The Devil's Mistress by David Barclay (summer reads txt) 📗

Sloop tried to tear himself free, but the figure held him fast. She turned his head. There upon the path was his Gwendolyn, naked and screaming, her body sitting on what appeared to be an enormous, inverted ax. She was sinking slowly, every twitch and shudder causing the blade to cut through her groin in tiny, imperceptible increments.

“She was captured by the French, put upon the blade and executed for witchcraft. What think you of that, Tiberius?”

He tried to close his eyes, but the ice-like fingers held them open. Upon the iron horse, his wife continued to scream.

“No,” he moaned. “Show me not this horror!”

Something red and slippery had begun to poke through the growing hole between Gwendolyn’s legs. It threatened to slip down the blade and take the rest of her insides with it.

Sloop put his hands to his face. “You’ve won, demon. Make me not look on this!”

“Oh, but we’ve just begun,” the voice breathed, “and I have so much more to show you.”

Chapter 25

The wolves kept pace as he lumbered down the path. Four, then six, then ten shapes howling and yipping and darting between the trees. They seemed to be toying with him, mocking his stride and laughing at his wooden leg. His flintlock was a welcome burden, but if more than one broke free of the pack and charged, it would do him little good. So far, none had.

He at last cleared the trees and came before the waterfront, turning to see if the wolves would follow. They didn’t, and he allowed himself a moment’s respite.

A dark cloud drifted up from the center of town, and he started down the shore toward it. His leg did him few favors in the mud, but he deemed it the safest course. He strayed not toward the trees. The billowing black cloud grew larger as he approached the parish, but there was no odor upon the air. No crackle of flame. No glow of fire.

Jacob stopped. It was not smoke drifting into the night sky, but a thick and burgeoning swarm of insects. Termites, beetles, cockroaches, and everything in between. They were pouring in from the forest, crawling over the parish and feasting upon its timber. A second swarm was devouring the structure beside it, wherein lay the hitching post and the abandoned horse stalls. A mere few thousand insects drifted lazily between the two structures, meandering over the side yard in search of sustenance.

“You there! Come here!”

Startled, Jacob looked across the yard but saw no one.

“I said come here, boy!”

Jacob looked again, and this time his eyes fell upon a divot in the side yard. Two hands had reached up to grasp the iron bars at the top, though the body to which they belonged remained hidden below. The boy hesitated, then wove through the swarm and approached the hole. He covered his mouth to avoid inhaling flies.

“Let me out of here,” said the voice.

Jacob peered down. “You. You’re that savage, aren’t you?”

“If you do not let me out, I will die in here. Then you will be more savage than I.”

Jacob looked at the swarm and back again. “Did you kill the Collins boy?”

The response was swift and immediate. “No.”

“Will you kill me if I let you out?”

“No.” Then, “Probably not.”

Jacob considered. After all he had witnessed, he had little reason to trust the word of the town watch. Isabella, too, had thought the man innocent. “Hold a moment.” He examined the bars. They were attached to a hinge but secured in place with an iron lock. “Where’s the key?”

“Probably on the guardsman. I believe you’ll find him at the gallows.”

Jacob made up his mind. He rose at once and moved to the side yard gate. He had never run so much in a single evening, even with Sands in charge.

“Just a house in the countryside,” he told himself. “A little row of crops. Some horses.” His wooden leg caught in a rut, and he stumbled, crunching the shells of a dozen black-bodied vermin. “One horse,” he corrected, and pushed forward again. “Just a little cottage with one horse.”

He came to the front of the parish and approached the hanging square. The light of the moon shone down upon the drop. The carpenter yet hung from the noose, his body creaking against the rope. Jacob put a hand over his mouth. As he looked down, a host of termites began crawling up his man-made leg and chomping at the wood. He cried out, wiping the small battalion off his person and rolling onto the platform. He collided with another body. It was the one called Wembly, the scrawny watchman from Isabella’s trial. The same man who was supposed to be guarding Moberrey’s door. Ants crawled to and from his half-eaten face, carrying pieces of his brain off into the night. Jacob staved off another retch, but the keys were there, attached to an iron ring on the man’s belt. He jerked them free and returned to the yard with haste.

The Indian was waiting. “Did you find it?”

“I think so.” He knelt next to the divot and worked the lock. It opened with the very first key. The iron bars flew upward, and the prisoner leaped onto the earth as if sprung from a trap. To most men, the Indian would have been considered tall. To Jacob, he was a giant with long limbs and sinewy muscle. He was wearing dirty settler’s clothes. In the dark, he might have even passed for a tall Englishmen were it not for his hair—which was long and black and shaved back from his forehead—and a ring in his nose, which glinted in the light of the moon.

Without a word, the Indian sprinted into the small enclosure next to the church and disappeared. Jacob tried to shout after him, but he inhaled a flying roach and spent the next few moments coughing it out. As he recovered, the Indian