed, jaw clenched — then added, with a half-grin: “When I’m in over my head. And it’s boiling.”
“None of us got any Oath protecting us,” Morrow suggested. “For me, that don’t matter. You two, though . . .” He trailed off, clearly unable to think of any ending didn’t make him unhappy. Chess moved forward to join him, hunkering down behind the pile of rubble, then rabbit-rising to squint over the top.
“Anyone see us?”
Morrow shook his head. “Think we got away with it. Not that that’s gonna make a difference, in a minute.” He slipped the knife from his belt. “If I’m getting to understand this shit at all, seems like the minute we start this, Herself’ll know it — and her big brother, too. How much time are we gonna have before she shows up, to make her point about it?”
Yancey shrugged. “She can get to us pretty much instantly, wherever we are; don’t expect it matters, aside from we’re within the walls.”
Chess nodded. “’Sides which, we want ’em to come, don’t we? So I can put an end to this, if I can.”
“Yeah, if,” Morrow muttered. For which Chess couldn’t blame him.
“We’ll have as long’s we have, Ed,” he concluded. “Let’s just get it damn well done.”
Yancey nodded, and held out her wrist, matching Morrow’s gaze with her own. From outside came another mighty crash — some other part of the walls going down? With a quick look, Morrow directed Chess to stand between them; Chess obeyed, gallows-grim, then watched as Morrow took Yancey’s arm in his, a parody of hand-fasting, and laid her main veins open: a fiercer, more painful wound than any they’d dared before, liberating a gush of blood so strong it ate the fount of Yancey’s strength almost instantly. It struck the earth under Chess’s ghost-feet, pooled for a moment on the surface, before sinking in.
Next second, Ed had cut himself just as deep, the blood-stream doubling, rich red liquid puddling up until that whole same crimson store combined leapt upward, suffused itself throughout Chess’s shadow-shape, deepening his colour and inflating him toward opacity: became the rich plum of his coat, the red of his hair. He flung out his arms and gasped, sucking in air, substance, power all together. Yancey felt that parasite hex-hunger of his latch on, draining them out with terrifying speed, pulsing gore-drops actually flying mid-air in all defiance of gravity’s laws to enter him.
No prayers needed, this time: their sacrifice was free and willing, made right where the Crack in the world rendered all incantations meaningless. Within seconds, Chess had become almost solid, only the deep crimson flush of his skin betraying his fragile grasp on materiality; his body steamed in the cold air. As he opened his eyes, they glowed green as absinthe louched and lit.
At that precise moment, the roof blew off the hut, walls shattering outward — and Ixchel came descending, dragonfly cloak swarm-flapping to scour the sky. From below, simultaneously, the ground writhed and split, Weed spilling upward like maggots escaping a caved-in corpse; the Enemy stood atop, re-envisioned as Chess’s blue-skinned reflection, naked but for barbaric graveyard ornamentation.
Staring at this pair, Yancey dimly knew she ought to be frightened — terrified, even. But . . . she was tired, so she folded gently to ground instead, which felt only slightly colder than she herself did. Reached for Ed’s hand, feeling her slit tendons flap, her nicked bones grate uselessly together. Soon, she reassured herself, they would get up and run. In a second, perhaps . . . just after they’d rested only a scant tick, or two . . . .
Someone was shouting, but she couldn’t tell who. Her eyes skewed sidelong, turned up, rolled ’til she could almost glimpse the dark inside her own skull. Then closed.
She was gone.
Outside the City’s breached wall, the spider lunged up in a titanic final spasm, rising to stand almost vertical, palps and mandibles stretching skyward. Red light bloomed in its eyes, brightened until — with a sodden explosion — all eight of ’em simply burst and Clo Killeen’s immortal remains came rocketing up out of its forehead, scorched but triumphant, a penetrating stink of boiled mucus trailing her in a venomous cloud. She screamed in triumph, flipping dolphin-gleeful, then slid back down to spew gloating yet incomprehensible Irish jibber-jabber at the mortally wounded monster.
It was her undoing. The closest foreleg — whipping down, in a movement perhaps half spasm, half vengeance — caught her by the waist even as its owner tilted backward, describing a slow, dreadful, inexorable arc. Curling inward, the beast’s immense bulk crashed down, smashing a second immense breach open in what was left of the wall before bursting open on impact like a piñata, spilling a vast tide of indistinct black, wriggling forms — were those guts? Organs? Or something . . . living? — both into and out of the City.