Flesh & Bone (Rot & Ruin, #3)(24)

Behind Mother Rose was a man Lilah knew had to be a bodyguard. He was enormous, a giant who could not have been an inch less than seven feet tall. He had skin the color of mahogany and a shrewd, intelligent face on which was no single trace of compassion or humanity. It was a killer’s face, and Lilah knew what killers looked like. The giant stood apart, just inside the darkness of the forest. He leaned on the haft of a long-handled sledgehammer. There were knives sheathed at both hips, and around his neck he wore a necklace of withered human hands. Lilah counted nineteen of them. Somehow she did not think that these hands had been cut from the wrists of zoms.

“Blessings to you all, my reapers,” Mother Rose said in a soft southern drawl. “May you always walk the shortest path to the darkness.”

“Praise be to the darkness,” they responded.

Reapers, mused Lilah. Her hands tightened on the shaft of her spear.

One of the men Lilah had seen on the bikes, the one with the two-handed sword, knelt and kissed one of the streamers that was tied to Mother Rose’s ankle. It did not seem to matter to him that this streamer had trailed in the dirt and mud.

“What have you found, Brother Simon?” asked Mother Rose.

“The gray wanderers you flushed toward the clearing are still there,” said the man. “Jack and I—”

“Brother Jack,” corrected Mother Rose.

Brother Simon nodded, took a breath, and continued. “Brother Jack and I put the call out all along the western slope. There are at least three or four hundred grays heading downland now, which means that those trails will be totally blocked. Sister Abigail has her reapers on the north flank, and Brother Gomez is in a nice blind down at the southern end. If any of Carter’s people slip the grays, they’ll have to take one of those two routes, and they’ll walk right into our people.”

Mother Rose nodded.

“I think Carter and his people are still heading southwest,” continued Brother Simon.

“Good,” said Mother Rose, nodding her approval. “That means the heretics will walk right into Saint John.”

At the mention of that name, Lilah saw many of the people stiffen, their smiles becoming tighter, forced.

“It would be better for Carter if he let us catch them,” said one of the reapers, a woman with red poppies tattooed on her face. “They’d at least have a chance to join us instead of immediately going into the darkness.”

Many of the others nodded. Mother Rose’s smile was less forced and entirely unpleasant. Lilah did not like that smile. Not one little bit. It was the way she imagined a shark might smile.

Mother Rose said, “Saint John is the favored son of the Lord Thanatos.”


“Praise be to the darkness,” replied the gathered reapers immediately upon hearing the name.

“Saint John has his own path to the darkness,” continued Mother Rose, “and it is for him alone and not for us to understand.”

“All blessings to Saint John,” said Brother Simon. “All blessings to the beloved of Lord Thanatos.”

As the others echoed his words and bowed low, Lilah saw Mother Rose cut a quick look at her bodyguard. Was that a smile they shared? Or a sneer? Lilah was not well practiced at reading faces, but she had spied on Charlie Pink-eye and his crew many times, and she could recognize deceit when she saw it. Whoever this Saint John was, Lilah guessed that he should be worried about how much Mother Rose truly respected him.

And what was that name Mother Rose had mentioned?

Thanatos.

Lilah frowned. The name tugged at a memory. Not someone she’d ever met, but something she’d read. She didn’t push at it; instead she relaxed her thoughts and let the memory float to the top.

Thanatos. One of two aspects of death from ancient Greek culture. Her frown deepened because as she remembered it, Thanatos was the nonviolent death god. The one who came to relieve suffering. And yet all these people were heavily armed. Lilah decided that whoever this “Carter” person was, she was glad she was not in his shoes.

Below, Brother Simon clamped his jaws shut, clearly struggling with something else that he wanted to say, or perhaps feared to say.

Mother Rose saw this and touched his face. “What is it?”

“A few of the scouts have sighted a, um . . . girl with a slingshot among Carter’s refugees.” He spoke as if prying the words from his mouth. “The descriptions match Sister Margaret.”

Everyone gasped and took involuntary steps away from Brother Simon, as if they expected lightning to strike him for some great sin. Suddenly the giant dropped his sledgehammer and caught Brother Simon by the throat, lifting him effortlessly until the reaper stood on the very tips of his shoes.

“We do not speak that name,” he growled. Brother Simon’s face turned red and then purple as the giant squeezed his hand.

Mother Rose leaned past the giant. “Are you sure, brother?” she asked in a voice that was as cold and hard as a knife blade.

“Y-yes,” croaked Brother Simon in a strangled little voice.

The giant glanced at Mother Rose, who studied the choking reaper with narrowed eyes. She touched the giant’s arm, a soft brush of fingertips over the landscape of his bulging muscles.

“Brother Alexi . . . ,” she said, and the giant released Brother Simon, who collapsed to his knees, gasping and honking as he fought to drag in a breath. The giant, Alexi, picked up his sledgehammer and returned to his station just behind Mother Rose.