Flesh and Bone (Benny Imura 3)

Brother Peter felt stricken. “Then . . . we have failed?”

The saint turned toward him, his face filled with love but also with a passionate light. “No, my son, and do not fall to doubt now. Mother Rose does not know that we know. In her pride, she opens her throat to us.”

FROM NIX’S JOURNAL

Warrior Smart

Tom wasn’t one for he-man war quotes, but there were two that he liked.

“Si vis pacem, para bellum,” which was a quote from De Re Militari by fourth-century Roman author Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus. It translates as: “If you wish for peace, prepare for war.”

Tom said that the best way to ensure that you won’t be attacked is to be too strong to make it worth the other guy’s while. Or something like that. I mean, I never read much about samurai or armed soldiers getting mugged.

The other phrase was one from the samurai: “We train ten thousand hours to prepare for a single moment that we pray never comes.”

I get that.

61

FOR A LONG TIME CHONG FLOATED IN AN INFINITE OCEAN OF PAIN.

For hours, days, weeks . . . maybe years.

Time was meaningless.

Then he heard a voice.

“You in there, boy?”

“Don’t . . . call me ‘boy,’” Chong said thickly.

“I need y’all to wake up,” said Riot. “We need to have us a talk.”

Chong slowly opened his eyes. He was lying on his uninjured side and had to look over his shoulder to see Riot, who knelt behind him. She appeared to be studying the exit wound. When Chong looked down at the entry wound, all he saw was a red-black burn.

He expected it to hurt, and it did. The area around the burn was puffy and red. Chong felt hot, as if the heat of the cauterizing blade had infused his entire body. Sweat ran down his torso and pooled under him.

“I don’t feel too great,” he said.

Riot breathed in and out through her nose for a moment. “Yeah, well, that’s the thing,” she said. “We maybe got us a problem.”

“Really? A problem?” He arched an eyebrow. “Beyond arrows, burned flesh, an army of killers, and the end of the world?”

She did not smile.

“Riot—?”

Instead of answering, she picked up the arrowhead she’d unscrewed. She sniffed it, and her frown deepened. Th

en she picked up the quiver of arrows and studied the blackened tips of each.

“Oh, man . . . ,” she breathed.

“What is it?” asked Chong. “What’s wrong? Is it poison?”

Riot got up and walked around so she faced him. There was a haunted look in her eyes, and her mouth was drawn and tight.

“Is it poison?” Chong repeated.