Brother Peter was too good to be defeated in such a duel. Maybe Tom, at the top of his game, might have done it. Maybe a younger and faster Joe Ledger might have. But no one in that hallway—not Nix or Lilah, not Grimm, not Chong, or Colonel Reid even if she had more bullets—none of them could ever beat Brother Peter.
Benny knew that Brother Peter would parry his attack because Peter was expecting the attack. Benny knew the reaper would stab him, because Peter was too good not to. So Benny attacked and was parried, and he was stabbed. And he was ready for all that. His first move was a big, fast kirioroshi, a downward cut. His raised arms gave Brother Peter something to block but also kept the killer’s knives away from his own throat.
In the last half of that one second . . .
As the blade chunked into his back, Benny pivoted in place. A sloppy move filled with agony, but perfect in its selection. It used the force of the stabbing knife to power the turn as Benny swung his sword between himself and Brother Peter. A yoko-giri, a tight lateral cut that cleaved the air between them.
Except that there was not enough distance for the sword to pass unhindered.
Brother Peter was too close.
Too close to avoid that blade.
Too close to escape the moment and all its red truths.
The sword drew a line through both of the reaper’s biceps, and through the flat plates of the man’s pectoral muscles, and grated along the bones in his chest, grooving the sternum so dee
ply that it collapsed inward. Brother Peter coughed as those jagged bones did awful work inside his body.
The kami katana flew from Benny’s hands as he staggered past the point of impact. He managed a single reflexive step before the pain drove him down to his knees. He fell against Colonel Reid, who—like everyone else—stared in abject horror at what had just happened.
The second came and went, and in its wake there was wreckage that would last forever.
Brother Peter stood for a moment longer. The stern, unlined face of the man who had never smiled now wore its first smile. A bemused smile, as he looked down at his chest and saw the red mouth that stretched all the way across his body. He dropped to his knees with such force that the sound of bone on concrete was like gunshots.
Benny turned and looked at him. They were only three feet apart, both of them on their knees.
“You—you haven’t won,” said Brother Peter in a voice that was wet and trembling.
There was a sound—the sharp, harsh, metallic sound of someone working the bolt of a machine gun—and Benny saw Joe Ledger, still bleeding, his face gray with pain, leaning against the far wall. His weapon was in his hands, barrel pointed at the remaining reapers.
“Yes, we have,” said Benny, and his voice was firmer than he thought it would be. He expected to speak in a dying whisper, but the lights in his head were not going out. Not yet. “We have a cure now. We win.”
The reaper sneered at him, blood dribbling from between his lips. “Take your . . . cure . . . see if it will save . . . anyone . . .”
His words were torn apart by a fit of coughing that sent him crashing to the stones. He fell over and stared at Benny with glazing eyes, but his lips still moved. Despite the agony in his own body, Benny crawled to him and bent to listen.
“Your sins . . . are already . . . paid for . . . ,” wheezed Brother Peter. “Even now . . . Saint John and our . . . army . . . are closing in on your . . . home.”
“Home? What are you talking about?”
Brother Peter was fading quickly, the lights burning out in his eyes. “Mountainside will burn.”
With that smile still on his lips, the reaper sagged back and seemed to settle against the cold stone. Benny wanted to grab him, to shake life back into him, to force him to live another moment longer so he could make sense of what he’d just said.
Mountainside will burn.
It was insane, impossible. How could the reapers know about Mountainside? Then he thought of the slip of paper he’d found that showed how many reapers were already in California. Two armies . . . one of forty-five hundred and another with over nineteen thousand of the killers. Already in California.
And they knew the name of Benny’s hometown.
They knew about Mountainside.
God . . .
How could his town defend itself? And with what? A tiny town watch and some fence guards? A frail chain-link fence?
Against an army of twenty-four thousand killers?