We, lost below, can only seek You
As if for someone hidden among flowers.
Your heart grows weary of us.
The Giver of Life drives us mad,
And no one can truly be His friend,
Succeed in life, or rule on Earth.
The Weed changed so fast it seemed to shimmer, its fragrance fiercely fresh, storm popping like a soap bubble. Yancey felt the power flood her, strong enough to taste, and heard her blood sing out in answer, hot and living and furious. Felt Sheriff Love’s anger mount, equal fast as Pargeter’s ecstasy, and revelled in whatever hurt it did him—merely academic when compared to the blow he’d dealt her, off-hand, simply by being what he was. But a passive variety of vengeance on Pa’s behalf, nonetheless.
Two knots of passion fought within her breast, bisected: cold grief, sharp loss, a mounting general horror, set cheek-by-jowl with blind triumph and burning delight. And at the apex, magnet-pulled, her gaze lifted to Pargeter once more, his black aura now gone the same brilliant green of his eyes . . . which met and locked with hers, equal-strong, to flare with mutual recognition.
It’s too much. He can’t take it all in—can’t let it go, either. And now, right now, is when it’s gonna—
—blow, sky-high. The green broke apart, knocking Pargeter ass over teakettle, dazed, sickened. The backlash sent Morrow to his aching knees yet again, jackknifed, dry-heaving into the grass; towns-folk who’d bled to feed the Weed all staggered too, likewise released.
While Love rose up once more, strength and fury both surging back in a flood, boiling off of him like steam.
He turned his face on faithless-proven Hoffstedtites and Mouth-of-Praisers alike, roaring that God-sent final verdict he’d spoke of to the uncaring skies: “Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days!”
Moving so fast Yancey could barely track his passage, Love was on Mister Frewer before the poor fool had time to blink and struck him a backhanded blow that spun his head near clean around, bone cracking like a gunshot-load; Yancey felt the spirit blast from his body even as it fell limp, face down into the grass he’d helped pray into being.
“Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth to the Lord of Sabaoth—” A few steps more brought him to where Hugo Hoffstedt lay, still unconscious, side by side with dead Sheriff Haish. Incensed beyond reason, Love lifted one boot and stamped down, crushing the complaint-fond tobacconist’s neck so hard it near sprang from the body on a burst of blood that stained his salt-crusted boot crimson.
Jesus, Yancey’s mind repeated blindly, returning under fire to the less apparently reliable God of her youth. For in those two dreadful moments, all her hexcraft-got “victory” had turned to dust in her mouth.
“Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter!” Love howled out, joyfully. To which her dear Uther, suddenly bereft of friends, enemies and barely made acquaintances alike, shook his handsome head in disapproval.
“You, sir,” he told Love. “Can just . . . shut the hell up. Your point is made, and you’re frightening my wife.”
Track-caught by such reasonableness, Love paused in his rampage, voice gone abruptly calm. “Well, as to that—your wife is damned, Marshal, I’m sad to say, same as every one’ve those she’s enticed to give the Devil reverence, rendering this place anathema; it should be burnt, so that better people may start over. Burnt to the ground, and its ashes salted.”
Though white-lipped, Yancey found the grace to snort, amazed by her own audacity. “Really. Answer me this, then, Sheriff: things only occur ’cause God lets ’em, as I recall . . . so if it works, and it did, who are you to argue?”
Those dead eyes swung back her way, two blasted moons in dull orbit. “Don’t be sophistical, ma’am,” Love replied. “It’s unbecoming.”
Uther took a step closer. “I’m the one gets to decide that, thank you. Now—people have had enough; we’ll solve our own problems in our own way, thank you kindly. Leave.”
“I don’t answer to you.”
To this, Uther smiled, ever so slightly. “Oh?” he asked. And punched Love, hard.
It was a roundhouse hook to the jaw that would’ve floored any other man. But the former Sheriff was—tacky, so the Marshal’s fist sunk in wrist-deep, then stuck. Yancey jumped to his aid, hauling on him with both arms ’til he tore free at last with a horrid sucking noise, sagging back against her. They were both equal-floored by the sight of his hand, skinned something nasty—a literal glove of blood, fingernails torn either almost to the root, or missing entirely.
“Oh, Jesus!” Yancey cried out, and Uther seemed happy to hear her upset on his behalf.
Started to say: “Hush, now—could be worse—”
But that was when Sheriff Love chose to haul off himself, jab Uther so rough he crushed in one eye like a popped egg, then backhanded him into what was left of the altar stone. Uther’s temple struck the corner, skull broken open on impact, with a meaty crunch. One further twist, snapped-stick sharp, and he was looking back at her full-on, over his own shoulder.
Yancey screamed and clapped both hands to her face, as Uther dropped away. She heard him fall. And knew, at last, that she was all alone. . . .
Except for Love.
On the ground, aching all over, Ed Morrow came back to himself in a rush, slammed together once more by the whip-tail scorch of Missus Kloves’—Widow Kloves, now—desolate cry. For a split second, he thought on how it’d be to be made mateless and orphaned on the same damn day, and that supposedly reserved for celebration. How it’d feel to know it was your fault, too, for having brought the means of everyone else’s destruction in through the door and handed ’em ’round like any other guest, thinking your will alone could keep ’em from acting like curse-laden skeletons at your unsuspecting husband’s marriage feast.
A split second only, not a hair more. After which he forced himself up, grabbed Chess ’round his drunken-lolling praise-junkie neck and growled in one ear: “Help her, Goddamnit, ’fore that crazy bastard does her like he’s done for the damn rest! It’s the least you owe.”
Chess’s breath came huffing out visible, heavy with green-spiced vapour. “Don’t owe that bitch nothin’,” he snapped back, automatically. “Hell, I ain’t the one wants to get up under her skirts. You like her so much, maybe you should take a swing at that crusty bastard yourself.”
“Tried that already, remember? You were there. Didn’t end well.”
Before them, Love stood over Missus Kloves, gesticulating like a premier Sensation Scene melodramatist: The Preacher Transformed, or, God’s Monster! While she, a mere slip of a thing in her green- and dust-stained wedding duds, simply glared at him past her husband’s corpse, grey eyes gone so hard you could strike matches on ’em.
“Well, sir,” she said, with admirable haughtiness, “your work here seems done. Unless you’re fixed to kill me, too.”
Love thought on that, then shook his head. “No,” he replied. “You knew what you did, but not why you shouldn’t, so I’ll trust God in his mercy to grant you time to reflect on your sins, and repent of them. For the nonce, therefore, I’ll let you live, for our great Father’s sake.”
Missus Kloves drew her lips back, showing all her neat white teeth at once. And hissed at him, voice rage-thick, “My father is dead.”
For just a tick, Morrow saw Love’s regained mask of sanity shudder, his leprous hands curl into claws. But with an effort, he appeared to thrust those impulses away from him, having already overindulged, to take the high road. Gave himself a species of all-over shrug, and turned away.
Only to find Chess right there, his fingers already dug deep in the “lapel” of that salt-skin-memory mélange Love wore for a coat.
“Time t
’go, Sheriff,” Chess told him. “Just like the Marshal said.”
That same no-explosion, a barely there toll struck on the world’s bell, and so Goddamn fast. Faster yet, every Goddamn time.
Chess and Love were there, then Chess was back, like he hadn’t ever left. And Love?
Gone, at last, if only in body. Not like Pa, Sheriff Haish, Mister Frewer—poor, stupid Hugo Hoffstedt, laid low, never to return. Or Uther.
Yancey sat shivering in the street while Pargeter and Morrow, fellow architects in the destruction of everything she’d ever known, exchanged a look.
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.
“Where . . . ?” Yancey managed, eventually, but Morrow just shook his head.
“Seems somewhat familiar,” he offered, at last. “But . . .”
Behind them, still aloft, Pargeter hovered a foot above the ground for one vertiginous moment more, before starting at last to sink. He touched down bootheels-first and smoothed down his finery, wiping all hint of battle-marks away, before marching right past them both, making for the canyon’s narrow channel.
“Well?” he asked, impatient. “Two of you comin’, or what?”
“You . . . ain’t minded to rest?” Morrow called back.
“No time, no need.” Pargeter snapped his fingers, sheathing them in lightning—checking he’d regained full control of his arcane faculties?—then snapped again, to banish it. “We’re in the hill country, near as not to Splitfoot’s; ten minutes should see us on their doorstep, well outta harm’s way. So let’s us stop dickin’ ’round, and—”
But here he froze, reorienting: seemed to sideslip distance, suddenly back at Morrow’s side, both guns levelled. Morrow turned too, Yancey followi
ng after, as a lone figure stepped carefully from the scrub. Felt her jaw drop at the sight, unladylike.
“Mister . . . Grey?”
“Truth told? Not entirely.” The young man she’d known as Grey adjusted his hat and smiled, looking far beyond weary. To Morrow: “’Lo, Ed.”
Morrow nodded back. Tonelessly: “. . . Frank.”
Pargeter cocked both guns, probably pretty much for conver-sational emphasis alone. “Was you, wasn’t it?” he asked. “The extra weight I felt, comin’ out here. Didn’t even feel you grab on—how’d you do that?”
Mister “Grey” indicated Yancey, with a wry smile. “Tryin’ to keep her from getting pulled along, mostly,” he admitted, “though that didn’t exactly take, I guess.”
“Looks like.” The guns didn’t waver. “So—you know Ed and Ed knows you, but I don’t know you from sheep-shit; in my book, all that means there’s only one thing you can be. Care to prove me wrong?”
Frank sighed, shook his head. “Think you well know how I can’t, Pargeter.”
He locked eyes with Morrow, passing some silent signal; in return, Morrow took a deep breath, eyebrows canting in surrender. “Yeah okay, all right. Chess—Miz Col—”
“Yancey,” she corrected, quickly, unsure she’d ever be ready to hear either maiden or married name again. “Call me Yancey, please . . . Edward.”
Which last addition sent things rocketing straight into the realm of awkward-forward, not that Morrow let himself be seen to notice.
“Yancey—allow me to introduce Agent Frank Geyer, of the Pinkerton Detective Service Agency. Sent here to bring us in, most likely.”
Grey—Geyer—smiled again, this time more widely. “Not . . . entirely, no.”
A pause ensued. Yancey glanced at her feet, just in time to see her wind-chased bridal veil go tumbling away along the canyon floor, smeared deep in bloody dirt, brief as some lost snow-ghost. And felt her past slip along with it, leaving her just another woman in a once-white dress.
I have to be someone different now, she told herself, resolving not to let herself think too deep about the choices she had to make from this point on, lest she quibble to make them at all. Someone neither Pa nor Uther would recognize—me either, in days gone by. Do what I have to, in order to make sure that thing which laid them both low pays its dues. Fight fire with fire. So . . .
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