Free A Book Of Tongues by Gemma Files Page B

she spoke on,
that impossible voice, only underlined by the thin, gnawing whine
issuing from his own throat, endless and terrible and raw.
    Saying, gently: Save him, save them. Punish your enemies,
reward your friends. Do as your God does. Become as your God
is.
    Save yourself.
    No breath left to speak with, not even to beg. Yet the words flew up
anyhow, spilled from his mouth and swam in front of his eyes like
sparks from cinder, molten-silver hot, and burned whatever they
touched, until the whole world howled out in unison —
    Therefore saith the Lord GOD. Behold, I, even I, am against
thee, and will execute judgments in the midst of thee in the
sight of the nations.
    And I will do in thee that which I have not done, and
whereunto I will not do any more the like, because of all
thine abominations.
    Therefore the fathers shall eat the sons in the midst of
thee, and the sons shall eat their fathers. And I will execute
judgments in thee, and the whole remnant of thee will I
scatter into all the winds.
    The funnel, that moving finger, swept in on a slather of whipped
dust, a froth of stones and swirling brick-bats. To either side, the
sky remained clear — grey-blue with a messy touch of pink to it,
frostbit flesh turned inside-out. But inside the twister was only rain
and darkness, so cold it tore skin wherever it touched. And yet the
wavering path of its eye swept over Rook’s fellow prisoners entirely,
while pivoting to tweeze the rest of Captain Coulson’s company
out of Heaven’s reach. They scatter-shot in all directions, spread so
far that the only sign that the camp had ever been inhabited was a
single torn grey sleeve full of shattered bone and red muck poking
up through the debris, its buttons still a-glint, intact.
    Then the rope finally snapped, and Rook dropped to his hands
and knees as the scaffold broke apart around him, watching through
blood-dimmed eyes as the pieces flew up and away, into the whirling
sky. Blood and spirits forced themselves into their former channels,
a flash flood through a needle’s eye, nerves pin-pricking so
intolerably he spent a breathless moment cursing himself, paralyzed
with pain — wishing himself hanged again, a thousand times over,
for the unforgivable crime of cutting himself down too soon.
    The twister spent itself in an outward rush and dissipated, slung
clouds and rain across the horizon, leaving only wet dusk behind.
    All around, nothing still stood except the things he’d allowed to
survive. The rest was laid waste, sure as Gideon left Jezreel. Like
Chorazin and Bethsaida, whose smoke goes up forever.
    Which made him . . . one of them.
    Exodus, 22:18. Fit only to be weeded out, burned and buried, their
graves sown with salt. Just like that poor boy with the one goat’s
eye, trembling in fear with his sidelong pupil opening squarish, as
he stared headfirst down into the flames.
    Back in Missouri, in Rook’s first parish, “good” people had tied a
sick child to a ladder and cooked him over a flaming stack of hay, for
the grand crime of being born a witch’s get — while Rook had done
nothing but watch and pray, because they were his, and he theirs.
Which was why he’d left under cover of night soon after, fled as far
as the stage-ticket bought with his flock’s money would take him,
then got roaring drunk enough to join up. Fleeing from what he’d
seen, and done, by not arguing other parts of the Good Book, for
fear of suffering similar excision and execution. Matthew , 7:3 to 7:5,
for example. 1 Corinthians 13.
    Born different, that boy — and through nobody’s fault, not even
his own. Same as Chess, always flaunting his slick little occasion-for-sin self around, with what he refused to pretend not to be
writ large on every inch of him. Or Rook, too, with his doubts and
deficiencies, the Bible leaping in his breast-pocket every time he
heard something he felt he couldn’t speak out against for himself,
without using Jesus’, Moses’ or Ezekiel’s words