Read Online A Book Of Tongues by Gemma Files - Free Book Online

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