Blink of an Eye

by Ted Dekker

  Billy may have repented, but his childish indiscretions will plague the world yet, as much as Adam’s indiscretion has plagued the world since the garden.

  Yet all of this was foreseen! In fact, I am convinced that all of these events may have been allowed as part of a larger plan. The Books of Histories may have spawned raw evil in the form of Black, but those same books also brought forward truth. And with that truth, your gifting. Your power!

  And Billy’s power. And Darcy’s power. (Though they may not know yet)

  Do you hear me, son? The West may be overrun with a populace that teeters on the brink of disbelief while at the very same time being infested with the very object of their disbelief. With incarnate evil! Black and the other walking dead.

  But there are three who stand in the way. Johnny, Billy, Darcy.

  Black is determined to obtain the books again. If he does, God help us all. Even if he fails, he escaped Paradise with a few pages and can wreak enough havoc to plunge the world into darkness. I am convinced that only the three of you stand in his way.

  Find Billy. Find Darcy. Stop Black.

  And pray, Johnny. Pray for your own soul. Pray for the soul of our world.

  David Abraham

  Marsuvees frowned. Yes, pray, Johnny. Pray, for your pathetic, wretched soul.

  He crushed the letter in his gloved hand, shoved it into the bucket of gasoline by his side, and ignited the thing on fire using a lighter he’d withdrawn from his pocket after the first reading. Flames whooshed high, enveloping his hand along with the paper.

  He could have lit the fire another way, of course, but he’d learned a number of things from his experimentation these last years. How to blend in. Be human. Humans didn’t start fires by snapping their fingers.

  He’d learned that subtlety could be a far more effective weapon than some of the more blatant methods they tried.

  Black dropped the flaming page to the earth and flipped his wrist to extinguish the flame roaring about his hand. He ground the smoldering ash into the dirt with a black, silver-tipped boot and inhaled long through his nostrils.

  So, the old man had known a thing or two before dying, enough to unnerve a less informed man than Black. He already knew Johnny and company were the only living souls who stood a chance of slowing him down.

  But he was taking care of that. Had taken care of that.

  Marsuvees spit into the black ash at his feet. Johnny’s receipt of this letter would have changed nothing. It was too late for change now.

  And in the end there was faith, hope and love.

  No . . . in the end there was Johnny, Billy, and Darcy. And the greatest of these was . . .

  . . . as clueless as a brick.