Fire and Ash (Benny Imura 4)

Those words were all the uglier for being true.

Sometimes there aren’t words, Benny knew. Sometimes there are hurts so deep that they exist in a country that has no spoken language, a place where all landscapes are blighted and no sun ever shines. Benny had left his footprints in the dust of that place. It was on the day Tom brought him to Sunset Hollow, to the house Benny had lived in as a baby, to the place where his parents waited, year after interminable year, tied to kitchen chairs. Tom could have quieted their parents years ago, but he’d waited because he knew that one day his little brother would need to have a hand in the closure of their shared pain. That day—that terrible, terrible day—Tom had taken his knife and quieted Benny’s dad, Tom’s stepfather. Then he’d given the knife to Benny. It was an act of kindness and of respect that felt like the worst betrayal, the worst punishment.

Holding Riot, he closed his eyes and was right back at that moment with everything as clear and precise as a razor cut.

• • •

Benny stood behind the zombie, and it took six or seven tries before he could bring himself to touch her. Eventually he managed it. Tom guided him, touching the spot where the knife had to go. Benny put the tip of the knife in place.

“When you do it,” said Tom, “do it quick.”

“Can they feel pain?”

“I don’t know. But you can. I can. Do it quick.”

Benny closed his eyes. He took a ragged breath and said, “I love you, Mom.”

He did it quick.

And it was over.

He dropped the knife and Tom gathered him up and they sank down to their knees together on the kitchen floor, crying so loud that the sound threatened to break the world.

• • •

The way Riot wept now was her passport to that country. Nix had been there too. And Lilah. Each of them had wandered alone through that land, refugees among the war-torn devastation of their innocence.

Benny did not tell Riot that it was okay, because it wasn’t.

He didn’t tell her that this would pass. The moment would, but the scars would always be there. It was the thing that would always identify them as travelers through the storm lands of the soul.

35

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; ONE WEEK AGO . . .

On a hot afternoon Sister Sun staggered out into the sunlight. Saint John and the army had been gone now for weeks, marching to California to find nine towns filled with heretics. By the time Sister Sun had returned from the remote lab two hundred miles away, the saint had already left. She felt empty without him; he was a great source of strength for her.

Her Red Brotherhood guardsmen snapped to attention. The nearest of them saw how unsteady she was on her feet and rushed to catch her as Sister Sun’s knees buckled.

“Sister—” he began, but she cut him off.

“No, I’m fine . . . I just need to sit down. Send a runner to find Brother Peter. At once. Good. And some water. Thanks. . . .”

She sat in the shade under a Joshua tree and sipped water from an aluminum canteen. Her hands shook so badly that the water sloshed against her lips and splashed onto the front of her shirt, darkening the black cloth and soaking the angel wings.

“Brother Peter is coming up the hill,” said the reaper who’d helped her sit.

Sister Sun looked up to see the unsmiling young man walking toward her at a brisk pace, his own guards fanned out behind him.

“Are you unwell, my sister?” he called as he jogged the last few yards. Sister Sun grabbed his wrist and pulled him close.

“Send them away,” she whispered.

Peter snapped his fingers and the Red Brothers immediately retreated out of earshot but within visual range.

“What is it, sister?” asked Peter, his tone gentle and filled with concern. “Is it the cancer . . . ?”