A Rope of Thorns by Gemma Files Read Free Book Online Page A

glass, head and shoulders blazing with blue fire, the Enemy—Ixchel’s, Rook’s, his, the whole wide world’s—grinned back down at him, its teeth like knives.
    She is right, of course , it said.
    Chess crab-scrabbled backwards so the fire was between ’em, anything to get away. Then glanced down himself, all unthinking, and screamed out loud.

Chapter Three
    “Seemed nothin’ out of the usual, when we went to bed,” the man—Yancey Colder thought his name might be Frewer, but wasn’t sure—began, eyes kept careful on the teacup he held balanced on one skinny knee. “I mean . . . sure, that business with Dentist Glossing, earlier, but—everything’d been already took away, street swept clear of bad rubbish. Was warm and fine that night, red skies for a clement morning, not one cloud on the horizon. . . .” He trailed away, head shaking slightly. “And then . . .”
    “Then?” Yancey’s Pa encouraged.
    “My woman woke me, ’round about four of the clock. Said she heard this sound like something tearing, off in the distance. But when I went to take a look out the window, I couldn’t get the shutters open, ’cause they were weighted down with all sorts of . . .
bugs
, and other awfulness—grasshoppers, chiggers, furry-winged moths. Devil’s darning needles the size of pie-plates, rubbin’ ’emselves together ’til the hum went up too loud to yell over.”
    “How long’d this-all go on?” asked Sheriff Haish from his place in the corner, leaning back in his chair. Up ’til now, he’d seemed far more interested in his chaw of tobacco than in Mister Frewer’s story, but Yancey guessed that was mainly for show.
    “A goodly piece after dawn.” The cup trembled between Frewer’s long hands, thin china squeaking dangerously. “We just sat there with our arms ’round the children, hangin’ on for dear life. Noise got so loud near the end, by God, it like to’ve drove us mad.”
    Pa and the Sheriff exchanged a glance, but seemed to agree to let him set his own pace.
    “When I
was
able to wedge the door,” Mister Frewer said, at last, “the street was
gone
, all of it. Like it’d never even been. Nothin’ left but this low rut through a tangle of roots, and every other house just slick with crawler-juice, and this
smell
in the air—Christ Almighty, like when that whole farm died of Yellow Jack in high summer, but nobody twigged ’til a week and a half later. All it lacked was for maggots.”
    He took a shallow breath. “Happened to glance east then, where the tooth-pull shop used t’stand, and it was one big green knot, like kudzu. ’Cept for it had little red bell-flowers hung on it every-which-where, gaped wide, like snappin’ mouths.”
    “I never heard tell of Weed grown up that fast,” a fresh voice—Mister Mergenthal, Hoffstedt’s Hoard’s only butcher—piped up, nearer to the room’s back end, where Yancey had made sure the half-open door blocked Pa from any sudden view of her eavesdropping. “So . . . what’d y’all
do
?”
    Frewer shrugged, hapless. “Might’ve come about from them hexes havin’ a shoot-out in the middle of Main Street, I s’pose, the day before—”
    “Who and who?”
    “One was Doc Glossing, the dentist, like I already said—not that most’ve us knew he was hexacious before that, at least not for sure. And the other was that new-turned ’slinger, Reverend Rook’s boy—”
    Sheriff Haish scowled, and let fly into the spittoon. “Chess damn
Pargeter
shot up your town, and you didn’t think anything would come of it?”
    “Well, he left, right after. So . . . no, we didn’t. Not like
that
, anyways.”
    Pa frowned too, but refrained from expectoration. “Hold up, though. Pargeter’s a pistoleer only, I’d always heard.”
    “Don’t know why the Doc would’a tried to take a pull on ’im in the first place, he wasn’t good for the effort. And believe me . . .” Frewer shook his head again, as though to clear it. “Seemed like