Hot Blooded by John G. Hartness

Author:John G. Hartness [Hartness, John G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Falstaff Books
Published: 2018-01-30T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

The light was fading by the time we got all the crap loaded onto the wagons and back on the road. Amy rode ahead looking for a village or anything with an inn, but I wasn’t real hopeful. If we’d made decent time, we probably would reach a safe place to stop for the night, but since we spent hours casting a spell and then fighting a faerie witch in a ring of mushrooms that wouldn’t even get me stoned, it was probably gonna be a night of sleeping on the ground for my heroes.

“Are you okay, Robbie?” Mama asked after we’d been rolling for about half an hour. “You seem very quiet.”

“I’m alright,” I said. “A little pissed that I fell for the will-o’-the-wisp, but I’m okay.”

“Why would you be upset about that? The wisps have lured travelers to their death for centuries. They are very good at it.”

“Yeah, but I’m a monster hunter, remember? I been doing this a while, and I’ve fought some serious shit.”

“I remember. I was there for some of that serious shit.” My mind flashed back to Mama tied to a stake, about to be burned alive, and me killing my kid brother to save her life, and the lives of pretty much everybody on the east coast. She had seen some shit, indeed.

“Yeah, so you know what I mean. This is what I do. This is who I am. I shouldn’t get lured into the woods like some dumbass in a fairytale!”

“Robbie, my love, you are in a fairytale. My entire life is a fairytale, and not a particularly happy one. I have an insane mother, a power-hungry heartless father, two dead husbands, one dead son, a kidnapped daughter, and one remaining son who wavers between loving me and wanting to kill me. If that doesn’t sound like a tragedy straight out of the tales, I don’t know what does.”

“I never waver,” I said, staring at the reins in my hands and the brown rumps of the horses in front of me.

“Excuse me? You never waver? You haven’t been able to decide whether to shoot me or hug me since I walked into that recording studio in Alabama.”

“That ain’t the point. I love you, Mama. I never stopped loving you, not even when you left and went back to Fairyland. I ain’t saying I haven’t wanted to strangle you more than once, but I can think two things at once. I mean, hell, I love Pop. I never didn’t love Pop, not even when he…”

“When he murdered your first love.” Mama finished the sentence for me, because all of a sudden there was something in my throat and I couldn’t talk.

I got my shit under control and went on. “I loved Jason every minute of every day, even when I shoved three feet of steel through his chest. I love him every minute today. So I love you, Mama, and after tonight, I’m almost over being mad at you. Not quite, but almost.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.