Benny and Nix stared.
Grimm barked in fear.
The creature bared bloody teeth at them.
Nix was the only one who could find her voice.
“Chong!”
84
BROTHER PETER WAS LOCKED IN a death struggle with Lilah, but he managed to shout an order to his startled men.
“Kill it!”
It was the wrong thing to say.
Yes, it snapped everyone out of their shocked tableau; but it switched the focus of the fight to the wrong place for a fraction of a second too long.
As the reapers lunged forward to subdue the savage monster that was Chong, they momentarily forgot Benny and Nix.
Tom Imura’s young samurai made them pay for that inattention.
Without a word, without even a shared look of agreement, Benny and Nix attacked. Their blades whipped and slashed with all the speed they could muster, all the skill they possessed, all the rage that burned in their hearts. They did not try for killing blows. That required more time than this fragile moment of opportunity offered. Instead they cut at tendons and muscle, across the backs of knees and the backs of arms. Men and weapons crumpled. Screams filled the corridor, the echoes punching the struggling figures from every direction.
Benny heard a meaty thud, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Lilah pitch sideways, reeling away from Brother Peter’s vicious punch. It was the second blow he’d delivered, and tough as she was, Lilah was still a teenage girl, while Brother Peter was an adult man in the full prime of his physical strength. She rolled against the wall, dazed and bleeding from nose and left ear.
Grimm attacked the knot of reapers from the side, slamming sideways against them to use his shoulder spikes. The Red Brothers stabbed at him and broke their blades o
n his armor.
A few yards away Brother Peter staggered to his feet. He was bloody and panting. One eye was puffed nearly shut, and there was a ragged bite mark on his cheek from when Lilah had savagely bitten him. He had a long, shallow cut across his chest that caused the whole front of his shirt to hang down, exposing muscles that were sharply defined beneath bloody skin. For all those injuries, however, the young reaper seemed unconcerned. He still held one short knife, and as he rose he drew another from a concealed pocket inside his clothes.
Reapers screamed as they were caught between the savagery of Chong’s feral attack and the whistling blades of Dojigiri and the kami katana. The surviving reapers were fighting back to back, trying to use their blades to stop the longer steel, but now they were on the defensive.
Grimm raced along the wall toward Brother Peter, but the reaper deftly sidestepped and kicked the dog in the side. Even with the armor, the kick was powerful enough to knock the mastiff into the wall, where he lay winded and whining.
With a snarl of annoyance, Brother Peter waded into the fight, blocking Nix’s blade with one knife and slashing at her with the other. Blood erupted from amid the freckles on Nix’s cheek, the slash bisecting the scar that ran from her hairline to her jaw.
Nix cried out in pain and retreated, cutting with redoubled speed, but everywhere her sword went, Brother Peter’s knives were there to deflect it. He moved so fast that it looked like he had eight arms. Metal rang on metal as he drove Nix back.
Benny wanted to jump in to help her, but the other reapers renewed their attack, forcing him back. Other killers surrounded Chong.
Suddenly a shot rang out and one of the reapers went spinning away, blood erupting from a hole in his throat.
For an irrational moment Benny thought it was Joe Ledger, but the ranger had only managed to get to his hands and knees and was leaning against the wall, gasping like a fish on a riverbank.
The shock of the gunfire temporarily stopped the fight in the hallway. The reapers backed away from Chong, uncertain of what was happening; and Chong scuttled away from them, bleeding, glaring, and confused.
A figure raced up from behind Dr. McReady, grabbed the scientist, shoved her away from all the fighting, and fired two more shots. Reapers dodged and yelled, and one of them fell with a wound in his shoulder. The newcomer wore a military uniform that was torn and bloodstained, and she had a wild look in her eyes.
Colonel Jane Reid.
She fired another shot and a reaper clutched his chest and fell, but then the slide locked back on Colonel Reid’s pistol.
Brother Peter saw this and dodged Nix’s cuts and ran at Reid, eyes blazing.
In a freakish way Benny could understand the reaper’s rage. Colonel Reid was the commander of Sanctuary, and this whole place stood as a symbol of everything the Night Church wanted to destroy. Killing her must be to Brother Peter what killing one of the archdukes of hell would have been for a crusading knight of old.