Matt, Zeng Wei, and David (the Dalai Lama to-be) gathered in front of the house every morning to practice a kata and meditate. This morning was no different, and after the news of the decimated safe house in Ivory Coast and the arrival of Nathan, a little meditation was welcomed.
“I feel that there is something wrong in this town,” Zeng Wei observed, breaking the silence, “some foreign element.”
Finished with his meditation anyway, Matt asked, “What do you mean?”
“There is something dark, but not demonic, brewing in this town,” the Elder Prophet replied ambiguously.
“I’ve felt it too,” another voice affirmed from behind them.
Matt was on his feet and facing the intruder before either of the other prophets had even turned their heads. He recognized this person from the news and a few encounters at Jeremiah’s mansion. This was John.
“What do you think it is?” Zeng Wei showed no surprise as he got to his feet.
“An evil prophet,” John reasoned, “the only thing it could be.”
“A prophet will be harder to locate than a demon,” Zeng Wei noted. “I am sworn to protect all prophets, so this one must be taken alive.”
“Agreed,” John said. “Besides, this prophet may have useful information. Matt, will you be attending?”
“Uh, sure. This sounds like it could lead to a breach of security for this compound.”
John nodded. “Most certainly.”
“Your security chief,” Zeng Wei asked Matt, “would he watch David while we’re gone?”
“We’ll assign him his own guards while he’s here,” Matt answered. “It will probably just be better to have someone with a gun watching him whenever you’re not around.”
“I concur. David?”
The little boy shrugged his shoulders. “I guess.”
Matt smiled. The boy seemed to be pretty easygoing. It must be easier to cope with being different when you’re younger, he thought.
“There is a young, Buddhist woman in town. She has volunteered to watch over and tend to him. I too often spend my time in the company of demons and other miscreants. If at all possible, he needs a stable environment where I can still be close by, at least for the next few days. Her name is Luz.”
Matt looked confused. “Loose?”
“Her name is Spanish,” Zeng Wei explained patiently. “It means ‘light.’”
“Oh.” Matt nodded. “I’ll let my guards know. They’ll also keep surveillance on David and Luz. If something does go down, we might be able to react in time.”
It made Matt sad to think that the boy was in peril just by being here. Children should be sheltered, loved, not harmed. They should be running and playing with friends. David should be causing trouble or playing with an animal right now, not walking around with an armed escort. As long as monsters lurk in shadows, the Dalai Lama to-be would always have to watch his back.
It will be better for you, Matt promised the boy silently. It has to be, he added, almost as a desperate plea to a higher power.
***
Yuri looked up over his workbench. Beakers with a florescent, greenish liquid bubbled under his face, casting an eerie glow upon his countenance. Renee stood at the top of the steps of Yuri’s basement laboratory, inspecting him warily.
“I should have a thousand doses prepared for tonight,” he told her. “What doesn’t get taken gets sold at a ridiculously low price to any drug dealers who show up. I don’t actually plan to attend the party, so you will have to facilitate all of those transactions for me.”
“Why won’t you be there?” she inquired.
“It’s not time for me to make a public appearance. Your job is to use your little gift to sell yourself and my drug to the town’s weak-minded youth. Tell them whatever they need to hear to make them believe it’s the right drug for them. Tell them it will take off weight or put on muscle. Tell them there are no lasting side-effects. Lie to them. Just get them to try it; they’ll get hooked all by themselves.”
“I’m still curious why this job falls on my shoulders. I thought I was just a sidekick.”
Yuri sighed and carefully placed the vial into which he had been dropping minuscule amounts of the greenish liquid in its stand.
“All right,” he said. “After all we’ve been through, I’m surprised I still have to spell it out for you. I have no want or care for your questions. Your curiosity is irrelevant to me. You are not even a sidekick; you’re a tool. That’s all. My master ordered me to this ridiculous little town to do a job. You assist me in carrying out his bigger plans. Your tits may be an asset, but your brain is not. You do what you’re told. No more, no less.”
As expected, Renee had nothing to say to the comment. She merely stood there, taking the verbal abuse and waiting.
Yuri chuckled. “Oh, I see. You want a treat, now, for being a good dog. Well, it would be cruel to addict a person to a substance and not provide the fix they crave. So...no. I’ll give you a few hours without it—to give you a taste of what life might be like without me.”
Her eyes narrowed. For a moment, Yuri could see an animalistic fury in her.
“You can’t do this,” she hissed.
He picked up a walkie-talkie and said, “Sergei, would you take and confine Renee to her room until further notice. I find her presence very distracting.”
“Yes sir,” the deep voice replied.
Within moments a heavy hand fell on Renee’s shoulder. Resignedly, she turned away.
“You see,” Yuri told her as she was leaving, “I can do this.”
***
Patheus peered down at a map of Kingstone on his office desk. With all of the recent prophet arrivals, the prophet spies he’d sent would certainly not be identified. They had given him valuable information on the location of individual prophets in the city, as well as keeping an eye on the safe house.
He knew the safe house couldn’t be touched. Even a legion of demons could be eliminated, or at the very least contained, with little effort if they angered an archangel. However, the individual prophets were relatively unguarded. And that could be all Patheus would need to draw his enemies away from their protection.
“Are your people in place?” he asked Ephippas, who was sulking close by.
“Yes. We have been watching events unfold and awaiting your instruction.”
“I have a list of names and addresses of prophets within the city. I want you to find them and kill them. If they quietly go missing, it may take the other prophets a while to fully appreciate their dilemma. Be warned: they are surely traveling in groups. You must catch them by surprise and destroy them quickly. News must not reach the safe house until I am ready.”
“Forgive my curiosity, my lord,” Ephippas returned without sincerity, “but when will that be?”
“Soon. I have devised a plan to beat the prophets at their own game. Before this will be totally effective, though, I will need you to even the playing field.”
Ephippas bowed slightly. “As you wish.”
“Carry on,” Patheus ordered.
He watched Ephippas leave and turned back to his map. His plan would be a risky one, but even if it failed, it would not be a great loss. It was only meant as a diversion, anyway. If this lure drew away any of their attention, it would serve its purpose.
***
Sara walked across the street at a four-way stop in downtown Kingstone. The atmosphere was quiet, and it smacked of decent, home-grown, dull suburbia. Some of the buildings were historic, though most had merely been built to look that way. In between the buildings was a park—in the middle stood a pavilion with a stage that often hosted mediocre musical talent, obscure demonstrations, and politicians on the weekends. The park served as fairgrounds once a year, and was the preferred location for any festivals that might arise. Most days, however, it was relatively quiet. A skateboarding adolescent or an elderly couple could usually be seen, but the park and pavilion were rarely used. Today, it seemed, there was a speaker.
For the time being, it looked like it was up to Sara to stall this man’s strange ravings.
“This man who came to you as a herald of God is no less human than any person here,” the gaunt, pale man told the audience. “This man who summoned fire from the sky is a simple genetic anomaly, and it is true that there are many such anomalies. I should know because I am one.”
From this the audience gasped. Mixed emotions flooded the crowd. Who was this man? Could he be trusted? Why was his message different than the other one? Were they in danger? Did he have the power to raise the dead as well? Would he protect them?
“I work for an organization that governs the power of such people,” he continued. “But this man—John is his name—has ties to a powerful worldwide organization, which he calls ‘The Elder Prophet Council.’ We have tried over the years, sometimes unsuccessfully, to encourage their compliance in our policies of non-interference. These ‘prophets’ have no more right than I do to make your decisions for you. Unfortunately, not everyone feels the way I do.
“My views on religion are irrelevant, but I can tell you that I cannot support John’s claims of angels, demons, or prophets. He is different, strange, but he’s not a prophet from God. He is just like I am, if only a little confused.”
Sara raised her voice loud enough to be heard over the muttering of the crowd. “Those things he was fighting over on Main Street didn’t look human to me.”
He leered down at her for only a moment. Then, he smiled. “Smoke and mirrors, my dear girl. John is a master of illusion. When one has cameras, props, and a little prestidigitation, he can turn the simplest feat into magic or divine intervention. Do not be so easily swayed by parlor tricks. He creates fire that doesn’t burn? It is simply a clever deception.”
“He brought that boy back to life,” Sara argued. “There were witnesses who had seen the boy dead and alive.”
“He is different, as are you and I,” he replied to Sara critically. He then turned to the crowd. “You may not realize this, but there are many such people in this city right now. None of them can raise your dead though. As I said, John is a master of illusion. It may come as a surprise to you, but this would not be the first time that he won the heart of a small town by making it seem that one of their own was dead and resurrected. It may be that, among his many other talents, John has the ability to place people in coma-like conditions that will, to even careful examination, make the subject look completely dead...and then return them to their previous state an hour or so later. Another possibility is that the boy was, legally, dead. There have been reported cases of people returning to life, through purely scientific reasons, an hour or more after resuscitation has been abandoned. It is, somewhat poetically, termed the Lazarus Syndrome. It isn’t mystical or divine, merely a buildup of pressure.
“They will claim all manner of things. Always remember that there is a cost to pay for these people to perform their tricks. They will demand your help, and even allegiance. They claim that there is a danger out there, but in reality, their goal is to use your kind and trusting nature to gain an upper hand against a group who fights to protect you and your rights.”
Sara glanced around at the crowd, and she could sense the unease apparent in all of their faces. They may not trust the man on the stage, but they didn’t particularly look like they trusted her either. She could need reinforcements quickly.
“You protect their rights against who?” she demanded. “No one has attacked them.”
“On the contrary,” the man corrected. “Someone or something killed that boy, according to you, or, more likely, made it look as if he had been killed. It seems too convenient that this ‘prophet’ would have been present in Kingstone and aware of what had happened. I think he created this situation.”
Sara didn’t know what to say. It was possible; she hadn’t been at any of these places when so-called miracles happened. Every prophet she’d talked to had seemed confident in the existence of demons, but perhaps they had all been confused. Up until recently, she would have thought the stories to be fantasy as well. Lately though, everything seemed to be changing so much, that her life, as a whole, had taken on a surreal overtone. Maybe she had been taken in by the hype also.
She was then aware that she had a tingling sensation in her head, and a voice called from within her, words inaudible, that she felt she desperately needed to listen to. Though she couldn’t understand the voice, she had an urge to leave this place, to go away from this man, but her legs wouldn’t move. He was speaking again, and she couldn’t make out what he was saying either. Just the sound of his voice was reassuring enough to ignore the doubt.
Sara felt a hand on her shoulder, and the tingling subsided. The spell was broken. A familiar presence brought her back to reality—a reality where very literal good battled very literal evil. Her heart slowed; the anxiety disappeared. She felt whole, and her legs were once again under her control.
“We’re here, Sara,” a soft, male voice informed her.
She looked to her right and saw Alex. His attention had already turned to the stage, where the man had stopped talking and was watching them.
The man sneered at them. “I see you’ve brought friends.”
Sophie was then standing next to him on the stage. “Interesting choice of words.”
The crowd gasped at her sudden appearance. They backed away from the stage, but did not move far, for fear of missing any of the action.
The Elder Prophet continued, “For we are friends. We have not come to your town to coerce or enslave you,” she told the crowd. “This one, however, has.”
“You all may feel honored,” the man exclaimed, taking only a brief notice of the woman on the stage next to him. “A member of this secretive ‘Elder Prophet Council’ has deigned to join us today. What wisdom can you bestow upon us about this phantom force of evil bent on world domination?” he scoffed.
“Quiet, fool,” she ordered. And, with a wave of her hand, he was frozen out of time, standing in his last position like a statue. “Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce Alexander Tanner.”
“Oh my God!” a girl gasped as Alex passed her, headed toward the stage.
He’d recognized the girl from school, Michelle Bloomquist. She belonged to the Bible club, and was always wearing shirts that had Christian clichés on them, like the one she was wearing today: “Seven Days Without God Makes One Weak.” Alex wondered if she had any conception how true that statement could be.
But this is what faith had become in this town. It was not only popular to be Christian in Kingstone, but if someone wasn’t, or even didn’t go to the right church, he or she found it very difficult to assimilate at all with the other residents. Faith as a fad disturbed him in a strong way. Though he had known all of his life that this was the state of things in Kingstone, after seeing what faith was capable of, the thought of it on the t-shirts of judgmental pseudo-Christians felt dirty.
Michelle belonged to the Convocation of Christ Church in town. They always wanted to save your soul and got offended when they encountered resistance. Teenage members often held prayer sessions around the flagpole in front of the school when something like abortion or gay marriage found its way into the political arena again. These pseudo-Christians could usually be characterized by their impetuous judgment and their almost complete lack of compassion.
Michelle’s parents, like so many people in Kingstone, went to services on Sunday, listened to the preacher speak of Jesus’s love for the weak and poor and the obligations of those who follow him to do the same, then retreated to their extravagant homes, forgetting about brotherly love until Wednesday. Most of these people worked
in Kansas City and passed broken, impoverished people all the time, but did nothing to help. They went to Christmas services, heard the need of families in the community, and thought, “Thank God for my Christmas bonus.” Their children were deftly picking up this superficial Christianity as well.
As Alex ascended the stairs to the stage, he suddenly began to question the wisdom in returning to this town to make a stand against evil.
“I go—went to school with him,” Michelle told someone breathlessly.
“It’s the one John talked about,” a woman whispered to her husband.
“They said he died in a car wreck,” another voice added.
“Release him,” Alex told Sophie when he reached the top. “We can’t learn much about him if he’s not allowed to speak.”
Sophie cocked an eyebrow, but did as she was told.
The man picked up where he’d left off, unaware of his previous predicament, “How dare you to order me around like I’m your peasant. These people know what you’re all about.” Then, he noticed that Alex was on the stage with them. “Yes, the great Alex Tanner. I’ve heard so much about you.”
“You know my name,” Alex observed quietly. “What is yours?”
“Julian Miller.”
“Please continue, Julian,” Alex instructed. “I believe you were saying that these people know all about us. What is it, exactly, that they are supposed to know? It might make my job easier.”
“They know you have ulterior motives.”
Alex laughed. “I haven’t said much yet to give you an indication of my motives one way or another.”
Several people in the crowd laughed too. Most of them knew that Alex was one of their own. Whatever the circumstances were that brought him back or whether or not any of these people besides Michelle knew him personally, they felt a connection with him. Something about him seemed more trustworthy than this Julian.
Alex could sense that he was taking control of the crowd with very little conscious effort, and Julian could feel it too.
The Elder Prophets (To Absolve the Fallen Book 2) Page 26