Behind him, the aggregate mass of two armies stood clustered, poised at the ready: Washford’s Battalion and Pinkerton’s Agents, plus the ever-growing cadre of collared hex-handlers and their equal-collared hexes. To Morrow’s right was Carver, pistol in one hand, spun magnesium double-tailed leash in the other; Eulie Parr stood with drooping head on left, while Berta Schemerhorne glowered unbroken on his right, and it afforded Morrow some odd sort of comfort to note that Carver seemed to find his dominant position over the two girls far more embarrassing than victorious.
Back of Morrow’s left shoulder, meanwhile — ordered by Morrow himself, in a low voice, into that place of what little safety might be found — hunched Doctor Joachim Asbury, face sharp with full-sober misery and terror; Frank Geyer stood guard adjacent, in his James Grey guise, wearing what seemed to be one of Asbury’s hex-nullifier bracelets clasped ’round his wrist. This’d puzzled Morrow greatly when first he’d noted it — Geyer was no hex — but once he’d seen how Pinkerton’s power-addled gaze passed over Geyer as if he had never known him, he’d realized it might be more for disguise than restraint.
And ahead of them all, Pinkerton himself, standing only steps behind the Enemy, big hands knotting and unknotting as if already savouring the feel of Ixchel’s flesh beneath his fingers. He’d doffed his civilian garb for the rudiments of a uniform, including a blue jacket with colonel’s insignia, worn loose and open; the act had won him no affection from Washford’s soldiers, but he seemed beyond caring. The air outlining him shimmered with power, and Morrow wondered sickly how many captive hexes had been sucked dry like oranges to bring his employer to this horrendous apex.
“Takin’ her sweet time about it, isn’t she?” Pinkerton demanded, of his Trickster “companion.” Before adding, with an ostentatious guffaw: “Just like a woman!”
The Enemy shot him a black-on-black side-eye, unimpressed.
I would conduct myself more quietly, Pinkerton-creature, were I you,
it told him.
For she comes, even now.
And oh, Jesus Christ Almighty, if she didn’t, at that.
Rising up over Hex City’s western walls, eddying high on that dragonfly cloak of hers, which seemed — denser than usual, a living veil, those faceted wings shielding what little could be glimpsed of a jade-scaled forehead, sunken eyes and tattooed cheeks, lips peeled back over vulpine teeth, the thorn-rope at her throat lying slack between those leathery horrors that had once been her vessel’s fine, firm breasts. Beneath two sub-swarms of dragonflies that drooped like sleeves, her hands, fingers and wrists alike could be seen, if you squinted, to gleam with bone, much like the exposed tips of her doubly bare toes. Only her black flower of hair seemed intact, stiff and queenly, fresh braids high-piled ’round a knot of sharp stone knives.
On
her
right and left, meanwhile, came two more figures, hanging from the air like Juno enchained. The Rev was one, of course, recognizable even at this range — though now Morrow came to consider on it a moment, he did look
different
, somehow: stretched thin for such a massive brute, as though he’d been hollowed and restuffed, a mere shell of his former self. And the other —
My God, I do believe that is the wreck of Hank Fennig’s last wife, just like her two “sisters” already said. Sorry for doubting you, ladies.
What sketchy breath he was able to draw at the sight of her seemed to burn like lye, or strangling mountaintop air. Like a mouthful of the same lime they’d thrown into the blood-pit, ’fore tossing the sandy earth it’d taken to carve it out back in and piling a bunch of rocks on top of that so she’d rest still, if not easy. The former Clodagh Killeen, shining skull-face set with corpse-lamp eyes and every other joint of her body lit up too, a star map of hellish constellations . . . just riding the sky as though it were sea while the sound of a million swelling rattlesnake bells tumbled to earth beneath her, pocking the dust like hail.
Jesus
, Morrow thought again, while also sending up a brief prayer to anybody else who might be currently out there, listening.
And I thought the bitch who made her over this way was bad.
Inclining her head, Ixchel stared down, and seemed to smile.
Brother. You are arrogant, as ever. I had expected you sooner.
A shrug.
I needed time, to put things in place — and see what you have put in place, likewise.
“Things.” Like this . . . pretender you ally with, perhaps?
Pinkerton’s face darkened. “I’ll thank ye tae address me directly, ye high-nosed heathen hoor!” he called up, making fists yet harder, so’s his knuckles spat sparks.
Be silent
, was all Ixchel told him, without even deigning to look his way.
You are amongst your betters now, mud-toy. It does not behoove you to try and speak to me directly, any more so than it would a beetle to hold congress with jaguars.
“Hah! The day such as ‘Reverend’ Asher Rook stands my equal, let alone my better, will be a cold one in Hell indeed.”
But Hell
is
cold, Pinkerton-thing. As you would know, had you ever truly been there.
She turned her eyes to him at last, so dark they almost seemed to cast their own negative light.
Still, if — not trusting my testimony — you wish to confirm it for yourself, I believe I might be persuaded to assist you.
“I’d heard you rumoured beautiful, not so long ago,” Pinkerton replied, grinning. “Right now, though, Lady, I must admit — I’m disinclined tae believe it.”
I am not . . . at my best, no. But that will change.
“Oh, ye think? Once ye locate that little Mex girl of yuirs, mayhap?”
The Enemy cast another look, less annoyed than slyly amused, this time.
Be careful, Pinkerton,
it warned him;
be circumspect, if you can be. You tread unwisely.
Pinkerton ignored this advice, however, as the creature had no doubt known all along that he would.
So
, Ixchel said, gaze fixed on Pinkerton like she was trying to burn through all the layers of his skin at once.
You
do
have her.
“I did. At one point.”
Explain.
Pinkerton struck a pose, hands on hips. “’Twas these two who brought her to me, straight into my camp’s heart — ” He indicated the remaining Missuses Fennig, the motion bringing Eulie’s head up at last, tears already a-sparkle in the corners of her eyes. “ — which at first I thought was for mere negotiation, as a bargaining chip. But no; turns out they truly did only want to save her from you, and the awful fate ye’d condemned her to.”
A sneer, difficult to distinguish, considering how skewed her lips already were.
And you jumped at the chance to “rescue” my sweet Marizol, vowed to me by her own parents as a love-offering — to play protector, hide her away somewhere, disguised perhaps behind your tinkerer’s “hex-proof” trinkets —
“Not as such, ma’am.”
Then bring her forth! Restore her to me, now, and I may spare
you . . .
may
.
“Can’t do that, I’m afraid. For in the end, contemplating upon it, I realized that just as whatever did
you
good was nothing I wanted a hand in, neither did I wish tae run the risk of you taking her back, no matter what might occur later on. And so . . .”
Oh, just get the hell
on
with it, you numbskull
, Morrow thought, annoyed with these theatrics. While Ixchel simply peered at Pinkerton, not even visibly angered by his ridiculous hubris.
What is it you are saying?
she demanded.
But Pinkerton was revelling in his own stupid glory now, making the haze around him bunch and blur, almost dense as Ixchel’s insect panoply. He took time to smooth his beard before calling up to her, gaily: “Yes, I’ve been somewhat remiss in no’ makin’ it clearer, havnae I? For which I apologize. But what I
mean
is . . . she’s dead. Head-shot. Dead over a day, by my watch. And granted, Our Lord returned after three, good as new or better — but you, ye’re nae Jesus Christ, is what I’m sayin’.”
A slow, impassive blink was Ixchel’s only reaction, revealing supernumerary false eyes mosaicked to their lids — but Morrow went cold all over, every hair erect and stinging. As memory winged past him, he heard Yancey’s toneless voice asking, in that split-second before joy shattered to horror:
Sheriff Love?
Signalling Carver and Geyer with a sidelong glance, he first gestured them back without moving — upper body held perfectly still — then eased backward himself ’til his shoulder bumped into Asbury’s; at his nudge, the Professor yielded with a stumble, gawping bemusedly. By inch-fractions they withdrew, all Morrow’s attention left concentrated on those three dreadful beings before them, muscles taut to a fare-thee-well hair trigger.
Then, unexpectedly, Morrow caught Reverend Rook’s eyes — and in them the same tense dread plus something else, wholly unexpected: that amused arrogance the Rev had always affected, most ’specially to his enemies, was gone. Without changing expression, Rook
turned
slightly, still hanging in the air, looking past Morrow as if he wasn’t there. The black book he’d held in one hand (Sophy Love’s Bible, it jolted Morrow to see), a convenient page marked with a finger, had disappeared up his sleeve.
In that instant, Morrow knew what he had to do.
Ixchel screeched something in that rotten-flower dead tongue of hers, spraying stinking black blood like venom with the force of it, and flung herself down upon Pinkerton. The plunge was thunderstrike-quick; greenish-blue light exploded ’round both of them, as they — and the Enemy — disappeared, together. Morrow was already bringing his shotgun up, swinging it ’cross toward what had once been Clo; had he hesitated even a fraction of a second in choosing a target, he would have been too late, and almost was anyhow. Clo went hurtling straight at Carver, Eulie and Berta, who survived only because Carver sensibly flung the girls’ leashes away, while simultaneously hurling himself backward. Clo’s dagger-length bone claws came within an inch of tearing off the man’s scalp ’fore Morrow’s anti-hex shell slammed into her.
She screeched, spun in mid-air, crashed to the ground, bounced upright once more like a wolverine. A second shot caught her right between the breasts, smashing her backward. Clo reeled, gaping chest hole showing torn innards and broken bones, but the wound was already sealing. Hands flying, Morrow broke open the gun and slammed another two shells home, bracing himself to burn, as a fiery holocaust seemed to well up out of the horrid creature’s eye sockets and mouth together.
Yet here, most welcome, Carver’s pistol thundered instead, stitching smoking hole after smoking hole across Clo’s front. She yowled and sprang away, blurring almost too fast to see over the ground, heading straight for the front lines. Carver stared after her, then let out a whoop, and began to reload.
“What you yelpin’ over, you idjit?” cried Eulie, clambering to her feet. “She’ll tear ’em apart!”
Carver chortled. “Two whole damn armies, miss? Think maybe you ain’t counted those odds right! Ain’t no way one woman, no matter how . . . I mean, she . . . can’t . . .” But here he trailed off, jaw slack, too mazed with battle heat to register much beyond distant, dismayed shock. “Oh. Oh, sweet Jesus, no — ”
Morrow took one second to check over his shoulder — yes, Rook too had vanished, far less obtrusively than his Lady — then turned back, heart heavy, to watch the catastrophe unfold.
The soldiers had obeyed their sergeants’ orders with all their old precise professionalism:
Front line, aim! Second line, prep! Third line, load! Front line, FIRE!
— and a shockwave of lead ripped out across the empty plain, slowing Clo only for a second. Unfazed, the front line stepped back three paces; as the second line stepped forward into their place, knelt and aimed, Clo drew closer and closer:
Front line, FI — !
Too late.
Clo opened her mouth. What came out was not sound, but light: a white-hot, triple-thick beam of white fire fed from mouth and empty eyes together that tore through the massed ranks like grapeshot crossed with sun focused through a jeweller’s eye. Shrieks of agony erupted skyward, torrenting fountains of blood, severed limbs. Yet these war-hardened men might’ve stood fast nonetheless, even in the face of such carnage, if Clo had not then sprinted directly into the centre of the army — using that very same path of scorched flesh and earth as her guide-trail — and cut into them like a knife-bedecked whirlwind, slashing and stabbing faster and more accurately than any human.
No weapon touched her. Pistols and rifles went off to no effect, or felled hapless comrades. Geyer swayed on his feet, watching it; Asbury collapsed to all fours to empty his stomach. Berta and Eulie held each other up.
In mid-air, above the abruptly empty plain, Ixchel and Pinkerton reappeared with a thunderous
crack
of torn air, hands locked; they spiralled about each other, whirling down and down, and broke apart on landing with an impact Morrow felt in his very boots. Ixchel, still screaming — had she ever stopped? — vomited a gout of greasy black power straight onto Pinkerton’s face, like a sluice-gate opened on a sewage pond; Morrow bit savagely on one knuckle, driving out nausea with pain, as he saw the force of the attack distort Ixchel’s very skull, pushing jaws and nose plate forward ’til she seemed more ape than human. Her face’s corpse-tight skin snapped and tore, peeling away from warped bone.
But Pinkerton didn’t flinch; he opened his own mouth and
swallowed
the blast, sucked it greedily down like whisky. His body blurred, rippled, swelled, bulged; the seams of his coat and shirt burst, boots exploding off his feet. Skin marbled with fungus-like patches, he towered up ’til he was half again Ixchel’s height, and roared.
Ixchel stumbled backward, face too ruined now to read. Yet her body, at last, betrayed the truth: this once-goddess was no longer the master of events. Pinkerton lunged forward and slammed both outsized fists down, pinning her to earth on her back with a massive, cartilaginous wrench. Just as he seized her throat, however, it was Pinkerton’s turn to gag — Ixchel’s own hand lashed up and
stretched
, palm and fingers splitting apart, peeling back, limp as a torn glove. Exposed bones, speared out long as bayonets, came punching through his shoulder at the juncture of neck and chest, drawing smoking blood to gout from the wound in thick jets.