A Rope of Thorns Read Online Free PDF Page A

hapless, like he’d momentarily forgotten he and Chess were still holding hands. And Chess gave a mean, familiar predator’s grin at the sight, gripping so hard his knuckles flared up white—drew in even
harder
, as though he meant to drink every last drop of the fat little man up through a rye grass straw.
    It was sad, in its way—for both of ’em. Chess Pargeter, battle-proven killer of men, reduced to a child stepping on ant-hills. Doc Glossing, reduced to meat.
    The dentist hissed, a near squeal. Then went all at once a-droop, overwhelmed and withering—a popped pig’s bladder.
    “So powerful,” he gasped, giving way. “
So
strong, and yet . . . you don’t know anything. Not a
damn
thing. Not even . . .”
    An unintelligible mutter followed, resolving itself into: “. . . was right, ’bout you . . .”
    At this, Chess’s eyes—already lit up with the surplus—literally snapped and flared. “
Who
was? Rook—that deathless bitch of his? Goddamn
Songbird
?” The man just shook his head, defeated, taking refuge in silence. “
Tell
me, shithead! I’ll yank your soul out through your eyeballs, see if I don’t!”
    “Won’t get . . . a stitch more from me, Mister Pargeter. I’m done.”
    “Oh, you got
that
right,” Chess snarled, pulling all the harder, ’til Glossing’s entire plump visage seemed about to cave in. “Question is—you want the end of it to go quick? Easy? Or anything Goddamn but?”
    “
Cheh,
” Morrow said, warningly.
    Too late. Glossing slumped, emptying himself into Chess in one foul gush. When Chess looked up once more his pupils blazed like lamps, slitted and triangular; a ghostly cat’s gaze, touched with Hellfire.
    Across the street, doors were opening—citizens either stood frozen and staring or went scattering off to find guns, the Law, the nearest preacher equipped for a long-distance exorcism. At the sight, power crackled between each of Chess’s ten spread fingers, so sharp it made even him jump.
    “And what’re
you
all lookin’ at?” He demanded.
    “Cheh, I seh less go. Less juss—c’mon, now.
Go
.”
    “We’re lookin’ at
you
, you hex from Hell!” Some brave soul yelled, meanwhile, before ducking back into the town’s one saloon.
    “Damn straight; we heard your story, Chess Pargeter. Wrecking decent folks’ homes, destroying respectable businesses.”
    As the only mundane combatant here engaged, Morrow could sympathize with their simple human outrage, even when a few started tossing horse-apples along with the abuse.
    “Invert! Vandal!”
    “For
his name shall be called Abomination,
and
his place made desolate
!”
    “That a jacket, or a damn circus-rig?”
    Above, the clear sky growled, like it was getting hungry. Chess flushed, furiously; jacked up on Glossing’s stolen juice, his own anger reached out wider, causing the shattered store-window glass to run and drip, mercurially refusing to merge with the street’s dust around it.
    “You motherless bitches,” he said, the lightning flashing ’round his palms rising wrist-high. “Dare to quote the damn Bible at me—I’ve
had
that, from the best! So c’mon over here and try it to my
face
, you lily-livered—”
    “
Chess
, fuh shissakes—”
    Chess blew out a snarling breath, and shook his head. “Hold on,” he told Morrow, knitting his still-sparking fingers painfully in the bigger man’s shoulder.
    And—they were gone, popped out and back into existence in a half-second, the town erased like blown-off mist. Nothing but empty rock, scrub and equally empty overhang of cloudlessness, sun the colour of a struck match.
    Chess stumbled back a pace, then sat down, heavily, like he’d been gutted. Morrow collapsed on his side, hands automatically gone to his maimed mouth . . . only to find the raw hole plugged once more with a bare rim of new tooth—man-sized, smooth as china plate—poking up, impossibly, through tender flesh.
    He wondered how long it’d take to grow out fully, and