A Tree of Bones (Hexslinger 3)

“Oh, ye think? Once ye locate that little Mex girl of yuirs, mayhap?”

The Enemy cast another look, less annoyed than slyly amused, this time. Be careful, Pinkerton, it warned him; be circumspect, if you can be. You tread unwisely.

Pinkerton ignored this advice, however, as the creature had no doubt known all along that he would.

So, Ixchel said, gaze fixed on Pinkerton like she was trying to burn through all the layers of his skin at once. You do have her.

“I did. At one point.”

Explain.

Pinkerton struck a pose, hands on hips. “’Twas these two who brought her to me, straight into my camp’s heart — ” He indicated the remaining Missuses Fennig, the motion bringing Eulie’s head up at last, tears already a-sparkle in the corners of her eyes. “ — which at first I thought was for mere negotiation, as a bargaining chip. But no; turns out they truly did only want to save her from you, and the awful fate ye’d condemned her to.”

A sneer, difficult to distinguish, considering how skewed her lips already were. And you jumped at the chance to “rescue” my sweet Marizol, vowed to me by her own parents as a love-offering — to play protector, hide her away somewhere, disguised perhaps behind your tinkerer’s “hex-proof” trinkets —

“Not as such, ma’am.”

Then bring her forth! Restore her to me, now, and I may spare

you . . . may.

“Can’t do that, I’m afraid. For in the end, contemplating upon it, I realized that just as whatever did you good was nothing I wanted a hand in, neither did I wish tae run the risk of you taking her back, no matter what might occur later on. And so . . .”

Oh, just get the hell on with it, you numbskull, Morrow thought, annoyed with these theatrics. While Ixchel simply peered at Pinkerton, not even visibly angered by his ridiculous hubris.

What is it you are saying? she demanded.

But Pinkerton was revelling in his own stupid glory now, making the haze around him bunch and blur, almost dense as Ixchel’s insect panoply. He took time to smooth his beard before calling up to her, gaily: “Yes, I’ve been somewhat remiss in no’ makin’ it clearer, havnae I? For which I apologize. But what I mean is . . . she’s dead. Head-shot. Dead over a day, by my watch. And granted, Our Lord returned after three, good as new or better — but you, ye’re nae Jesus Christ, is what I’m sayin’.”

A slow, impassive blink was Ixchel’s only reaction, revealing supernumerary false eyes mosaicked to their lids — but Morrow went cold all over, every hair erect and stinging. As memory winged past him, he heard Yancey’s toneless voice asking, in that split-second before joy shattered to horror: Sheriff Love?

Signalling Carver and Geyer with a sidelong glance, he first gestured them back without moving — upper body held perfectly still — then eased backward himself ’til his shoulder bumped into Asbury’s; at his nudge, the Professor yielded with a stumble, gawping bemusedly. By inch-fractions they withdrew, all Morrow’s attention left concentrated on those three dreadful beings before them, muscles taut to a fare-thee-well hair trigger.

Then, unexpectedly, Morrow caught Reverend Rook’s eyes — and in them the same tense dread plus something else, wholly unexpected: that amused arrogance the Rev had always affected, most ’specially to his enemies, was gone. Without changing expression, Rook turned slightly, still hanging in the air, looking past Morrow as if he wasn’t there. The black book he’d held in one hand (Sophy Love’s Bible, it jolted Morrow to see), a convenient page marked with a finger, had disappeared up his sleeve.

In that instant, Morrow knew what he had to do.

Ixchel screeched something in that rotten-flower dead tongue of hers, spraying stinking black blood like venom with the force of it, and flung herself down upon Pinkerton. The plunge was thunderstrike-quick; greenish-blue light exploded ’round both of them, as they — and the Enemy — disappeared, together. Morrow was already bringing his shotgun up, swinging it ’cross toward what had once been Clo; had he hesitated even a fraction of a second in choosing a target, he would have been too late, and almost was anyhow. Clo went hurtling straight at Carver, Eulie and Berta, who survived only because Carver sensibly flung the girls’ leashes away, while simultaneously hurling himself backward. Clo’s dagger-length bone claws came within an inch of tearing off the man’s scalp ’fore Morrow’s anti-hex shell slammed into her.

She screeched, spun in mid-air, crashed to the ground, bounced upright once more like a wolverine. A second shot caught her right between the breasts, smashing her backward. Clo reeled, gaping chest hole showing torn innards and broken bones, but the wound was already sealing. Hands flying, Morrow broke open the gun and slammed another two shells home, bracing himself to burn, as a fiery holocaust seemed to well up out of the horrid creature’s eye sockets and mouth together.

Yet here, most welcome, Carver’s pistol thundered instead, stitching smoking hole after smoking hole across Clo’s front. She yowled and sprang away, blurring almost too fast to see over the ground, heading straight for the front lines. Carver stared after her, then let out a whoop, and began to reload.

“What you yelpin’ over, you idjit?” cried Eulie, clambering to her feet. “She’ll tear ’em apart!”

Carver chortled. “Two whole damn armies, miss? Think maybe you ain’t counted those odds right! Ain’t no way one woman, no matter how . . . I mean, she . . . can’t . . . .” But here he trailed off, jaw slack, too mazed with battle heat to register much beyond distant, dismayed shock. “Oh. Oh, sweet Jesus, no — ”

Morrow took one second to check over his shoulder — yes, Rook too had vanished, far less obtrusively than his Lady — then turned back, heart heavy, to watch the catastrophe unfold.

The soldiers had obeyed their sergeants’ orders with all their old precise professionalism: Front line, aim! Second line, prep! Third line, load! Front line, FIRE! — and a shockwave of lead ripped out across the empty plain, slowing Clo only for a second. Unfazed, the front line stepped back three paces; as the second line stepped forward into their place, knelt and aimed, Clo drew closer and closer: Front line, FI — !

Too late.

Clo opened her mouth. What came out was not sound, but light: a white-hot, triple-thick beam of white fire fed from mouth and empty eyes together that tore through the massed ranks like grapeshot crossed with sun focused through a jeweller’s eye. Shrieks of agony erupted skyward, torrenting fountains of blood, severed limbs. Yet these war-hardened men might’ve stood fast nonetheless, even in the face of such carnage, if Clo had not then sprinted directly into the centre of the army — using that very same path of scorched flesh and earth as her guide-trail — and cut into them like a knife-bedecked whirlwind, slashing and stabbing faster and more accurately than any human.

No weapon touched her. Pistols and rifles went off to no effect, or felled hapless comrades. Geyer swayed on his feet, watching it; Asbury collapsed to all fours to empty his stomach. Berta and Eulie held each other up.

In mid-air, above the abruptly empty plain, Ixchel and Pinkerton reappeared with a thunderous crack of torn air, hands locked; they spiralled about each other, whirling down and down, and broke apart on landing with an impact Morrow felt in his very boots. Ixchel, still screaming — had she ever stopped? — vomited a gout of greasy black power straight onto Pinkerton’s face, like a sluice-gate opened on a sewage pond; Morrow bit savagely on one knuckle, driving out nausea with pain, as he saw the force of the attack distort Ixchel’s very skull, pushing jaws and nose plate forward ’til she seemed more ape than human. Her face’s corpse-tight skin snapped and tore, peeling away from warped bone.