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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 consu, 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 naod"

"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 forearht thumbnail he cut a deep red line in his flesh Blood welled, nearly black in the shadows under the trees The reaper sertips, spat on the blood, and then flicked it at them It did not reach them, but that didn’t seeht 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,open

The birds and monkeys were silent in the trees, and the whole forest seelistened on leaves that trean 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 serly uncock the pistol’s hammer and lower it into place "I mean, seriouslywhat 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 theone into the woods and then circled around on their blind side, standing doind 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 theirl "Nyx"

Nyx was the od

He rubbed at the cut on his arhteous but hasty Were they, in fact, heretics who profaned her holy name?

Orwas this some kind of test?

He chewed on that It would not be the first such test laid before hiue started when he found a wretched wo 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 sorasp, 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 as iainst his habits and better judgment, Saint John had helped that wo red mouths in their flesh Their souls flowed into the darkness

The woman appeared to flee fro in a church Hiding with twenty-seven angels Twenty-seven celestial beings who had chosen to take hu to be orphaned children

They had adopted Saint John, and he had adopted thee of that first test, Saint John would never have ht 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, s 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 hat 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 screaels--of which only nine were left on this side of the darkness--or one of the recruits who had fully elory of the red an 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 the 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 the he and Mother Rose had trained theence of true faith

A quad rowled behind him, and Saint John turned to wait as one of his reapers hurried to find him When theit, he smiled

Brother Peter

Peter had been the first of the twenty-seven angels to e at all Peter was a natural, a prodigy The nuion, 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 hile 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 theroups Brother Alan and Sister Gail are going to take the third in a pincer roup went into a valley, and Brother Andrew is hunting a fourth near the creek"