Fire and Ash (Benny Imura 4)

28

NIX SAT ON A SWING, arms looped around the chains, toes dug into the sand so that the swing moved only a few inches back and forth. The adrenaline in her bloodstream had begun to wash out, and it seemed to be taking all her energy with it, leaving her exhausted and sad.

Seeing Eve did not make that sadness retreat one inch.

The little girl was dozing in Riot’s arms, but Eve’s brow was furrowed. Nix could imagine what her dreams were like.

When she closed her own eyes, Nix saw Charlie Pink-eye and the Motor City Hammer crowd her mother into a corner and begin beating her. That memory was the very last Nix had of her mother. Right after that Charlie knocked her unconscious. By the time she regained consciousness, Nix was already in the Ruin on the way to Gameland. And her mother was dead. Found too late and quieted by Tom Imura.

Would her dreams ever go away?

Nix doubted it.

She worried about it too. Grief and anger were changing her, warping her. For months she had been mean to Benny—the one person who loved her unconditionally. She felt shrewish at times, and vicious.

Only recently had that begun to change, and Nix didn’t know why.

She still had her nightmares. And in her troubled sleep she probably furrowed her brow as Eve was doing now. She knew she ground her teeth—her jaws always hurt in the morning.

How does one come back from that edge? What was that saying from Nietzsche?

Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

Nix wished she didn’t understand what that meant.

Riot caught her looking at Eve, and for a long moment the two of them stared at each other, saying so much without words. Riot slowly nodded, and Nix nodded back.

She understands too.

And Lilah.

Benny, too, now that Tom was gone.

And Chong?

He hadn’t wanted to come along on this journey. The jet didn’t matter to him. He left home for love, and in the wilderness he stumbled along all the way to the edge of the abyss.

Was Chong already lost? Was he a monster?

If you fought monsters and then became one . . . could you ever go back again? Or did the abyss own Chong . . . and Eve?

And all of them?

29

TWO MONTHS AGO . . .

Saint John leaned against a tree, peeling a fig with a small knife, enjoying the sensation of the blade sliding just beneath the skin of the fruit. He wondered, not for the first time, if fruit could feel pain. If it could scream. Even a simple fig would taste so much better if that were the case.

Six tall, stern fighters of the Red Brotherhood stood nearby. Two watching him, four watching outward. The least experienced among them had

sent a hundred heretics into the darkness. Saint John loved the Red Brothers as if they were his own children, and it was their choice, not his, that they wear the tattoo of his left hand on their faces. Brother Peter was his right hand, and they—collectively—were his left.

Inside their circle, seated on a tree stump, was Sister Sun. On the ground between her and Saint John was an old blue plastic ice chest. The lid was sealed with tape. A stack of boxes stood beside the cooler. Each of the boxes was marked with a large letter D.

“My sister,” said Saint John, “do you know what this is?”

Sister Sun’s eyes were wide as she stared at the material. She nodded, almost unable to speak.