“No. We have more than we will ever need. We have reapers in the thousands, and we have the Gray People in their millions. Mother Rose has never quite grasped that. Or rather, she has purposely ignored it. She wants people to stay alive.”

“Why?” asked Brother Peter, appalled by the very thought of it.

“For the same reason she has recruited so very many reapers.”

“And . . . why?”

Saint John smiled. “She wants to conquer the world, my son,” he said, “and then she intends to rule it.”

Brother Peter shook his head. “But she knows the darkness. She believes—”

“Don’t you think that Judas believed in the son of his god? Don’t you think that those people who flew planes into towers or strapped on vests of explosives believed in their god? There are misguided people in all faiths, and there always have been.” Saint John sighed. “Mother Rose has been very quietly recruiting from within the reapers. Brother Alexi, Brother Simon . . . others. The weak ones who think they are strong, but who long to be here rather than to truly be with the darkness. She will use them as her generals. They probably believe in her with their whole hearts. Some of them are quite lost. Others . . . well, there has always been corruption in any organized religion. Insidious people who exploit the honest faith of the masses. Mother Rose will use all that—faith, belief, greed, whatever tools she can find—and with those she will very likely conquer every settlement, town, and city in this country. She will make a kingdom for herself here on earth.”

He pointed into the desert.

“And I suspect she wants to make Sanctuary her Camelot, the seat of her power.”

Brother Peter felt stricken. “Then . . . we have failed?”

The saint turned toward him, his face filled with love but also with a passionate light. “No, my son, and do not fall to doubt now. Mother Rose does not know that we know. In her pride, she opens her throat to us.”

FROM NIX’S JOURNAL

Warrior Smart

Tom wasn’t one for he-man war quotes, but there were two that he liked.

“Si vis pacem, para bellum,” which was a quote from De Re Militari by fourth-century Roman author Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus. It translates as: “If you wish for peace, prepare for war.”

Tom said that the best way to ensure that you won’t be attacked is to be too strong to make it worth the other guy’s while. Or something like that. I mean, I never read much about samurai or armed soldiers getting mugged.

The other phrase was one from the samurai: “We train ten thousand hours to prepare for a single moment that we pray never comes.”

I get that.

Chapter 61

61

FOR A LONG TIME CHONG FLOATED IN AN INFINITE OCEAN OF PAIN.

For hours, days, weeks . . . maybe years.

Time was meaningless.

Then he heard a voice.

“You in there, boy?”