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"You", he said, straddling the Reaper, feeling stronger than he had ever felt in his life.
He twisted the femur. "You, at the other end. Talk, or I make your puppet into a corn dog".
"sssstop! pleasssse".
Valentine withdrew the femur, and the Reaper lashed out with its free arm. He caught it at the wrist and twisted it until he heard a snap.
"Stop it", Valentine said. It was like talking in a foreign tongue; he had to force himself to make words. "I'll take your toy apart a limb at a time. Then I'll hang your churchmen from the goalposts".
"what do you want? i give you your life, i give the female her life, i give the man his life, just let my servant go".
"Are you Seattle? The head honcho?"
"no, i am but a keeper of..."
"I want to talk to your chief. King. Grand and Exalted Overlord, whatever he calls himself. The one in the big tower".
"he does not deal with your kind directly".
"Then through you. I don't care. Tell him I have an offer".
"what could a human give such as he?"
"Adler. The leader of the resistance".
The Reaper's slit eyes widened, "impossible!"
Valentine reached up, got his hand around its windpipe, felt the thick muscles that drove the tongue.
"grraack..". Valentine released his grip, "yes, yes, cease and desist, i contacted, he assents, you shall have your meeting with his representative among the mortal".
ction vans: Valentine had seen all varieties of them over the months and years of his trips through the Kurian Zones. He'd seen buses with shuttered windows in Chicago and long yokes for captives to be linked together in Hispaniola. He'd averted his eyes from vans in Wisconsin and armored cars in Louisiana. The principle was always the same, whether they rode on battered old suspensions across snow-dusted old interstates in the Dakotas or were pulled by a team of cart horses along an Alabama backwoods path: Separate those to be taken to the Reapers from the rest of society, hike so much of the Kurian Order, it was a simple mix of deception from the New Order and willful blindness in their subjects. Hide the contents of the stock trucks bound for the slaughterhouse and allow those who might be unlucky enough to see one in operation the comfort of telling themselves a lie.
Valentine had seen more of them than he cared to remember. But that chill November night was the first time he'd been put in the back of one.
* * *
They made the switch at midnight on a small, battered bridge over a river. Three Bears, in spiffy uniforms the color of a typical overcast, pulled Valentine out of a concrete bunker and chained him to two other unfortunates, a man in the lead and a woman just in front of him. The man wore thick flannel and was barefoot; the woman stood shivering in militia pants and a T-shirt. Valentine passed a note to the Bear in charge, a brief farewell to Gide he'd been allowed to pencil, thanking her for their weekend at the Outlook, and asking him to pass his regrets to Colonel LeHavre and Captain Mofrey.
Passing the note was made a little more difficult by the thick leather belt around his waist, and the attachment for the handcuffs around his wrist.
The Bears brought him to the east end of the bridge. Valentine's night-sharp eyes saw a similar party on the other side.
A flashlight waved up and down. One of the Bears waved his horizontally right and left.
"They're ready", an NCO said. "Let's go, dead men".
"And women", the one in front of Valentine added, tiredly.
The man in front sort of lurched forward. "Ahhh! Ahhha!" Valentine heard his handcuff chain rattling against the front fitting at his belt.
"Move it", the Bear at his side ordered.
"My legs!"
"Now they're stopping", a young militia with a volunteer armband said, his eyes pressed to some binoculars.
"You just gotta walk to the other side of the bridge. Nothing's going to happen to you there, not with our guys around", the lead Bear said.
