"Settled," Valentine said. He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. "Hey, Hank, come over here."
The boy ran up to them. "Yes, Mr. Ghost?"
"We're going out on an all-night scout. You want to come?"
"Yes, sir!" Hank answered, his voice breaking with excitement.
"Go on, ask your parents. If it's okay with them, catch up to us."
"Thanks, Mr. Ghost," the boy said, and ran off toward the wagon.
Valentine and Ahn-Kha moved off into the woods. After a hundred yards, Valentine touched Ahn-Kha's shoulder.
"Time for his first lesson," Valentine said. "Keep going."
Valentine held his sheathed knife in his hand and waited next to the trail. Ahn-Kha disappeared into the brush, leaving a Grog-wide trail. Soon he heard the boy's footsteps as Hank ran to catch up with Ahn-Kha's furry back.
As Hank passed, Valentine stepped out from behind the tree. Quick as a Reaper, he got the slim youth in the fold of his left arm and put the sheathed knife to the boy's throat. Hank let out a squeal of fear.
"Just me, Hank," Valentine said, releasing him. "Don't pass so close to trees big enough to hide somebody"
"You didn't have to grab me!" Hank said.
"Your heart beating hard?" Valentine asked.
"Yeah. I don't like being grabbed."
"Then move a little more carefully when you're going through the woods. Long time ago, over on the other side of Arkansas, some friends and I weren't. They're both dead. The Hood stepped right out from behind the tree and grabbed
Gil, as easily as you'd pick up a rabbit knocked out with your slingshot."
"Hood? That's another word for a Reaper, right? We were supposed to call them Visors."
"Do you know how it all works, Hank?"
"I know the Vis-the Reapers drink blood."
"A Reaper's like a puppet. There's another person pulling the strings. We call them Kurians because they're from another world, a planet called Kur. They use the Reapers to feed because it's less dangerous for them when they get the energy. The donor puts up a fight."
"That energy they get, it's something in us, right? Like our souls?" Hank said.
Valentine felt as if the boy had kicked him in the stomach. He thought back to the graves of his parents, brother and sister who fell in Minnesota when he was eleven. He had asked Father Max if their souls had been eaten. "Nobody knows. Yes, it's something humans have more of than other creatures. The man who raised me called it an 'aura." There's more aura in an intelligent being than there is in a dog or something. That's why they feed on us."
"We walked past a Reaper once on an Honor Guard march. They had us out burning down houses. It didn't move. Just looked at us dead cold. Reminded me of a snake sitting on a rock."
"Dead cold, all right," Valentine agreed.
"So that's why everyone's scared all the time now. They're afraid the Reapers will get them."
"That's why people cooperate with them. The people who serve them get badges, or cards, or pieces of jewelry that mean the Reapers can't touch them."
Hank nodded. "Yeah, we heard some of that in Honor Guard. Our Top Guardian had some sorta certificate that signified his family was too important to reassign. I hated him, Dallas trash if ever there was."
"You grew up here in the Ozarks, right?"
"Yes, in the borders. My pa would go out into Texas and steal, or trade for horses. He sorta worked for Southern
Command; at least they gave him stuff when he brought horses in."