Tooth & Nail

8

Saint John of the Knife stood in the shadows of a live oak and waited for the slaughter to begin. He stood on a grassy knoll, looking down on a country lane that wandered lazily through the countryside. Birds sang in all the trees, and the air was alive with the buzz of honeybees and bluebottle flies. Sunlight slanted through the boughs, dappling the road in yellow and purple.

The wagon clattered along the road, wheels crunching against the edges of ruts worn into the cracked blacktop. Four heavy-boned horses pulled the wagon, their bodies wrapped in carpet coats and draped with metal mesh. Two men sat on the wooden bench seat, one with the reins in his hands, the other with a shotgun across his knees. The wagon was an old-fashioned chuck wagon that had probably been looted from a cowboy museum. The sides had been reinforced with metal sheeting, and the words gunderson trade goods had been painted in bright colors. Two men walked beside the wagon, one on each side, leading their horses. Fifty yards behind the wagon, another man rode slowly on a slate-gray Percheron that stood nineteen hands high and wore a helmet covered in spikes.

The man who sat astride the Percheron had flaming red hair gathered back into a ponytail, dusty jeans, cowboy boots, a Western shirt with flowers and hummingbirds stitched across the chest, and crisscrossed army gun belts around his lean hips, from which holstered Glocks hung. A widemouthed sheath, from which one half of a compound bow protruded, was slung from the saddle horn. It was a metal-and-fiberglass hunting bow fitted with cables and pulleys. A quiver heavy with arrows was slung across his back.

The man was big — tall, broad-shouldered, and muscular. His chest and arms were almost freakishly huge, nearly simian, but for all his mass there was something about him. A lurking potential to use that power with deadly speed. Saint John could see that right away; he was an excellent judge of combat potential.

This was the man they were looking for, he decided. He fit the description given by the Night Church’s newest reaper, Brother Tony. This was the man who knew where Mountainside and the other eight towns could be found.

The trade wagon and its guards were walking through country that was virtually empty of the gray people, and it showed in the slack disinterest of each of those men. Only the big man seemed to be alert. In fact, Saint John saw the precise moment when the red-haired giant realized that the woods were not as empty as they appeared. His horse passed through a patch of shadow thrown across the road by a crooked willow. As the rider passed out of the shadow and into the sunlight, his head jerked up and he looked around. First to the right-hand side of the road, then to the left. His body language changed as he shifted forward in the saddle.

He raised his head, and Saint John had the strange impression that the redhead was sniffing the air the way an animal would. Could he somehow smell the chemicals on the tassels of the hidden reapers? With all the wildflowers that bloomed on either side of the road, it seemed unlikely, improbable. It was why Saint John had chosen this particular spot for the ambush.

“Bobby, Harv,” called the big man. “Hold up.”

The two men leading their horses turned to look back at him. “What’s up, Mike?”

Iron Mike Sweeney used his thighs to guide his horse forward as he continued to look around.

“I don’t know… something’s…”

He let his voice trail off. And then it seemed to Saint John that the big man’s whole body appeared to blur. His hands were empty and then they were not. He’d snatched up his bow so fast that the eye could not follow it. An arrow seemed to appear on the string as if by magic, there was a vibrating twang, and then a wet scream tore the air. A reaper staggered from between two thick bushes with that same arrow buried to the fletching in his chest. He took two wandering steps and then toppled forward onto his face with no attempt at all to catch his fall.

“Trap!” yelled Iron Mike.

Before Harv and Bobby could even react, Mike had begun filling the air with arrows. One after the other, so fast that Saint John felt an electric thrill race through him. It was like nothing he’d ever seen. Screams filled the air as each arrow plunged into dense shadows to find a chest or throat or eye socket. Reapers fell, writhing in agony or still in death.

The shotgun man on the wagon stood up and swung his barrel around, firing blindly into the trees. Then he shrieked and pitched backward, a hatchet chunked deep into his lower back.

There was a thunderous cry, and the reapers rose up from behind bushes and rocks. A wave of them crested the top of the grassy knoll and washed down toward the road.

Harv and Bobby drew their guns and fired.

And fired and fired.

The reapers were so closely packed that every bullet hit a target.

The guns clicked empty and the guards tried to reload.

Tried.

The reaper wave slammed into them, and they went down in a froth of red as silver knives ended them. Other reapers dragged the driver down and cut him into red inhumanity.

The arrows of the big trade guard never paused. He killed seven reapers, ten, fourteen. Twenty.

They surged toward him, and he hooked the string of the bow over his saddle horn and drew his Glocks. The reapers, the killers who served Saint John’s god, ran into the storm of bullets. They screamed the name of Thanatos. They screamed the name of Saint John.

They screamed the names of their mothers as the bullets tore them down.

Iron Mike filled the road with the dead.

His mighty Percheron, twenty-six hundred pounds of warhorse, reared up and lashed out with steel-shod hooves. The elite killers of the Night Church were flung into the air with shattered skulls and arms and chests.

And then a blade whistled through the air, turning end over end, and its point bit deep into the Percheron’s throat. The horse screamed and twisted sideways and fell.

Iron Mike leaped from the saddle and landed hard, tucking and rolling, coming up onto the balls of his feet, dropping empty magazines, swapping them out, turning, firing, killing. He dropped those magazines and slapped in his last two.

The reapers formed a wide circle around him, the diameter thirty feet across, the ranks of killers thirty deep. Hundreds of knives and swords and scythes glittered in the sunlight. The red-haired giant held the pistols out as he turned in a slow circle.

Everyone knew how this was going to end. He had fifteen rounds in each gun. He had no more magazines.

There were a thousand reapers around him.

Saint John walked slowly down from the top of the knoll. He paused to retrieve his knife from the horse’s throat; then he gave an order and the reapers parted to create a corridor. The saint wiped his blade clean on his thigh and slid the throwing knife into its sheath as he strolled toward the last trade guard. He stopped ten feet away.

The big man said nothing, but he lowered his pistols.

“I am Saint John of the Knife,” said the saint. “You understand that if I wanted you dead, you would be dead.”

The big man shrugged. “Everybody dies.”

His eyes were strange. The irises were red except for a rim of gold. Saint John had never seen eyes like that except in church paintings of vampires and demons.

“The question is, my friend,” said Saint John, “do you want to live?”