Fire and Ash

Page 20

It would be no comfort at all, though, to be slaughtered by intelligent killers.
Dead was dead.
Nix shifted to stand on Benny’s left flank, and Riot moved to his right, a steel ball bearing socketed into the pouch of her powerful slingshot.
Twelve to three. Nix had a gun with five bullets in the cylinder. She was a good shot, so Benny figured she’d get at least three. The ball bearings in Riot’s slingshot were slower than bullets but just as deadly, and she could fire and reload with lightning speed. Benny had his sword. Unless the reapers intended to grind them under the wheels, the killers would have to dismount.
How many could they take?
Six? Eight?
Defeating all twelve was a heroic dream, but not a probability.
If Lilah was here . . . maybe.
The quads were not slowing.
“They’re going to run us down,” Riot yelled, reading the situation the same way he was.
“Back up,” snapped Benny. “All the way to the edge. They can’t run us down if we’re right on the edge.”
The edge, though, might not hold their combined weight, and Benny knew it. Pulling Sergeant Ortega out of the ravine had weakened an already fragile structure. But that was a different problem. Or maybe it was another problem that would overlap this one, forcing their odds from weak to impossible.
Benny scanned the faces of the reapers as they closed in. All but one of them had red hands tattooed on their faces. They looked wild and fierce, like barbarians out of an old storybook.
As the reapers closed in, they realized that they couldn’t use the machines as weapons. A stern-faced young man—the only reaper not marked with the red hand tattoo—raised his fist, and the reapers revved their engines, the combined drone pulsing like the breath of a gigantic dragon.
He’s the one, thought Benny. He’s their leader.
The young man looked like a warrior. Lean and muscular, with big hands and eyes as hard and dead as desert rocks.
Even through the din, Benny heard Riot say, “Brother Peter . . . oh my God.”
It was a name that struck a big bell of terror in Benny’s heart. He hadn’t met this man, but he knew about him. He knew him from a thousand terrifying tales Riot had told them. From firsthand descriptions by survivors of reaper massacres. From accounts by monks who had witnessed acts of savagery so grotesque that their minds were scarred by the memories. From surveillance photos Joe had shown them.
Brother Peter, the right hand of Saint John.
Even Joe said that Peter was one of the most dangerous men alive. Deadly with any kind of weapon, and equally deadly in unarmed combat. A man totally without mercy or remorse.
Like an echo from out of the shadowed past, Benny thought he heard Tom’s voice. Don’t give in to fear. Be warrior smart and survive.
Benny nodded as if Tom could see his agreement.
Hot wind blew dust plumes past them, momentarily obscuring them, turning them to wraiths. Then the dust blew past Benny and his friends and on across the ravine. The waist-high grass swayed drunkenly in the breeze.
The reapers were in a tight arc around them. They kept revving their engines, and the sound seemed to beat on Benny’s chest.
“Nix,” he said, speaking just loud enough so she could hear him beneath the pulsing roar of the quads. “If you have to shoot, go for Brother Peter.”
Nix swung the pistol around toward the man.
Brother Peter saw this and smiled. Then he slashed down with his clenched fist, and suddenly all the reapers cut their engines at once.
The silence was crushing. It collapsed the world into a surreal bubble that enclosed the ravine, the killers on the quads, and the three of them.
Where the hell is Lilah? wondered Benny. Did they already get her? Is she dead somewhere out in the forest?
Brother Peter sat in silence, studying them. When his gaze drifted over to Riot, his eyes widened for a moment.
“Sister Margaret,” he said, and the other reapers recoiled at his words. Some of them actually hissed and spat onto the dirt.
“Don’t call me that,” warned Riot.
“Why not? You are the daughter of Mother Rose, that traitorous witch.”
“My mama died a long time ago,” said Riot. “She was just another victim of Saint John and his sickness.”
At this, three of the reapers suddenly made as if to leap off their quads, but Brother Peter held up a hand. “No,” he said. “Words can’t harm the honored saint, and this child can’t tarnish her soul any more than it already is.”
“You can kiss my fanny,” suggested Riot.
“You pile sin upon sin,” said the reaper. “Have you no fear for your soul?”
“My soul’s just fine, thank you.” Her words were flippant, but Benny could hear the fear in her voice. Riot was a tough and brutal fighter, but she was clearly terrified of Brother Peter.
For his part, the reaper seemed not to care that Nix’s pistol was pointed at his head.
Brother Peter looked at Benny. “Do you know who I am?”
“I know,” said Benny. “But I don’t care.”
“You should care.”
“Look, all I care about is you and your goons getting back on your quads and leaving us alone. We didn’t do anything to you, and we don’t want any trouble.”
“Do you know how frightened you sound?”
“Do you know how you’d feel with a bullet in your brainpan?” asked Nix.
“At this range, little sister, you wouldn’t get more than two shots off, and then we’d open red mouths in your pretty skin.”
“Maybe,” conceded Nix. “First shot will still be through your ugly face.”
The reaper shook his head. “So what? Am I supposed to faint from fear? We’re reapers, child. We pray for the darkness to take us. Every morning, every night, we pray that Lord Thanatos takes us.”
“All praise his darkness,” intoned the reapers.
“You say that,” Nix said, “but I’ve seen some of your people run away, too.”
“I was the very first of the reapers,” said Brother Peter. “My companions are members of the Red Brotherhood. Ask Sister Margaret if she thinks we will run away. From you or from anything.”
Riot said nothing, which was not all that encouraging. Benny swallowed a lump of dry dust.
“If you want to test my faith, little sister,” said Brother Peter, “then pull the trigger.”
The gun was steady in Nix’s hand, but when Benny cut a look at her, he could see lines of fear sweat running down her freckled face.
When Nix didn’t answer or fire, Brother Peter nodded. He pointed at Benny. “Yesterday you took something from one of my reapers. Something that was not yours to take.”
“Yeah? Says who?” asked Benny, trying to make his voice sound tough. It didn’t.
“I watched you do it through my binoculars. I saw you arrive, saw your fight with Brother Marcus, and saw you rob him after he’d gone into the darkness.”
Benny said nothing. It made him feel immensely disturbed to know that that had all been witnessed yesterday. He thought of the fight, of his tears, of how vulnerable he must have looked.
Brother Peter nodded to the satchel slung on Benny’s shoulder. “Today you came out here to defile and rob one of the gray people. That bag was not yours to take.”
Nix said, “This gun’s heavy. If you have a point, get to it.”
Benny almost smiled. It was the kind of line he read in novels, and she said it with the kind of bravado he’d tried for a moment ago. Nix was better at it than he was. Benny wasn’t sure if Nix had cribbed it from a book or if she was simply that incredibly cool. Probably both. Despite everything that was happening, he wanted to kiss her.
Brother Peter looked faintly amused, though the expression on his face in no way qualified as a smile. Benny remembered Riot saying that this freak never smiled.
“If you give me what you took,” said Brother Peter, “the bag on your shoulder and whatever you took from my reaper, we will let you go.”
“Oh, really?” said Riot with so much acid that it could have burned the paint off a tank.
“Really,” said Brother Peter.
“Last time I checked,” continued Riot, “you reapers only left people alive when they got down on their knees and kissed your knives. Isn’t that how it works? We get to live if we become reapers too?”
“Oh, fallen sister,” said Brother Peter in a sorrowful tone, “there is no place for you in the Night Church. You are an outcast, forgotten of god, unworthy of the darkness. You are an excommunicate and a blasphemer and you will be punished by a long life of suffering.”
“Suits me,” said Riot.
“Yeah, works for me, too,” agreed Nix.
Benny nodded.
“Really,” repeated Brother Peter. “That appeals to you? A life spent wandering blind and disfigured, screaming for mercy without a tongue, shunned by everyone because your face will bear the mark of damnation upon it.”
Riot proved that her earlier demonstration of foul language had only been a warm-up. She described an act so physically appalling and improbable that even Benny winced—and he appreciated this kind of thing. Several of the reapers blanched and fingered their knives.
“You prove your worthlessness with every breath.” Brother Peter dismissed Riot with a casual wave of his hand and turned his focus back to Benny. “Make your choice, little brother. You can walk away, unharmed, untouched, alive if you give me what does not belong to you. Return what you took from my reaper, and hand over the bag you stole from the dead.”
Benny looked at him, at the other reapers, and at the vast, unforgiving world around them as if it was able to offer answers to the madness of the moment. He held his sword with one hand and touched the strap of the satchel.
“Give me the bag,” said Brother Peter in a voice that was eerily calm. He could have been commenting on the weather. “Give it to me and live.”
“It’s a trick,” said Riot. “Don’t do it.”
“Benny, you can’t,” said Nix.
Benny smiled.
“Sure,” he said.
46
“WHAT?”
Nix, Riot, and Brother Peter all said it at the same time.
Benny shrugged and lowered his sword. He slid the bag off his shoulder and held it out. “I said, sure. Take it.”
Brother Peter studied him with suspicious eyes. “It would be unwise to try a fast one, little brother, I’ll—”
“I know. Red mouths, tongues cut out. What is it with you guys and threats? You need to work on your people skills.”
Everyone was staring at Benny. He smiled and swung the bag back and forth. His heart thumped like a crazy monkey, but he was sure he was managing a pretty good reckless smile. It hurt his face to keep it in place.
Brother Peter snapped his fingers, and one of the Red Brothers dismounted and stepped forward to take the bag. Nix shifted the pistol toward him, and the reaper stopped.
“If he takes another step,” said Benny, “she’ll blow his head off and then she’ll shoot you.”
The reaper threw a questioning glance at Brother Peter, who gestured for him to remain where he was. Instead he dismounted and held his hand out to Benny.
“The bag,” he said.
Benny wondered if there was even the slightest chance that Brother Peter was not going to kill him the moment he handed over the bag. Riot said that the reaper had a dozen knives hidden in special pockets and that he could draw and cut faster than lightning. She’d seen him do it too many times.
So Benny slung the satchel at him instead of handing it over. He slung it hard, hoping to catch Peter in the mouth, but the man simply snatched it out of the air. He opened the flap, and the dry wind rifled the pages. Brother Peter nodded approval.
“Now give me what you stole from my reaper yesterday,” he said.
“Ah,” said Benny. “That’s going to be a problem.”
Brother Peter lifted an eyebrow.
“I don’t actually have that stuff,” said Benny. “I gave it to Captain Ledger. Maybe you know him? Big guy, real grumpy, has this huge dog?”
“Joe Ledger.” Brother Peter pronounced the name slowly, tasting it, hating it but enjoying it too. Benny could see all that flicker through Peter’s dark eyes, and he also enjoyed the look of profound discomfort that rippled across the faces of the other reapers.
Joe scares the pee of out them, he thought. It elevated the ranger another notch in his book.
“That’s the guy,” Benny said. “So . . . you’re going to have to ask him for it.”
“No,” said Brother Peter, “I think you’ll go and get it from him and bring it back to me here.”
“You think I’d really do something that stupid just because you ask?”
“I’m not asking you, little brother. I’m telling you.”
Benny shook his head. “No. I played fair. I gave you what we took from the zom. Not going to argue jurisdiction over that stuff. But the stuff I took off the reaper yesterday belongs to me. Your reaper attacked me. That means that anything I took from him is mine by rights. Spoils of war.”
“This isn’t a war, boy.”
“Well, what the hell do you call it?”
“You are defying god’s will.”
“I’m pretty sure I’m not.”
Brother Peter sighed. “Then let me simplify things for you. I’ll send you back to Sanctuary. You’ll get whatever you gave to Joe Ledger and bring it back here to me.”
“Why on earth would I do something stupid like that?”