The map seemed to work some magic on Saint John. Calming him, driving the wildness from his eyes. The saint took another breath and let it out slowly.
“There is great evil all around us, my friend,” he said in a ragged voice. “The sooner this world is destroyed, the safer all our souls will be.”
He turned and walked away.
Brother Marty stood there, quivering, bathed in cold sweat.
Marty cast a nervous look down the slope to where the red-haired man hung between two trees. Even now, even slumped in death, there was something about the prisoner.
Something deeply, deeply wrong.
Marty backed away, spun, and ran to catch up with Saint John.
12
Sanctuary
Area 51
Benny whirled and saw more reapers emerge from points of concealment. Six of them.
No . . . seven.
His mouth went instantly dry, and his heart sank all the way to his feet.
“Oh God . . . ,” he whispered.
One reaper, a tall man with a hook nose and tattooed beetles and scorpions covering every inch of his shaved head, pointed at Benny with a two-handed field scythe, but spoke to the other reapers. “You see, my brothers and sisters? He calls on a false god when confronted by the servants of the only true god. All hail Thanatos.”
“Praise be to his darkness,” intoned the others in unison.
Benny licked his lips, which were so dry it felt like they were covered with sand. “I don’t want any trouble.”
It sounded as lame as it was, and the reapers smiled.
“Unless you accept the darkness, you are lost in a world of trouble.”
Benny looked quickly around. There were five men and two women, all of them lean and hard-looking, all of them armed with knives and swords. Their white angel wings seemed to glow with inner light on their chests, as if the intensity of their strange beliefs burned with real fire.
“Kneel, brother,” said the man with the scythe. “Humble yourself and pray for release, and in the name of our god we will send you into the sweet and perfect darkness.”
Benny stood and considered the man and his offer. Then he reached over his shoulder and slowly drew the kami katana.
“Or not,” he said.
The reapers looked at the sword and then at the teenage boy who held it.
They burst out laughing.
It was, Benny mused, not exactly the ideal reaction.
His mind was racing furiously, trying to remember every lesson Tom had ever taught him. The path he’d used to come up here was behind him and he could reach it, but it was impossible to negotiate it fast enough to stay alive. Even though none of these reapers carried bows and arrows—and none of them ever carried guns—they could simply stand at the edge of the cliff wall and throw stones at him. They’d batter him off the wall and send him plunging down into the jagged rocks below.
All other potential routes out of here were blocked by reapers. Benny could see some paths beyond them. One wending through dry grass looked well trodden. Benny realized with a jolt that the reapers must have been using this spot to observe Sanctuary. Why weren’t there soldiers up here? There were soldiers across the trench below; Benny had seen a few. Why wouldn’t they have people up here?
Or . . . had some of these reapers once been
soldiers who’d been forced to kneel and kiss the knife, to accept membership into a church built on total human extinction?