He wanted to, though. He would even have accepted death as a price for saving her. That’s what a samurai would do. There was justice in that. There was closure in that.

But to die with half the job done . . .

You’re not a hero, he told himself, but don’t die a loser. Don’t let them win.

Chong took a step, but his knees buckled and he dropped down beside Danny’s body. The bow was right there, inches away. The arrows were spilled all around him.

The universe is throwing you a bone, he told himself. Take it.

He reached for the bow with clumsy fingers. Picked it up. Picked up an arrow. The black goo smeared on the tip smelled horrible, like cadaverine or something worse.

But even as he fumbled it onto the string, Chong felt his strength pumping away. Flowing out of him.

He looked past Brother Andrew to where Eve stood.

“Run . . . ,” he croaked.

The girl was frozen to the spot. Wide-eyed, voiceless with horrors so vast that she could do absolutely nothing but stand and stare.

And die. Chong knew that she was going to die. She’d stand there and be killed and never lift a hand because there just wasn’t enough of her left for even that.

Brother Andrew seemed to snap out of his own daze. His lip curled in anger, and he adjusted his grip on his scythe as he began stalking across the clearing toward Chong.

“Run,” begged Chong. He raised the bow and arrow, but his hands trembled with the palsy of shock and injury.

“I’ll make you pay for what you’ve done,” promised the reaper. “I’ll make this last. I’ll hear you scream and beg before I let you taste the darkness. By the god of death so I will.”

“Will you please just shut up,” Chong said between gritted teeth. Then, with the last energy he had, he pulled the string and released the arrow.

It flew straight and true and buried itself in the dirt between Andrew’s feet.

The reaper laughed and raised his scythe, and its shadow painted a promise of darkness across his face.

FROM NIX’S JOURNAL

Before we left town, I did something nobody else knows about.

I went to the cemetery and dug a little hole next to where my mom’s buried. I put two things in it.

The key to the house we used to live in and a drawing of me that Benny did. It looks just like I did before everything went bad.

I wanted to bury the me who used to live there, because that person was dead. It’s a different person who left town.

Chapter 38

38

LILAH STEADIED HERSELF AGAINST THE TREE TRUNK AND EXAMINED HER wounds.