The girl looked wild and terrible. Her face was bruised and crisscrossed with scratches. Blood trickled from one ear, and there was a shallow knife cut across the tanned flesh of her bare midsection.

She stood over Carter’s body with tears streaming down her face as she drew and fired stone after stone from her slingshot.

The reaper bellowed and tried to fight through the barrage, dodging some of the shots, taking others on his huge forearms as he sought to protect his face. Riot kept shooting, though, and the sharp stones cut bloody lines in the reaper’s skin.

And yet, the stones were not enough.

Brother Andrew was a monster of a man, with muscles packed onto his limbs. Riot was hurting him, but she wasn’t stopping him, and with a bear’s growl he waded into the attack, scythe clutched in powerful fists, head bowed to protect his face.

“No,” whispered Chong. “No!”

He suddenly lunged for the reaper and grabbed a fistful of the red cloth streamers on the big man’s ankle, yanking them with all the strength he had left. The sudden jerk made Brother Andrew stumble.

“Get off,” snapped the reaper as he smashed Chong across the face with a brutal backhanded blow.

Fireworks exploded inside Chong’s head and he sagged down, but his hand remained clamped around the red streamers. He distantly heard another thwap and Andrew’s howl of pain, but Chong’s vision was filled with black smoke. He collapsed down on his chest.

Andrew kicked free of his grip and raised a foot to stomp down on Chong’s head. But there was a cry like a hunting hawk and the meaty thud of flesh on flesh, and Chong peered up in wonder to see the reaper and Riot fall together in a snarling and deadly embrace. Andrew had his hands on Riot’s throat, but the young woman did not seem to care. She had a small knife in each hand, and as she crashed down and rolled over and over with the reaper, those blades did horrific work. Blood splashed the ground and spattered Chong’s face as he watched, dumbfounded and appalled as Riot—a teenage girl—slaughtered the monstrous reaper.

There was no better word. No cleaner word.

It was slaughter.

Then it was over. Riot rose from the red ruin that had been Brother Andrew. Blood dripped from her knives, her arms, her face. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She looked across the clearing at Carter, then at Sarah, and finally at Eve—who stood as still and blank-eyed as a statue.

That was the last thing Chong saw before a massive wave of darkness rose up and then crashed down on him, washing everything else away.

Chapter 40

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