The Prophet Box-Set: Books 1-4

by David Beers

  “Yes, Your Grace,” Spyden said and then exited the room.

  Yule stood up and walked across the office, staring at the windows.

  “They’re wild,” he said. “Like animals. Look at that one. She’s laughing.”

  Blood was splattered across her right cheek, dark red against pale skin. She appeared to be dragging a dead body, just pulling it by its leg, the static strands on her arm wrapped around the ankle. Laughing the entire way.

  “The Black has never done this before,” Yule said.

  “It’s not the Black,” Trinant said. “It’s us. The One Path.”

  The Pope turned around. “What do you mean?”

  “Have you heard of our detention centers?”

  The First Priest looked over as well. “Is that where the High Priest is?”

  Trinant kept looking at Yule. “Yes. The civilian population calls them the pits. We house specific criminals in the detention center here, but for the majority of the population, they’re placed in massive containers. Each ‘center’ contains a liquid, though I think the technical terminology is pentium carcerem. We can do different things with this liquid, depending on the criminals housed inside.”

  She broke away from Yule’s stare, turning her face to the windows. Trinant was quiet for a moment. She was pale, a Minister frightened when she was supposed to be the most protected person in the entire territory.

  “We use a dosage which ensures they lose their minds,” she finally said.

  “Why?”

  “Revenge. For the amount of people they killed. For all of those faithful they butchered. They threw them from buildings, Yule. Their bodies were obliterated when they hit the ocean below. Justice would have been to make them remain in the pits forever, slowly going insane. Not even knowing their own names.”

  Trinant didn’t look at him as she spoke, but watched the product of her actions.

  Yule turned and watched it too.

  We, the most religious, created this, he thought. God, have mercy on us. Please, have mercy on all of us.

  Yule went to Daniel, though Spyden advised him not to. It would be harder to protect him if the attackers somehow broke through. She offered an escort as well, but Yule denied it. He felt sick to his stomach, and sitting in that room with those other three was only worsening it.

  The people marching toward them, gray strands dripping from their hands and their minds broken … The Black hadn’t done that. The One Path had.

  Yule needed some time away from it all--to simply gather his thoughts, if nothing else.

  Daniel was on the same floor, though it took him 10 minutes to get there. Guards were posted all over the place—Yule noticing that as their rank decreased, more men were visible.

  Daniel was sitting in the room’s only chair, Yule’s small Bible open in front of him.

  “How bad is it?” he asked, looking up as Yule entered.

  Yule had been in contact with him over the past day, updating him as he could. The man had calmed some, though the Pope didn’t think Daniel would ever be exactly friendly.

  Nor should he, given what the Church has done to him.

  “It’s worse,” he said, sitting down on the bed. “They’re 200 floors beneath us now.”

  “Any good news?”

  “Well, all religion might be wiped out within the next day or two, and you might consider that good.” Yule smiled as he said it, though nothing similar crossed Daniel’s face.

  “Is that what you see yourself as? How you see the four Ministers? You embody religion?”

  Yule, forgetting his title and propriety, laid back on Daniel’s bed and looked up at the ceiling. “No, Daniel. I was only kidding. Religion didn’t start with any of us, nor will it end if we perish. Religion will continue because God wants it to be so.”

  The two were quiet for a few minutes, the Pope preferring this man’s company to the Ministers’.

  “It’s the Black?” Daniel asked.

  “Yes.”

  “How did It come back? Its weapon is dead.”

  “We don’t know,” Yule said. “We don’t know a lot about this. But it’s happening everywhere. They waited until our forces were en route here, and then attacked.”

  “Do you think It’ll win?”

  Yule recognized that was the first question Daniel had asked him in which he actually cared about the Pope’s thoughts. Yule remained where he was, not wanting to disrupt whatever had made him ask it. The Pope didn’t hear any fear in his voice—in fact, Daniel seemed more okay with what was happening here than he had anything else since Yule knew him.

  Because his daughter’s not involved.

  “I don’t know.” He paused for a second, thinking he should say something else, but then only repeating it. “I really don’t know.”

  He heard Daniel flip the page in the Bible.

  “What are you reading?”

  Daniel chuckled. “Genesis.”

  “Why?”

  “Just the ridiculousness of it all. God breathing life into dirt and then creating more life out of a rib. Name these animals. Don’t eat that fruit. It just sounds crazy when you look at it objectively; I’ve always thought so, but have never really been able to say it before. Now it doesn’t matter.”

  “Not finding any solace?” the Pope asked.

  “No. Only distraction.”

  Yule sat up. “Your attitude has changed over the past day. Why? I understand Nicki isn’t in danger with any of this, but why the … calm? You and I may very well die within the next few hours. I don’t begrudge you your attitude; I’m only curious.”

  Daniel didn’t look up from the Bible. “If she’s really lost, then I’m okay with dying. I’ve been full of anger since this all started, but if there’s no way to find her, then I’m not going to waste my last few hours hating the Church. Hating you. It would mean you all win.”

  In front of him, Yule saw the Old World’s version of those battling up from the bottom of this globe. Perhaps Daniel wasn’t insane, full of hate instead. Even now, calm as he was, it was the hate that made him so. Yule didn’t understand how religion could inspire such love, yet also such hate … such violence.

  Yes you do, you fool.

  “Religion has created a lot of good in this world,” he said, not truly knowing if he was talking to himself or Daniel. He only paused for a moment, knowing that Daniel would interrupt to argue if given the opportunity. “But it’s also done some of the most evil things imaginable. In that book you’re reading, examples of both proliferate throughout. In the end, Daniel, it’s not religion that is good or bad, but people. We can do what we want with what God has given us. We can use it to help and grow selfless, to put others before ourselves. Or, we can take the words in that book and use them to conquer. To kill. I won’t even say twist the words, because we don’t have to twist very hard to make it so.”

  He did pause then, looking at his black shoes.

  “God is real, Daniel. Nothing you can ever say will convince me otherwise. He exists and He loves us. But I believe He recognizes our imperfections. And because He is God, He has to turn away from the evil in man. People will say that God is cruel, but that’s not true. Man is cruel. It wasn’t God that did anything to your daughter, but it was the Church. I’ll grant you that, because the Church is nothing but man using God’s words as he desires. If you want to hate man, go ahead, Daniel. I can’t stop you, nor would I even try. Man has earned his hate. I would caution you on hating God, though. To hate God is to hate choice in itself, and to hate the part of that choice that allows you to love Nicki so.”

  The Pope stood and went to the door. He stopped at it.

  “I guess, maybe I would even caution you about hating man, too, though. Recognize us for what we are, but if God can love us, then surely there is good here, too. Because God loves your daughter, whether or not you want to believe it. You hate the bad, and you love the good, but in this world, the two often walk hand in hand.”

&nbs
p; Sixty-Six

  Raylyn sat silently in the back of the transport.

  She didn’t know where she was going, nor what she was doing.

  And maybe, just maybe, she had sold her soul. Not to some Prophet or false god, but sold it all the same. Because she was alone in the back of the transport, the man she loved left behind on some island. And who was the person with her in this transport, sitting up front? The weapon’s sister.

  Raylyn would have laughed if she hadn’t been so close to crying, because life no longer made sense. Everything she had believed in a month ago was gone, and everything she had possessed, trashed. And now, the only person she had loved was going to die.

  Because she hadn’t been willing to take the Blood.

  When the Prophet first approached the beach, Raylyn had walked away. She had an idea of what was to come, and to be near it was to invite death. So she had left and listened to the lunatic’s ranting and raving at his sister.

  Eventually though, he had left, and Raylyn saw Rebecca Hollowborne still standing. No static wrapping around her, no life threatening wounds.

  The weapon didn’t return, and Raylyn found her feet moving across the sand, heading toward Hollowborne. She still stood in the transport, not yet moving.

  The conversation had been quick.

  “I’m not taking any of his Blood,” Raylyn told her.

  “Get in, then,” Rebecca said. “Otherwise you’re going to die.”

  Raylyn had looked at Hollowborne for only a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity. Because in that moment, she decided what mattered: her life or Manor’s.

  No, her mind spat at her. No, that’s not true and you know it. That’s not fair. It wasn’t your life or his. It was your life or the Prophet’s. That’s what this was about. Manor could have given it up, told you he would go wherever you wanted, but he didn’t did he? No, he sat there on that beach and tried to convince you. Raylyn, there was no choice of your life and his, it was your life or the weapon’s, and there’s no choice in that.

  You can’t trade one false god for another, not for anyone in this world.

  Manor had contacted her shortly after she left, and Raylyn hadn’t lied. She could have ignored him, could have told him anything or nothing, but she told him the truth.

  I left with his sister.

  And he’d said nothing in return. Stunned silence, because both of them knew what it meant.

  Tears sprang to Raylyn’s eyes as she thought of it now. She stood up, forcing the memory away. She couldn’t keep dwelling on it, because it only brought her to a single truth: she left, and Manor would die because of it.

  She reached up and wiped at her eyes, then walked to the front of the transport.

  “Where are we going?”

  It was the first thing she’d said since getting in.

  “To the One Path,” Hollowborne answered.

  Raylyn stepped over the small barrier separating the front from the back and sat down in the open seat. “Why?”

  “Mainly because I don’t know where else to go. But, that’s where the girl was heading, and so that’s where I’m going too.”

  “What girl?”

  Hollowborne looked over at her. “You don’t know?”

  Raylyn shook her head.

  “There’s a girl, a young woman really,” Hollowborne said, “and she’s like David. I don’t know how, not really, but that’s why we were in the One Path. It’s the reason we were in the One Path when you found him, because we were intercepting her.”

  Raylyn leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes and trying to take it all in. “There was a transport we were following, and we were supposed to protect it,” she said.

  “That transport was what we were after.”

  The two were quiet for a few seconds and then Raylyn said, “This is going to take me a minute to understand. Why would we go to her? Why do you care?”

  “I don’t know where else to go. You can’t feel it, but David has started the Summoning again. People are dying in every Ministry right now, and he’s surely going to head to the Nile River.”

  “I’m still not getting this. Why would you go to her?”

  “Because I think she might be the only person that can stop him. The Ministries are useless at this point. They can’t do anything, and I’m not sure they ever could. I might have underestimated him, and the Unformed, because I really thought he was dead.”

  Raylyn opened her eyes and looked to the woman next to her. “You’re still going to try and stop him?”

  “It’s the only thing I can do,” Hollowborne said.

  “Why are you different? What happened to change you? You say your blood still itches, because you swore yourself to him. Why are you the only one that wants to stop him?”

  “You True Faith people really like learning about David, don’t you?” Hollowborne asked. “Your Priest had me talking for hours and hours about him. Now you’re wanting to know more.”

  “Not about him,” Raylyn said. “About you.”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  Raylyn laughed and looked out the window to her right. Ocean lay beneath her and clouds above. Their ascent was slow and winding. “After all this … I’m not sure you could say anything that would surprise me.”

  Rebecca didn’t want to tell her; she’d let the woman get in the transport, but that was only because death awaited her on that island. The woman was still an infidel, someone who spent her entire life worshiping at a shrine made to a false god.

  Rebecca wasn’t even moved that the woman had risked her life to save them.

  You two belong with each other, she thought. She gave up her lover, and you gave up your brother.

  Brinson was staring out the window to the right, perhaps waiting on Rebecca to speak, or perhaps she’d given up on it.

  Why would I tell her anything?

  Why wouldn’t you? For better or worse, you two are together now; there isn’t a whole lot of time before the world ends, if you’re being honest.

  “Everyone talks about truth,” Rebecca said softly. “David, Rhett, the Ministries. I’m sure your Priests talk about it, too. Everyone thinks they know truth, that if you just follow or listen to what they’re saying, then it will all work out. You’ll be safe. The people you love will be safe. And then there’s an afterlife waiting, where you’ll get everything you ever desired. That is the basis of the truth people talk about. David is no different. When the Unformed arrives, everything will be great for those that followed him. And I believed it.”

  Rebecca felt Brinson’s eyes on her now, no longer looking out the window.

  “Maybe there is truth. I don’t know. What I do believe, though, is that if any truth exists, it isn’t happily ever after. There’s no savior. There’s no life after death. There’s only what we can do for ourselves. And she showed me that.”

  Seconds passed with Rebecca saying nothing, then Brinson whispered, “Who?”

  A small laugh—more of a hitch—rose in Rebecca’s throat. “This is where you won’t believe me. No one would, except maybe David, but I couldn’t tell him.”

  She paused again, and in that silence, decided to go ahead.

  “Rachel Veritros.”

  Neither spoke for nearly 30 seconds, then Brinson said, “You’re right, I don’t believe you.”

  Rebecca burst out laughing—real, hard laughter. She kept going and then Brinson joined in, as much nervous tension being released as humor, but it didn’t matter. Tears came to Rebecca’s eyes and she didn’t even try wiping them away. She just kept laughing, finally feeling good, if only for a few seconds.

  When the laughter died, Rebecca was breathing harder, and so was Brinson.

  “Well, it was Rachel Veritros that told me what I had to do,” she said, still smiling, though at the mention of the woman’s name, the entire transport grew serious. Rebecca understood what kind of feelings Veritros caused in people of any faith—any besides David’s.
She was a monster, and to even speak of her could mean ostracism, if not outright death.

  “I guess I’ll keep talking,” she said. “You don’t have to believe it, but I’m already this far along. It was a few years ago, though now it feels like lifetimes. I was only 24 or 25 then, and David’s numbers were growing rapidly. Our numbers back then. It seemed like a new transport was delivering people to the compound weekly, and David was different then too. The anger he has now, it was there, but not omnipresent. Things were … lighter, I guess, even if the situation we dealt with wasn’t.

  “The Prophet, whether Abby, Veritros, or David, can always remember the exact moment when the Unformed first comes to them. It’s the same for me with Veritros.”

  Rebecca looked over at Brinson, wanting to see how critical her face was. She was leaning back against the opposite door, her brow furrowed, but it didn’t appear to be in condemnation … or any accusation of insanity.

  “A transport had been arriving, another five people joining the compound. I was out on the platform, ready to welcome them. David was there, Rhett and Christine, too. His entire inner circle, because it was important to make them realize that they had finally arrived home. Five people exited the transport, and other members of the compound went to take their bags. Five. That’s all that had come, and yet I saw a sixth. She didn’t move off the transport, wasn’t walking toward us like the rest. She remained standing on it, behind the other five and looking at none of them. She was staring right at me.

  “There are pictures of Veritros. I don’t know if you’ve seen them, but they exist, and I’d seen them over the years. I never doubted for a second who I was looking at. Rachel Veritros stood in that transport and was staring right at me.

  “I looked over at David, then, but he was walking forward already, going to meet his followers. I looked back at the transport, sure she’d be gone and that I had hallucinated the whole thing. She wasn’t gone, though; she was still standing there staring at me.”

  Rebecca closed her eyes, seeing the woman as if she stood in front of her now.