“Hey, look, pal,” snapped Benny, “we’re not blaspheming anyone or anything. And if that’s what it sounds like, then we’re sorry. Like she said, we’re not who you think we are, so we’re just going to leave. Pretend you never saw us. You go ahead and do whatever it is you were doing, and we’ll be out of your life and—”
Saint John spat again and took a threatening step forward, his fists balled. “Where are you from? Are you scouts from Sanctuary?” His eyes flared, and he bared his teeth. “That’s it, isn’t it? You think you can spy on the holy children of my god in order to lay a trap for us?”
“Still don’t know what you’re talking about, man,” said Benny, “and we’re still leaving. Adios.”
“You pathetic maggots,” sneered Saint John. “Do you think Sanctuary can hide from us? Do you think it can withstand us? We are the fists of God on earth.”
“Whatever,” said Benny.
“Sanctuary will fall, as every other town has fallen, as all evil must fall. The reapers will open every red door and wash its streets in blood. You cannot hope to defy the will of the only true god. Thanatos—all praise to the darkness.”
Saint John reached into the billowy folds of his shirt and drew out two knives, and he did it so quickly and smoothly that they seemed to appear magically in his hands. Benny had seen enough skilled knife fighters—Tom, Solomon Jones, Sally Two-Knives, and others—to recognize that this man was a master of these blades.
Nix saw it too, and she stopped backing away and settled into a wide-legged shooter’s stance. “Don’t be stupid,” she warned. Her voice did not sound like that of a fifteen-year-old girl. Benny knew that she was deadly serious.
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 bl
ack. 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.