Fire and Ash (Benny Imura 4)

“You should care.”

“Look, all I care about is you and your goons getting back on your quads and leaving us alone. We didn’t do anything to you, and we don’t want any trouble.”

“Do you know how frightened you sound?”

“Do you know how you’d feel with a bullet in your brainpan?” asked Nix.

“At this range, little sister, you wouldn’t get more than two shots off, and then we’d open red mouths in your pretty skin.”

“Maybe,” conceded Nix. “First shot will still be through your ugly face.”

The reaper shook his head. “So what? Am I supposed to faint from fear? We’re reapers, child. We pray for the darkness to take us. Every morning, every night, we pray that Lord Thanatos takes us.”

“All praise his darkness,” intoned the reapers.

“You say that,” Nix said, “but I’ve seen some of your people run away, too.”

“I was the very first of the reapers,” said Brother Peter. “My companions are members of the Red Brotherhood. Ask Sister Margaret if she thinks we will run away. From you or from anything.”

Riot said nothing, which was not all that encouraging. Benny swallowed a lump of dry dust.

“If you want to test my faith, little sister,” said Brother Peter, “then pull the trigger.”

The gun was steady in Nix’s hand, but when Benny cut a look at her, he could see lines of fear sweat running down her freckled face.

When Nix didn’t answer or fire, Brother Peter nodded. He pointed at Benny. “Yesterday you took something from one of my reapers. Something that was not yours to take.”

“Yeah? Says who?” asked Benny, trying to make his voice sound tough. It didn’t.

“I watched you do it through my binoculars. I saw you arrive, saw your fight with Brother Marcus, and saw you rob him after he’d gone into the darkness.”

Benny said nothing. It made him feel immensely disturbed to know that that had all been witnessed yesterday. He thought of the fight, of his tears, of how vulnerable he must have looked.

Brother Peter nodded to the satchel slung on Benny’s shoulder. “Today you came out here to defile and rob one of the gray people. That bag was not yours to take.”

Nix said, “This gun’s heavy. If you have a point, get to it.”

Benny almost smiled. It was the kind of line he read in novels, and she said it with the kind of bravado he’d tried for a moment ago. Nix was better at it than he was. Benny wasn’t sure if Nix had cribbed it from a book or if she was simply that incredibly cool. Probably both. Despite everything that was happening, he wanted to kiss her.

Brother Peter looked faintly amused, though the expression on his face in no way qualified as a smile. Benny remembered Riot saying that this freak never smiled.

“If you give me what you took,” said Brother Peter, “the bag on your shoulder and whatever you took from my reaper, we will let you go.”

“Oh, really?” said Riot with so much acid that it could have burned the paint off a tank.

“Really,” said Brother Peter.

“Last time I checked,” continued Riot, “you reapers only left people alive when they got down on their knees and kissed your knives. Isn’t that how it works? We get to live if we become reapers too?”

“Oh, fallen sister,” said Brother Peter in a sorrowful tone, “there is no place for you in the Night Church. You are an outcast, forgotten of god, unworthy of the darkness. You are an excommunicate and a blasphemer and you will be punished by a long life of suffering.”

“Suits me,” said Riot.

“Yeah, works for me, too,” agreed Nix.

Benny nodded.

“Really,” repeated Brother Peter. “That appeals to you? A life spent wandering blind and disfigured, screaming for mercy without a tongue, shunned by everyone because your face will bear the mark of damnation upon it.”