Book Of Tongues

by Gemma Files

  “Goddamn ’f I know what’cha gettin’ at, ya skull-face sumbissh — ”

  Look down, little brother.

  Chess did. There was a crack spreading fast across the floor beneath his bed, hairline to gaping — flourishing open even as he watched, humping the floorboards up, the same way roots break open cobblestones. And beneath, beneath —

  — sure ain’t the ground-floor, no sirree —

  — was nothing but blood, and black, and cold water welling up, looking to breach the crack neat as a flooding river’s banks. A wind of knives, rising.

  A living man should enter neither Mictlan nor Xibalba, Smoking Mirror observed, and those who try, pay prices beyond imagining, as my sister well knows. Perhaps she thought your lover’s retinue would suffice for exchange, allowing you, and he — along with that mutual toy of yours — to escape unscathed . . . and perhaps she would have been right, in less hungry times. But as it stands now . . .

  Chess stared, spat — saw it drop away into the endless gap, back down to where the skull-racks sang and the ball-players danced. Then, wrestling with his own slack mouth, demanded: “You . . . sayin’ I did that, somehow?”

  A shrug, and the voice in Chess’s head became Oona’s once more. Just sayin’ ’ow your warlock didn’t even ’ave the guts to ask outright, so ’e gambled on it bein’ easier to beg forgiveness after than ask permission before. Put you in a trance, tried to make you into one of me — an’ damn, if ’im and ’er didn’t succeed, but not the way they wanted. ’Cause when you’re enspelled, you can’t say yes or no, as such — can’t submit fully, gladly, as a good ixiptla should. If you ’ad, things’d be . . .

  The clear implication: better. Less — apocalyptic, maybe.

  Went on ahead and ended the whole world, him and you, with your Godlessness: that’s what you did. Sure ’ope you’re happy now. . . .

  Chess spat again, a barely disguised snarl. Snapping, in reply: “Uh huh. And if my aunt had nuts, she’d be my uncle, and if things weren’t the same, they’d be different. So fuckin’ what?”

  At that, cold wind from below met — abruptly — with an equally cold front of wind from above, a rush of “godly” disapproval: Don’t mock, meat-thing. Chess flashed his teeth outright, this time, and bore it. Perverse as it might be, he’d match his own hotness ’gainst the coldest shit on this earth any damn day, let alone from under it.

  But merely thinking this blasphemy alone seemed enough to work the turn. That blue flame leaking from Smoking Mirror’s head-set coal-pot straightened in a quiff, rearing proudly once more. The monster itself loomed closer, holding Chess’s defiant eyes with its own. Crooning, wordlessly: Oh, but I do like you VERY much, little brother. You have true mischief in you, fit to breed and burn. Let loose, you will seed this Flat Earth well with chaos and horror, carving roads for all the things even now escaping from the Ball-Court’s gravity to follow.

  “Screw you, you spooky motherfucker! I already shot you the once, even if it was in a dream — ”

  Yes, I remember. And that . . . only makes me like you more.

  Fast as it’d whipped up, the heat was draining out of Chess again, maybe through that same gaping, skin-shielded hole in his chest — he coughed and clutched himself, bent in over his own absence.

  Naked, if not ashamed, he felt his numb-tongued incoherence return, and fought hard to demand, ’fore he was no longer capable of distinct speech. “Uhhmmmean . . . why the fuh sh’d I lissen t’ yuh ’t all, ’bout anythin’. . . .”

  ’Cause I’m you, little brother. No-voice sliding back to Oona’s naff scolding tone, now, fast as sooty London winter: Fink I can’t be ’er too, just ’cause she’s dead? All the dead are mine, no matter ’oo, an’ all of them find their way down ’ere to me, eventually. They come an’ go, like tides, but we endure, all my four faces — red, white, blue, black. All the same.

  “Fuh yuh! Sure’s heh ain’t, ’n’ I . . . ne’er wih be!”

  A shrug, so large it seemed to ripple the roof. No? Take a look, then — see for yourself.

  Though Chess tried hard to keep his gaze from going back to that meat-set blackness, both eyes returned nevertheless, as of their own will — spellbound, death-magnetized. Without fanfare, he beheld himself enthroned, splendid yet ghoulish — all turned inside-out and hung with corn-silk, a garland of ripe ears in ’round his blood-sticky head, and the green of his eyes converted to new growth — the spirules of budding stalks pushing out his sockets, bisecting both palms in imitation of Christ’s passion, offered helpless to the world at large.

  My body and blood, here, take, eat. All flesh shall be grass.

  But that last, that ain’t me either, bein’ how I’m a God-starved whoreson queer raised in knocking-shops who’d rather spit on the Good Book than have it read at him. I don’t know any of that crap. That’s . . . Ash Rook, you faithless fuckin’ fucker, HELP ME . . .

  And Smoking Mirror, smiling down: Pelirrojo, conquistador. Red hair, red face, my own red self, little brother, o brother mine. . . .

  “Born t’ live fast and die young,” it said, meanwhile — out loud — at the exact same time. “Born to raise ’ell. That’s what your man an’ my sister wanted, all right — a Flayed Lord fit to sow a fresh new crop of gods, all the way ’cross this empty West of yours. ’Course, the people as already live there might ’ave somethin’ t’ say on the matter . . . but then again, that’s ’alf the fun.”

  “What are you?” Chess repeated yet one more time, hoarse and hollow.

  “I’m your Enemy, son — yours, an’ every other’s. Chess Pargeter, English Oona’s boy, Asher Rook’s lover. Trickster. Killer. Destroyer of worlds.”

  Its voice dropped, intimately, effortlessly reassuming that other, interior tone — But the real thing to keep in mind, when you’re calm enough to do so, is this . . . I am your enemy’s Enemy, as well.

  “The” Smoking Mirror gave Chess a push, right over the miraculously unscarred area where his stolen heart should reside: a mere flick, the easiest of keep-aways. And Chess felt himself drawn down, down, back down into his body again, the soft box of his flesh locked shut on him, a movable, woundable, wounding coffin — ’til finally he woke up again, mid-leap, while rocketing out of bed: a spent shell, momentum-burnt, dead to the touch.

  Still screaming.

  Next door, in his hotel-room, Morrow heard Chess come to and whipped ’round, staring at the wall. From the mirror, Reverend Rook followed his actions, though only with his eyes.

  Showtime, son. So . . . you do know what it is you gotta do now, right? Chess’s scream went on, arcing high, every new second of it a further lost opportunity — but Morrow hung back nonetheless, letting all his breath out in a huff, long enough that Rook’s amusement started to slide to annoyance.

  Right, Ed?

  “I’m thinkin’.”

  Well, think fast, damnit. Songbird ain’t but a few steps behind. “No doubt.” Morrow straightened up, full height, shoulders squared — then added, as he turned to stare deep into Rook’s phantom face: “Oh, and speaking of which . . . you do know since she already broke your spell, that means you can’t make me do shit, anymore.”

  Rook shook his head, sadly. Aw, Ed, c’mon. It’s Chess who’s laid the spell on you now, much as he don’t even know it . . . and deeper by far than anything I could’ve whipped up, seein’ he’s finally let loose all the explosive power of a lifetime’s stored-up hexation at once — with not an ounce of skill to temper it, in the expression.

  The scream had long since lapsed to an air-hungry half-sobbing, less bereft than infuriated. Morrow could hear Chess blundering around, circle-caught and hammering at the invisible walls Songbird’s wizard-trap had set up ’round him, cursing freely in a dry, exhausted whisper. In consequence, both rooms seemed quieter now, even somehow smaller — cramped with intentions, both good and bad.

  “Lie down with hexes, that’s what you get, huh?”

  Dogs and fleas, Agent.

  �
��So I’m fucked either way, is all.”

  Maybe so, yes.

  Which was no sort of surprise at all, of course. And all Morrow could do, in the end, was take it, with a sigh.

  “Best not to keep him waiting, I guess,” Morrow told his suddenly empty quarters, as the mirror irised securely shut once more. And opened up the door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Cramps racked Chess and pitched him back onto the bed, doubling him over. He managed to roll far enough to get his head over the edge and retched up onto the floor. No stranger, that particular feeling . . . almost comforting, for sheer normality. Until he cracked his eyes open again and saw what lay steaming on the floorboards: a wide, scarlet puddle of blood, with insects all a-wriggle in it, wings buzzing. Blood fell away to reveal rainbow glitter and huge crystal eyes.

  Dragonflies.

  They took to the air, filling it with a skin-crawling buzz. Several seemed to have been vomited up mid-bugfuck, careening awkwardly ’round in pairs, their black segmented tails still fused. Mouth open, Chess followed their flight and then froze, eyes locked on the corners of the bed’s headboard, where two dark reddish rings of powdering metal hung broken from bright new chains. Like a score of years had passed in a night, making wrought iron shackles into useless rust, easily shattered with the flick of a wrist.

  Two at the head, for his arms. Two at the foot, equally decayed, for his new-freed ankles. A folded set of duds on the nightstand, drab but serviceable. And — his guns, laid out neat, polished and repaired. With his belt and holsters coiled next to them.

  How his hands itched to strap those back on, and draw! But there was no way that wasn’t some sorta trap, same as the ring of Chink scrawl drawn ’cross the floor beneath — circling him with a net Chess couldn’t seem to fight free of, no matter how hard he instinctually rammed and thrashed against it.

  Heart trip-pounding, eyes wide and wild, ricocheting back and forth and back again: door, bed, floor, guns. Door, bed, floor, guns guns guns guns —

  The door itself banged open, freeing Chess Pargeter to gladly obey his oldest and swiftest instincts — to snatch both sidearms up by their barrels, flipping them mid-way, and thread indexes through triggers like a damn magic trick. Thumb-cock the hammers, low and level, and train them both on whatever — whoever — was revealed.

  Ed Morrow, as it turned out. Agent Ed Morrow, that was. And looking none the worse for his trip Down Under, either.

  “Chess . . .” he began, then stopped short, the very sight of him apparently enough to drive a man’s words out of his head entirely. “. . . I, uh — see you’re awake.”

  “Uh huh. Figure that out all by yourself?”

  “Um . . .”

  Squinting hard at Morrow, Chess abruptly discovered that the additional buzzing he was “hearing” (above and beyond that of his sicked-up companions, who were already starting to die off, perhaps over-weighted down with a double payload of blood and impossibility) must be that of Morrow’s actual thoughts, which almost immediately began to blunder through Chess’s own skull. A goddamn offputting thing, not least since it made him inevitably wonder if Rook had always been able to read his, all along. . . .

  The thoughts jumped forward, clarified and blew up hurting-large: himself staring back, looking somehow older, even tougher than before — both less and MORE attractive in a strange way, even with a FIREARM POINTED STRAIGHT ’TWEEN MORROW’S EYES —

  — aw shit, God DAMN that stings!

  “You . . .” Chess said, slow, and shook his head. Coughed again, wrackingly. “You’re a goddamn Pink.”

  “Chess, it ain’t like you think it — ” But here Morrow seemed to register Chess’s blood-slicked chin for the first time — along with the raucous, hovering debris of his recent supernatural up-sick — and stopped again, transfixed. “ — just what the hell did you let Rook do to you, you damn crazyman?”

  Chess scowled at him, drunk with pain and fatigue and fever. He couldn’t keep both guns up any more, and let the left one drop to the bed, while the right one wavered. “Well — are you, or ain’t you?” he demanded.

  “That’s neither here nor there. What did he do?”

  Chess didn’t glance down, though his other hand brushed automatically against the raw-to-touch skin where his scars should lie but didn’t, stroking it.

  “Cut out my heart, fool,” he snapped back, annoyed by Morrow’s incredulity. “Just like you saw.”

  “Literally?”

  “You were damn well there, weren’t you? Pinkerton man?”

  Morrow sighed again. “Look . . . it ain’t what it seems.”

  “Yes it is,” Chess said, and pulled the trigger, which clicked hollowly against nothing. Enough of a surprise to make him pop out the barrel and gape at the empty chamber, thus allowing Morrow time to both roll his eyes and snatch the gun away with one sharp yank.

  “I took the bullets out three damn days ago,” he snapped, though he knew Chess wasn’t listening (and Chess knew he knew, in a completely distinct way from how he’d’ve once meant that sentence — Jesus, this shit was weird). “Just left the guns so you wouldn’t pitch a fit, if you woke up and found them gone. Now c’mon — you’re sick. Get back in bed.”

  “Sure. Gonna try and hold me down?”

  Morrow flushed, and Chess knew, precisely, to the last little drop — as if gauging the mix of a favourite drink — how much of that flush was memory, equal parts arousal and embarrassment, versus how much was exasperated anger . . . with something else lurking lower yet, gobsmacking in its urgency, its stark truth: fear. Of Chess — no surprise there. But also — for him.

  Shuddering, Chess pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “I’m worse by far’n just sick, Morrow,” he said. “Sick people don’t heave up bugs, or puke cooked blood — and better still, when people ain’t got a damn heart in their chest, sick or not, they usually go on and die. Not to mention how there’s no sickness I ever heard tell of lets you fuckin’ well hear what someone else is thinkin’ — ”

  But that was a mistake, ’cause the instant the words were out, Morrow paled, and Chess swayed under the cold blast of his fear before he threw it off with a jolt that rocked both of them: No no no shit, get your head out of my head you sumbitch!

  Silence and numbness slammed down. Chess stared hard at Morrow, who stared back — then sighed. And replied, “Sounds like hexation, right enough . . . ’cause you’re a hex, Chess. That’s the sad truth of it.”

  Morrow crossed to the nightstand, flipped the plain denim clothes at him. They fell on top of the bed. “You don’t wanna sleep, fine. Put those on, at least. We got business to discuss.”

  And I could stand not havin’ to watch your tallywhacker jig free under there, while we do it.

  Oh get out, get out, get GODDAMN OUT!

  “I don’t see how there’s any sorta business left ’tween you and me, exactly — ” Chess started.

  But here Morrow whirled on him — faster than Chess had ever seen him move, ’cept maybe in the occasional gunfight.

  “Inside this circle Songbird’s done up here, you got no more mojo than I do, Mister Pargeter,” Morrow snarled, his sideburns fair to bristling with the righteously angry effort of it. “There’s enough men to fill a whole goddamn state would wanna kill you, they found you like this — and I might even be one of them, too, if I didn’t already have bigger shit to worry about.”

  Initial rage expiated, he stood back up again, but his glare didn’t lessen. “You spent one half your whole life thinkin’ you were dirt, but the next thinkin’ you were a man above all other comers, just ’cause you could draw faster and shoot better’n any of the rest of us. But ain’t nobody gets to call himself a man who don’t clean up his own fucking messes.”

  The new door in Chess’s brain swung open a moment. Immediately, Chess was submerged, still and breathless, under a bitter surge of anger, frustration . . . contempt, marrow-stunned with the hurt of it, the shock. Maybe because of its shee
r inside-out impact, if nothing else, for to be loathed, looked down on, was certainly nothing new. But — Morrow’s rush of disgust, temporary as it might prove, had nothing to do with the truths-turned-insults flung out. No. What riled Morrow ran far deeper — was the sheer perversity of Chess’s own nature, that unbreakable wilfulness he’d always revered in himself, as sign and source of his innate freedom. His stark refusal ever to be bound, to obey aught but his own whim and want.

  Because while he could walk free and hold a gun, Chess Pargeter answered to no man — no man, no law, no damn body, motherfucker. No ideal, no cause, no force but sheer chaos, bound and determined to move unimpeded and burn for the sake of burning. To never submit himself to ghost or hex or priest or even God, ’less he damn well wanted to.

  No man except Ash Rook, that was — for a time. And after this last betrayal, from now on . . . not even him.

  ’Course not, Morrow’s anger spoke back, unimpressed by Chess’s well-tuned inner litany. That’s ’cause you’re nothing but a brat who never grew up — a skillet-hopping little hot-pants who knows everything ’bout killing and nothing at all ’bout living. Who spits on friendship, duty and honour not ’cause he’s above them, so much, as ’cause he don’t know what they even mean — same way you don’t really grasp how anything’s real, ’cept if you want it, or it hurts you. And that’s why you ended up givin’ everything you had to a man who skinned you alive, then left you stranded down in Hell — ’cause he was what you wanted, and Christ forbid Chess Pargeter ever admit what he wanted was a goddamn bad idea. You made it easy for him, Chess, you damn fool. ’Cause you couldn’t believe you deserved anything better. And me? I’d never do that to you, or anyone. Never.

  The door between them slammed shut once more, leaving Chess alone in his own head, wrung out with surprise and confusion. And Morrow — he didn’t seem to have even noticed their momentary communion. Just folded his arms, jaw set, and repeated: “So get dressed, I ain’t gonna tell you twice. There’s more goin’ on than just you — and for once, you’re gonna help fix it, instead’ve doin’ every damn thing you can to make things worse.”