pitiful handful of people who stood against them.
And they all died.
Every last one of them. More than half of Mother Rose’s army. Gone.
Nix and Chong had not fired a shot.
Nor had Lilah.
Or Riot.
Even Grimm had only watched.
One man.
Now Joe walked among the bodies, looking for signs of reanimation. Every now and then a hollow crack broke the silence. As he reloaded, he looked around, and his eyes met those of Chong and Nix. The ranger’s face was totally without expression as he pocketed the empty magazine and slapped a new one into place. His eyes were not bright with battle lust or dark with emotion. His eyes were… nothing. They were as dead in their way as the zoms. Joe stood for a moment, watching them watching him, then turned without a word and went about his grotesque but necessary work.
Chong found his voice, but it was thin and fragile. “When we fought Preacher Jack and his people at Gameland,” he began slowly, “I thought I understood what war was really like. But… ”
“This is war,” said Nix. “This is what it really looks like. God… there has to be something better than this.”
Chong nodded and turned away.
But then a new sound intruded into the moment. A motor sound, but not the sound of quads. It was bigger. Much, much bigger.
They leaned out.
The sound was massive, rolling out over the tops of the trees.
They turned and looked upward.
“Oh my God!” cried Nix.
Even Chong, despite everything, smiled.
The thing was enormous and white, with massive wings stretching on either side. It flew directly over the clearing, and its shadow caressed their faces as they watched. It flew low and descended toward the red desert mountains in a graceful line.
Down among the dead, Joe stopped and shielded his eyes as he looked up. Stained with soot and blood, he smiled.
The jet.
92
In the last glow of the dying sun, Mother Rose stood at the edge of the forest. She watched the jet descend toward Sanctuary. Once, long ago, she had seen it flying high in the sky, and she’d thought it was a passenger liner. How foolish a thought that had been. She knew what it was now; her daughter had told her. A C-5 Galaxy. A cargo jet that brought staff and supplies to Sanctuary.
Even if Mako hadn’t revealed the location of the place, the landing jet would have been a beacon.
Not that it mattered anymore. Mother Rose had less than one hundred reapers left. A fraction of her force. All the rest…?
Alexi had come running from the shrine, bloody and furious, claiming that children and a ranger were trying to take the weapons from the fallen plane. Mother Rose had sent so many of her reapers back with him. Too many.
And all of them… gone. Dead. Torn to rags by the weapons she had hidden and protected from Saint John and the rest of the Night Church.
Her weapons. The tools that would have made her the queen of this world.
Gone. The weapons, her reapers, her dreams… gone.
Only Alexi returned. Bloodier still. Defeated. A general without an army.
Her remaining reapers milled in the darkness. Not enough to take Sanctuary away from the monks and scientists who worked there.
Not enough.
“We’re done,” said Alexi.
Mother Rose almost stabbed him. Her hand was on her knife, but her heart was breaking and she simply could not do it. It was over.
“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
