A Rope of Thorns (Hexslinger 2)

Pargeter, all blissful-unaware of this exchange, caught Yancey looking and sketched a mocking bow while Mister Morrow hurried to his side, muttering something Yancey couldn’t make out. But right as he got there, his foot stepped awry, bringing him down heavy on one knee. Shock lit Morrow’s face.

Pargeter grabbed his partner’s arm in turn, as though to pull the bigger man up, half-pivoted in the same direction—and saw why.

For the drift of salt he’d made was whirling in a contracting spiral, vicious with energy; it scrabbled in on itself, mounding high ’til it abruptly plumed skyward, a miniature eruption that literally blew the top off the place, scattering shingles everywhere. Then fell back down, into an all-too-familiar shape.

Love stood there unharmed, exactly where he had a mere moment before.

The Sheriff slowly flexed his hands, which grated icily, giving off a great puff of skin-stuff. At the sound, a general moan went up from all around, desperate as wind through a graveyard.

“Fuck-almighty!” Pargeter burst out.

“Interesting,” Love mused. Then added, looking up through what was left of the church’s roof: “Thank you, Jesus.”

Morrow clutched back, palpably a-strain to keep his body interposed shield-wise between ’em, apparently without thinking twice. “Chess,” he gritted, “we need to go.”

“So he’s got tricks. Think that frights me?”

“Know it don’t, you ass. But what about the rest?’

Hell with those fools! Yancey could feel exactly how hard Pargeter wanted to snap the thought back, stacked cheek by jowl with how he knew he couldn’t—and that was a change, one he found distinctly unwelcome. And here Hugo Hoffstedt broke in, pointing a shaking finger at poor Mister Frewer, as though he was the true cause of everybody’s danger.

“Told you we’d rue the day we let these Mouth-of-Praisers in—hexation draws hexation, and that’s the damn fact! And now look what’s the result: two hexes, for the price of one!” His eyes skipped to Uther, already wending his way back. “Your foolish softness’s doomed us all, Uther Kloves, you and your Jew father-in-law, too—”

“Shut your mouth, apostate,” Love told him, absently. “Pargeter’s the man-witch here, but my strength comes from Almighty God alone . . . and you will not mock at me.”

Hoffstedt’s face turned even more purple; his eyes bulged. With a gagging sound his only accompaniment, he started a collapse, but hadn’t quite completed it before Uther caught him, knotting one big hand in the tobacconist’s shirt. “Sorry ’bout this, Hugo—” The other drew back and punched him, straight in the stomach.

Hoffstedt jackknifed, whooped a slapped-baby gasp, and puked out a sodden chunk of rock salt too huge for any normal throat to swallow, which skipped to lie before him, dripping. Yancey stared at it.

Salt, which Mala always said turned hexation aside, surer than any other known cure. There’s folks say witches can’t cry at all, Yancey, since tears are saltwater; I’ve seen enough do so to know that isn’t true. Yet salt does keep, and render, and purify. And salt throws off hexation, same as a rod does lightning—roots it down deep, so it’ll make away with itself without causing too much harm. Same way as your Pa throws a spilled pinch over his left shoulder at dinner, to ward away the Devil.

And the Sheriff . . . that was all he was made of, wasn’t it, saving terrible grief, and a seeking after revenge? So even if he didn’t understand the true whys and wherefores, believing it was the diamond-hard strength of his own faith that kept him safe, the result would be the same.

Oh, Jesus.

Not knowing to make the same connection, Pargeter just sneered, like it was all another bad joke. “Hell, preacher—if that’s supposed to be a sample of God’s work, then maybe you better go on and pull the other one!”

Mister Morrow was right, Yancey thought, soul-sick; you should run, the both of you. For his sake, if not your own.

But the devilish little man just wouldn’t, obviously; wasn’t in him. Might be he didn’t even know how.

As Hoffstedt rolled onto his back, gasping, Pargeter neatly swapped his place for Morrow’s, much as the other man tried to prevent it. “But that is some extra-fresh load of power you’re carrying, one way or t’other,” he continued, ignoring how being mis-called a hex twice in a row made Love’s jaws grind. “And how you’re puttin’ it to use ’minds me most of . . . what the Rev could pull out his Good Book, you only pissed him off enough. Like back in Bewelcome.”

“Don’t presume to talk on that, you filth-piece.”

“Oh yeah, I recall how you did pretty good in Round One, ’til he called on Lot in Sodom, and pimp-smacked your Jesus Christ holler like a two-bit whore.”

“Be still!”

“Take a sight more than a shake or two of table-fixings to stop my queer-boy mouth, Sheriff—”

“You!” Love’s voice almost hurt to hear, now. “You killed my wife, my son, my town . . . you and Rook, the both—”

Yancey shuddered, yet again. For they had done that, undeniably—and if Pargeter had not consciously chosen to do it, he had certainly delighted in seeing it done.

“Or you killed ’em, more like,” Pargeter threw back, shameless, “by standin’ against us.” With a gunman’s vaudeville flourish, he sent lightning crackling fingertip-to-tip, green as his eyes. “Took on ’cause you were too proud to hear the Rev ‘blaspheme’ your precious Book, though what-all it had to do with you I still don’t know; thought to reap reward on our heads, and kicked your own house down doin’ it.”

Love drew himself up. “I did . . . what I had to.”