Read 5: The Holy Road for Free Online

nowhere like fucking flies.”
    John lunged out and grasped the woman. She was small and he easily scooped her up and pulled her quickly back behind the shelter of the wagon. She seemed incredibly delicate, more like a bird than a person. He wasn’t used to holding women.
    A sharp pain burst through John’s forearm as she bit him.
    “I’m trying to help you,” John said.
    “Go to hell, priest,” the woman growled back. She rammed a tiny sharp elbow into John’s stomach. He released her and she dropped to the ground.
    “Sheb’yu.” Saimura hunched down beside the woman. “He’s helping us.”
    “What?” She eyed John with open disbelief.
    “This is the same man who hid me in the forest,” Saimura explained.
    She frowned at John. “Why are you dressed as a priest?”
    “It’s a long story and I don’t think we have time for it.” John returned to the cracked planks. Saimura had been right. The black silhouettes of the ushiri’im and the ushman’im were appearing all along the city wall. They raised their hands in an eerie unison. John could almost see the air all around them shimmering with energy.
    “They’re opening a God’s Razor,” John said. It was going to be huge. The thin edge of the Gray Space stretched nearly the full length of the city wall.
    “How many priests?” Saimura asked.
    “Forty or fifty,” John replied. He wondered if Ravishan was up there. He thought he recognized Fikiri’s blond braids.
    “Ji can’t handle that many,” Saimura said. He looked to Sheb’yu. “She has to pull back.”
    “She won’t leave without you,” Sheb’yu said.
    “She shouldn’t have come for me in the first place.” Aggravation and frustration played through Saimura’s strained face. “None of you should have.”
    Whatever reply Sheb’yu would have made was lost. A rending scream tore through the air as nearly a quarter mile of the Gray Space ripped open. Both Sheb’yu and Saimura hunched as though the sound were a physical blow. They clasped their hands over their ears and clenched their eyes closed in pain. All around, people and animals responded in the same manner, cowering in pain and fear. John found the noise grating but not unbearable. The open gash that gaped across the sky, however, seemed to wrench through his chest and sent a rush of intense repulsion through his entire being.
    Flames burst up along the edge of the God’s Razor, forming a narrow ribbon of fire that hung in the air just above the city wall. The grounds were suddenly so quiet that John could distinctly hear a single lamb bleating in its pen.
    Then the God’s Razor dropped. The flames extinguished, but John could see the deadly edge descending.
    “Get down!” John shouted. Beside him, Saimura and Sheb’yu dropped to the ground. But the people gathered at the city gate continued to stare up at where the flames had been.
    The God’s Razor descended, slicing through everything in its path. The limbs of trees instantly shredded to splinters. Then it cut through the crowd at the city gate. Bodies tore open. Arms, hands, heads were severed as people tried to run or shield themselves. The God’s Razor swept forward towards the blood market. It ripped through stalls, tearing apart the people and animals sheltered within as if they were paper.
    John knew he should drop to the ground and hope that the God’s Razor would pass over him. He wanted to crouch down and just hide from clench sights and noise of the massacre surrounding him. And yet he didn’t move. He fixed his eye on the edge of the God’s Razor racing towards him. It had to be stopped. The people hiding in their tents and stalls couldn’t do it. The children crouching beneath carts and the animals trapped in their pens wouldn’t stand a chance.
    John drew in a deep breath and lifted his hands. He had broken Dayyid’s Silence Knives more than once. The God’s Razor was just an extension of the same thing. Thousands of times stronger, but