Fire and Ash (Benny Imura 4)

“I’m not asking you, little brother. I’m telling you.”

Benny shook his head. “No. I played fair. I gave you what we took from the zom. Not going to argue jurisdiction over that stuff. But the stuff I took off the reaper yesterday belongs to me. Your reaper attacked me. That means that anything I took from him is mine by rights. Spoils of war.”

“This isn’t a war, boy.”

“Well, what the hell do you call it?”

“You are defying god’s will.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m not.”

Brother Peter sighed. “Then let me simplify things for you. I’ll send you back to Sanctuary. You’ll get whatever you gave to Joe Ledger and bring it back here to me.”

“Why on earth would I do something stupid like that?”

Brother Peter did not answer. Not in words.

He stood a yard away from Nix, apparently ignoring the gun pointed at his head. And then he moved. So hideously fast that there was no time to react or cry out. Brother Peter snatched the pistol from Nix’s hand, spun her, and wrapped an arm around her throat. He let the pistol fall and suddenly there was a knife in his hand, the edge of the blade pressed against the soft flesh beneath Nix’s jaw.

Benny’s sword flashed from its scabbard, but Brother Peter froze him in place with seven horrible words.

“I will paint you with her blood.”

The pistol lay on the ground by Brother Peter’s foot. He kicked it into the ravine.

“And now,” he said calmly, “tell me again that you refuse to get what belongs to me. Tell me, boy, and watch this girl’s life flow out of her.”

“No!” cried Benny.

Nix stared at Benny with wide eyes filled with total terror.

The reapers began climbing off their quads, grins forming on their tattooed faces.

Riot pivoted and aimed her slingshot at the nearest one, but Benny knew that it was no good. She could bring the man down, Benny could take the next few with his sword, but that knife was already at Nix’s throat.

Then suddenly there was a sharp metallic sound behind the reapers. A sound so specific that everyone knew what it was befo

re they turned and looked.

A slide being racked on an automatic pistol.

The Lost Girl rose up out of the tall grass behind the half circle of reapers, her big automatic pistol held in a two-handed grip.

“Let Nix go,” she said in her graveyard whisper of a voice, “or I’ll blow your head off.”

The reapers froze in place, some with weapons half-drawn. Brother Peter turned to face Lilah.

“Kill me and she dies too.”

“You’re threatening to kill her anyway. Might as well kill you first.”

“My reapers of the Red Brotherhood will slaughter you.”

Lilah said, “Look into my eyes. Tell me if you think I care.”

Brother Peter did look into her eyes, and Benny thought he could see something shift in the man’s expression. It was not fear—Benny didn’t think this man was capable of that emotion—but perhaps it was a kind of understanding, of acceptance.

He lowered his knife and gave Nix a small push. She staggered forward, and Benny caught her with one arm. Nix immediately wheeled and tried to kick Brother Peter in the groin. He parried the kick as effortlessly as if he was swatting a fly.