Malachai's Arc

Chapter 8 of 11

The first night she brought a man back, Malachai watched from the corner of the cabin and let her do the work herself. She led him through the door with a hand at his belt. She smiled the way Malachai had taught her. When the man saw Malachai in the shadow, it was already too late. Deborah put the knife under his ribs the way Malachai had shown her. The man dropped. She looked up at Malachai for approval. He gave it. That was the nine hundred and ninety-eighth. The next came two nights later. She did not need him to point. She cut the throat clean and stepped back before the blood reached her boots. Nine hundred and ninety-nine. Malachai waited for the pressure. Every soul before this had brought his master close, a weight in the skull, a hand at the back of the neck. Tonight there was nothing. He stood in the middle of the clean pine floor and listened for Diablo the way a man listens for a footstep on a stair. The stair was empty. He called the name in his head. No answer. He said it aloud. The cabin held only the sound of the fire and Deborah wiping the blade on a rag. She looked up. "What is it?" "He is not here." "Your master." "Gone quiet." He did not know if that was good or bad. He only knew the room felt like his own room for the first time in fifteen years. She set the knife down and came to him. She put her hands flat on his chest. She had done this more each night, small touches, then longer ones. He had let her. In the silence where Diablo had been, he let her again. He caught her wrist and pulled her against him and did not think about the count. They stayed close through the days that followed. She cooked at the hearth in his shirt. She slept against his side. When she went out for the next one, she came back faster, hungrier for his hand at her jaw when he told her she had done well. The wound in her side was gone. What was left of the woman from the temple was gone too. She was his tool and she was warm and she pressed her mouth to his throat when he sat by the fire. He did not summon Diablo. He did not test the silence. On the seventh night she brought the last one. A traveler, lost, thirsty. She took him at the table before Malachai stood up. The body slid sideways off the bench. One thousand. Malachai waited. No pressure. No voice. No claim. Deborah wiped the blade. She looked at him across the dead man and smiled. "What now?" she said. He did not have an answer. The count was full. His master was gone. The cabin was quiet, and the thousandth soul sat in him like something no one had come to collect.