Read Online Jenny Plague-Bringer: (Jenny Pox #4) by J. Bryan - Free Book Online

else.
    Men and women from the crowd clambered up onto the stage with fear glowing in their
     eyes. 
    “Destroy her!” the preacher shouted. “Drown the demon in the river!  We’ll baptize
     it back to Hell!”
    The crowd swarmed the stage, all of them closing in on Juliana, and she realized they
     would kill her, unless she killed them first. 
    “Stop!  Get back!” she shouted.  She raised her bare hands and let the demon plague
     appear all over her skin, even her face, mutating her appearance into something infernal.
    The crowd slowed.  Suddenly, nobody wanted to be the first to grab her.
    “I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Juliana said. “I’m here for healing...but I can kill
     you if I want.  Please don’t make me.”
    One person advanced toward her, the preacher’s assistant.  He grabbed her hand and
     pulled her toward the back of the stage.  She noticed that her boils and blisters
     vanished where he touched her, and she felt a warm glow there instead.
    “I have the touch of God, as you have just seen,” the young man told the confused,
     edgy mob. “I will take care of the girl.”  He tugged Juliana toward the canvas flaps
     that served as the backdrop of the stage.
    “Don’t you take that witch out of this tent!” the preacher shouted. “She’ll use her
     devilry on you!”
    The assistant gave Juliana a long look.  The crowd, emboldened by the preacher’s words,
     advanced on her again.
    “We ought to run,” the assistant whispered to her.
    They dashed away through the canvas curtain into the dim area behind the stage, where
     a number of preachers and their supporting performers had crowded to escape the rain. 
     The snake handlers were still there, kneeling on the dirt floor and praying, their
     snakes rattling and hissing inside the basket.  They looked up as Juliana and the
     preacher’s assistant leaped over the stage’s back steps, landed in the muddy dirt,
     and ran out of the tent into the rainy night.
    A few trucks and automobiles were parked behind the tent, as well as a number of wagons,
     their horses hitched under tent tops to keep them out of the rain.
    He led her into the horse tent and drew a knife from his boot.  He cut free one horse
     after another as they moved down the temporary hitching rail.  The crowd burst out
     through the back flaps of the tent, shouting and looking for them.
    “What are you doing?” Juliana asked, as he cut free yet another horse. “We have to
     run!”
    “Then let’s run.” He climbed up onto a tall brown horse, then held out his hands.
     “Hurry!”
    She hesitated.  She couldn’t risk her legs touching the horse, or she would poison
     the poor creature.
    The mob shouted and ran towards them.
    “Now!” the young man said. “Or they’ll kill us both.”
    “Give me that knife!” Juliana didn’t wait, but snatched it from the sheath in his
     boot.  While the mob approached, she sliced the bottom hem of her dress at the front
     and back, and then she ripped the dress all the way up to her waist.
    “Now, what are you doing?” he asked.
    “Protecting the horse.” She sheathed the knife, took pins from her hair, and fixed
     the torn sides of her dress around her legs like breeches.  Then, finally, she let
     him grab her hands and haul her up, and she slid into the saddle behind him.
    “Take those reins,” he said, pointing at a horse to her left.  She grabbed the horse’s
     reins, knowing there was no time to ask why.
    They rode off, flanked by an extra horse on either side.  The preacher’s assistant
     held the reins of the horse on their right.  He yelled at the other horses, trying
     to get them to follow, and a couple of confused-looking horses actually did trot after
     them.
    She looked back over her shoulder as they rode out of the horse tent.  The loose,
     wandering horses were slowing the crowd’s pursuit.
    They turned onto the muddy road, riding north along the Mississippi River, toward
     St.