Flesh & Bone (Rot & Ruin, #3)(46)

Saint John doubted that a hundred heretics still remained on this side of the darkness.

Soon red doors would open for each of them. The reapers were doing everything he and Mother Rose had trained them to do, and they did it with the unquenchable diligence of true faith.

A quad motor growled behind him, and Saint John turned to wait as one of his reapers hurried to find him. When the machine came into view and Saint John saw who was riding it, he smiled.

Brother Peter.

Peter had been the first of the twenty-seven angels to embrace the way of the blade, and it had taken no urging at all. Peter was a natural, a prodigy. The number of heretics he had ushered into the darkness was legion, second only to Saint John himself.

The quad pulled up and Brother Peter turned off the engine, allowing a soothing quiet to settle over the woods. He placed a hand over the angel wings on his chest and gave a slight bow of the head.

“Honored One,” he said softly.

Peter was in his early twenties and had grown up tall and powerful, but his face was unmarked because he had never, in all the years Saint John had known him, smiled. Not once. His scalp was tattooed with a tangle of thornbushes through which centipedes crawled.

“How goes the crusade?” asked Saint John.

“Carter split his people into six groups. He probably thought that would make it easier for them to escape, but it made it easier for us to hunt them. We opened the red doors of two of the groups. Brother Alan and Sister Gail are going to take the third in a pincer movement, because that group went into a valley, and Brother Andrew is hunting a fourth near the creek.”

“And the other two?”

“Our people are looking.”


“That is well.” Saint John approved of Andrew, who was a recent convert and a former town guard from Treetops. It was he who had provided Brother Peter with a map to the tree-house city where Carter and his people had lived until a week ago. The knives of the reapers had been bloodied from tip to pommel that night, and every day since.

“I met Brother Simon a few minutes ago,” said Peter. “He asked me to tell you that Mother Rose has called a meeting of the team leaders.”

“Where?”

Brother Peter paused. “They are to meet her at the Shrine of the Fallen in two hours.”

Saint John was a long time in responding. He folded his hands behind his back and seemed to be interested in the dance of a pair of dragonflies.

“I want you to be there,” he said softly. “But don’t be seen. I want to know everything that is said at that meeting.”

“Yes, Honored One.”

“And I want to know if anyone—anyone—enters the shrine itself.”

“Mother Rose would never allow it. It’s her shrine,” said the young reaper. “Even I’ve never been inside.”

“Nor have I,” murmured Saint John.

The two reapers regarded each other for a silent moment.

Brother Peter frowned. “Why call a meeting there, of all places? Why a place she has expressly forbidden anyone to visit? I—don’t understand.”

Saint John’s smile was small and cold. “God speaks to each of us in a different way. Who is to say what secrets he whispers to our beloved Rose?”

His smile was warm, but his tone was cold.

After a long silence, Brother Peter nodded. “There are times I do not entirely . . . understand what Mother Rose does, Honored One.”

“Oh?” said Saint John.

“Perhaps I am too simple a man, but sometimes I cannot connect her actions with the needs of our holy purpose.”

A faint smile played over Saint John’s lips. “I’m sure God forgives you for such doubts.”

The younger man bowed. As he straightened he said, “There is another matter, Honored One.”

“Oh?”

“I was patrolling the forest beyond the shrine, looking to see if Sister Margaret dared to lead any of the heretics that way . . .”

Saint John nodded encouragement.

“ . . . and I found five reapers who had red doors opened in them.”

The saint spread his hands. “We knew that Carter would fight. He is stubborn in his heresy, and there are many like him in his group.”

“No, Honored One, I do not believe that Carter or any of his people killed them. Whoever took them did it quietly and with great skill.”

“What level of skill?”

Brother Peter’s face was as bland as ever, but his eyes were alight. “Possibly as good as me. And around the bodies I found animal tracks.”

“A dog?” asked Saint John.

“A very large dog.”

“Ah,” said Saint John, raising his eyebrows. “You think he’s back? The ranger?”

“Yes, Honored One, I do . . . although that confuses me. Am I mistaken, or did not Brother Alexi swear that he killed the ranger? Did he not swear before God that he smashed the life out of him with his great hammer?”

“He did say so,” agreed Saint John.

Brother Peter began to add something to that, but he bit it back. However, Saint John nodded as if the rest had been spoken.

Mother Rose had said she witnessed her pet giant kill this particular heretic. This mercenary who served the evil ones—the doctors and scientists; this killer who preyed on the reapers.