A Book Of Tongues (26 page)

“Aw, Rev, c’mon — ” Hosteen flushed. “You know we’d follow you
into, um . . . wherever takes your fancy.”

“I know, Kees, I know.” He clasped his hands behind his back and
took them all in with a level look. “But here’s the thing . . .”

Oh good,
Morrow thought.
It’s damnation
and
a lecture, tonight.

“. . . since all of you know how hexes can’t work together long,
seein’ me here with the Lady, you must think: what viper have we
taken to our bosom?” He glanced at his “wife,” who had not taken
her black eyes off Chess even the once, in all this intervening time.
“But Lady Ixchel here, she’s
more
than just your ordinary hex — more
than me, Songbird, or any other sorcerer you may have heard tell of.
Where she comes from, them that use magic are powerful beyond
the dreams of any minor mage or witch. They don’t gobble each
other up, ’cause they don’t
have
to. They got other ways to get what
they
need — ”

— by takin’ it from
us
somehow, no doubt —

“ — and that alone’s what proves she’s got the goods to show me
how to bind any other hex —
every
other hex — I meet to our cause.”
He brought his hands together and knotted them in one another, as
if strangling a ghost. “Or just suck the life outta any won’t join up
anyhow, whichever comes first.”

As Rook’s voice took on an unnatural resonance, the steel-spike
pain flared in Morrow’s skull once more. He saw the other men’s
eyes glaze over too, and knew hexation was at work.

“We’ll live like emperors, boys, doing whatever we want,
whenever we want. No more running and hiding, just sweet cream
and an endless river of gold, once I gain my apotheosis — become a
god, or damn near like unto one.”

“
The
God ain’t bound t’like
that
much, I’d think,” Hosteen
muttered. “I mean . . . ain’t makin’ yourself
a
god somewhat ’gainst
Bible-lore, at least a little, for a preacher?”

Morrow felt the hairs on his neck ruff just a tad, and braced
himself for yet more offhand killing. But Rook just smirked.

“Almost certainly so,” he replied. “But I hate to tell you, Kees
. . . me and the Good Lord ain’t been on speakin’ terms for quite
some time now.” He shot a hot glance at Chess, and added: “Obvious
reasons.”

Usually, Chess would have returned the look in kind — but not
today. Not with Lady Ixchel looking on.

“Me a god, Chess,” Rook said. “You too, maybe. How’s that
sound?”

Chess reddened. “Sounds like . . . well, no sorta fun at all, t’me,”
he finished, and fell sullen-silent, as if even he could hear the whine
in his own voice. A balky child quibbling over wrapping, when the
present itself was rare beyond belief.

That
did
make the whole room laugh, right out loud. Even
Hosteen smiled, and Rook himself guffawed with deep hilarity. But
there was an odd, almost unconscious affection in it as well.

“Joe,” Rook called out, over the laughter, “uncap every bottle
you got.” He reached inside his coat, pulled out a purse heavy with
strange metal, and flung it at the barkeep, who caught it one-handed. “Should be enough in there to cover it all, with gold left
over. Gentlemen — tonight, the drinks’re on me. ’Cause tomorrow,
we spit in the Devil’s eye, and take the world for our own!”

A general maddened hurrah erupted, with Morrow, Hosteen,
and Chess the only ones who didn’t immediately rush the bar; Chess
stood still where he was, glowering at the Rev while trying to ignore
Lady Ixchel completely — which didn’t bode well, for anybody. So
Morrow risked both a hand on Chess’s shoulder and a nudge forward,
praying Joe might have just one more bottle of absinthe he hadn’t
admitted to still in store.

“Look kinda green, Chess,” he said. “Let me stand you one.”

Chess didn’t fight, but didn’t shift his eyes, either. “Tryin’ to get
me gay? Hope you’re not lookin’ for some sort of repeat performance,
Morrow.”

“Hardly. Naw, I reckon you’re still the Rev’s just like he’s still all
yours, tonight and always.”

“Just like,” Chess repeated, with even less affect.

“You got any cause to doubt it?”

“
No
.”

“Well . . . act like you mean it, then.” Glancing back at Lady Ixchel,
Morrow added: “I mean — you can’t be worried over
her
account, can
ya? Long as you and the Rev been — together?” He shook his head.
“Throw it off, son. It’s a chigger-bite in a windstorm.”

“You ain’t my damn daddy,” Chess snapped, automatically. Then,
after a moment: “She smells like
him
, you get in close.”

Morrow shrugged. “She
is
like him.”

“That ain’t what I mean, and you know it.”

Any other time, this last would’ve come out as a sucker-punch, or
even accompanying one. Instead, Chess leaned back against the bar
with his arms crossed — trying for insouciance, yet almost hugging
himself. His purple-clad shoulders rose high and he bent his head
first right, then left, his tense neck cracking audibly.

“Been a while since he’s had him one, I guess,” he said, as if to
himself. “That’s all — somethin’ familiar. Though . . . it
is
true how
he ain’t queer down to the bone, like me. Not really. And me . . .”
Chess paused. “. . . me, I ain’t no hex, Goddamnit.”

Morrow had to bite his tongue. “Well — ”

“Well what?”

“You never know, right? Do ya. I mean . . .
I
could be a hex, I just
got hurt bad enough. That’s the rumour, anyhow.”

“Sure it is. Want me to gut-shoot you right now, so we can find
out?”

That
did succeed in drawing a laugh, after all — from both of
them at once, equally sharp, yet genuine. Morrow felt an instant’s
strange stab of kinship with the little monster standing next to him,
’specially since there were two others within easy reaching distance
who really did have him beat for scariness.

But here came one of them sidling up, a raw flicker of dark on
dark, to lean past Morrow and loom over Chess with a small smile
curving her lips, as she murmured: “Ah, but no . . . there is no power
waiting dormant in your bed-warmer, little warrior. He is a man,
nothing more or less — as good as any other, I suppose, for doing
those things that men do.” The smile deepened, letting out a sliver
of teeth. “Though you may feel free to enlighten me, if I misjudge.”

Morrow, unable to figure out
what
best to say in return, just
stood there, a wax-hall dummy.

But Chess blushed deep, eyes fair throwing out sparks, and
snarled back, “Ain’t too sure how they do things where you come
from, ‘Lady’ — but for my money, Ed and I were havin’ ourselves a
private
palaver, and I don’t recall you bein’ invited.”

Ixchel’s own laugh rippled out, an ascending glissando of music —
light and cold, yet weirdly innocent. “Aaaaah,” she said, her teeth
fully out now. “You
are
such an angry little man, Mister Pargeter. For
so little cause, and with
such
small result.”

“There’s a host of dead men would disagree with you on that
one — ”

“But then,” she continued on, without even seeming to hear, “he
did
warn me of this when we discussed you, earlier. . . .”

“Who did — Ash?” Chess blushed further. “Ash wouldn’t — ”

“And why would he not? Being, as he is, my very own. . . .”

Not the guns, then, but Hosteen’s knife. Chess had it out and
brandished before Morrow could blink, so close its shine lit Lady
Ixchel’s dolorous eyes from the outside-in. Saying: “Keep on callin’
him ‘husband,’ you gimcrack bitch, and I’m gonna stick
this
right in
your — ”

“Oh, shhhh.”

No pause in the surrounding rollickry, but as of that exact split-second Chess was stuck — eyes locked with hers, strung tight and
humming. Unable even to close his own lips as she leaned near
enough to steal the breath from them, crooning: “Here, child.
Here
. Yes.
This
is better.” She gave him a protracted huff, sniffing
him deep. “Aaaah, yes. It is as the Reverend implied.
So
strong, so
singular . . . and so untouched, even now. So . . . inviolate.”

Morrow looked for Rook, and found him closer than he’d
thought — a step or so behind Lady Ixchel, near enough to look down
over her shoulder — yet hardly close enough for comfort.

Chess’s lids were fluttering now, ever-so-slightly, and . . . damn,
if Morrow hadn’t seen that look before, back at the Two Sisters,
watching the air between Rook and Chess grow slimy-liquid and run
like blown glass, while Rook sucked a portion of Chess’s very life
from him in the service of a Little Death.

And yet Chess managed to bite out, while the lover he’d thus far
trusted to protect him simply stood there and watched — “
You
. . .
don’t . . . know
me
worth shit on a shingle, ’f
that
’s what you think . . .
‘Lady.’”

A spasm ran through him, heel to head, as he struggled to
free himself — and almost succeeded, before Lady Ixchel laughed
again, and made a casual motion with her left hand’s little finger,
insultingly tiny. Which tied him up tight once more, jaws locked
and straining. She leaned farther forward, to sleek her lips up the
cords of his tense throat, spilling out a rope of foreign words whose
syllables crackled and crawled, sluggish, bruising the eardrum.

On Chess, their effect was both immediate and horrid: it brought
him up against her in a single hapless heave, pressing himself to
her curves, inhaling her smell — wrapping himself in her torrential
hair, which almost seemed to rise and embrace
him
, in its turn. Set
his pupils skittering, frantic for escape, even as it hooked him
deep
between the legs, pushing his trouser-fronts tight.

Oh God,
what
? What the ever-friggin’ hell —

The day Chess Pargeter looks t’ engage himself with any woman’s
situation’ll be a cold one in the Hot Place for sure,
Hosteen had told
Morrow, once — and though Morrow found he couldn’t remember
why, the remark had stuck with him ever since. Which was just one
of many reasons why this, right here, was unnatural . . .
awful
.

Like he’d said last night, Chess wasn’t made that way — and the
Lady damn well seemed to know it. To
revel
in it.

Morrow looked back to Rook again, heart slamming, but
registered no appreciable difference in attitude. In fact, the Rev
seemed similarly statue-bound, one hand held mid-rise, on its
way toward Ixchel’s shoulder. The long span of it twitched, as
though galvanized — or like he, too, were deriving a sick spiritual
nourishment from Chess’s plight. Were somehow piggybacking on
the Lady’s extraction, siphoning away its topmost layer for his own
enjoyment while Chess hung in agony between them, made a meal
of . . . predator turned prey, at the mercy of two hungry hexes.

Goddamn vampires, the pair of them,
Morrow thought, as the
Manifold spun and kicked with vile activity.
Yet not a soul around
seems to see it, savin’ me, Hosteen, Chess. Chess, who can’t do nothin’ to
save himself. And us — who won’t
.

Lady Ixchel stroked Chess Pargeter’s cheek with one hand, deftly
plucking his knife away with the other — turned it so the blade was
toward him and briefly menaced one green eye with it, as though
to see if he’d give out any betraying blink. But when he refused to,
she only grinned the wider, reversed it once more and slid it straight
down the front of her bodice. A single perfect brown breast sprang
forth, grazed along its inner orbit, deep enough that one small
blood-drop ran quick and sure to gild the sharp, red nipple.

Chess stared at it, hypnotized. And when Ixchel flicked that
littlest fingertip of hers yet again — he went down on both knees,
heavy enough to skin them. Mashed his face into her cleavage and
opened wide, sucked at that poisonous orb like he was a baby once
more, so unfamiliar with his own nature that he might think to
take small comfort there. And groaned aloud as he did so, utterly
overcome: his deadly pistoleer’s hands aflutter ’round his stretched-to-busting trouserfront buttons, like he yearned to pop them all at
once and bring himself off in a stroke or two, spill his seed in the
saloon-floor’s trash.

“Oh yes,” Ixchel told him, stroking his head softly — while all
around her his stolen power boiled off in waves, contemptuously
wasted. “I know
you
, warrior.
Ixiptla
. Little god-to-be. I have known
you a thousand times — you and all men who were
born
to die for me,
in shame, and pain, and ecstasy. Your heart’s-blood is fire. I could
drink it a million years, and never weary.”

“Lady . . .” Rook said, finally.

To which she responded by hugging Chess closer, whispering,
into his ear, “But because my little king loves you, I will not; your
blood is his, and his alone, to shed.”

A few steps over, Morrow glimpsed Hosteen keeping his own
gaze steady-trained anywhere else, unable to bear to watch. And
Christ, how he envied the man for not having to see Chess and the
Lady tandem-step in a funeral march, heading for the stair, while
Rook followed after, his hand still on Chess’s arm.
Pushing
.

“I’d move on now, Ed, if I was you,” he said, all but throwing
back a damn man-of-the-world
wink
. “I mean . . . you had
your
fun,
already. Didn’t you? But tonight’s for us, and we really don’t need no
witnesses.”

Chess moved sleepwalker-slow past Morrow’s elbow, his stunned
stare flicking just the once to lock with his, then fall as though cut
free. And Morrow . . .

Morrow did nothing to stop him — stop it. Because there was
nothing he
could
do.