Thunderhead (Arc of a Scythe #2)(2)

“Come out,” he said. “I know you’re there.”

He thought it might be a child, or perhaps an unsavory hoping to bargain for immunity—as if an unsavory might have anything with which to bargain. Maybe it was a Tonist. Tone cults despised scythes, and although Brahms had never heard of ?Tonists actually attacking a scythe, they had been known to torment.

“I won’t harm you,” Brahms said. “I’ve just completed a gleaning—I have no desire to increase my tally today.” Although, admittedly, he might change his mind if the interloper was either too offensive, or obsequious.

Still, no one stepped forward.

“Fine,” he said. “Be gone then, I have neither time nor patience for a game of hide-and-seek.”

Perhaps it was his imagination after all. Maybe his rejuvenated senses were now so acute that they were responding to stimuli that were much farther away than he assumed.

That’s when a figure launched from behind a parked car as if it had been spring-loaded. Brahms was knocked off balance—he would have been taken down entirely if he still had the slow reflexes of an older man and not his twenty-five-year-old self. He pushed the figure into a wall, and considered pulling out his blades to glean this reprobate, but Scythe Brahms had never been a brave man. So he ran.

He moved in and out of pools of light created by the street lamps; all the while cameras atop each pole swiveled to watch him.

When he turned to look, the figure was a good twenty yards behind him. Now Brahms could see he was dressed in a black robe. Was it a scythe’s robe? No, it couldn’t be. No scythe dressed in black—it was not allowed.

But there were rumors. . . .

That thought made him pick up the pace. He could feel adrenaline tingling in his fingers, and adding urgent velocity to his heart.

A scythe in black.

No, there had to be another explanation. He would report this to the Irregularity Committee, that’s what he would do. ?Yes, they might laugh at him and say he was scared off by a masquerading unsavory, but these things needed to be reported, even if they were embarrassing. It was his civic duty.

A block farther and his assailant had given up the chase. He was nowhere to be seen. Scythe Brahms slowed his pace. He was nearing a more active part of the city now. The beat of dance music and the garble of conversation careened down the street toward him, giving him a sense of security. He let his guard down. Which was a mistake.

The dark figure broadsided him from a narrow alley and delivered a knuckle punch to his windpipe. As Brahms gasped for air, his attacker kicked his legs out from under him in a Bokator kick—that brutal martial art in which scythes were trained. Brahms landed on a crate of rotting cabbage left by the side of a market. It burst, spewing forth a thick methane reek. His breath could only come in short gasps, and he could feel warmth spreading throughout his body as his pain nanites released opiates.

No! Not yet! I must not be numbed. I need my full faculties to fight this miscreant.

But pain nanites were simple missionaries of relief, hearing only the scream of angry nerve endings. ?They ignored his wishes and deadened his pain.

Brahms tried to rise, but slipped as the putrid vegetation crushed beneath him, becoming a slick, unpleasant stew. The figure in black was on top of him now, pinning him to the ground. Brahms tried to reach into his robe for his weapons, but could not. So instead he reached up, and pulled back his attacker’s black hood, revealing him to be a young man—barely a man—a boy. His eyes were intense, and intent on—to use a mortal-age word—murder.

“Scythe Johannes Brahms, you are accused of abusing your position and multiple crimes against humanity.”

“How dare you!” Brahms gasped. “Who are you to accuse me?” He struggled, trying to rally his strength, but it was no use. The painkillers that were in his system were dulling his responses. His muscles were weak and useless to him now.

“I think you know who I am,” the young man said. “Let me hear you say it.”

“I will not!” Brahms said, determined not to give him the satisfaction. But the boy in black jammed a knee so powerfully into Brahms’s chest that he thought his heart would stop. More pain nanites. More opiates. Brahms’s head was swimming. He had no choice but to comply.

“Lucifer,” he gasped. “Scythe Lucifer.”

Brahms felt his spirit crumble—as if saying it aloud gave resonance to the rumor.

Satisfied, the self-proclaimed young scythe eased the pressure.

“You are no scythe,” Brahms dared to say. “You are nothing but a failed apprentice, and you will not get away with this.”

The young man had no response to that. Instead, he said, “Tonight, you gleaned a young woman by blade.”

“That is my business, not yours!”

“You gleaned her as a favor for a friend who wanted out of a relationship with her.”

“This is outrageous! You have no proof of that!”

“I’ve been watching you, Johannes,” Rowan said. “As well as your friend—who seemed awfully relieved when that poor woman was gleaned.”

Suddenly, there was a knife at Brahms’s neck. His own knife. This beast of a boy was threatening him with his own knife.

“Do you admit it?” he asked Brahms.

All that he said was true, but Brahms would rather be rendered deadish than admit it to the likes of a failed apprentice. Even one with a knife at his throat.