Preacher Jack.
He held an old-fashioned six-shot pistol in one hand and the curved cavalry saber in the other. His black coat was streaked with soot and blood and his face was pale madness in the starlight. “Imura!” he shouted. “Did I kill you? Did I kill the son of a bitch who murdered my sons?”
“Benny, Nix…,” wheezed Tom, grabbing Benny’s sleeve. “Run!”
Benny peeled Tom’s hand away. “No,” he said fiercely. “We have to stop him.”
“You can’t stop him,” gasped Tom. “He’s too fast… too strong. He’ll kill us all.”
As he spoke, Tom tried to get to his feet, but a furious wave of pain crashed him back down onto his knees. Nix tried to help him up, but her hands slipped on the blood.
“Keep the compresses in place,” warned Lilah.
Benny got to his feet and watched Preacher Jack stalk toward him. He knew that Tom was right. None of them were a match for this madman, old as he was. Preacher Jack had been a soldier and killer his whole life, and the hard years since First Night had only made him tougher. There was no way Benny could beat him, but maybe he could stall the old mercenary long enough for Lilah or Chong to wound him. Or kill him. Even if it meant sacrificing himself to make that possible. Benny looked at Tom, injured and helpless. And at Nix. And Lilah and Chong. He would die for any one of them. He might have to die for all of them.
Benny turned back to the preacher and raised the jagged stump of Nix’s bokken. It was the only weapon he had left. It was broken, but the end was sharp. Maybe that would be enough.
Or would it? Preacher Jack stopped ten paces away and raised the pistol.
Then he felt something move behind him and there was Chong, coming up to stand at his side, his bokken in his hands. He smiled at Benny and took another step forward, putting himself between Benny and the pistol.
“What are you doing?” Benny whispered, but Chong ignored him.
Preacher Jack sneered. “Out of the way, rat meat.”
“Bite me,” said Chong, and his voice quavered only a little. “You want Tom, you’ll have to shoot me first.”
Preacher Jack grinned, and his teeth were bloody. “Hell, boy… I’m going to shoot all of you.”
“You won’t have time. One of us will get you,” Benny said, not sure if it was true. Preacher Jack also had the sword.
Lilah snatched up her spear and stood on Chong’s other side. She pointed the broken blade at the preacher. “You’re mine, old man.”
“No!” cried Tom weakly. “No… all of you-run!”
“Not going to happen,” said Chong firmly. “I’ll die before I let him win.”
“This ain’t about winning, boy,” Preacher Jack said with a laugh. “This is about justice. You killed my sons! You killed my whole family. Don’t you understand the full weight of your sin? You did what First Night and three hundred million dead could not do! You killed the House of Matthias!”
“Your sons were trash,” said Benny, his voice heavy with contempt. “Your whole family is nothing but trash. You’re everything that was wrong with the old world, and you want to rebuild that world and make it in your image. You want the world to be about pain and suffering and hurt. How can you pretend to be a preacher, a man of God, and do the things you do?”
Preacher Jack eyed him with burning hatred. “You don’t speak to me like that, boy. You don’t dare.”
And he pulled the trigger.
The hammer fell on a spent cartridge. Preacher Jack pulled the trigger again and again and then, with a snarl, he threw the empty pistol at Benny.
Benny ducked.
Suddenly Lilah was running at Preacher Jack, driving her spear toward his chest and screaming like a banshee. The blade was an inch away when he suddenly pivoted and let it slice through his lapels; he kept turning in a circle and drove his elbow into the back of her head as she passed. Lilah pitched forward onto the ground. Preacher Jack pivoted toward her, raising his foot for a kick that would have shattered her face-but Chong was up and moving faster than Benny had ever seen his friend move. He dove at Preacher Jack and tried to tackle him.
The attack made the kick miss, but it did not take the preacher down. Preacher Jack caught Chong as he flew at him, and with a snap of his hip sent his attacker pitching off into the grass. Chong landed hard. Preacher Jack stamped down, but Chong rolled desperately away.
Benny was up now, clutching the broken bokken as he closed in on Preacher Jack’s blind side. He jumped forward, stabbing at the man’s unprotected back, but the man shifted as quick as lightning and flashed out with a backward kick that caught Benny in the chest. Benny flew backward, landing in a heap.
Lilah climbed to her feet and rushed the preacher, faking high and low, and aimed a vicious cut at the man’s knee, but Preacher Jack blocked the cut with his sword. Lilah rebounded from the cut and slashed again and again and again, and for a moment her attack was so ferocious that the preacher gave ground, backing away and parrying the blows as fast as he could, his sword flashing in the moonlight. For a few golden seconds Benny thought that Lilah was going to do it, that she was going to kill the man; but then he sideslipped the spear and caught the shaft with his free hand. He instantly chopped down with the sword, and Lilah was forced to let go to save her hands. He kicked her and sent her tumbling to the ground, then flung her spear out into the smoke and shadows.
Benny and Chong climbed painfully to their feet and spread out to flank Preacher Jack. The old man smiled at the tactic, shaking his head in amusement. “Children’s games,” he said. “If that’s the way it has to be, then let the lesson begin.”
They rushed him, but Preacher Jack was too fast. He stepped into Chong’s sword thrust, parried it, and whipped his blade across Chong’s body. Blood exploded out from Chong’s bare chest and he was suddenly staggering back, his sword dropping to the grass, his hands clamped to his body to staunch the bleeding.
That left Benny on his feet.
“Now you, boy,” said Preacher Jack. “I’ll cut you some and then let you watch what I do to the others. When you beg me for death, I’ll show you how merciful I can be.”
Benny had no quip, no smart retort. He knew that he was doomed. He had twenty inches of burned and broken wooden sword to try and stop a man who had killed untold numbers of people. A soldier. A warrior. A killer, and a man who was the architect of all the pain in Benny’s world.
With all that, Benny still had to ask the question that had been burning in him since they had first met this man.
“Mr. Matthias,” Benny said, “do you… do you even believe in God?”
Preacher Jack’s smile flickered and then intensified, the original secretive grin replaced by a goblin’s leer. “There is no God,” whispered the old man. “There’s just the devil and me and the Rot and Ruin.”
The sword glittered as Preacher Jack suddenly faked a few cuts at him, taunting and playing with him. The tip of the sword was a silver blur, and Benny felt a burn on his cheek and knew that he had just been cut too fast to even see.
“Drop the weapon, boy,” demanded the preacher. “Put it down and I really will show you mercy. I’ll let you and these other pukes walk out of here. But I want Tom. I want his head and by God I’ll have it.”
“Never!” declared Nix, clutching Tom to her.
“Don’t…,” Tom said weakly as he fought to get to his knees. His eyes were burning and his sweating face was bright with fever.
“Why don’t you just give up?” snapped Benny as he backed away. “Your crew is dead. Gameland is destroyed. Why are you still-”
“I am Gameland, boy! Don’t you get that? While I’m alive, it’s alive, and I’m going to build it back, bigger and better than ever. I’ll build it in the center of Mountainside if I have to… and there won’t be anyone left to stop me. Not you and not your brother. Look at him! He’s halfway to dead already. He just needs a little push.”
Benny saw the future. It was as if the whole world had become bright and clear, and in that clarity he saw how this was going to play out. With sinking horror and grief he knew that there was only one path to walk, and that path was a red one. Preacher Jack began to raise his sword for the final cut. It was all spiraling down.
Benny had backed away as far as he could. Tom was beside him, on his knees, blood spilling down his stomach and thighs. With painful slowness Tom reached over his shoulder to grasp the handle of his sword.
