The Prophet Box-Set: Books 1-4

by David Beers

  The girl’s eyes still burned gray, but Rebecca saw she could do nothing. David hung in the distance, still not moving, only gazing with those haunting eyes.

  Far, far from either of the two, Rebecca saw a massive, static filled drop fall from the sky. It paused in the air for a second, hesitating, looking like some sort of moon. Rebecca knew what it meant: death for Nicki … and then death for the universe.

  The strands continued striking down and the static orb started forward. Slowly, containing mass that couldn’t immediately move at great speeds, it came. Heading directly toward Nicki.

  “Stellan died for you, you fucking bitch. Now it’s your turn.”

  Rebecca heard the words, turning the moment they reached her ears.

  She turned just in time to see an object break her face.

  As above, so below.

  A war raged in the sky, and now Rhett would do what David hadn’t been able to. He might have allowed his sister to live, but Rhett wouldn’t. He hadn’t even said anything to Christine; he had simply gone to the back of the transport, rummaged in a toolbox, and brought out the lengthiest pipe he could find.

  If the toolbox hadn’t been there, he would have used his fist.

  Rhett didn’t look up at the sky, nor at the water rushing along his right. He didn’t hear the wind whipping by his ears. His senses focused on only one thing, the person who nearly murdered his Prophet—the man that gave them purpose.

  Rebecca was staring into the sky as he marched—head slightly down—right to her.

  He started speaking about two feet from her, rearing his arm back as he did, the pipe extending further into the air.

  “Stellan died for you, you fucking bitch. Now it’s your turn.”

  He watched as she turned, her movement eerily like David’s, and then brought the pipe forward. It smashed across her left cheek, splitting the flesh and sending blood spurting across her face and into the air.

  He heard a slight scream, though whether Rebecca or the woman next to her made it, he didn’t know.

  Rebecca collapsed to the ground. Her eyes were fluttering, but her hand was at her face, meaning she wasn’t unconscious—and that was what Rhett wanted.

  He pointed the pipe forward at Brinson. “You interfere, you can die too.”

  The woman only stared at him, confusion reigning in her eyes.

  Rhett looked for a second longer, deciding she was no threat, and then bent over Rebecca.

  “He might love you, but I don’t.”

  He grabbed her right arm and ripped it backward, forcing her onto her back, and then knelt down with one knee on either side.

  He grabbed the pipe with both hands and then brought it down on her throat, though not pressing hard. Her eyes were still fluttering as blood flowed freely down her cheek.

  “Look at me, Rebecca. Look at me right fucking now.” Rhett took his right hand off the pipe and slapped her across the open wound. Rebecca’s eyes flared open. “There. There you go,” he said, pressing the pipe back down on her neck. “I want you to see this, Rebecca. I want you to know it was me that killed you. I’m not going to hide behind Ministries or even David. You’re going to look me right in the eye while I do it.”

  Rhett looked up for a second, toward the girl. She was a bloody rag, and Rhett didn’t know how she was still alive. He turned around slightly, too, finally noticing the river. Steam was rising from it and he thought it was just about ready to boil.

  “Look around, Rebecca. See everything very clearly, even through that swollen eye. You lost. Whatever you wanted to stop, you didn’t have a chance. That girl up there? She’s nothing. You down here? You’re nothing.”

  He was quiet for a second, not pressing down too hard, letting her take in what he’d just seen.

  “Okay,” Rhett said. “Now you know.”

  And then he pushed the metal pipe down, smashing it against her wind pipe. Her hands when to it, weakly, trying to press back, to move him at all, but there was nothing she could do.

  Her face first turned red, and then purple, and Rhett kept pressing, knowing that death was soon.

  “YOU DID THIS!” he screamed. “YOU DID IT TO US! YOU COULD HAVE BEEN HERE! YOU COULD HAVE BEEN WITH US!” The last word was a shriek that rose above the whipping wind and angry water. It swirled through the air like a mad bird, raging on amphetamines with its only goal to pick the eyes of every living creature.

  “I love you,” the woman beneath Rhett said, spit flecking onto her lips. “I’ll always love you.”

  David didn’t move. He remained in the same place, feeling the static sky as if it was another appendage. This woman, barely an adult, had come to stop him without understanding anything at all.

  She was still alive, though her flesh in tatters and a fine mist of blood hung around her. David could see it even from this distance.

  He floated forward slowly. Time was nearly done for this woman. The final blast was still in the distance yet, but the speed was increasing with each second. In a minute, she would no longer exist.

  As he moved closer, he took her in—or what was left of her. Was it arrogance that brought her here? This young woman, thinking she could somehow make a difference? David had felt her power, yes—and perhaps even feared it some—but to wield it was something else entirely.

  She saw it now.

  Without a doubt.

  She had been pretty and graceful when she first dropped from the sky, but now her flesh was ragged and her body broken. David could feel the shattered bones beneath her clothes, and the thick cord of static wrapping around her squeezed tighter against them. Cracked things rubbing against one another. If he placed her down now, she wouldn’t be able to stand at all, but would simply collapse the moment her feet touched ground.

  She was alive, but David thought that only because of the gray in her eyes. It was the only thing keeping her body from dying.

  David reached her. The gray mass was coming now, rolling forward across the air, and soon—very soon—it would destroy this person.

  Her name was Nicki Sesam and David took her in fully. The thin gray strands ceased their whipping, and he looked at a woman shredded. Strings of skin hung from her face, her arms. Raw, bleeding meat stared back at him. Her scalp, which had been full of blonde hair, was now in strips. Hair attached to flesh hung from the side, a grand strand having ripped it off.

  “You should have left,” he said. “I would have made sure you lived. You didn’t deserve this. You have no place in this. Don’t you see that? You never did.”

  The girl only stared at him and David wondered if she could see him at all. If she could hear anything he said at all, or if she was far past that.

  It didn’t matter any longer.

  “Perhaps we’ll see each other soon. My time isn’t long here either. Perhaps we’ll both go to the Unformed.”

  And that was all he could do for the girl.

  With blazing speed, David flew backward, his arms spread in the air.

  The massive drop that had fallen from the sky enveloped Nicki Sesam, washing across her like a wave does a sandcastle. It slowed as it continued moving, until it finally came to a stop a short distance from where the girl had been. She was no more. David stared on for another second, not yet wanting to vanquish the sky nor the static orb in front of him.

  Let it stay, he thought. Let it all stay, and when the Unformed arrives, this will be Its parade.

  David lowered himself to the ground, turning to the river as he did.

  People were to his left and right, but they no longer mattered. David took a step, stumbled, and then straightened. He took a deep breath, and when he released the air, he coughed blood onto the dirt in front of him. It sat there atop the brown grit, telling him exactly what was happening.

  You’re dying, Prophet. Bring forth your God, and then be done with it all.

  David wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, not looking at the blood smeared there. He went forward, gray spreading f
rom his eyes and wrapping around his body. It spread over his clothes and skin alike, protecting him from what was to come.

  Rachel Veritros had lowered into the river from high above, but David simply floated over the top, inches above the boiling liquid.

  David Hollowborne, creature of pain and anger, finally reached his destiny. It was truthfully all he ever wanted, and he had finally achieved it.

  The Prophet dropped inside the river and the world saw him no more.

  Pain wasn’t a word that could accurately describe what Nicki Sesam felt. It might have been like saying the blind were in darkness, but that was only how those with sight might try describing it.

  Darkness might be the correct word, but it did nothing for the totality of the blind’s experience. Its unendingness. Its infinite nature.

  That was Nicki Sesam’s pain.

  She had heard the dark man’s words—Hollowborne’s. He told her to leave, and she’d only laughed at him, because it showed how little he knew. She couldn’t leave. She could do nothing but ride the train until it stopped in front of him, that or have jumped off long before.

  But it was too late to jump off, and so she laughed, then foolishly acted as if she was ready for battle.

  He acted with speed that almost couldn’t be seen. Nicki tried to stop it, she truly did. She tried countering, tried calling on the gray above her, the gray within her—gray anywhere that she could find it.

  The gray light was not hers, though, and if it had ever been, then she’d only borrowed it. No matter how much she struggled to take hold of the light, it would not obey. Powerful she may have been, Nicki was brought low in a single moment.

  And then the pain poured on. She felt her bones snapping like brittle glass. Not only major ones like her femur, but everything down to the tiny structures inside her hands. The large static cord wrapped around her like an octopus’s tentacle, squeezing tight and crushing her. She felt sharp objects—things that should not be there—slicing into vital organs.

  Blood poured from her mouth, but it could only be seen for a few seconds, because the smaller cords attacked next. None wrapped around her—no, they slapped at her, long strings hanging from the sky.

  Smack.

  Smack.

  Smacksmacksmack.

  They came so rapidly, with such little time between each lash, it felt as if there was no break between them. No time separating one from the other.

  Her skin practically fell from her body; her internal organs bled.

  And yet, Nicki lived. Impossibly—but what about any of this had ever been possible?

  None of it. Not a single bit. And so the pain consuming her was allowed to reign and her body not allowed to die.

  Tears fell from her eyes, just as bloody as the strips of flesh hanging from her cheeks.

  No words.

  Barely any thoughts.

  And pain. Glorious, unforgiving, unimaginable pain.

  The dark man came to her whispering words that she couldn’t focus on, nor possibly answer. Words that whisked by her ear, meaning nothing. This pain was now God and it said all else must bow.

  When the static orb smashed into her, rushing across her like an ocean wave, Nicki didn’t see it coming—and though she couldn’t think enough to hope—had she been able to, it would have been for death.

  Death did not come, though.

  Nicki saw nothing but static, her body a broken and beaten thing, but death was not allowed. Not yet.

  The gray consumed her completely, and the pain …

  … stopped.

  Nicki blinked, not understanding. The cord holding her was gone, and she collapsed to her knees. She opened her mouth to scream, but only gray static poured from her mouth—no noise, no sound at all. Just static like bees, flowing freely and spilling into the space …

  Nicki looked around her.

  This wasn’t space.

  This wasn’t gray static, and as Nicki looked down, she saw nothing pouring from her mouth.

  She stared at her hands—what had been tattered, broken things were now the pale, untouched white of her entire life.

  She wasn’t in a static cloud of death, nor draped with wretched, bleeding skin, but instead in her house, her home, wearing her restaurant uniform.

  “Hey, Nicki.”

  She was on her knees in the kitchen, and her head jerked up at the sound.

  “Mom?”

  Her mother was leaning against the kitchen counter, looking as perfect as Nicki could ever remember. She wore …

  A yellow dress.

  Impossible.

  Just like everything else, because Nicki remembered that yellow dress.

  It had always been her favorite.

  “Kind of.” Nicki’s head jerked to the voice on her right. Her father stood at the kitchen doorway. “But not really. I know that probably doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

  Nicki was lost, still on the floor and unable to find a single word.

  “Come on, get up, honey,” her mother said, stepping across the room, her yellow dress moving with her hips. She reached down and took both of Nicki’s hands in her own, and then slowly—delicately—lifted her. “Let’s sit down.”

  Nicki was led to the kitchen table, then placed in a chair.

  She watched her father walk across the kitchen and to the cupboard where he first grabbed a bowl, and then a box of cereal. She read the name off the box—Priest Pops (they’d always been his favorite)—and then watched as he went to the refrigerator to get milk.

  Nicki’s eyes went to her arms, appendages that had been bloody hunks of meat only moments before.

  “We know,” her father said. “It’s a lot. But, we wanted to talk with you for a moment.”

  Her mother pulled out a chair from the kitchen table and sat down in it. “Some would call this deus ex machina, but that’s only because they haven’t been paying attention.”

  “God from the machine,” her dad said as he poured the milk into the bowl. He turned around and leaned against the counter, bowl in one hand, spoon in the other. “Here to resolve an impossible situation, like the one Earth is currently facing.”

  Nicki’s head whipped around, expecting to see the Prophet and the river.

  “It’s okay, honey.” Her mother reached forward, placing a hand on top of Nicki’s. “You don’t have to worry about that right now.”

  Her dad dipped the spoon into the bowl, pulled out a bite and put it in his mouth.

  “I suppose we are and we aren’t your parents. We’re just as much you too, and those blessed people down there acting foolish. We could take this down some existential pathways, but that’s not why we came.”

  Her mother shook her head, agreeing with her husband.

  He took another bite, and then continued. “The thing he serves, it’s … outside of our will, I guess. That’s what Laurel was trying to tell you, in her own way.”

  “Your will?” Nicki asked, finally a question coming to her lips.

  “Yes. That’s probably the simplest terms we can put it in.”

  “You’re God?”

  “We really can’t say one way or another on that,” her father answered. “People might consider us God, in the same way very young children might consider their parents God. But, perhaps there is more out there. Who knows?”

  He took a bite of the cereal as if the question was perhaps the least important thing he’d ever considered.

  “Honey,” her mother said. “We wanted to talk with you for a minute.”

  Her father nodded. “Yup. Normally we wouldn’t come here like this, but we thought we owed you something.”

  “Our will is important, but it’s not the only thing that matters. We can set things in motion, and we can try to keep them rolling, but eventually, other wills matter too.”

  “That creature coming here now, for one. We wanted nothing to do with it, but there it is, trying to consume the whole damned universe.” Her father shook his head.

&nb
sp; Her mother turned around and looked at him, displeasure at his language across her face. After a second, she came back to Nicki. “Only those without a good grasp of the English language use such base words … The point that I’m trying to make is, other wills come into play as well. If ours is so strong, it’s only because we see further out. Still, all of this could have been stopped if you hadn’t kept going, or made different choices. Like killing the man who came to your house, for one. And that’s why we wanted to speak with you.”

  “You came through a lot to get here, and you just kept coming, darling.”

  Her father was staring at her now, the nonchalance completely gone. Nicki saw … love, and maybe a sense of reverence as well.

  “Our will would have been meaningless if you didn’t keep going, and we actually thought you might not make it,” her mother said. “There are limits to what we can do—”

  “And the Laurel thing was straining them,” her father interrupted.

  “But we showed you her, because we wanted you to see there is a plan. We wanted you to trust in it. It was the only way we could stop that thing out there.”

  “And this plan,” her father said, “goes back a long, long time. The sight wasn’t an invention of man, no more than the nuclear bomb was. We had to hope you would make it here, though, to this very point, or else everything else…”

  He looked into his bowl and stirred the cereal.

  “Well, it all would have been lost.”

  “But you did it, honey,” her mother said. “You made it.”

  “Why do I matter in this?” Nicki asked.

  “Believe it or not, Nicki,” her father said, “on our side, you’re the only thing that matters. Literally, no one else was important. We did our best to keep pushing things our way—like a strong wind blowing everything in one direction—but that was all we could do.”

  “You’re not answering the question,” her mother spoke up, looking at Nicki with the brown eyes that she had thought she’d never see again. “Honey, you matter, because we can’t save the human species. You may think of God or Gods as everything. All powerful. But we’re not. At least we’re not. You’re about to save mankind, Nicki. Not us. We created a situation for that to be possible, but you’re not a clock that we wound up. You’re just a racer that we trained. You still had to get out there and run that race.”