A Rope of Thorns (15 page)

“
He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty
,”
he rasped, wiping his hands. “
I will say of the LORD, He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.
”
A long step forward. “
A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but near you it shall—not—come!
”

Each of those last three words came with another unnaturally swift pace, closing the distance, taking him almost within his wiry little opponent’s reach. Pargeter took a step back—Yancey felt Morrow’s dismay, a cold shock in her stomach’s pit, at seeing his fearless partner
retreat
—before groggery-brawl reflex took over, and he whipped his knife at Love’s right eye.

The blade buried itself hilt-deep, which stopped Love for at least a moment; Pargeter seized this opportunity to circle sideways, opening up the field. And though his lips stayed peeled, Yancey sensed, for the first time, more doubt than anger behind this reflexive grimace as Love simply turned as well, resuming his opposing stance.

“Oh, what a vain, luxurious, vicious young coxcomb you are,” Love declared, almost conversationally, pulling the knife free of his socket with a visible wrench. The eye that reformed was now completely white, unshelled to show the phosphorescent glow beneath, spreading in faint hairline cracks up to his very temple. “A walking canker, spreading fresh plague with every step. Yet God, who has made even you, has appointed me your cure.” He looked down at his hands, brow wrinkling, as if he’d forgotten how the weapon he still held got there—then snapped it lengthwise, and tossed it to the floor.

Now it was Pargeter’s face which went blank. “That,” he said, almost too soft to hear, “was a gift. From a friend.”

The black aura around him deepened, as though the edges of the world were peeling back. And the silence outside the church began to shred.

Something coming.

“Oh shit,” Mister Morrow said.

Pa’s head jerked, foolishly, as though primed to snap:
Don’t think to swear in front of
my
daughter, you outlaw! Most ’specially not on her wedding day!

But by then, Uther and Sheriff Haish had joined them; faster than Yancey could blink, they’d already upturned the coveted sack, doling out guns like party favours to Pa, Mister Frewer, themselves.

Love, intent on Pargeter, seemed utterly incurious as to the rising clatter and flurry behind him. But Uther, on finding Mister Morrow’s shotgun at the bottom, snapped the stock, racked it—and tossed it back to its original owner, who plucked it gratefully from the air and levelled it over Pargeter’s shoulder, straight at Sheriff Love’s chest.

“Sheriff!” Morrow shouted. “You’ve got any of God’s mercy in you, back off, ’fore this goes too far!” When Love glanced at him, though Morrow’s voice cracked, his gun stayed steady. “
Think
, man! What’s the fate of those who spill innocent blood?”

The Sheriff’s other eye went white as well, while the entire air around him leached to the colour of dry-fissured bone.

“I am,”
Love replied.

Then Morrow’s finger clenched on the triggers, unleashing both barrels. Love’s chest erupted; salt sprayed everywhere, flushing unwary eyes. But Love barely rocked back on his heels, pellets blazing merrily right on through, their momentum unabated. Along with yet more salt, sharp and pitiless, forged near-obsidian hard by passage through Love’s furnace-hot heart.

Duck,
Yancey thought, even as she yelled out loud: “Now,
now
, get damn well
DOWN
!”

But one burst nicked Haish’s neck, drawing a mighty spurt—he spun, clapped a hand to the damage, looked drunkenly surprised. Fell to the floor, jacked and shaking, like cholera. The other neatly blew out the centre of Uther’s left palm, instinctively upraised between it and Yancey, as though he’d dreamed it would shield her from lead. Luckily, her Pa shoved her headlong at almost the same moment, to sprawl face-first onto the floor ’midst the dust and splinters. Which,
un
luckily, left him—

Oh my Good God Jesus,
Pa.

—looking down as she looked up, faces equal sick-white in the inconstant light. A flutter of ill-timed laughter spun inside her, trapped, a skeleton leaf in updraft. Like a flame-caught moth charred black, already dying.

“Gal,” Lionel Colder tried to say, through a closed throat. And Yancey heard his lungs rattle as he toppled, juicy-wet, through that unmendable hole in his chest.

“
Shit
,” Mister Morrow said again, like it was the only word he knew. Like he’d forgotten how to say anything else, without bawling like a damn baby.

Not his fault, though. More Pargeter’s, she supposed—but even now, lapped by this insane storm of destruction, he drew nothing from her but abstract alarm, mixed here and there with an odd pulse of pity.

It was
Love
who got the full brunt of her hatred, in a vitriol cocktail; Love who she wanted to see broken apart once more, reduced to crystals so fine they’d dissolve on skin. Blast him to particulates, and beyond. How dare he even mention God, for good or ill, when—

Eyes tear-burnt, Yancey felt blindly for her Pa’s hand, which flexed in her grip, fixed and cooling. Closed her lids so tight they hurt against the sight of him, only to see his soul’s skein bloom upwards anyhow—unwind from his mouth in a fine gold thread and out through the shattered roof, along with his last attempt at breath.

Took a second at most, probably less. Felt like forever.

Uther by her side, big as a house, stuck to her with sweat and blood alike; Uther, still trying to shield her with his body as he pried her gently loose, raised her to her trembling knees.

“Honey, oh honey,” he said, tender as a stone-made man can be. “I’m so sorry.”

Me too,
she thought, but couldn’t speak aloud. Could only choke on, dry, as though she were chewing a cud of blood . . . ’til from all around came a noise Yancey recognized immediately, though she’d only heard it described the once.

“What . . . the hell . . . is
that?
” someone, maybe Hoffstedt, whimpered.

A buzzing and clicking at the window-frames, as of a multitude of scrabbling legs. A reverberant hum moaning up through every breach, every crumbling mortar-lick. The floorboards juddering and splintering underfoot, sending those still trapped inside the church reeling, while Pargeter and Love both remained rooted. Jagged cracks lancing up through all four walls at once, filled with a tangle of red-stained green, a million dancing filaments tasting air: budding, seeding, blooming. Turning their hungry flower-faces toward the rigid purple-clad figure of their god, even as the plain wooden cross behind the altar broke free and crashed to the ground, crushing a handful of poor parishioners beneath it.

Yancey saw it all, through a hundred eyes at once: screams, tears, Pa and Sheriff Haish, Uther hauling her close.

But
heard
none of it, for her ears were blocked, admitting one sound only—that other voice in her head once more, dry, urgent—

This heralds your moment, granddaughter; be ready to make sacrifice—

Sacrifice?
Yancey was barely able to ask.

You shall show them the way. Be
ready
.

A flicker of light caught Yancey’s eye as half Pargeter’s broken knife-blade leaped high into the air, tossed by a floorboard suddenly cracked in two; when it landed near her, and she squirmed to get one arm free, grab for it. The edges bit her palm, stinging fiercely.

With a splintering cacophony, Weed thrust up through every crack, spreading out ’round Love’s and Pargeter’s feet in a widening, slimy green and crimson pool. What Mouth-of-Praisers were yet present screamed in unison, rushing the church’s doors and hammering on them, wailing, as the Weed spread ever further; the floor decimated, whole fresh ropes fisted every wall-chink apart at once, a barn-raising in reverse, brickwork crumpling outwards in a cacophony of shattering wood and billowing dust.

And through this fresh ruin the
itzapapalotl
(the foreign word sliding into Yancey’s mind, bringing such a flood of similar jabber in its wake that for one reeling heartbeat, she feared she’d never speak English again) came swarming—a thousand thousand black glass butterflies on squeaking, jagged wings, each flap drawing blood.

They folded themselves sidelong ’round debris, grazing Weed ’til juice sprayed wide in their wake, and whirled ever inward in a glittering twister. The roar of their passage was like every sand-storm ever sighted bearing down in unison.

We’re done for sure,
Yancey thought, cleft palm cleaving to Uther’s, a last hopeless parable of matrimony.

Yet even as she did, she heard that ruthless voice—
What should I call it?
—inside her answer—

Such discourtesy! I called you granddaughter, did I not?

. . . Grandma?

Morrow lunged to his feet as a host of more natural insects—dragonflies like the Lady came cloaked in, mosquitoes and wasps, red-shelled ladybirds and a dozen more kinds besides—spilled in behind those volcano-born death-moths he and Chess had glimpsed above Tampico, gnawing through flesh and fabric alike. Flinging himself in their path, he gasped with relief when all of ’em went skittering away from him, as though he wore some invisible canvas tarp. Unbelievably, Rook had told the truth: he
was
protected from harm, at least indirectly; marked and bound, both for good and ill.

“Ed.” Even Chess’s voice had changed, resonant with echoes of the gap between worlds. “There.” He pointed; Morrow followed his finger to where a young woman hunched over her screaming child—same one he’d seen Chess stare at, before?—with her whole back streaming blood. At the first sign of trouble she’d folded herself ’round him, just like you’d expect; now the butterflies were stripping her shoulder blades bare, drawing wet, red wings down her good gingham dress.

Morrow whipped off his duster, draped it over ’em both and hauled ’em clear, kicking past the maelstrom’s swirling rings. Weed pulled at his boots, but let him go when he strained—as if it recognized that somewhere, deep down, Morrow had at last begun to accept his role as the Flayed One’s servant.

The woman, her boy’s screaming face pressed hard to her breast, could barely make her feet. “God bless you, mister,” she managed, through bitten lips.

Morrow shook his head, and set one boot to her ass, as gently as he could. “Run!” he ordered, kicking the two further out of danger. “Don’t stop. And don’t look back!”

Then, much against his own misgivings, he turned to fight his way back in.

Back at the storm’s core, Chess poured his anger out upon the preacher in entirely one-sided fashion, each finger discharging a six-shooter’s worth of those roily little spell-loads, while Love simply stood angled slightly into the barrage, like it was no more than a stiff wind. No matter what Chess threw at him, it either soaked right into the man’s skin or slid off harmlessly into the unstable bed of rucked and vibrating floorboards beneath, re-emerging as fresh new batches of Weed.

“Fuckin’ well
die
, you sumbitch!” Chess growled. But Love simply shook his head, insects glancing off his face and body, leaving nothing behind but drag-marks.

“Unlikely, I fear,” he said. “And you’ve only yourself to thank, for that.”

With horror, Morrow saw Love move forward again, inexorably; whenever Weed reached up to snare his legs, the powdery flesh just broke apart and re-coalesced around it, leaving a trail of vines flopping like pulled veins in his wake. Missus Kloves gagged at the sight, like she was fixing to heave. Chess just stared on, amazed.

“There really ain’t nothin’ left of Bewelcome’s big damn hero anymore, is there?” he asked. “Look ’round, Sheriff. Womenfolk, children, Marshal and Missus Kloves—‘good people,’ Goddamn
innocents
, caught in the crossfire. You could stop it, you only wanted to . . . but then you’d have to let me go. This what your God-botheration
really
amounts to?”

That got Love to stop at last, as nothing else had—to consider Chess directly, for almost the first time.

“Arminius’s creed says we are justified by faith alone,” he told him, “but sanctified by the Holy Spirit. And whatsoever the Spirit does is right, for it is the
Spirit
which does it.”

All at once, those big hands flashed to seize Chess’s throat, hauling him up by the neck—and everything proceeding from Chess’s power-source immediately stopped dead. The Weed fell still, insects plummeting ground-wards with one great rattle, a glass-and-chitin hail. Chess’s boots kicked useless, fingers scrabbling frantic, unable to find purchase; green lightning crackled from his fingernails only to disappear inside Love’s body, like every damn thing else.

Morrow too collapsed, his own throat constricted, spots swimming before his eyes. The room darkened.

“And see.” Love’s voice had gentled, almost regretful. “Even thus is the Lord’s vengeance properly delivered. With all your might, you’re flesh and blood; no more, or less. Soon you’ll be dead as Sophy, or my boy . . . dead as me.”

Eyes bulging, lips blue, Chess choked out a final jibe: “Buh ahll—stih—
look
—behher.”

The revenant nodded. “I’m sure you’ll have fresh admirers aplenty, in Hell.”

Granddaughter—look, now. See.

Yancey let her gaze slip back down to her own yet-dripping blood beading bright on what was left of the floor, the Weed’s writhing bed. Where it landed, a faint scent and smoke rose up and the tide calmed, vine smoothing to wet grass, thick with possibilities. One incautious
itzapapalotl
flew over top and cracked down the middle, both sharp wings bisected, still fluttering even as they fell to smash below.

Remember what he said, your little Hataalii’s travelling companion. Remember how it sounded . . . so plausible.

“The Weed eats blood, and dies,” she whispered, eyes straying again to Mister Morrow. “You have to—cut yourself, and pray. In his name.”