The Prophet Box-Set: Books 1-4

by David Beers

  “Hi,” he whispered as if introducing himself.

  “Mr. Franklin, are you okay?”

  Jackson flicked his eyes to the woman, though it took a gargantuan effort. “Sit down.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Jackson launched himself at her, crossing the few feet between them effortlessly. He grabbed her by the hair before she even had time to scream, then slammed her head twice on the edge of the sink.

  Whack. Whack.

  He let go and her body sagged to the ground. Blood dripped down the cabinet beneath the sink, short lines growing long.

  Jackson turned to the boy. Tears rested in his eyes and his body was shaking as if he stood in a blizzard. He said nothing, though, only stared down at his mother’s motionless body.

  A low whine finally started in the boy’s throat, but Jackson didn’t move. He watched the boy while the boy watched his mother, the scream growing louder.

  It was beautiful.

  So. Damned. Beautiful.

  “Come here,” Jackson whispered.

  The boy didn’t move and that was okay. Jackson went to him, his screaming echoing through the kitchen—Jackson loved the sound.

  He kneeled in front of the boy, grabbing his shoulders tight. The boy’s eyes whipped to him, a single, fat tear escaping his eyes and rolling down his cheek. His screaming stopped, though his mouth remained open.

  “Go in the living room and sit down.”

  The boy didn’t move.

  “Now!” Jackson snapped. The boy ran right to the living room, his conscious mind not in control at all. He’d just witnessed his mother murdered and was now operating on autopilot. A scary man told him to do something, and so he did it.

  Jackson felt none of the anger his voice portrayed. He only wanted to get the boy moving. He was still in awe; the sight practically radiated off the boy. Jackson followed him into the living room. The boy was sitting in the middle of the couch, his hands underneath his legs, and tears streaming down his face. His lips trembled and his body still shook.

  Jackson took a seat in the chair across the room.

  He watched the boy. This was what his mentor hadn’t understood. Brent would have come in this house, probably left the mother alone, and simply taken the boy. He had no interest in actually watching. He only wanted to eliminate the targets given to him. He didn’t take joy in his work.

  Jackson wanted to bask in the glory of these creatures—they might be abominations (he might be an abomination)—but that didn’t stunt their beauty.

  The boy began rocking back and forth, whimpering, and Jackson just kept watching. He watched until the boy’s father came home, and then after dispatching him, he went back to watching. When the boy stood up and tried to run, Jackson knocked him unconscious.

  And just kept watching.

  Until the sun went down.

  Daniel opened his eyes.

  He blinked a few times, realizing he was lying on his side. The psychopath (Jackson Carriage, his mind told him) sat facing forward and looking out the window as the drone continued its flight.

  The seat had been laid down and Daniel felt a light blanket over his body—obviously something he hadn’t done.

  The recent past came back to him slowly, and he didn’t move as it did. He remembered … the psychopath standing up and throwing him back against the seat he now lay on. He remembered the man grabbing both his throat and head, and then …

  He has the sight, and … and what? He can communicate with me through it?

  Remaining still, Daniel scanned his body for pain but felt none. Even his neck was fine, meaning that once he went under the psychopath’s trance, he’d been released.

  And then what? The psychopath put the damned blanket over him?

  Daniel sat up, pushing the cover off him.

  “How long have I been out for?”

  “An hour maybe. I didn’t really track it.”

  Daniel said nothing for a few seconds. “What happened to that boy? The one at the farm.”

  “The same thing that would have happened to your daughter. I was younger then, still apprenticing, so it wasn’t up to me to eliminate the target. I brought him back to the Vatican and he was taken care of. I received my wings after my apprenticeship ended.”

  “Your wings?”

  “I became the angel that took the little boys and girls to heaven,” the psychopath said, a small grin on his face.

  Daniel sat in silence for a few moments, questions ricocheting though his head. He thought about not asking them, but what would be the point? If the psychopath wanted him dead, then Daniel would be. Instead, Daniel lay with a blanket draped over him.

  “Why didn’t you kill me?”

  The psychopath looked over his shoulder for a second, a quizzical look on his face. He shook his head as if Daniel had asked something insane and he could hardly believe the man said it. He turned back around and shook his head once more in disbelief. “Kill you? Why would I do that?”

  Daniel felt as much disbelief as the psychopath. Was he truly that insane? “Because you’re going to kill my daughter, and that means I’m going to kill you the first chance I get.”

  A small, low chuckle escaped the psychopath’s mouth. He looked down at his lap. “You don’t understand. I’m not going to kill her. That isn’t what I wanted with that boy or any of those I found. I only wanted to watch them. I brought them back, or killed them, because it was my duty. With your daughter … it’s not my duty any longer.”

  “You’re not making any sense.”

  “I don’t want to kill her. I want to keep her.”

  Daniel opened his mouth to say something, but then paused, understanding gripping him. The psychopath wasn’t going to get Nicki and follow the Church’s original plan. He was taking her for himself. So that he could watch her like he had that boy … for the rest of his life.

  “Why am I still alive then?” Daniel asked. “You don’t need me to find her. You don’t need me at all.” He felt no gratefulness toward the man—certainly not any trust—yet he wanted to know the answer.

  “I can’t say that I’ve never killed because I wanted to. I’ve wanted to kill people before, and I have, but it’s always been done in the Lord’s service. I’m not going to simply murder you. I’ll do it if I have to, if you make me, but killing you now wouldn’t be inside God’s will. You’re one of His children. I may end up excommunicated from the Church, but that doesn’t mean I have to be excommunicated from God.”

  Daniel blinked, hardly able to believe what he was hearing. The man actually thought he was in God’s grace? He’d hunted and killed those like him—people his Church created—and yet somehow still believed his God loved him?

  Daniel laughed, a sharp thing. “Only a God as fucked as yours wouldn’t give you to hell.”

  The psychopath wasn’t provoked at such words, only kept staring straight forward. “Matthew 5:30. ‘And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that only one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.’ The Lord was telling us what we have to do to those with the sight. Perhaps I’ve enjoyed my job too much, but I cannot believe God would send me to hell for it.”

  “And what about my daughter, and me? The right hands?”

  “I don’t believe God would send you to hell for the sight. You simply can’t live in this world any longer, because you are an abomination to Him. Whether or not you two make it to heaven, that’s between you and Jesus.”

  “But your soul,” Daniel said, “even though you’ve killed any number of people, your soul is saved?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that a lot while you slept,” the psychopath said. “When I left the Vatican, I thought I might be sacrificing it, but I’m not so sure anymore. I’m not going to kill your daughter. I’m actually saving her from a heathen. If you don’t make me kill you, I think God might actually look at this positively.”

&nbs
p; Daniel leaned back in the seat and watched the sky outside, almost flabbergasted. He’d never spent so much time within the Catholic Church; these past couple of weeks, they’d shown him more than he ever wanted to see. A Pope as a politician. A psychopath as a Saint.

  “You all delude yourselves,” he said absently. “You all make up whatever you want in your minds, creating a narrative that lets you keep moving through the day.”

  “You don’t have a narrative?” the psychopath asked.

  “Maybe I do, but mine can at least fit in with reality.”

  “Mine can’t?”

  Daniel shook his head.

  “Romans 3. ‘For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is Christ Jesus.’”

  “I think it’s Matthew 7,” Daniel said. “Somewhere in there. ‘You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.’” He looked to the front of the drone. “What kind of fruit have you borne?”

  “You know the Bible. That’s good. Do you know about Sodom and Gomorra?”

  Daniel said nothing; there was no need to.

  “God killed nearly everyone in those cities, because they were an affront to Him. And Lot’s wife? When she simply turned around to look at the city? A pillar of salt. God removes all of that which offends Him, and those with the sight are a part of that offense. I’ve done His will and nothing else.”

  Daniel could have kept speaking, but realized there was no use in it. The Bible was like statistics, you could make it fit whatever story you wanted to tell. In this psychopath’s, he was simply a sword of righteousness, swung by God.

  “I’m going to nap, I think. Ten more hours and we’ll be there,” the psychopath said.

  Daniel watched his seat recline, the psychopath remaining on his back with his eyes shut.

  The delusion of the faithful knew no limits.

  Forty-Seven

  There were faithful of all types in the world, falling under the banner of different belief systems. The arc of history was a curious thing, especially when it came to religions. Early on in human history, beliefs were primitive—if, indeed, they ever evolved beyond that. Basically, if you looked different, then you were most likely evil and should be killed. Perhaps in a horrendous fashion, as a sacrifice to the gods. There was no concept of foreign beliefs, only foreign people that could either be traded with, enslaved, or killed.

  Humanity, for better or worse, did change over time. Trade allowed different groups to communicate, and it became known that there were different beliefs, different gods. This didn’t do much to stop the violence—if anything, it led to a consolidation of beliefs, creating a few large ones, instead of many dispersed.

  And then, of course, humanity decided—as a general rule—that if you weren’t part of the accepted belief system, you had to die. The accepted belief system simply depended on where you were born, and wars raged over this rule. The Crusades killed hundreds of thousands of people. This type of religious violence continued on for centuries, until just before the Reformation.

  In an odd twist, humanity somehow moved away from religion. The majority of people grew tolerant of other beliefs, and those who didn’t were considered radicals. It wasn’t religion that mattered, but nations and economic systems. Humanity had traded the belief in one superstition for the belief in another without even knowing it.

  The Reformation occurred, changing everything—that 100 year war that led to more death than all other wars combined. Human zealotry grew obsessed with the imaginary lines drawn around geographic territories, and they nearly destroyed each other over those lines.

  Finally, or at least as far as history has allowed, humanity reached a mixture of their early and late ancestry. It rooted its faith in gods, but without letting their fear of the other cause mass destruction. There were, of course, multiple reasons for the second piece: a unifying language and culture, the threat of the Black looming in the background. Plus, there was the need to rebuild after the Black attempted Its coup of the universe.

  All of this history—tens of thousands of years—preceded Raylyn Brinson’s conversation with Manor Reinheld, though she was aware of almost none of it. She lived during a time of complete faith, but she had experienced something that her ancestors had as well.

  An opening of the mind.

  Raylyn had tried sitting in her room, returning to it after Manor finally finished talking. He’d spoken for an hour, perhaps even longer. Raylyn said nothing the entire time, only listening, trying to take it all in, but finding it harder with each passing minute.

  Her room had felt too cramped, so she ventured outside of Corinth’s Shrine—though, that might have been a misnomer. The Shrine was a city unto itself, enclosed within a single building that stretched deep into the Earth. Raylyn couldn’t leave the Shrine, but rather, she went to the platforms that encircled each floor.

  The platforms stretched out for a thousand feet, massive areas that had a circumference of five miles. It would take her longer than an hour to walk even one, but she paid no mind to that as she went outside.

  Others were outside as well, mainly refugees.

  Like me, she thought. Everyone here is a refugee of a destroyed city.

  Raylyn went to the edge of the platform and stared out into the sky. Transports were flying now, some showing designations as medical, others evacuation. Outside of the Shrine, massive amounts of work were occurring as the True Faith moved into action, almost frantically trying to rebuild what had been destroyed.

  People came and went daily from this place, and Raylyn had paid them no notice. For over a week, she’d been lost in her head, and for the first time …

  What? For the first time what? she asked herself, almost accusingly.

  She didn’t want to think these things at all. Part of her wished she had never gone back down to Manor’s cell, because she couldn’t stop considering his words.

  Raylyn looked far into the sky, and she could see—Corinthmeters away—the darkened SkyLight. Broken from the war, and the people living underneath it were cast into a darkness they’d never known.

  No one lives there anymore, she thought.

  Maybe not. Maybe they were all dead. Killed by the God who Manor loved as much as she loved Corinth.

  A debate began inside of Raylyn; it wasn’t a new argument, only new to her. A debate combined with a logical proof, all leading to something that Raylyn truly didn’t want to consider, but yet couldn’t stop moving toward it.

  How do you know what you believe is true? she asked herself.

  Because it is true.

  No, you believe it because you were taught it. What, innately, makes it true? Name one thing that shows its truth outside of True Faith doctrine.

  I’ve prayed to Corinth. I’ve had prayers answered, Raylyn thought.

  Prayers answered. And exactly what percentage of those answered prayers could have been luck? Perhaps only the flip of a coin? Have you ever had prayers not answered? No, that answer isn’t logically consistent, so give another example that shows your faith’s truth.

  I … I …—

  Exactly. I, I—that’s all you can say. When you get down to it, there isn’t anything that shows your faith is true—

  That, Raylyn interrupted, is why they call it faith!

  Fine. I’ll grant you that. Faith is what happens when proof no longer exists. Now, what is different between your faith and those that live in any other Ministry? Again, one example.

  Raylyn turned around and looked at the Shrine. She was far enough away from the building to understand its massiveness, yet close enough to understand how small she was in comparison. She saw it stretching both up and down, an engineering marvel of steel and glass. Beautiful.

  Look at it all you want, but I’m waiting on an answer, the stubborn part of her demanded.

  They
don’t have this, Raylyn responded.

  Do you know how absolutely childish that sounds? Do other Ministries not have buildings dedicated to their gods? Does not the Old World have an entire city? The Vatican? And the Citadel inside The Constant? Please, Raylyn. Every religion to ever exist created objects for people to worship, all in the name of worshipping their deity. So, again, I ask that you give me one thing that makes the True Faith different from any other Ministry.

  Corinth said—

  No. No doctrine. Logic. That is what we’re using here. Doctrine is the handbook for the faithful, because the faithful have run out of proof to follow. Logic is our handbook, and it leads the logical to proof. Answer my question.

  Raylyn had never once thought she would reach this point. It was an impossibility, something reserved for evil people. The people that Raylyn had always chased, caught, detained, and eventually had put to death. This thinking was reserved for those that didn’t deserve Corinth’s love—the people she held in such disdain.

  Yet here you are, the stubborn part said, though there was no anger within its words.

  There was no need to argue anymore. The truth had been found. A new truth, one that lacked any of the True Faith’s comfort, but instead spread only abject terror.

  Perhaps the truth is frightening. Perhaps that’s why you hid from it for so long.

  And then the stubborn part rejoined Raylyn, knowing no more than she did. Fear filled her heart, mixing with a knowledge that said she could never go back. She felt the coin in her pocket; she’d kept it near her ever since receiving it.

  Raylyn reached into her pocket and touched it, running her fingers over its smooth edges. She turned back around and walked to the platform’s edge. She pulled the coin out and leaned against the fence. Raylyn didn’t stare at the sky this time, but instead looked at the coin’s dark red color. Corinth’s Blood. That which he sacrificed for the True Faith, and only those who sacrificed their own for Him could be bestowed this honor.