A Rope of Thorns Read Online Free PDF Page B

whose face he almost felt he
should
know, if only from someone else’s memory. . . .
    Doc Asbury in his travelling laboratory, throwing lightning between two steel balls—Pinkerton in his private train-car, scribbling dispatches—faceless agents dispersed to the wind, carrying all Chess and Morrow’s particulars in their pockets—red Weed growing wild, constantly turning its many floral heads at once to search out Chess’s scent, and re-orienting itself accordingly. . . .
    While deep underground, Mictlan-Xibalba roiled like a crock-pot, throwing up cracks and sickness . . . and to the north, that
city
grew: dark spires rising, mortared with spells and pain; Lady Ixchel looking down on it all, her empty face the moon set high above. While at her side stood an amused shadow, tall as some blood-watered tree.
    This was how things had been for Asher Rook, Chess now understood—
just
like this, the entire Goddamn time. No wonder
he did them things he did, with all this forever poking at him, never letting him rest.
    Across the fire, Chess could see Morrow fixing him slant-eyed, with what was getting dangerously close to outright pity. To prevent himself from punching him right in the stupidly sentimental face, therefore, Chess broke off conversation entirely and lay down, trusting the annoying bastard to eventually follow suit.
    To sleep, however, was always to lay oneself even further open, the way healing and infection both cracked a wound beyond its own stitchery.
    Chess’d never been much of a one for reading—could do it in a pinch, but never for fun. But the dream began with words spilling out into the air before him—silver-white on black, reversed, thorny-twisted in the Gothic style. They hung there glinting, a spray of flickery nails. And next came the voice, as ever: Rook’s rasping tones, echoing straight down into a man’s groin. Reciting, while Chess felt his unwilling gaze pulled along those floating letters—
    . . . His cheeks are like beds of spice
    Yielding perfume
    His lips are like lilies
    Dripping with myrrh
    His arms are like unto rods of gold
    Set about with chrysolite
    His belly is like unto polished ivory
    Set about with lapis lazuli
    His legs are like unto pillars of marble
    Set on bases of pure gold
    His body is like unto Lebanon
    Choice as its cedars.
    —Song of Solomon,
5:13 to 5:15.
    Adding:
That’s you, Chess, sin and ruinous doom incarnate. And quite the prettiest thing I ever saw in my whole life, too—before,
or
after.
    Chess saw the sky peel away in front of him all at once, present becoming past with one quick rip, like lifting a scab—thrusting him back from this moment to that, from dream to memory, right into Rook’s fond embrace. The two of them set up in front of some roadhouse cheval-glass, Chess perched on Rook’s lap while the Rev hugged him hard from behind, curled into the bigger man’s all-enveloping heat like a purring cat; stripped almost to his skin, with proof of desire pushing hard out the front of his small-clothes as he let Rook puppet him ’round, one hand grazing up through the red-gold fleece of Chess’s chest to tweak at a nipple even as the other sank steadily lower, always travelling the other way . . . widdershins, counterclockwise. The broad and pleasant road to Hell.
    For He hath made every thing beautiful in his time; also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from beginning to end.—Ecclesiastes, 3:11 .
    Chess frowned.
Wouldn’t be puttin’ a spell on me, would you, Reverend?
    Aw, now, Chess. Would I even have to?
    Probably not
, Chess realized, already defeated.
    And even though just recalling how he’d once loved the man now sickened him . . . to have Rook’s hands back on him, even in a dream . . . hell, it shortened Chess’s breath. Made his chest’s hollow squeeze like the bastard’s fist was thrust deep inside, Rook’s phantom pulse beating hard enough to light the both of ’em