A Rope of Thorns (Hexslinger 2)

So easy, she found herself thinking, too bone-tired to even be angry. It’d’ve been just that easy for him to dispose of Love all along, had he only wished. Or rather, had he thought to.

Pargeter was still humming with whatever she and the rest’d poured into him, swaying slightly, stare glazed. It snapped in his already-green eyes, lifted his red hair, lent a greenish, motile tinge to his skin. His very sweat crackled, galvanized, in a way that both repelled and attracted. From the way Morrow stood, she could tell he wanted to touch him—and so did she, for that matter. To crawl into that fatal little man’s too-bright shadow and curl herself ’round his legs like a cat, for just as long as he’d be inclined to let her.

There’s nothing left for me here, she thought, without any par-ticular emphasis. Not one single thing.

No, the voice in her head agreed. You cannot stay. But . . . neither can he. For there is yet more damage to be done here, nonetheless.

The Weed was almost entirely grass now, a jewel of fertility in a sore, parched land, not evil, but unnatural. And so long as Chess Pargeter was its anchor, it would only keep on spreading.

Removing him, however, might at least—disarm it, Yancey supposed. The way pulling bullets from a gun made it a different sort of weapon.

People would return. She owed them a place to rebuild that didn’t have him in it, or her.

Though Pargeter was already turning away, Morrow’s gaze stayed on Yancey, as she’d somehow trusted it would. And though a part of her rose against the idea of abandoning her husband of an hour’s cooling side so soon, there was no point in staying to mourn; Uther Kloves would be equal-dead no matter where she went. No betrayal, then, just a cold urge, a horrid practicality—the realization that wherever Morrow and his half-god master went, Sheriff Love was sure to follow.

This is true, yes. You know it, granddaughter.

Yes. Not to mention how she’d need to know how to kill, as well, by the time their paths crossed once more. And killing was something both these bastards knew, intimately.

Painfully, she twisted already strained hips, raising herself to a clumsy crouch—at which point Morrow put out a hand to help, like the gentleman he no doubt hoped she thought him. Even now, with the wreckage of Pargeter’s passage all ’round ’em, and her birthplace flattened like a bug . . . she’d’ve laughed, if she’d had that left in her.

“Thank you,” she said, and let him draw her up. To Pargeter: “We need to talk.”

“Don’t see how.”

“Don’t you?” Yancey showed him her hand, her arm; saw his nostrils twitch at the blood that still ran there. “Yes, you’re powerful enough right in this instant—but who’s to say you won’t need further reverence, in future? Can’t leave without what remains of your congregation, Mister Pargeter.”

To which Pargeter just gave her a look: green sunlight through a magnifying lens, piercing, painful. “Don’t go affectin’ any concern for me and mine, girl. Think I can’t see the hate in you? I got time enough for one revenge only, Missus, and it ain’t yours.”

Morrow scowled. “Chess—”

“Not happenin’, Ed. She’d be a millstone ’round both our necks.”

“We do owe her, Chess.” If Pargeter’s gaze was fire, Morrow’s was stone, utterly obdurate. “We brought this on her, in all its awfulness. As you damn well know.”

“She brought it on herself. We’d laid low, left on our own recognizance—”

“—Love might’ve turned up anyhow, and killed us both. Like he probably would’ve here, she hadn’t done that blood-trick of hers to save your ungrateful ass—”

“—and if my aunt had nuts she’d be my uncle, Ed; that ain’t the fuckin’ point, nohow.” But the strange fire was fading, just a little, from Pargeter’s eyes. He pointed at Yancey. “You know where we’re going, what we gotta do; know what our odds are of livin’ through it, too. You really wanna put her ass up in the sling with ours? That what it means to you, to pay her back?”

Morrow stared at him—then hauled him close and laid a full open-mouthed kiss on him, as much from desperation as desire. Yancey felt the tug of it in her own loins, sick with shame amidst all her loss; Pargeter fought to not react, albeit perfunctorily. But when Morrow released him, that stone-hard look hadn’t much altered.

“I know,” Morrow said, softly. “So do it for me, or don’t.”

Pargeter cleared his throat, then shrugged. Without warning, he seized Yancey’s arm, sending an invisible rash of prickling heat through her body; smeared blood and dirt powdered off into the air. And then the flush sank bone-deep and snapped her stiff and upright, a wind-filled sail—her eyes widened, fingers splaying, spasming. Green light leaked from her mouth.

“Aw, hell—” Morrow‘s own big hand fell upon Pargeter’s, gripping as if to pull it away, but Yancey felt Pargeter’s power instantly

snap-surge across into him as well, a spark jumping gap between metal and flesh. The supernatural cyclone whirled compass-wide, dizzying and queasy; Hoffstedt’s Hoard shimmered, dissolving mirage-like, lost behind an undulating veil of power.

Stop it! Yancey called, her mind and Pargeter’s abruptly merged, the way she’d never hitherto been able to with anyone but Mama; overrode his consternation completely in her haste, refusing to “listen.” Take us out of here, sir, now! Let whatever’s happening work its tricks elsewhere!

This time, Pargeter didn’t even bother to argue, just let her rip: that same green blink, a cloth-wrapped hammer-hit, right ’tween the eyes. And then—

—Yancey came down, jolted enough to stagger as the sere earth turned under her wedding slippers, all previous tumult-stink instantaneously whisked away as clean, cool air licked her face. Strong arms caught her in mid-plunge; disoriented, she allowed Mister Morrow to take her weight and gulped in deep, coughed out hard, stomach clenching painfully.

They stood high on the side of a long and shallow valley, with stunted firs and sagebrush for a nearby tree line. The next slope’s centre was scored by a dry riverbed, low-set sun hanging mild above, sky speckled white as any hen’s egg: all of it clean of anything but dust and weed, empty of threat. All of it utterly, wrenchingly unfamiliar.