John Connolly - The Reapers

“Okay,” he said. He gestured at the rear door. It opened to the left. They had just stepped outside when a young man appeared from around the corner to their right. He was small, and armed with a pistol. He stared at them, then raised his gun halfheartedly. It wavered in his hand.

“Don’t move,” he said, but Angel was already moving. He grabbed the gun, pushing it away to the left, and hit the man as hard as he could in the face with the crown of his head. The man collapsed, leaving Angel holding the gun. As he went down, Angel heard the sound of the double doors at the front of the barn opening.

Something flamed behind Angel. He turned to see Louis lighting the sack.

“Run,” said Louis.

And Angel ran. Seconds later, Louis was beside him, his hand on Angel’s aching back, pushing him down to the ground as Angel started to pray.

Benton and Quinn heard the shots as they moved into the barn. One end of the barn was heavy with dust, and they could not see the far wall. Quinn had already grabbed Benton by the shoulder and was forcing him back the way they had come when the burning bag came sailing through the double doors and into the dust-rich environment of the barn.

“Aw, hell,” said Benton. “Aw-”

And then hell became a reality as the world turned to fire.

Jackie Garner was tired of being wet.

“We can’t just stand here in the rain,” he said. “We need to get going.”

“We could split up,” said Paulie, “take a road each and see what happens.”

What happens if we do that is we end up dead, thought Willie. The Fulcis and their pal were clearly nuts, but at least they were armed and nuts. Five of them together had a better chance than two, or three.

“It’s still a lot of ground to cover,” said Jackie. “They could be anywhere.”

At that moment, a hill to the south was suddenly altered by a plume of smoke and wood and dirt that soared into the gray sky, and their ears rang with the sound of the explosion.

“You know,” said Jackie, “it’s just a guess…”

Louis and Angel climbed to their feet. They were surrounded by debris: wood, sacking, burning grain. Louis’s coat was on fire. He shrugged it off and tossed it to one side before he began to burn, too. Angel’s hair was singed, and there was a bright-red scorch mark upon his left cheek. They surveyed the damage. Half of the barn was gone, and the grain store had collapsed. In the midst of the wreckage, Angel could make out the body of the young man who had, briefly, held a gun on them.

“At least we have one gun,” he said.

Louis took it from him.

“I have a gun,” he corrected. “Which would you rather have: you with a gun, or me with a gun at your side?”

“Me with a gun.”

“Well, you can’t have it.”

Angel gazed beyond the remains of the barn.

“They’re all gonna come now.”

“I guess.”

“At least they’ll bring some more guns.”

“I’ll get you one when they do.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Bliss will come, too.”

“Yes, he will.”

“So we still going to see Leehagen?”

“We are.”

“Good.”

“That is good.”

They began to walk.

“You know, my shoes are wet,” said Angel.

“But at least you’re warm now…”

BLISS HEARD THE EXPLOSION, and knew that Louis was near. He had no concern that his target might be dead, for he knew in his heart that Louis’s life was his to take. This reckoning was his due, after all that he had endured.

He had underestimated Gabriel’s protégé, but then Gabriel had always been seeking the perfect Reaper, the one whom he could mold to do his bidding without question. Bliss had seen so many of them come and go, their dying bringing grief to Gabriel only because their failure was his failure. What he had not realized, but Bliss had, was that a man or woman who could be broken to Gabriel’s will would be useless in the end. What made Bliss special-and, he had come grudgingly to acknowledge, what made Louis special, too-was that there was a streak of individuality to them both, perhaps even a kind of perversion of the spirit, that meant they would ultimately break free of the constraints placed upon them by Gabriel and by those who, in turn, used him to serve their own purposes. That was why they had stayed alive when so many others had not, but Bliss had been wise enough to know that such a situation could not go on forever. Eventually he would tire, and his thinking would slow. He would make a mistake, and pay the price; that, or he would attempt to slip quietly into anonymity, taking his secrets with him, but there would be some, Gabriel among them, perhaps, who might prefer if Bliss’s secrets were buried with him, and sooner instead of later. So Bliss had taken a calculated risk: he had named a price, and it had been met. He had made one mistake: Louis had survived. Now it was time to rectify that error.

The explosion made the next part of his task easier. He knew Louis’s location, even if it was farther southwest than he had expected. Curious, he thought, that Louis and his lover should be moving into the trap instead of trying to break out again. He knew from Leehagen’s son that they had tried to find a way through the cordon and had been forced back into the woods. Had they persevered, they might well have broken through the line at another attempt. With luck, even to reach one of the bridges over the stream might not have been beyond them, although they would have managed to get no farther, for their movements had been tracked from the start. Their fate lay entirely in his hands, and he had written that they should die.

Moving in, not out. He thought about finding some way to warn Leehagen, then decided against it. The old thug could work out for himself what was happening, and if he couldn’t then he didn’t deserve to live. Despite all the obstacles that had been placed in his way, Louis was still coming for Leehagen. Bliss admired his dedication. He had always considered Louis impure, for no one had Bliss’s purity, but something of his own tenacity lay buried deep in the younger man.

Quickly and steadily, Bliss began walking toward the site of the explosion.

Something moved in a ditch near the ruins of the barn. A pallet shifted, followed by a sheet of corrugated iron. Beneath it lay Benton. The left side of his face was charred and blackened, thin streaks of raw red flesh visible where the skin had broken like magma bursting through a volcanic crust, and he was now blind in that eye. The pain was excruciating.

He raised himself to a sitting position using the palms of his hands. The backs were burned and cracked, but the palms were unscathed. He looked down at himself. Part of his shirt had been burned away, and the skin beneath was covered in heat bubbles, and punctured by multiple fragments of wood. Beside him lay what was left of Quinn. When the barn had ignited, Quinn had taken the brunt of the explosion. His body had been lifted off the ground, striking Benton and inadvertently shielding him from the worst of what followed, assisted by a fortuitous accretion of debris.

He got to his feet and brushed red and black matter from his trousers. He suspected that some of it was part of Quinn, and felt a surge of indignation at the death of his friend. He put his hand to his head. His skull ached. There was a bare patch where hair used to be. His palm came back bloodied.

The pain in his eyeball was the worst because it was so specific and intense. His depth perception was gone, but he was aware of something protruding from the socket where his left eye used to be. Carefully, he raised his right hand and brought it closer to the eye. The palm of his hand brushed against a sliver of wood, and Benton yelled in shock. Tears fell from his right eye, and his vision blurred. He tried not to panic, forcing himself to stop taking short ragged breaths and instead draw air in deeply and slowly.