A Book Of Tongues (31 page)

“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.

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 —
who
ever — 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.”