Book Of Tongues (Hexslinger 1)

Chess nodded, and kept his eyes firmly locked ceiling-wards — not on anything in particular about it, so much, as just trained in that general direction, but it obviously helped him talk. “She’d’ve killed me if she could, a hundred times over; tried hard enough, ’fore I even came out of her. That was back when she still thought she could be some big man’s kept girl, ’stead of a penny whore. But there I was anyhow at the end of it, redheaded and screaming, like Judas himself.”

“Uh huh,” Rook said, stroking lightly down Chess’s red-and gold-sheened belly, like he was gentling a horse.

“Kept me on her tit ’til I was three, ’cause she heard it’d keep her from gettin’ knocked up again. Had me goin’ through tricks’ clothes by the time I was four. Oh, she’d pet me some when she was drunk enough, or gay enough on smoke, but otherwise — I wasn’t even there. ’Til the day she figured out what I was, and what that could maybe get her, she let only the right sort of people know.”

“Well, she’s dead now, if that helps,” the Rev said, still stroking.

But Chess reared back up, gaze abruptly furious as ever once more, and fixed Rook with it, so sharply Morrow could almost feel the big man’s surprise. “Just don’t you never leave me behind,” he told him. “’Cause if you do . . . I won’t be held responsible, for what comes after.”

A weirdly ineffectual threat, one might think. Yet even from where he stood, Morrow could see the effect it had on the Rev.

“How could you even say such a thing? Look what-all I just done for you, Chess Pargeter.” He hugged Chess to him in a way designed to make anyone’s head swim, and growled, into his open mouth, “I’ll damn my own soul for you, gladly, and that’s a fact. Now — what’ll you do for me?”

“Anything. Like you already know, you king-size bastard. . . .”

“Oh, yes. I surely do.”

Now’s another good time, Morrow thought, and hauled the Manifold out into the light — to find it still spinning with a horrid rattlesnake chatter, teeth shook in a box. To find himself simultaneously caught up and shook alongside: transfixed, unable even to cry out in agony. As though one long javelin made from glass barbs and Jericho thorns had entered through his mouth and bisected his tongue, plunging straight through his trunk and out between his shaking feet to pin him to the floor where he stood.

Don’t anybody ever think to creep up on ’em when they’re . . . engaged? he heard his own voice ask Hosteen.

Saw the old man shake his head, cheerfully: One fool did, sure — planned on turnin’ ’em in to the Pinks, and gettin’ hold of that reward they was offering. But he run ’cross some mojo the Rev laid down all around the room him and Chess were stayin’ in, instead, and it stuck that fucker right to the spot. We found him still there come mornin’, after a whole damn night of hurtin’ too bad to scream. Probably didn’t even feel it, when Chess blew his brains out.

That’ll be me, Morrow thought, helpless. Oh Jesus, what an idiot. I am so damn screwed.

He met his own eyes in the cheval-glass, searching for something to take his mind off his current situation . . . ’cause when it stung this awful, any port in a storm would do, in terms of distraction. And there Rook lay on his belly, down between Chess’s wide-spread legs, working away throat-first to the very red-gold roots of Chess’s cock, so his spine jack-knifed with pleasure, while reaching up to cover Chess’s face with one huge hand, at the same time — spreading it over him, like a blindfold. Morrow could see him kissing Rook’s palm as Rook did it, licking at those long fingers and moaning gutturally, his eyes squeezed tight-closed.

Sighing out: “Oh Ash, oh God, oh Jesus — oh, God fucking damn, that’s good — ”

Rook gave a rumble of laughter, right into Chess’s privatest spots. “Sssh,” he managed, mouth too full for anything else.

Bad enough, but not the worst. Because even as Morrow trembled in the grip of Rook’s spell, rigid with pain, he understood — with sick certainty — that his own drained-white face had always been visible in the mirror, from some angles. For example, the one Rook was looking up at Morrow from, right damn now —

Yes, it’s true, a voice — not his own — said, inside of Morrow’s head. I see you, Ed; know why you’re here, and what for. But, that said . . . watch this.

Well, it wasn’t like Morrow could do anything else.

Dimly, Morrow began to perceive a weird light forming around Chess’s ecstatic, prisoned face, some ectoplasmic substance flowing off of him in a fluid, rotten caul up along Rook’s arm, illuminating veins and muscles as it sunk beneath the skin, vampiristically absorbed.

What the Hell? Morrow wondered. Thinking, at the same time: Bot-flies, and knowing how “Hell” might be the exact correct word, given.

I said to watch this, Edward, Rook’s mind-voice repeated — as, simultaneously, the Rook right in front of Morrow cupped his other hand beneath Chess’s ass, two fingers teasing him open again so they could drive up high inside, feeling for that magic button. Chess’s flat stomach knotted, heels kicking, and a fresh blush blazed up toward his throat; he gave a hoarse half-yell, flailing, while Rook sucked even harder, draining him dry.

The phosphorescence hooding Chess’s head flickered once and went out, a doused lucifer.

Rook grinned at Morrow, licking his lips. Then rose up, naked and dripping as some well-fucked ogre, palming Chess’s lids delicately shut as he went, like he was blessing some corpse he’d just defiled. Didn’t even bother to put on a pair of pants before he crossed back over to where Morrow stood, wavering in the magic circle’s barbedwire net, and pulled him bodily in through the Bridal Suite’s door, kicking it closed behind them.

“So you’re a Pink,” the Rev said. “So what? That wasn’t exactly hard to figure, even without my skills. Most men who’ll go out of their way to join up with me got to have somethin’ really, truly wrong with ’em, so the fact that you’re a good man, let alone good at your job too? Dead giveaway, I’m afraid.”

Though mortified by his own weakness, Morrow couldn’t quite stop himself from making noise at that — a shameful sort of squeak — as the Rev looked back over at Chess, now fast asleep and snoring. “Oh yeah, that’s right — Chess does hate Pinkertons, that’s for damn sure. But that’s how I knew I could trust you, Ed, if things came down to it — ’cause since I could always give Chess good reason to kill you, I figured you’d probably do whatever it took for me not to.”

Then: “But pardon me. I’m afraid I clean forgot you were still in . . . difficulty.”

Rook made a sign in Morrow’s direction, and the pain took flight all at once — such a relief, he all but collapsed into the Rev’s ploughhorse arms. Instead, he stumbled backward, almost flopping down on the bed with Chess before he realized his mistake.

“Naw, don’t want to do that,” the Rev pointed out, mildly. “Try over on that chair, instead.”

Morrow did, straining not to sprawl every which-way. His joints burned like he’d been wrung out, heart tripping clog-step, bowels full of cholera-water.