A Rope of Thorns (Hexslinger 2)

A shrug. “I’ve no easy answer to that. Except to suggest how, sorry to say . . . might be your nose don’t work too well, these days. Given all that’s happened.”

“That so?”

“It is.”

“Hmm. S’pose we’ll have to see, then.”

Here Love made only the smallest of gestures—a brief figuring, equal-fit for blessing or curse. But a tremor ran party-wide at the mere sight of it, as though the very dust beneath came skirling at his call; not hexation, but the faint echo of some power far more oblique, implacable, sere. “God’s will” writ small, and bent to another’s service.

“O Lord God,” the undead intoned, laying his skeletal palms together, “to whom vengeance belongeth; hear me now, in Jesus’ name, amen. O God, to whom vengeance belongeth, shew thyself.”

Chess heard the Rev read along, behind his eyes. Saw the words all but cast up and glinting, black sparks on bright:

Lift up thyself, thou judge of the earth: render a reward to the proud.

LORD, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked triumph?

. . . Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which frameth mischief by a law?

“Psalm 94,” Morrow whispered, eyes shut, his head half hung down—bent to Love’s yoke, like he was more afraid of some damn quotation than the man’s own black-miraculous spectacle.

But Kloves, unswayed, replied: “I want you gone, ‘Sheriff.’ Back to your own place. We’ve no need of you here.”

“And I want Pargeter, or Rook. Give ’em to me, I’ll move on. If not . . .” Love smiled, grimly. “They gather themselves together against the soul of the righteous, and condemn the innocent blood,” he said, to no one in particular—yet his voice wrung ever more horrid, ’til women clapped hands over their children’s ears and a few weak souls doubled over, baptizing the floor. “But the LORD is my defence; and my God is the rock of my refuge. And he shall bring upon them their own iniquity, and shall cut them off in their own wickedness; yea, the LORD our God shall cut them off.”

A groan, a whimper—the crowd lurched all at once, aching to cut and run. Chess wondered, for a timepiece’s barest half-tick, if he shouldn’t let whatever was pending happen—he’d survive, almost certainly. But Ed’s fists were closing, like he thought to throw punches at a man Death itself had spit up whole, and Kloves obviously meant the same. And Yancey cast Chess a single beseeching, lash-cut glance.

Goddamn all “good” people, Chess thought, with a sigh.

And let his glamour go altogether, with a plaster-rip wrench. In its wake he stood himself once more, purple-suited, to sneer back at the gaping faces which ringed him:

Yeah, take a look while you can; here I am, life-sized. Small-made, still, but that don’t matter none. As you will see.

Sheriff Love might have his God, as always. Yet Chess had learned a thing or two ’bout gods himself, in the interim.

“No Heaven for you, Sheriff?” he enquired, conversationally. “And such a fervent sumbitch, too! You want me? Here I am.”

Two guns to the Marshal’s one, and a hand on either. Chess grinned at Love, mean as ever, ’til Love grinned back—equal-nasty in his own God-bothering way, and wide enough they could hear his salt-glazed jaw hinges crack.

“So you are, after all,” he replied. “Praise Him!”

Chapter Seven

Mister Frewer gave a slow blink. “By God,” he said, finally, “if that ain’t Chess Pargeter. Been there the whole time, I’d suspect.” A pause. “Think Mister Chester knew it, all along?”

That Grey fellow replied, “Reckon so, if that’s Chester over there; man’s really named Ed Morrow, who used to be a Pinkerton.”

Hugo Hoffstedt said, “Sheriff, Marshal—oughtn’t you to do something, here? ’Fore—”

“You got any real kind of plan of attack on offer, Hugo, do feel free t’let it slip,” Sheriff Haish shot back. And Uther, hand gone automatically to the empty place at his belt where his gun should hang, just blew slowly out through his nose—a bull, matador’s cloak new-sighted, composing itself to charge.

In that instant, Yancey came painfully closest to loving him outright than she ever had before. He’s good, she told herself, fiercely, and that’s the simple truth. Probably better than I deserve, given . . .

Given how sadly complicit she was in what was happening—was about to happen.

Back stiff, she made herself look past to Lionel, who stood there gaping. “I shook his hand,” he told her.

“I saw, Pa.”