The Devil's Bag Man (23 page)

Valentine dropped to his knees.

I will never doubt you again, Great One
.

The light or heat or energy or whatever the fuck it was reached his fingertips, and Cucuy's raised arms shot downward, like a pianist sounding a concert's first notes.

The light cut through the darkness, ten blinding high beams forked and divided in midair, branched and rebranched.

By the time they reached the combatants on the ground, there were hundreds of them.

Each one found the chest of a Virgin Army soldier and lit her up like a paper lantern. They thrashed, tried to escape, but the light was like a tractor beam; it held them immobile, penetrated their bodies until they, too, glowed from within.

The scent of burning flesh rose from them, and Valentine flashed on childhood afternoons spent immolating ants with a magnifying glass.

But this was something else.

A moment later, in perfect synchronicity, every last girl caught in Cucuy's clutch exploded into a fountain of charred flesh and black blood.

They spattered the ground like tiny storms of hail, and Valentine released the breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

The sun was back in the sky now, shining down on a very different war. Cucuy raised his arms toward it again, and Valentine understood, with a rush of elation, that he was reloading.

SHERRY WATCHED FROM
the palanquin, perched high atop a hill that afforded a perfect sight line into the prison yard.

Chacanza had startled when the beams hit, and she twitched when the girls went down, wrenched as if she could feel their pain.

By the time the monster destroyed a second cadre of warriors, the queen's face was a mask of dismay and hatred. Her army was in disarray; some of them sprinted away from Ojos Negros and others fought on, flailing at the rejuvenated prisoners as if the goal was to savage as many as possible before their own inevitable demise. But their coordination was off, the hive mind ruptured; they no longer moved in orchestrated collaboration.

The mind controlling them was divided against itself, Sherry thought. She glanced over at Chacanza, but the queen was gone.

Cucuy's third strike took down as many as the first two combined. The sun blinked like a loose lightbulb in the sky, and Sherry braced herself for more, wondered how far his reach extended, where the limits of his power lay.

If there were any.

She found Chacanza standing just outside the conveyance, staring straight at him. Sherry couldn't begin to fathom the look on her face. How long had the queen lain in wait, in secrecy, building her strength, spoiling for war?

The answer, it seemed, was
too long
.

And now she was exposed. Routed. Hemorrhaging soldiers, forced to watch as the enemy's tentacles began their insidious creep across the face of the world.

Sherry had been wrong. He did not
think
he was invulnerable. He
was
invulnerable.

And if she was to keep her promise to Cantwell, they had to get the fuck out of there right now.

Sherry wasn't afraid to say so.

She stepped before the queen to block her view. “Hey. We gotta go. Now. Before it's too late. Before he sees you.”

“He cannot kill me,” Chacanza answered, but her voice was hollow, flat. “He cannot even see me, unless I allow it to be so.” She moved a step to her right, reestablished her vigil.

Sherry stepped in front of her again.

“Yeah, well, he can kill me. And my friend. We've gotta fall back. Make another plan.”

“No.”

The voice came from behind her. Sherry turned. Gum was hauling himself out of the palanquin, rubbing the crust from his eyes.

“We've gotta stay the course.”

Sherry felt her sap rise. “Are you out of your fucking mind?” She jabbed a finger toward Ojos. “Take a look. While you've been sleeping, we've been getting slaughtered.”

Gum's lank body vibrated with urgency, the man suddenly a tuning fork. He wrapped one clammy hand around Sherry's forearm, then reached out, grabbed Chacanza with the other, spun her toward him.

“Galvan,” he said. “I seen him. And Tezcatlipoca. I was with 'em both.” He found Chacanza's eyes. “I seen you too.”

“What did you see?” Sherry demanded. “What's happening?”

Another web of light flashed down from Cucuy's hands, and Chacanza buckled at the knees as hundreds more of her followers were obliterated.

Gum watched it happen, then turned back to them and swallowed hard.

“We've gotta buy him more time.”

G
alvan plummeted through the void, arms and legs pinwheeling. He clawed at the empty air, opened his mouth to scream—

Wait
.

Hold on, motherfucker
.

Calm your stupid ass down
.

Breathe
.

This wasn't free fall. This was a holding pattern. A waiting room. Tezcatlipoca was stitching together a world, building a crucible in which to drop him. Best thing to do was center himself, face whatever was coming with an empty mind, loose limbs, a total lack of expectations.

Strip himself down to reflex and muscle.

Luckily, a lifetime of being an impulsive knucklehead and three months of tamping down the Aztec priest trying to colonize his body had prepared Galvan nicely for this contingency.

Wasn't much point in trying to anticipate what a crazy, sadistic, drug-addled deity might dream up anyway.

There was ground beneath him now, a landscape of red clay dirt and scrub brush that spread across the nothingness like spilled water.

Galvan felt his velocity diminish as he fell toward it. When his feet touched the earth, he came down gently, as if he wore a parachute.

At least Tezcatlipoca wasn't trying to handicap the match.

Galvan got into a ready crouch and did a slow three-sixty, scanning this barren, horizonless world for whoever or whatever it was he was supposed to fight.

You must prove yourself worthy to be my sword
.

With his feet under him and his senses coming back online, the god's words took on new shades of possibility.

Put another way, that shit could mean anything.

There was no reason to assume he'd have to vanquish some fuckin' mythical beast. Maybe Tezcatlipoca wanted to see if he had the mental toughness to endure a hundred years of isolation.

Or a hundred years of torture.

Or, hell, put together a million-piece jigsaw puzzle.

What was time to an immortal?

It was hard to know where the three-sixty was supposed to end; nothing in this hastily created world provided Galvan with a landmark. He made two full rotations before he found what he was looking for.

And even then, it was the last thing he expected to see.

Standing fifteen feet away from Galvan, as if he had just sprouted from the earth—

Was Galvan.

It was like looking in a mirror. The man staring back at him was identical in every way, down to the loincloth wrapped around his waist, the furrowed brow, the look of heated confusion flashing in his eyes.

The large stone in his right hand.

Galvan broke off staring and looked down the length of his own arm.

Sure enough, he was clutching the same stone.

The same weapon.

What else could it be? What else could
this
be? It made sense—as much sense as anything else Tezcatlipoca could have thrown at him, anyway.

What better way to prove your worthiness, your will, your mettle, than by vanquishing yourself?

In that fucker's mind, anyway. What Tezcatlipoca didn't know about Galvan could fill a fucking warehouse.

Killing himself was nothing new.

He planted his back leg, cocked back his arm, and hurled the rock at the other Galvan's head with all his might.

Halfway to its target, it collided with the rock Galvan's enemy had hurled at him, and both projectiles fell to the ground.

Galvan looked down at his empty hand and willed a gun to appear.

By the time he raised and fired, the enemy had done the same. The bullets met in midair, just as the rocks had, lead meeting lead, the tips crushing each other and the deformed lumps jumping slightly apart as they, too, fell uselessly to the ground.

Galvan's mind raced.

He doesn't just look like me, he thinks like me
.
Moves like me
.

Is me
.

I've gotta go outside myself
.
Do some shit I'd never think of
.

Before he does the same
.

Galvan threw himself sideways, squeezed off three shots before he hit the ground shoulder first, and watched in consternation as the enemy executed precisely the same move, the bullets canceling each other out.

He scrabbled to his feet, cast the weapon aside, and charged at the other Galvan, full speed ahead.

It wasn't an original idea.

The right cross Galvan threw never met the jaw for which it was intended. Instead, with a sickening bone-on-bone crunch, it met its mirror-image blow, and Galvan's fist learned how those bullets must have felt.

He howled in agony and spun away, cradled his shattered hand, the sound and action doubled.

They regarded each other warily now, twin lions pacing invisible cages, Galvan trying to think through the pain. Whatever deathless-realm quick-healing shit applied to Tezcatlipoca's fuck buddies definitely wasn't in effect here; at least three of his knuckles were broken, the hand mangled and useless.

You're real,
Galvan thought feverishly, clenching and unclenching his good fist, his fury mounting as the enemy did the same.
He's not
.
Even if his fuckin' brain is an exact replica of yours, your pain still runs deeper and your anger burns hotter
.
You been through hell and you got shit to fight for
.
All he's got is what you give him
.

And all you've gotta be is one heartbeat quicker
.
Get close enough that copycat shit won't cut it, and break that motherfucker's neck
.

Do it for the world
.

For Nichols
.

For Sherry
.

Take all the rage and suffering you've ever felt and turn that shit into a grenade, pull the pin, and cram it down his throat
.

Galvan didn't know he was running until he saw the other Galvan doing the same. They collided like opposing tackles at the line of scrimmage, and a half phrase Galvan had picked up in high school physics flashed through his mind.

Something about equal and opposite forces.

He couldn't remember the rest, but he knew this much: he didn't have one iota more strength than this guy. He was putting everything he had into gaining the slightest advantage—calves and thighs, chest and arms straining, blood pounding in his veins—and anybody watching would have thought they were a goddamn statue.

So give
.
Drop your knees and flip him up and over
.
Use his own momentum against him
.

The instant he did it, so did the other—matching Galvan's precise reduction of torque, the exact bend of his legs. They fell to their knees together, still locked in a stalemate.

Galvan wrested his left hand free, raised it to the sky, called down a sword, a knife, some kind of fucking blade. A moment later, he felt the cool hilt in his hand and brought it slicing toward the enemy's vein-engorged neck.

It clanged against metal instead, and suddenly Galvan's head filled with an echo, a memory, a rebroadcast of Cucuy's voice.

The very voice that had done him in.

You cannot outrun me, Jess Galvan
.

He sprang backward, escaped from the grappling deadlock; it would have been impossible had his opponent not matched the action.

Again, they regarded each other from across a chasm of inches.

The man and the shadow.

This time, Galvan had a new thought.

What is it that makes me human?

Until I know that, I cannot win
.

STAY CLOSE TO
me if you want to survive
.

There was so much Sherry didn't understand about those words.

Why Chacanza gave a fuck whether she lived or died, for one.

How proximity to the undead woman currently charging into battle against her ancient, all-powerful lover and sure to command his complete attention the moment he saw her was any kind of recipe for personal well-being, for another.

But here was Sherry, scurrying along in Chacanza's wake as the queen entered the gates of the prison, Cantwell by her side, the three of them flanked by an honor guard of girls, the palanquin and whatever safety or anonymity it afforded abandoned at the top of the hill.

Apparently, buying her father more time—another phrase Sherry was sure she didn't understand—translated to Chacanza as a full frontal assault on Cucuy's stronghold. There he stood, even now, arms raised to the sun, unfathomable power roiling through him and all of it, every last ounce, focused on destruction.

And yet, when she looked at him, all Sherry could see was her father. His poor, colonized body, enslaved by the monster's invisible yoke and driven by its invisible whip.

For her.

Wherever you are, Dad, hurry the fuck back
.

Cucuy's gaze dropped from the heavens to the earth, his black eyes flashing.

A current of electricity rattled through her body, and Sherry knew he had seen her.

She prayed it would not hurt.

The beams shot from his hands. Forked and divided into hundreds of tendrils that crackled through the air.

An instant before they found their marks, Chacanza raised her eyes to his, and her voice cut through the air with as much force as his weaponry.

“Cualli!”

The beams froze in midair.

And then, like tributaries emptying into the ocean, they flowed backward, unbranched, became a single spear of energy.

He sees her,
Sherry thought, dumbstruck.

And then,
That can't be good
.

Cucuy smiled.

If you could call it that.

Then the beam shot forward and hit Chacanza square in the chest.

Sherry heard herself scream. She grabbed Ruth and ran for cover, all that
stay close to me
shit out the window now that the one who'd said it was nanoseconds from bursting like a water balloon.

Her eyes darted frantically across the yard, in search of safe haven. Chacanza's troops were frozen, as immobile as their commander, useless as marionettes without the puppeteer. Some of the Ojos Negros prisoners took the opportunity to drop them with head shots from point-blank range—walking up to them in disbelief and on tiptoe, as if approaching some wild animal that had wandered onto their lawn. Others closed in on the girls with hideous leers spread across their faces; it was dawning on the true scumbags in the crowd that there were other things that could be done to these suddenly oblivious girls.

Most of them, though, stared up at Cucuy, transfixed, waiting. They must have sensed that the battle hinged on these next few moments, on the stunning green-eyed beauty on whom their master's focus rested.

Sherry darted through their ranks, Ruth's hand in hers, until she reached the mouth of a tunnel at the edge of the yard. They stepped inside, and darkness enveloped them. Sherry pressed against the cool wall, her heavy breath echoing against the low ceiling, and peered back out at the battlefield.

Chacanza was still standing.

Still alive.

Still dead.

Whatever the fuck.

And whatever Cucuy threw at her, the queen absorbed.

Or stole. Her body pulsed with the same energy as his now.

But it was more than that, Sherry realized with a surge of hope. She
was holding him at bay. Locking him down. That beam might as well have been a rope, and Chacanza was holding on tight.

Buying them time.

No sooner had she thought it than a cool hand encircled her wrist, and Sherry heard the soft click of a pistol's hammer at her ear.

“Nice to see you again,” intoned Domingo Valentine.

GALVAN BROUGHT THE
blade to rest at his side and shut his eyes, trusting his shadow would do the same—and that what they'd see would be different.

He was staking everything on a concept that had never made a lick of fucking sense to him.

What makes me human?

Faith
.

Try to feel some
.

Ask and ye shall receive, or whatever the fuck
.

With that, Galvan reached out, projected his mind and soul into the cold dark universe, through realms and dimensions unseen and unknown, in search of anything resembling a friend of mankind.

Pinpricks of light shot past him in the darkness, Galvan traveling at the speed of light or thought or who knew what and finding only emptiness, desolation, the very cosmos he'd always envisioned as a cynical kid, a jaded adult, life on this planet just a one-in-a-zillion coincidence and nothing else out there but rock, gas, and crushing sadness.

Then one point of light glowed brighter than the rest, and everything slowed until Galvan felt a sense of absolute stillness.

The point of light grew larger, brighter, until it seemed to scour his insides and burn his soul clean.

Until it had a face.

A name.

Chimalma
.

He didn't know who or what that was, but Chimalma was the source of the buzz that filled his mind. He felt enveloped, subsumed into the womb of the feminine divine, a pulse of wisdom passing into him as if through an umbilical cord.

To call the sense of love he felt for Chimalma overwhelming wouldn't
do it justice. He was not evolved enough to hold or understand love of that magnitude—could feel his consciousness push outward simply to make room for the feeling—and knew that if and when the connection was severed, a new order of misery, of desolation, would move in and fill it.

Knew with a sudden, fleeting clarity that it was precisely this desolation that afflicted and defined the world.

And then it happened. The light receded. The warmth drew back into itself, and Galvan was more alone than he had ever been.

Forsaken.

But he knew what he had to do.

The test Tezcatlipoca had set before him was not a question of physical prowess. One did not conquer the self through aggression, any more than a sword was capable of cutting through shadow.

Or, to put it in fortune cookie terms,
Man who fights himself will always lose
.