Saint John studied Nix’s face.
“So be it,” he said softly, and slowly resheathed his knives. Then he pushed up the sleeve to reveal his left forearm, and with his long right thumbnail he cut a deep red line in his flesh. Blood welled, nearly black in the shadows under the trees. The reaper smeared blood on his fingertips, spat on the blood, and then flicked it at them. It did not reach them, but that didn’t seem to matter to the man in black. His face was alight with triumph, as if what he had just done sealed his threats into the fabric of reality. “May you live long,” he snarled, as if that was the worst thing one person could wish upon another.
Then Saint John of the Knife turned and melted like a bad dream into the darkness that lurked under the tall trees.
Benny and Nix stood there, sword raised, gun pointing, mouths hanging open.
The birds and monkeys were silent in the trees, and the whole forest seemed to hold its breath. Drops of blood glistened on leaves that trembled and swayed. Nix lowered her pistol and began to tremble all over. Benny wrapped his arm around her, but he had his own case of the shakes and wasn’t sure he was able to offer any real comfort.
“What just happened?” breathed Nix, her voice small and fragile. She used her thumb to gingerly uncock the pistol’s hammer and lower it into place. “I mean, seriously . . . what just happened?”
“I—I don’t know,” Benny admitted.
“Did I provoke him? Did I just make it worse?”
“No,” Benny lied. “I don’t think so.”
They backed away from the spot where the man—the reaper—had stood. Then, after five paces, they turned and ran as far and as fast as they could.
33
THE MAN CALLED SAINT JOHN STEPPED OUT FROM BEHIND A TREE AND watched the two teenagers run away.
When he’d left them, he’d gone into the woods and then circled around on their blind side, standing downwind of them so he could study them. He could have come up behind them and cut their throats, and his hands ached to do just that, but he was caught in a moment of indecision.
Before he had confronted them, Saint John had heard the boy call the girl “Nyx.”
Nyx was the mother of his god.
He rubbed at the cut on his arm and frowned in doubt. His vexation with them had been righteous but hasty. Were they, in fact, heretics who profaned her holy name?
Or . . . was this some kind of test?
He chewed on that. It would not be the first such test laid before him. He remembered that night a few days after the gray plague started when he found a wretched woman being chased through the streets of a burning city by a pack of abusive men. Saint John had seen such horrors a thousand times as the world crumbled and died, but this one instance drew his attention. On some level too profound for him to fully grasp, the events were part of a test of his faith and his resolve. It was a subtle test, and even after all these years he could not understand every aspect of it; but what was important was that he recognized it as a test.
Against his habits and better judgment, Saint John had helped that woman. He saved her from the men by opening red mouths in their flesh. Their souls flowed into the darkness.
The woman appeared to flee from him, but soon Saint John found her hiding in a church. Hiding with twenty-seven angels. Twenty-seven celestial beings who had chosen to take human form, pretending to be orphaned children.
They had adopted Saint John, and he had adopted them.
Had he not accepted the challenge of that first test, Saint John would never have met the woman who would become the pope of his Night Church.
Mother Rose.
And the twenty-seven angels?
They were his first reapers.