Book Of Tongues (Hexslinger 1)

“Shit!” Chess shouted, like he was near as surprised as Morrow — for all that seemed highly fuckin’ unlikely.

“Got that right,” Morrow yelled back, kicking ossuary junk away with both feet at once. “Make them lie down again, Goddamnit!”

They were both upright, back-to-back. Morrow swore he could feel Chess shake his head frantic-fast, where ’round mid-spine. “I’m tryin’ — I think. But — ”

— problem is . . . you just don’t know all too much, really, about any of this crap. Why it happens. How to stop it.

Now the stones themselves were getting in on the act, rocking and shuffling like they’d been hit by an influx of mole-diggery, spraying dust and earth in plumes, up high. The bones leapt and tangled, trying their best to reassemble themselves, or maybe cobble something entirely new out of their own ruin — strange and teetery, spider-legged, all grabby-stroking pinchers mated from fingerbones and shoulder blades, tentacles of re-beaded vertebrae dragging ’round in spasmic switching tails. Weird growth of marrows and tubers putty-sticking skull to skull, ribcage to ribcage. Flower-eyes a-bloom and seeking blindly, soft scrabbly root-clumps gone hectic as millipede legs.

And all of it closing in at once, like it wanted to kiss Chess. Lick his boots with its vegetable tongues, leaving a pungent trail of rot and growth behind.

“Chess, for Christ Jesus’ sake, c’mon — ”

Above, a swarm of bats flapped by, their wings squeaking slightly. At closer vantage, they proved to be butterflies made from black volcano-glass, filigreed, rough-hewn. Dipping in formation as they flew, they made a strange back-and-forth mutual flutter, as though saluting Chess with the synchronized rise and fall of their shadows passing by: fluid and staining, same as gunpowder, or ink — or those hellish-cold rivers they’d waded through, near-endlessly, on the road to the Moon Room.

You’re one of them, now, Morrow thought, looking anywhere but at Chess. One of their kings. And they love you for it, all of them.

“Chess — please — ”

“Beggin’ again, huh?” So deadpan-dry, it took Morrow a second to realize Chess Pargeter had made a joke. Like any man faced with craziness and death, and the choice of either laughing or going mad.

Morrow gulped. “Well,” he said, balancing on the fulcrum of his own rising hysteria, “I . . . I did recollect hearing how you liked it that way. . . .”

Which was maybe flirting with intent, or even skirting too close to Chess’s Ma’s old stomping grounds. But at this point, Morrow wasn’t minded to be finicky — just about anything that got them both out the gate would do.

Seein’ how, whatever’s comin’, I’ll definitely stand a far better chance of surviving if I got you by my side.

Chess flickered a grin at him, his old devil-take-everyone-but-me grin. “Ed, you got more guts than smarts. And you already had too many smarts.” Without a second’s pause he turned, held up his hands palm-together, then swept them apart with a cry: “Begone, Goddamnit!”

So thoughtless instinct succeeded, where lack of conscious skill had failed. The bone-creatures, black stone butterflies, bouncing stones and writhing vines, all parted Red Sea-wide, then fled away and out of the graveyard, vaulting the fence or sliding between its iron bars, into half a

dozen alleys and out the main exit.

Within moments, the dull background of screams ramped up sharper, harsher. Closer. Running shadows crossed the nearby streets, and a general smell of panic and blood filled the air.

Chess lowered his hands, gaping. After a moment: “Aw, shit.”

“It’s you,” said Morrow, coming to stand by his side. “You bein’ here, what you are, that’s what’s causin’ it. We leave, this ends . . . I think, leastways.”

A narrow sidelong look: “‘We,’ huh?”

Then, before Morrow could marshal further arguments: “Ah, hell. Might as well.”

From Bewelcome township’s dead heart, meanwhile, a tiny stream of ants — unseen, unchecked, under Rook and Ixchel’s noses both — bore salt away into the desert, grain by tedious grain. To where a black-faced figure squatted by an empty campfire at the crux of a thousand dead roads, studying the future in his own mirrored foot: past and present converging, diverging, splintering.

A million possibilities. Pick one, plant it, water well with blood. See what grows.

Looking deep into the wavy greyness, to seize — at last — upon one particular face and pull . . . hard enough to draw a devotee down once more from his own promised Heaven, to twin him with vengeance unslaked. Rebuild him, particle by icy white particle, then turn him loose — why not? — for no better reason at all than simply to see what happened next.

A man of salt opening his eyes, coughing out the residue of his lungs to glitter on the night wind. And turned his head only slightly, just far enough to catch what light remained aglint off the sharpfiled points of his resurrector’s awful smile.

Your name, little earth-apple . . . give it to me, and quickly. What did they call you, when last you were alive, mi conquistador?

Stretched out full-length, the man coughed again — gathered his strength even in devilry’s overt face, like any warrior of the one true God.

Then rose to meet his brave new life, unashamed in his tall, salt-glazed nakedness, and replied — “. . . Sheriff Mesach Love.”