Read Online The Hush by Skye Melki-Wegner - Free Book Online Page B

my rules. I won’t let an unlicensed Songshaper run out of here alive.’
    He pulled the trigger.
    The next few seconds were a blur. Sam crashed into Chester’s side and he was falling, stumbling, smashing down into a wall of stalks and leaves. Chester’s ears were ringing again, but this time pain accompanied the roar. His left arm burned hot, slick with blood.
    Sam lay half on top of him, heavy and gasping. But a moment later he was up, firing wildly at the Songshaper. Five sharp cracks smashed down the path. Every bullet shrieked, and Chester felt as though his ears might blast right off his head.
    Nathaniel staggered and dropped his weapon.
    Sam fired again and again. But he wasn’t firing at the Songshaper’s chest. With a jolt, Chester realised that the older boy was firing at Nathaniel’s ankles. The man toppled with a cry. His own pistol slipped from his fingers as he struggled to catch himself. He collapsed, flailing, into the tangle of his own coat.
    â€˜You might be hard to kill,’ Sam said, ‘but good luck standing with your ankles in shreds.’
    Nathaniel fished something from his pocket – another gun, Chester thought in a panic – but no, it was a miniature flute. The man pressed the instrument to his lips and began to conjure a huffing, panicked melody. As the notes poured out, smoke spiralled up from the end of his flute. The path began to tingle, alive with Music, and the dirt beneath Chester began to dissolve. With a gasp, he felt himself sinking, as though the dirt was sucking him down into his grave …
    â€˜Oh no you don’t!’
    Sam charged. He forced the Songshaper’s head down onto the path, and eddies of dust rose to mingle with the smoke. The flute skittered away and Sam swiped it up, along with the man’s lost pistol. Chester scrambled for a patch of solid earth just as the entire path snapped back into rigidity beneath him. On the ground fumbling in pain, he fought to rip his sunken knees and ankles free from the dirt.
    Nathaniel snarled up at Sam. ‘That’s mine!’
    Sam clutched the flute tighter, holding it beyond Nathaniel’s grasp. The Songshaper began to hum, pushing furious Music through his lips and teeth. Sam blasted a bullet into the man’s throat, just above his silver pendant. Blood and chokes poured from Nathaniel’s flesh as he writhed in the dust. But his fingers pummelled the dirt beside him, with a certain regularity to their beat. He was tapping out a rhythm, Chester realised: a weak, halting beat to slow the bleeding in his wounds.
    A curl of dark, unnatural smoke rose from Nathaniel’s throat, and the skin began to slowly blister. But this time, the healing was sluggish. A rhythm, it seemed, was less effective than a melody. For a while, at least, Nathaniel would be in no fit state to attack them.
    And behind him, the chestnut horse just stood there. It remained numb and silent, drugged by sorcery, its wits as lost as its vanished wings. The sight was unsettling: an unmoving statue in rising clouds of dust and smoke.
    Chester struggled to his feet. He had to help. He had to do something , he couldn’t just lie here. But as soon as he rose, his head swam with dizziness. Pain shot down his upper arm, where the bullet had struck. He clutched the wound, fingers tightening, and fought to stem the sticky flow of blood.
    A moment later, Sam was by his side. ‘All right?’
    â€˜Yeah.’ Chester gritted his teeth, and tried to look braver than he felt. ‘I’m fine. Better keep moving.’
    Sam grabbed his arm and examined the wound. He swore under his breath then stumbled back across to where Nathaniel writhed on the ground. The Songshaper struggled to rise but his bullet-ridden ankles made it impossible.
    Sam ripped off the man’s coat and tore a strip of fabric from the vest he wore beneath. Then he was back with Chester, tying the fabric tightly around his