The reaper held his ground but pointed one of the knives at them. “You are heretics and blasphemers, and in the name of Thanatos—praise be to the darkness—I curse you. Do you hear? Do you possess enough wit to know that the mouth of hell has opened to consume you? I curse you with pain and suffering, with loss and heartbreak. You will never know love and you will never know peace and you will live long years with no darkness to gather you in and give you rest. This I swear in the name of my god.”
“I don’t want to kill you,” said Nix, “but if you try anything, I’ll shoot you in the leg.”
Her voice and her hands shook as she spoke, but Benny knew that she’d pull the trigger if she had to.
Saint John studied Nix’s face.
“So be it,” he said softly, and slowly resheathed his knives. Then he pushed up the sleeve to reveal his left forearm, and with his long right thumbnail he cut a deep red line in his flesh. Blood welled, nearly black in the shadows under the trees. The reaper smeared blood on his fingertips, spat on the blood, and then flicked it at them. It did not reach them, but that didn’t seem to matter to the man in black. His face was alight with triumph, as if what he had just done sealed his threats into the fabric of reality. “May you live long,” he snarled, as if that was the worst thing one person could wish upon another.
Then Saint John of the Knife turned and melted like a bad dream into the darkness that lurked under the tall trees.
Benny and Nix stood there, sword raised, gun pointing, mouths hanging open.
The birds and monkeys were silent in the trees, and the whole forest seemed to hold its breath. Drops of blood glistened on leaves that trembled and swayed. Nix lowered her pistol and began to tremble all over. Benny wrapped his arm around her, but he had his own case of the shakes and wasn’t sure he was able to offer any real comfort.
“What just happened?” breathed Nix, her voice small and fragile. She used her thumb to gingerly uncock the pistol’s hammer and lower it into place. “I mean, seriously . . . what just happened?”
“I—I don’t know,” Benny admitted.
“Did I provoke him? Did I just make it worse?”
“No,” Benny lied. “I don’t think so.”
They backed away from the spot where the man—the reaper—had stood. Then, after five paces, they turned and ran as far and as fast as they could.
33
THE MAN CALLED SAINT JOHN STEPPED OUT FROM BEHIND A TREE AND watched the two teenagers run away.
When he’d left them, he’d gone into the woods and then circled around on their blind side, standing downwind of them so he could study them. He could have come up behind them and cut their throats, and his hands ached to do just that, but he was caught in a moment of indecision.
Before he had confronted them, Saint John had heard the boy call the girl “Nyx.”
Nyx was the mother of his god.
He rubbed at the cut on his arm and frowned in doubt. His vexation with them had been righteous but hasty. Were they, in fact, heretics who profaned her holy name?
Or . . . was this some kind of test?
He chewed on that. It would not be the first such test laid before him. He remembered that night a few days after the gray plague started when he found a wretched woman being chased through the streets of a burning city by a pack of abusive men. Saint John had seen such horrors a thousand times as the world crumbled and died, but this one instance drew his attention. On some level too profound for him to fully grasp, the events were part of a test of his faith and his resolve. It was a subtle test, and even after all these years he could not understand every aspect of it; but what was important was that he recognized it as a test.
Against his habits and better judgment, Saint John had helped that woman. He saved her from the men by opening red mouths in their flesh. Their souls flowed into the darkness.
The woman appeared to flee from him, but soon Saint John found her hiding in a church. Hiding with twenty-seven angels. Twenty-seven celestial beings who had chosen to take human form, pretending to be orphaned children.
They had adopted Saint John, and he had adopted them.
Had he not accepted the challenge of that first test, Saint John would never have met the woman who would become the pope of his Night Church.
Mother Rose.
And the twenty-seven angels?
They were his first reapers.
Saint John raised his arm to his mouth and slowly, sensually licked up each drop of his own blood. It was hot and salty, smelling of copper and tasting like iron. Saint John’s eyelids fluttered closed for a moment. Even his own blood was so delicious. All blood was delicious.
He wondered, not for the first time, if there were really vampires in the world, and if they were not merely men like him whose minds had been opened by God so they could appreciate the perfect taste of blood.
He decided that this was probably the case.
In the distance he heard a scream that rose louder than the roar of the quads on which his reapers went about their sacred work. Was it male or female? It was hard to say, because there is a level of pain so pure that it strips away gender and identity, and that was what he heard now.
Saint John nodded his appreciation. Most of the reapers were ordinary folk—believers, true, but in no other way exceptional. They were blunt.
Whoever sculpted that scream was one of the special ones. One of his angels—of which only nine were left on this side of the darkness—or one of the recruits who had fully embraced the way of the blade and the glory of the red mouth.
He smiled and nodded to himself.
He began to walk through the woods, following the footprints of the girl who called herself Nyx and the boy who served as her knight. He did not hurry. The world’s clock had run down, and haste was irrelevant.
In all it had been a good week’s work. Twenty-five hundred of the heretics had gone into the darkness at Treetops. Only six hundred of them escaped the burning of their town. Of those, four hundred reached the mountains of southern Nevada. Barely two hundred made it to this patch of wild forestland in the arid Mojave.
Saint John doubted that a hundred heretics still remained on this side of the darkness.
Soon red doors would open for each of them. The reapers were doing everything he and Mother Rose had trained them to do, and they did it with the unquenchable diligence of true faith.
A quad motor growled behind him, and Saint John turned to wait as one of his reapers hurried to find him. When the machine came into view and Saint John saw who was riding it, he smiled.
Brother Peter.
Peter had been the first of the twenty-seven angels to embrace the way of the blade, and it had taken no urging at all. Peter was a natural, a prodigy. The number of heretics he had ushered into the darkness was legion, second only to Saint John himself.
The quad pulled up and Brother Peter turned off the engine, allowing a soothing quiet to settle over the woods. He placed a hand over the angel wings on his chest and gave a slight bow of the head.
“Honored One,” he said softly.
Peter was in his early twenties and had grown up tall and powerful, but his face was unmarked because he had never, in all the years Saint John had known him, smiled. Not once. His scalp was tattooed with a tangle of thornbushes through which centipedes crawled.
“How goes the crusade?” asked Saint John.
“Carter split his people into six groups. He probably thought that would make it easier for them to escape, but it made it easier for us to hunt them. We opened the red doors of two of the groups. Brother Alan and Sister Gail are going to take the third in a pincer movement, because that group went into a valley, and Brother Andrew is hunting a fourth near the creek.”
“And the other two?”
“Our people are looking.”
“That is well.” Saint John approved of Andrew, who was a recent convert and a former town guard from Treetops. It was he who had provided Brother Peter with a map to the tree-house city where Carter and his people had lived until a week ago. The knives of the reapers had been bloodied from tip to pommel that night, and every day since.
“I met Brother Simon a few minutes ago,” said Peter. “He asked me to tell you that Mother Rose has called a meeting of the team leaders.”
“Where?”
Brother Peter paused. “They are to meet her at the Shrine of the Fallen in two hours.”
Saint John was a long time in responding. He folded his hands behind his back and seemed to be interested in the dance of a pair of dragonflies.
“I want you to be there,” he said softly. “But don’t be seen. I want to know everything that is said at that meeting.”
“Yes, Honored One.”
“And I want to know if anyone—anyone—enters the shrine itself.”
“Mother Rose would never allow it. It’s her shrine,” said the young reaper. “Even I’ve never been inside.”
“Nor have I,” murmured Saint John.
The two reapers regarded each other for a silent moment.
Brother Peter frowned. “Why call a meeting there, of all places? Why a place she has expressly forbidden anyone to visit? I—don’t understand.”
Saint John’s smile was small and cold. “God speaks to each of us in a different way. Who is to say what secrets he whispers to our beloved Rose?”
His smile was warm, but his tone was cold.
After a long silence, Brother Peter nodded. “There are times I do not entirely . . . understand what Mother Rose does, Honored One.”
“Oh?” said Saint John.
“Perhaps I am too simple a man, but sometimes I cannot connect her actions with the needs of our holy purpose.”
A faint smile played over Saint John’s lips. “I’m sure God forgives you for such doubts.”
The younger man bowed. As he straightened he said, “There is another matter, Honored One.”
“Oh?”
“I was patrolling the forest beyond the shrine, looking to see if Sister Margaret dared to lead any of the heretics that way . . .”
Saint John nodded encouragement.
“ . . . and I found five reapers who had red doors opened in them.”
The saint spread his hands. “We knew that Carter would fight. He is stubborn in his heresy, and there are many like him in his group.”
“No, Honored One, I do not believe that Carter or any of his people killed them. Whoever took them did it quietly and with great skill.”
“What level of skill?”
Brother Peter’s face was as bland as ever, but his eyes were alight. “Possibly as good as me. And around the bodies I found animal tracks.”
“A dog?” asked Saint John.
“A very large dog.”
“Ah,” said Saint John, raising his eyebrows. “You think he’s back? The ranger?”
“Yes, Honored One, I do . . . although that confuses me. Am I mistaken, or did not Brother Alexi swear that he killed the ranger? Did he not swear before God that he smashed the life out of him with his great hammer?”
“He did say so,” agreed Saint John.
Brother Peter began to add something to that, but he bit it back. However, Saint John nodded as if the rest had been spoken.
Mother Rose had said she witnessed her pet giant kill this particular heretic. This mercenary who served the evil ones—the doctors and scientists; this killer who preyed on the reapers.
They studied each other for a long moment, each of them calculating the implications of that.
“Someday soon,” murmured the saint, “we will have a discussion with Brother Alexi.”
“Most assuredly,” agreed Brother Peter, and his eyes were hard as metal. “But . . . if Brother Alexi has fallen from grace, what does that say about Mother Rose? They are inseparable. He does not scratch an itch without her say-so.”
Saint John placed his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “We must be vigilant, but we must not leap to judgment. The truth always finds the light, you know this?”
“Yes.”
“Then be patient. God has set many tasks before us. We have to find and end the rest of Carter’s heretics and send them into the darkness. We must find Sister Margaret and make sure that she tells only us how to find Sanctuary . . . and not her mother. This is of paramount importance.”
“Silencing her voice would be easy enough. . . .”
“Don’t underestimate her,” cautioned Saint John. “Remember how talented she was. Had she not fallen from grace, her skill could have rivaled your own.”
Brother Peter gave an elaborate shrug. “I welcome the opportunity to test that.”
“Do not give her the slightest chance. As far as the ranger, Joe . . . we need to find him before he can do more harm. Every time he kills one of ours and is not punished for it, a seed of doubt is planted in the hearts of our reapers. This man must be found.”
“Yes, Honored One.”
Saint John nodded. “There are two other tasks at hand. First, I want you to select your most trusted reapers and have them join you when you go to observe Mother Rose’s meeting at the shrine. Have some follow Her Holiness and Brother Alexi and send runners to me to report everything that is said at this meeting.”
“Of course.” Peter paused. “What is the other matter?”
Saint John looked at the line of footprints in the soft earth. He told Brother Peter about Nyx and her knight.
“Surely they are part of Carter’s party,” insisted Peter, but Saint John shook his head.
“I don’t think so. Their eyes have looked upon the darkness, I’m sure of it.” Saint John absently touched the cut on his forearm. “I will follow them and seek to discover the nature of this holy test.” He took a breath. “Go now. The god of darkness calls us to our purpose.”