Snake Handlin' Man Read Online Free

with a pointy stick, and he took the battle to the snakes with gusto.
    Eddie bumped into Adrian on the floor and stopped his roll. Adrian was turning purple in the face, the livid purple bordered with streaks of yellow that marked an ugly bruise in the height of its flowering. He gasped for air, and he locked his bloodshot, bulging eyes on Eddie’s own and choked out a few words.
    “Three hours,” Adrian managed, and then, “ per Hypnum dormito. ” His body went limp and his head fell back, cracking on the tile.
    “Adrian!” Eddie shouted, and pressed his finger against the wizard’s neck. Adrian, who was also the band’s organ player, often fell asleep in the middle of trying to cast a spell—he was cursed—but he didn’t usually look like he was at death’s door when he did so.
    He shot his eyes around the room as he checked Adrian’s vitals. The Komodo dragon scrambled to try to get out from behind the counter, but Twitch wouldn’t let it. The shape-changing fairy was in his big pony form and stood with his hindquarters to the lizard, kicking it over and over again. It squealed and tried to get around Twitch, but there was no room and the fairy was quick as lightning, and then he kicked the lizard back into the inferno of the diner’s kitchen. The lizard shrieked and disappeared.
    Mike fired his M1911 and plugged a flying serpent right through the cross of its wings, breaking the beastie in half and dropping it to the floor. Next to him, Owen the accountant held another snake pinned to the table with his meaty fist. It squirmed as he sawed off its head with a steak knife. Jim smashed a snake to the wall with his tray, the last that Eddie could see, and then he threw his shoulder against the tray and squashed the reptile into paste.
    Adrian had a pulse. He was breathing, too.
    But his breath was ragged and shallow, his heartbeat was intermittent, and he didn’t look very good.
    Eddie took a deep breath and let it out. His own heart raced like a train and he felt adrenalin surge through him. He held still and tried to let himself calm down.
    “That was hilarious,” Twitch offered.
    “Jeez,” Mike said, and he laughed a shaky laugh. “You guys ever go anywhere that you don’t burn to the ground?”
    “What?” Owen was astonished. “You mean this kind of thing happens to you a lot?”
    “It isn’t on purpose,” Eddie growled. He sat up, trembling. “And I wouldn’t say that it happens a lot .” Through the order window, in the burning kitchen, he saw a row of men wearing helmets, hanging from the neck by nooses and dancing in the fire. “But it has happened once or twice lately .”
    The horse disappeared and Twitch was there, head to toe in his usual spiked leathers, with his ever-present horse’s tail dangling behind. “How’s Adrian?” he asked.
    Eddie shrugged. “I think he put himself into a coma,” he said. “Anyway, you can see he looks like death warmed over, and then he cast some sort of spell and passed out.”
    “So, business as usual?” Mike joked.
    “Maybe.” Eddie shrugged again. “But he said something that might have been Hypnos in his incantation. Isn’t that the god of sleep? I think maybe he knocked himself out before the poison could kill him.”
    “Spell?” Owen said. He held his big fifty caliber Desert Eagle again, carefully pointed away from everyone, like an experienced and safety-trained shooter. “Incantation? God of sleep?”
    “Owen,” Eddie said, feeling stiff and sore, and his scorched butt hurting him, “I just watched you saw a flying serpent in half like so much ribeye. You gonna quibble about incantations now?”
    “Nope,” Owen chuckled. “I guess not. But if this kind of thing happens a lot, maybe there’s a market opportunity here. Have you thought about making a business out of it? I mean, monster pest removal, or something?”
    “Sounds like a winner of an idea to me,” Eddie agreed. “It’s all yours.”
    “So, what?” Mike