A Rope of Thorns (Hexslinger 2)

“This is what yuir comrade made of me, Edward.” Gluey decay permeated Pinkerton’s voice, yet it rang with good cheer, as though abandoning any attempt to still sound human was purest relief. He was bigger than he’d been, too, shirt all but buttonless, braces strained over swollen shoulders. “Dinna fret, though—it’s no’ nearly so unpleasant as it appears. I barely sleep; my perceptions are clearer, keener. And I’m strong now, Edward—so strong, it beggars belief!” Ham-hands closed on the ironwork railing before him, and tore it out of the caboose’s frame with a screeching snap. Contemptuously, he cast it down, then hopped out after it. With one fist, he smashed the base of the nearest salt-spear; it burst like cheap porcelain, gone to dust and powder in an instant.

Sort of behaviour’ll sure change your image of a man, no matter how “good” you reckon ’im, Chess mused, seeing how the salt-trapped Pinks’ eyes bulged, on finally glimpsing their leader in the altogether. Or maybe ’specially so, you were dumb enough to think that well of anybody, in the first damn place.

Love stepped forward. “Thought as much,” he spat. “You wish him kept alive because his Devil’s might sustains you; you crave it all, for yourself. By God, that shall not be!”

Pinkerton laughed, gooily. “I’ll concur with Mister Pargeter in one thing, Sheriff: God plays nae part in these proceedings. And so . . .”

Faster than Chess would have believed such a bloated, heavy thing could move, Pinkerton’s bunched fist swung at Love’s jaw—only to slap cold into Love’s upflung palm, and stop. Green lightning billowed, backlashing into Pinkerton, who roared in agony; surprise flattened his already truncated visage into something truly ludicrous. As Love clamped down with all five fingers, the salt that was his substance flowing halfway up Pinkerton’s arm, his opponent’s mass began to shrink, collapsing. In turn, Chess felt that awful pull in his own guts, as Love’s dead essence drank up the power of Ed’s and Yancey’s blood with greedy delight.

Instinct took control, prompting a near-fatal mistake: Chess flung out both his own hands, double gun-stance style, and spasmed as the power-drain’s ripping agony only redoubled. Love turned, slow as minerals forming—ground-salt rippling upwards along his body, coalescing into plates and spikes that sheathed him like whitish-grey slabs of armour, a lime-crusted stalagmite grown head-high in seconds—and smiled.

“Foolish,” he remarked, probably to both of ’em. “Yet not unexpected.”

This loss of contact seemed to snap their link; the lightning died, and Pinkerton dropped back onto his ass with a grunt. Chess buckled to all fours, gasping for breath. At once, every ounce of strength was gone from his limbs; it took all the effort he could manage to keep from simply falling flat on his face. He felt the ponderous, trudging steps as Love came closer, ’til two encrusted boots finally placed themselves before him. Even as he watched, their salt and the ground’s flowed into each other, eddying back and forth.

If there was any sympathy at all in Love’s dead voice, Chess was deaf to it. “Here is your sin, Pargeter—all around you. Bitter shall be your portion.”

Those too-long fingers passed over Chess’s face, stroking scratchily along his lips. A sting struck his tongue, and suddenly he was heaving so hard he couldn’t breathe. Black and stinking blood, sparkling with tiny crystals, splashed over the ground in a foul flood, hollowing him out. He spewed and spewed, vision darkening.

It felt like another tornado, suction-rush tearing strength out of Yancey in hot spurts, each surge of weakness matching one of Chess’s. No sense to it, especially since the ragged bite she’d taken out of her wrist was already closing over, not losing near enough blood to provoke such a sense of shock. But this could never be about mere flesh; it was something in the place, working against her, sucking at her like a sink-hole. A quicksand of salt.

She was on her knees before she knew it, fighting not to get up but to keep from keeling over, tongue ragged, tasting blood. So cold. Not in front of Love, she prayed. Don’t go letting him see you falter.

And then Ed Morrow’s strong arm encircled her, warming her, if only for a second. He bent close, contorted face all a-blur, though she couldn’t tell if the water was in her eyes, or his. “Yancey, honey,” he whispered, “you gotta cut free of this, please.”

She shook her head, waved a feeble hand at the knot of monsters triangulated upon each other, kitty-corner at all angles of Bewelcome’s disaster-emptied main square. “’M . . . part of it, like them . . . all together. Linked.” So clear to her now, the warp and woof strung between all three men: power, immediate and inevitable. A literally fatal web. “So maybe this’s . . . s’posed to happen.”

“Not you.” It came through grit teeth. “Goddamnit, not you, too!”

“Let it ride, Mister Morrow,” said Love, of all people, only his face still showing semi-human through a wealth of salten plate; he tossed his head at Chess, like he still had even one pigtail worth flapping. “She chose her end, by standing with this monster. It’s time for you to walk away.”

Morrow said nothing; his face didn’t even change. But Yancey felt his decision, a punch to the heart—tried to grab at his arm, but slipped her purchase. At the same time, Morrow’s knife slashed down, twice over: once to rip the sleeve, once to lay open the big vein in the forearm. More blood, steaming fresh, to water this unholy ground.

And what crop might yet grow, thus irrigated?

He raised his voice, then, too—and Yancey knew she must be close to crossing over some final threshold, because it seemed she could hear other words beneath his, not even in English. Yet clear enough, for all that . . . clearer by far than the tumult gathering ’round her, massive swirl and grind of some salt-sandstorm looming up between sky and ground, blocking the sun so it shrank pinhole-dim.

“Nomatca nehuatl, ni Quetzalcoatl,

(I myself, I, Quetzalcoatl,

niMatl / ca nehuatl niYaotl,

I, the Hand / indeed I, the Warrior,

niMoquequeloatzin—atle ipan nitlamati . . . .”

I, the Mocker—I respect nothing. . . .)

“Tla xihualhuian, tlamacazque!—

(Come forth, spirits!—

tonatiuh iquizayan, tonatiuh icalaquiyan . . . .”

from the sunset, from the sunrise. . . .)

“in ixquichca nemi