The Sunset Prophecy (Love & Armageddon #1)

by P. J. Day

  “You gotta get up,” Logan begged.

  “I’m tired.”

  He kneeled down and held both of her hands. “Come on...we’re almost there.”

  She shook her head. Her eyes lifted. “I don’t know what’s real anymore.”

  “You need to snap out of it or reality won’t be kind to us.”

  “I’m cold,” she said. “It’s cold...why is it so cold?”

  Logan put his arms around her torso and lifted her off the ground. She pressed herself hard against his chest and consumed his warmth, listened to his breaths and tried to locate the rhythm of his heartbeat. “You don’t have one,” she said. “How?”

  “I don’t need one.”

  “What are you?”

  “I’m a demigod. My mother was a goddess, my father was an actor—a mortal. I used to reside in a world named Pit. My name is rooted in Greek; Theolodus is my name. Does that name seem familiar to you? No?” he asked. “Anyway, my brother, Adam, is Lelantos. We share the same mother, but his father is Jrue, one of the most powerful beings in the entire dimensional universe from which this planet and others like it exist. You are on the verge of disappearing completely. Your entire physical makeup will not even be granted the luxury of living as dust or atomic residue. I am here to make sure that does not happen.”

  “...and here I thought I knew you...somewhat,” Keelen chuckled, an underlying sense of dread in her tone. “I guess everything they taught me in Sunday school was correct, huh?”

  “Not really. I don’t think they had any mention of plump gods or spiraled-eye demons in the New Testament.”

  The crowd surrounding Logan and Keelen slowed. Their eyes connected on the young handsome man who was assisting the equally striking girl. The mass of gatherers instantly remembered the description of Logan given to them by the movement’s de facto leader, Mirabel Hernandez—the same lady with white jumpsuit and the badly dyed hair, who was the fortunate and humble recipient of Logan’s message at Perry’s Restaurant.

  “I’d say partially true,” Logan said, while pulling out a pen from his hip pocket. He then opened Keelen’s palm and wrote the coordinates, 34° 17′ 20″ N, 117° 38′ 48″ W. Logan closed her hand and said, “This is where you are going to take me, do you understand?”

  “Wait...what? Why?”

  “Nod and tell me you understand.”

  Keelen nodded but remained flustered at Logan’s cryptic request. “Why...again, why all this?”

  “Have you ever wondered about where you go after you die?”

  “Yeah, well...I don’t know, really. I mean, I used to believe what my mom and dad believed. When I die...if I am good, I go to heaven...if I am bad, I go to hell, but honestly, I used not believe that stuff, but now, after seeing what I have just seen...you and those creatures...I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  Logan curled his fingers underneath Keelen’s chin and focused deeply into her eyes, penetrating them with his entire being. “You need to have conviction from this point on. This is the truth. You are being harvested. God...actually, let’s call him Adonai, because that is who he is. He isn’t good or bad. He is just trying to survive like you and me. But his world...those who depend on him...need your kind to survive. Only a handful of human beings, since the dawn of time, are granted an existence of eternity, the rest of you will be absorbed and your souls replenished to keep things going for Caeli. There is a world between Earth, Caeli, and Pit. This is where you go when you die. No one can access this world, not me, Adonai, Jrue, but we do know it exists. Matt is probably there. This ‘purgatory’ is what Adonai wants and needs. It’s what Jrue and Pit refer to as the valley of souls. The only way it can be accessed is to trick a significant portion of the population into believing that they will be granted salvation.”

  Keelen’s eyes glistened and her body limped. Her face lost all color, and for the first time in her life she was terrified of her own metaphysical thoughts. Well, there was that one time she tried LSD, but when her consciousness stabilized, she knew it was just a trip. This was reality, though. What Logan had told her threw her entire understanding of the universe into a tailspin. She then bent over and began vomiting all over Logan’s shoes.

  “I expected this,” Logan sighed, as he gently patted her back.

  Slowly, the marching crowd began to circle Logan and Keelen. Murmurs and questioning arose collectively, expressing the same thoughts. Is that Logan Drake? His eyes...that’s him? The slim, athletic build? That’s Keelen Grant...from the video. Quick, take a video of him to see if he shows up on film. Someone get Mirabel.

  A smile flashed across his face as the years of living in self-punishing anonymity were coming to a close. There was always a tiny part of him which wanted to embrace fame and revel in it. However, unlike his brother, Logan knew that in order to accomplish his goals, he’d have to bury a demigod’s instinctual desire for exaltation. Hundreds of people gathered around the demigod and the actress. Behind Logan, people shoved each other and complained as a small collective made their way through the tight maze of flesh. The gathering calmly gave way, eventually making room for a clique of short Hispanic women; one of them Mirabel Hernandez, who received Logan’s message at Perry’s Steakhouse. She pushed through the murmuring crowd and stood at the feet of demigod. She marveled at the young man, as she held the piece of paper he had given her into the air. Not only was Logan’s message the main draw for the recurring protests, but the fact that he didn’t show up on film also attracted the mildly curious.

  Mirabel scampered up to Logan, noosed him with a hug and shouted, “Mr. Drake, what you have done is a miracle.” Logan beamed and appreciated the gesture by patting Mirabel on her head, not in a condescending way though, she was just short. Everyone within arm’s reach reached over and touched his shoulders, arms, and torso. Little ones came up to him and tugged on his pants legs and the laces on his shoes. He was like a therapeutic, tactile doll for sensory-deprived children.

  “My father died of cancer, but we’re able to keep our home,” a woman said. “I didn’t have to buy food with my credit card for the first time in months, thank you,” a father said. “I’ve learned to forgive,” an old man said. “Oh my God...look he’s not in the video I took on my phone,” a young teenage girl said to her friends.

  Keelen pulled herself up and wiped her lips and saw the love for Logan Drake pouring in from the mass of strangers on the street. Others touched her hair, as if she were a goddess. She calmly pushed their hands away and said, “I’m no one special. I just know him, that’s all.”

  As Logan was inundated with praise and adulation, he glanced up at toward the skyline that surrounded the park. The tallest building, whose shadow covered a third of McArthur’s Park open lawns, was an empty skyscraper that was once was held by a now-defunct mortgage giant— a zombie husk, which through the help of needlessly hoarded money and interest, sat stubbornly overvalued and unused on the market. On its roof, a group of men stood rigidly and on point, decked out in paramilitary gear, but also joined with a thin man wearing a fine, black suit. Augustus Fisker stared down on the gathering with his binoculars, like a raptor looking to pick out the weak from the strong.

  A white and blue L.A.P.D. Eurocopter was parked behind him on the helipad.

  The crowd followed Logan and Keelen toward the park in an orderly fashion, as countless more continued to stream in from all the streets that led into the park.

  38

  Honor thy Fire

  “You have failed,” roared the heavy, roiling flame from inside the chimney. Fed by every wooden chair that used to occupy Adam’s penthouse, Jrue’s flame appeared more pronounced and cantankerous than ever before.

  “He’s coming back...he promised,” Adam begged, cowering in front if the fireplace, shielding his eyes with his beefy arm. “He’s...he’s settling something...for a girl, a human girl.”

  The fire spittle sparked beyond the stone arches of the hearth, melting the marble floor of
Adam’s salon into some sort of Neapolitan spackle. The chubby god backed away from the multi-colored lava, tearing up, knowing in his heart he had committed a huge mistake by listening to his brother, thus angering his father and duty beyond celestial reasoning. But again, as he thought back to the precise moment in time when Logan asked for permission to strive for earthly conclusions, something larger than himself put him at ease with his decision. As if a divine hand came down and assisted Adam in betraying his own mind. “I’m sorry, Father...it just felt like the right decision...he might come back.”

  “His intention is not to return to Pit. Do you not see what your brother is doing?”

  “I know...I know… he is trying to disrupt the Prophecy.”

  “So, you do know what he is trying to do, and you let him leave?”

  Adam stayed silent as he lowered himself to the ground and slumped on his behind. He bowed his head in defeat rather than in reverence. His tree-trunk legs extended out in front of him, as the fire seared the soles of his shoes. He peered into the flames, a pathetic and surrendering scowl painted his face. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Ignite me. Feed my flame. I shall raze the city as I did the Acropolis. If souls are what Caeli needs to leave this plane, then souls they will receive. I will not place Pit in harm’s way. I cannot defend her. We are too weak.”

  Adam shrugged his large shoulders. “But I’m out of furniture and the building is covered in plaster and there are sprinklers on every floor, and there is no time to bring more material here to fuel you further.”

  “You must take my flame.”

  “Where?”

  “To the forest hills north of the city, close to where Adonai’s son is set to return. I will use the dried, cracked timber as fuel. Then I will descend upon the city and finish what the Prophecy has begun.”

  Adam scratched his head and looked at the fire dispassionately, seeking one reason in his head to refuse throwing in his lot with his father and dismissing humanity along with his brother for eternity. Not getting ripped apart, atom by atom, was a compelling-enough reason, he thought. But conspiring with Caeli, now that was an action he had a hard time dealing with. “My Lord, you are aware that you are cooperating with Adonai by doing such a thing, there has to be another way?”

  39

  Sermon on the Green

  The crowd numbered in the thousands.

  There were the street vendors and the hustlers and the film bootleggers and the jewelers and the folks that worked in the small shops selling everything from leather goods to cheap Chinese-made toys with exaggerated colors on them. They stood side by side with those who came down from the valley. —families from Thousand Oaks and Sherman Oaks. Empathic wealth from the shoreline cities and the gated communities that lined the hills overlooking the city centers across the Southland. They all stood steadfast while extraordinary gusts of wind drowned out their collective murmur. Able-bodied young men climbed the trunks of the Mexican fan palms that lined the outer rim of MacArthur Park, hoping to catch a glimpse of young Logan Drake before he delivered his much-anticipated sermon. It was a pious gathering filled with pure intentions, but it was also surrounded by ominous signs of nature gone rogue, which did nothing to stop the taco trucks, roach coaches and food vendors from pitching their wares amidst the foul winds.

  Logan’s arm was tightly locked onto Keelen’s as he helped her up the largest grassy hill overlooking the dried, emptied lake in the center of the park. He looked tired and worn. His face gaunt. Large dark circles formed in and around his eyes. The skin on his arms was dried and cracked. Blood was on his mind but so was his mission of revelation. Keelen looked over her shoulder and was overwhelmed with the sea of people behind her, but also at the darkening skies above.

  “That doesn’t look good,” she said.

  Logan glanced up at the old Quest Lending Building where Fisker and a couple of snipers were perched, the foreboding glint from their scopes vibrated urgency in his voice. “Come on...just don’t look at the sky. We gotta get moving.”

  Augustus Fisker noticed the crowd gathering around the bare patch on the grassy hill. He quickly identified Logan and Keelen through his binoculars as they emerged from the commotion. “That’s him,” he said to one of the snipers, his voice rasped due to the dry wind. “That’s the fucker.”

  “Him? He doesn’t look very dangerous,” said one of the marksmen, who reclined on his belly, eying Logan through his scope of a Remington 700. His finger rested on the trigger like a miniature executioner awaiting his order. “The guy with the girl, right?”

  “That man has wreaked unbelievable amounts of havoc,” Fisker said. “He’s a terrorist.”

  The sniper swayed the reticle in a circular motion, painting Logan’s chest, shoulders, neck and head. He held his breath for a brief moment to try to gauge the wind as it blew on the exposed skin of his chapped cheeks.

  Fisker glanced at the sky and eyed the silver gray sheen which killed his own shadow as heavy gusts blasted his chest with anger. He hoped for a break in the wind, so the bullet’s trajectory could not be altered. “Wind isn’t letting up...we might have to get closer.”

  As they reached the top of the hill, Logan demanded Keelen’s attention by massaging her shoulders and making eye contact. “Stick with me, all right? If the crowd sees you with me, if they associate you with me, they’re going to be eager to help you if anything were to happen to me.”

  “What?”

  “If something happens. Whatever you need, just ask. They’re eager to help,” he said cryptically, but she knew what he meant.

  “Nothing’s happening to you,” Keelen said. She then pointed toward the crowd. “You’re gonna be fine...they love you.”

  “Remember, you stay by my side...always. Don’t lose sight of me. Make sure they don’t take me.”

  “Who’s they?” she asked loudly, as cheers and applause erupted around them. “Don’t be silly, no one’s kidnapping you. Who’s gonna kidnap someone as powerful as you?”

  “I’m not that powerful,” Logan said, as he smiled and waved at the thousands gathered to see him. “I’ve never felt worse.” He then waved at the sky, grinning at the multiple cameras that hung underneath the swarm of news helicopters, knowing full well that his image lacked the ability to be transmitted. He even smirked at the police in riot gear. Many of them tipping their helmets and lifting their clear shields at the charismatic demigod.

  “Things are so unfair,” he said. “How can perfection be demanded from beings that are inherently imperfect?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He then bellowed at the crowd, raising his arms in the air, animated. “How can perfection be demanded from beings that are inherently perfect?”

  The assembly of Angelinos roared back with approval and cheers.

  Logan fed off the energy of the diverse crowd and paced the lawn like a four-star general. “An overwhelming majority of you love your families, you do what’s best for them, you take care of them, and you love them. Yet, the majority of you aren’t worth saving?” Logan’s voice projected, his vocal chords amplified through divine means. “That’s right. The powers-that-be, whether those who rule you, on Earth or from the heavens, think that’s not enough. Surrender unto me, they say. You live for them, to satiate their power. Sure, they highlight those who do their bidding by giving them the keys to everlasting salvation or the keys to a wonderfully materialistic life on Earth, but only a selected few, the sycophants, those who sacrifice their own identity for their own selfish means know how to play the game or are allowed to play the game. What’s gonna happen to those of you who still do the right thing by looking at your children in their eyes before bedtime and remind them how much you love them, but will be judged in death because you profess a different faith from the one that worships the dominant God? Or have lied for survival, or have thieved because you’re hungry, or have cursed a wretched set of abusive parents? The expectations are unreasonable, you should not
be punished, you should be heard.”

  Logan’s enthusiasm and the vibrating crescendo in his speech escalated feelings of empowerment for everyone who came to see the young man who had bucked the structure of power. “You work 50, 60, 70 hours a week, yet, you can’t feed your family. You’re called freeloaders, unskilled. That’s right, unskilled. The new word for ‘slave.’ An economic unit, not worthy of a voice or decency. The hypocrisy in the message is deafening, isn’t it? Work hard they say and you will be rewarded, pray hard they say, and you will be rewarded with eternal salvation, yet there is limited space. Resources, people. Whether on Earth or in the heavens...resources are what determines who lives and who dies, who succeeds and who fails, who gets absorbed and who receives the gift of eternity. Nothing else nothing more.”

  Fisker’s face contorted with agitation. “What the hell does he think he’s doing?” His wings pulsed against the back of his suit, as he was tempted to swoop down and silence Logan, but the Prophecy was near its culmination, and if humans witnessed Logan getting thrashed by an angel, the demigod’s plan for disruption could come to fruition. Fisker snapped at one of the snipers, “How come you haven’t taken a shot?”

  “The girl...she’s in the way...I can’t, sir.”

  “Who cares about the girl?”

  “We’re already getting shit for taking out civilians in these types of situations. I don’t want the headache and I don’t want the paperwork. I’m not trying to be disrespectful, sir, but you should know better.”

  Everyone’s eyes and ears were dialed in on Logan Drake. People who were working in the nearby office towers stepped out onto the rooftops to listen. The rooftop crowds gave Fisker pause. “Wonderful,” he said, with sarcasm. “Everyone’s gonna be wondering about our little party.”