A Rope of Thorns (Hexslinger 2)

“Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter!” Love howled out, joyfully. To which her dear Uther, suddenly bereft of friends, enemies and barely made acquaintances alike, shook his handsome head in disapproval.

“You, sir,” he told Love. “Can just . . . shut the hell up. Your point is made, and you’re frightening my wife.”

Track-caught by such reasonableness, Love paused in his rampage, voice gone abruptly calm. “Well, as to that—your wife is damned, Marshal, I’m sad to say, same as every one’ve those she’s enticed to give the Devil reverence, rendering this place anathema; it should be burnt, so that better people may start over. Burnt to the ground, and its ashes salted.”

Though white-lipped, Yancey found the grace to snort, amazed by her own audacity. “Really. Answer me this, the

n, Sheriff: things only occur ’cause God lets ’em, as I recall . . . so if it works, and it did, who are you to argue?”

Those dead eyes swung back her way, two blasted moons in dull orbit. “Don’t be sophistical, ma’am,” Love replied. “It’s unbecoming.”

Uther took a step closer. “I’m the one gets to decide that, thank you. Now—people have had enough; we’ll solve our own problems in our own way, thank you kindly. Leave.”

“I don’t answer to you.”

To this, Uther smiled, ever so slightly. “Oh?” he asked. And punched Love, hard.

It was a roundhouse hook to the jaw that would’ve floored any other man. But the former Sheriff was—tacky, so the Marshal’s fist sunk in wrist-deep, then stuck. Yancey jumped to his aid, hauling on him with both arms ’til he tore free at last with a horrid sucking noise, sagging back against her. They were both equal-floored by the sight of his hand, skinned something nasty—a literal glove of blood, fingernails torn either almost to the root, or missing entirely.

“Oh, Jesus!” Yancey cried out, and Uther seemed happy to hear her upset on his behalf.

Started to say: “Hush, now—could be worse—”

But that was when Sheriff Love chose to haul off himself, jab Uther so rough he crushed in one eye like a popped egg, then backhanded him into what was left of the altar stone. Uther’s temple struck the corner, skull broken open on impact, with a meaty crunch. One further twist, snapped-stick sharp, and he was looking back at her full-on, over his own shoulder.

Yancey screamed and clapped both hands to her face, as Uther dropped away. She heard him fall. And knew, at last, that she was all alone. . . .

Except for Love.

On the ground, aching all over, Ed Morrow came back to himself in a rush, slammed together once more by the whip-tail scorch of Missus Kloves’—Widow Kloves, now—desolate cry. For a split second, he thought on how it’d be to be made mateless and orphaned on the same damn day, and that supposedly reserved for celebration. How it’d feel to know it was your fault, too, for having brought the means of everyone else’s destruction in through the door and handed ’em ’round like any other guest, thinking your will alone could keep ’em from acting like curse-laden skeletons at your unsuspecting husband’s marriage feast.

A split second only, not a hair more. After which he forced himself up, grabbed Chess ’round his drunken-lolling praise-junkie neck and growled in one ear: “Help her, Goddamnit, ’fore that crazy bastard does her like he’s done for the damn rest! It’s the least you owe.”

Chess’s breath came huffing out visible, heavy with green-spiced vapour. “Don’t owe that bitch nothin’,” he snapped back, automatically. “Hell, I ain’t the one wants to get up under her skirts. You like her so much, maybe you should take a swing at that crusty bastard yourself.”

“Tried that already, remember? You were there. Didn’t end well.”

Before them, Love stood over op Missus Kloves, gesticulating like a premier Sensation Scene melodramatist: The Preacher Transformed, or, God’s Monster! While she, a mere slip of a thing in her green- and dust-stained wedding duds, simply glared at him past her husband’s corpse, grey eyes gone so hard you could strike matches on ’em.

“Well, sir,” she said, with admirable haughtiness, “your work here seems done. Unless you’re fixed to kill me, too.”

Love thought on that, then shook his head. “No,” he replied. “You knew what you did, but not why you shouldn’t, so I’ll trust God in his mercy to grant you time to reflect on your sins, and repent of them. For the nonce, therefore, I’ll let you live, for our great Father’s sake.”

Missus Kloves drew her lips back, showing all her neat white teeth at once. And hissed at him, voice rage-thick, “My father is dead.”

For just a tick, Morrow saw Love’s regained mask of sanity shudder, his leprous hands curl into claws. But with an effort, he appeared to thrust those impulses away from him, having already overindulged, to take the high road. Gave himself a species of all-over shrug, and turned away.

Only to find Chess right there, his fingers already dug deep in the “lapel” of that salt-skin-memory mélange Love wore for a coat.

“Time t’go, Sheriff,” Chess told him. “Just like the Marshal said.”

That same no-explosion, a barely there toll struck on the world’s bell, and so Goddamn fast. Faster yet, every Goddamn time.

Chess and Love were there, then Chess was back, like he hadn’t ever left. And Love?

Gone, at last, if only in body. Not like Pa, Sheriff Haish, Mister Frewer—poor, stupid Hugo Hoffstedt, laid low, never to return. Or Uther.

Yancey sat shivering in the street while Pargeter and Morrow, fellow architects in the destruction of everything she’d ever known, exchanged a look.