Flesh and Bone (Benny Imura 3)

“We were so close,” she said.

Alexi leaned on his hammer and hung his head. “One day,” he said. “If we’d jumped on this yesterday. One damn day.” He let the handle of his hammer fall away to thump into the sand. “Now what? How the hell do we come back from this?”

Mother Rose shook her head. “I don’t know. I . . . I’ll think of something.”

“No,” said a voice, soft as a shadow.

Mother Rose whipped her head around.

“Saint John,” she said in a whisper.

“Get back!” barked Brother Alexi, lunging for his hammer. A shadow rose up from behind a bush as the giant stretched out for his weapon, and then Alexi simply sagged forward and collapsed onto the ground. Mother Rose stared in incomprehension as the sand beneath Alexi darkened and glistened wetly. Alexi tried to speak, but there was no possibility of that. Not with what was left of his throat. He blinked once, twice, and then stared at the darkening sky.

The shadow moved into the light.

Brother Peter wore no expression at all on his face. The fading sunlight gleamed on the bloody knife in his hand.

Saint John walked slowly toward Mother Rose. He had no weapon in his hand, but she wasn’t fooled. Saint John himself was a weapon, and every fold and pocket of his clothes hid blades. He was, after all, Saint John of the Knife. How many times had she seen this man reach out in the most casual fashion, his hand seemingly empty at the beginning of a gesture and filled with steel at the end, and between start and finish the air bloomed with red. He was the greatest killer the world had ever known; she believed that with her whole heart, even if she had never believed in the saint’s God or the Night Church.

To her, it was all a scam. A means to an end.

And this was an end.

Not the one she dreamed of. Not the one she wanted.

Saint John stopped inches away. His face, though not handsome, was beautiful, the way the carved faces of saints in churches are beautiful. Cold and remote and inhuman.

Tears dropped from Mother Rose’s eyes. She knew they would do nothing to change the shape of this day. Nor would anything she could say.

If her reapers were closer, if Alexi was alive, if they had the weapons from the shrine, then she would have tried to manage this moment. To shape it, to try and work a con on the saint.

But those possibilities had set with the burning sun.

She said, “I’m sorry.”

Strangely, surprisingly, she meant it.

Saint John bent close and kissed her on the lips. Without passion, but with love. With the kind of love only he understood.

“I know,” he said.

“Please don’t let it hurt,” she whispered.

“No,” he said.

And it did not.

Mother Rose fell into his arms, and Saint John lowered her to the ground. Then he stepped back, turned, and with Brother Peter at his side, walked away.

She lay there as the sun set. Time was dancing away from her.

There was movement somewhere to her right, and she managed to turn her head, just a little. Brother Alexi was stirring, crawling across the grass toward her.

Alive, she thought, her heart filling with joy. My love is alive.

Except that he wasn’t.

The giant was as pale as the distant stars, and as he bent toward her she could see the darkness. It was in his eyes and in his open mouth.