The Prophet Box-Set: Books 1-4

by David Beers

  “Honey, whatever you’re doing. Stop. I told this man to reach out to you. He’s doing it for me, baby. He’s not going to hurt you or me. Okay? I wanted to tell you that I’m safe.”

  Jackson felt the pressure increasing in his head, the vice squeezing an inch tighter.

  “Honey?” Daniel asked.

  Jackson collapsed to the floor, Nicki releasing him and the pain flooding away like water rushing from a broken dam.

  “Is he okay?” someone shouted from across the room.

  Jackson closed his eyes, not caring what anyone else said. Adrenaline rolled through his body, sending tingles down his arms and legs. He let the darkness wash over him, understanding that he may not have met God, but without a doubt, someone in contact with such a being.

  Nicki only partially released Jackson Carriage. She’d felt this type of thing before, yet she still grew bewildered at it. Complete power. She had felt it when the gray spread out inside the motel room, and then again inside the house in the sky. Now, inside Jackson Carriage’s mind, Nicki was a god.

  Her body still remained motionless, though her brow was slightly concentrated. The two women next to her saw it, but only because they had been staring for such a long time. Had someone came upon her, they most likely wouldn’t have noticed.

  Her consciousness was not at full attention yet, even with her father speaking to her.

  Nicki hardly knew it, but she was controlling someone else’s entire mind with only a fraction of her own.

  She was picking through Jackson Carriage, trying to understand if what her father said was true. She had released the man, though only barely. The urge to kill him … she’d never felt anything like it before. It had tasted sweet, like a rare chocolate. Had her father not looked in the man’s eyes, she would have done it.

  Even now, having released him, the sweetness beckoned her. Taste me. Pick me up. Eat me.

  She didn’t dip her mouth to it yet, her concern for her father stronger. This man had tried to kill her and she didn’t understand why her father would be around him.

  Quickly she went through Jackson Carriage’s memories, nothing inside the man able to create any kind of barrier against her. She had an image of someone picking through notecards, reading one and then passing onto the next—yet that was far too slow. The details were instantaneous; the only thing slowing her down was her desire to make sure she missed nothing.

  He’s lying, she thought, though not completely.

  The thought only held the weight of a leaf falling lazily from a tree limb.

  They’re coming for Dad, she thought. Those people down below.

  Laurel’s words came again, unbidden and more forceful. Because whatever is happening on Earth, whatever is happening with the Black, none of it really matters in the end. Even the Black is going to wind up facing the creature that put me and you here.

  They were heavier than her own thoughts, not something she could easily slap away.

  Her consciousness took another step forward, closer to the surface.

  What’s happening? she wondered as Jackson Carriage’s mind grew in importance. What’s happening there?

  Jackson didn’t know completely. He only had snippets of the overall picture.

  Taste me. Pick me up. Eat me. More words that weren’t hers, reminding Nicki of the sweetness death could give.

  No, not yet.

  There would be time for it if she wanted. Fully conscious, Nicki didn’t understand the power she held—though consciously, she ran from it. But in this semi-comatose state, it felt natural. She could do as she wanted and no one could stop her. Even these words that fluttered in and out of her mind—hers or not, they were empty. Powerless.

  Can you hear me?

  Inside the transport, Nicki’s eyes narrowed.

  Inside her mind, her consciousness took one more step forward, though a small one.

  It was the voice from before, the one with all that rage and fury behind it that Nicki had been frightened of. Now, though, she recognized the voice held no power. Perhaps it had, once before, but whatever it’d been capable of no longer mattered. Nicki was all powerful. Here, in this place, she could banish that voice.

  You can hear me, it said. You have to wake up.

  No, Nicki didn’t. Nicki didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to, and waking—or whatever term should be used—was definitely not on that list.

  The end is almost here, the voice said. Your father. The rest of the people with him. Even the people attacking him, they’re all doing this at Its direction. The Unformed’s. You have to wake up, because there is no one else that can stop It. There is no one left.

  Her consciousness took a third step.

  No, she thought. I don’t want to.

  LOOK! The voice shouted, and Nicki did.

  Daniel had been staring down at Jackson Carriage, lying on the ground, his body limp.

  Moments passed, Daniel having time to register that the man was still breathing. Still alive, so if Nicki was inside of him, she hadn’t killed him.

  And in the next instant, the psychopath’s eyes shot open, red veins running across the whites; his pale, sallow skin seeming to stretch as his eyes bulged from their sockets. His mouth opened wide, a black hole that looked limitless.

  His head slowly turned and his unblinking eyes stared up at the windows.

  “Nicki?” Daniel whispered, though the Pope was nearly to him. Others were coming too, and any wish that Daniel had of keeping Nicki’s name out of their heads was fading.

  He watched as the skeleton like figure stared at the windows, watching the horror unfold as everyone else had for hours.

  Do you see? the voice asked, and Nicki did.

  She looked at massive windows that stretched from floor to ceiling, each displaying murder and chaos. She looked through eyes not her own, but watched people killing one another. People with static strands hanging from their hands.

  Nicki had a vague sense that people were crowding around the body she now inhabited, but she didn’t care.

  That is the end. That depravity is slowly making its way to your father, and soon, it’ll be there. Unless you wake up.

  Nicki watched, not wanting to wake up, but horror draping over her consciousness the same as the strands had draped those killers’ hands.

  He’s going to die, she thought. A simple statement, because those people would make it to her father. Clearly they were insane, but that static on some of their hands meant only one thing. The Black.

  The Black was near her father.

  Yes, the voice said. Yes.

  Nicki hardly heard it, focusing only on that singular fact: her father was going to die.

  Nicki’s consciousness finally came fully forward, her eyes taking in the transport around her. Somewhere she didn’t recognize, but also didn’t care about. She looked at the woman next to her—the weapon’s sister. Rebecca Hollowborne.

  “We have to save him,” she said.

  Nicki didn’t know it, but gray static filled her eyes.

  Seventy-Five

  The panel on the front window showed: ETA - 1 hr.

  “David, are you okay?” Rhett asked, standing up in the back of the transport. Rhett had been watching him for the past half-hour, at first trying not to be noticed. As the minutes passed, though, he unconsciously quit caring.

  David’s eyes were low, though not quite closed. Sweat sat in large droplets across his forehead, and his skin had grown pale.

  Rhett stepped closer, any thought about the red marks circling his neck completely forgotten.

  “David?”

  He felt Christine step up next to him, but David’s eyes didn’t open. He didn’t move at all.

  The other two in the transport didn’t move; no one said a word.

  Rhett walked closer to the front, and still David showed no sign whatsoever of hearing him. Rhett went all the way to the front seat, standing just behind it, but where he could look upon David fully.
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  “Something’s wrong,” Rhett whispered.

  David’s eyes were rolled into the back of his head, his eyelids twitching rapidly up and down. A large bead of sweat dripped down his forehead, over his temple, and then down his cheek.

  Rhett reached forward slowly, and pulled an eyelid up. He could just see the bottom of David’s iris.

  It was lit gray.

  “I don’t know what’s happening,” he said, not needing to turn around. Christine had leaned over his back, her chest pressing against him, and was staring at the same thing. “I’ve never … Nothing like this.”

  He heard her swallow in the silence that followed.

  “David?” Christine asked.

  No answer.

  Rhett released his eye lid and the Prophet only sat there sweating.

  “What do we do?” she asked, standing up.

  Rhett looked at the panel.

  ETA - 57 min.

  He looked back to David. “We keep going. There’s nothing else we can do.”

  David had done his best to hide everything from his followers. In the end, though, he hadn’t been strong enough. The girl was too powerful, and David now knew why the Unformed had wanted her dead. He should have never sent Rhett after her; he should have gone himself, sacrificing the entire compound if necessary.

  Errors upon errors, and David only saw them now.

  He’d known the moment the girl returned, and then again when she started using the gray.

  It wasn’t only her, though—the strains on him were growing great from all directions. The Globe was becoming almost unmanageable, yet still David allowed them to feed off his energy.

  They’re close, he told himself. And if nothing else, they’re keeping the Ministers at bay. Keeping them focused on their own lives instead of what is happening outside.

  He could handle one or the other—the Globe or the woman—but both were proving too much. David had felt when she’d accessed the gray, and that’s when he decided to go to her again. He needed to understand what was happening, whether she planned on challenging him or not.

  So, still letting his power flow to a portion of his followers, he closed his eyes and accessed his own gray static. He went to Nicki Sesam.

  She knew he was there, of course. David could no more hide from her than she him, but he didn’t care. He didn’t have a choice.

  He didn’t need to stay long, though—he only needed one look to understand everything.

  Had he been in charge of his physical capacities, and not leaning back in his seat with sweat dripping from his face, he would have shook his head.

  In exasperation at himself.

  David hovered outside Sesam’s transport, but he saw inside clearly. Three women, all of whom should be dead, were plotting his death. Rebecca sat next to the girl, talking. David could hear her voice, could hear everything happening inside.

  “He’s here,” Sesam said.

  “David?”

  She nodded and then turned her head toward him. Her eyes were alight, static filled orbs and David finally understood what other people saw when they looked at him. She looked like a terror, an angel of death that could sweep through the world.

  “Right there,” she said, looking through the window at him. The transport was flying at speeds far too fast for him to keep up with, or to hear her, but he did both all the same. “He’s right outside the window.”

  Rebecca turned then, her own face filled with fear.

  You did this, David thought. You let her end up here because you didn’t have the heart to do what was necessary.

  “Can he hear us?” Rebecca asked.

  Sesam only nodded.

  Rebecca didn’t look away, though David knew she couldn’t see him. She didn’t say they should quit talking, because Rebecca wasn’t stupid. It didn’t matter what they said now, David knew the truth. Rebecca wasn’t quitting, even though he’d let her live. She was coming for him, to stop him and everything they had spent their lives building.

  Rage grew in David, a rage he had perhaps never known. Inside the transport, his eyelids half-shut, sparks still sprung from them. Gray static jumping out like grease on a hot skillet.

  Come then, he thought. Come and die, Rebecca, and bring your two friends with you. You can all die together if you won’t wait for the Unformed to come.

  If there were other forces at work, things not thought of or outright denied, David did not care in the slightest. He would kill them all. Anything coming for him would feel his wrath, because this time, the Prophet would not be denied.

  It’s not only me you three are concerned about, is it? he thought. No, there’s another, and you can’t hide him from me.

  David saw him clearly, knowing what most scared the girl. Not David, floating outside her transport, nor what Rebecca was telling her.

  The girl was scared for her father’s life, because David was about to snatch it from him.

  David didn’t need to say anything for Sesam to understand what he was thinking. She knew the same as he did. If it was him they wanted, fine. He would kill them soon, but before that happened, he would have the single person this girl loved.

  David left the three women, and he went to his mad followers in the Globe.

  They were draining him, but perhaps they only needed a bit more juice.

  The Pope stood over the fallen man, Jackson Carriage, thinking that he was possessed. The Pope knew of the ancient customs regarding exorcisms, as well as how such beliefs had gone out of fashion long, long ago. But as he looked at Jackson, it was the only idea his mind provided.

  He’s possessed. The Devil himself is inside of him.

  The man’s head had turned and was looking up at the glass displays, his face appearing like the skin across it might stretch so far it would simply rip off the skull beneath.

  “What’s happening to him?” Trinant asked from his left.

  Yule looked to Daniel, but the man only stared down and said nothing.

  He won’t say anything, Yule thought. Not to anyone in this room, not as long as it has something to do with his daughter. And this does. This is directly related to Nicki Sesam.

  “Daniel,” he said. “Daniel, what’s going on?”

  “I don’t know,” he whispered, though not sparing a glance for the Pope.

  Benten knelt down next to Jackson. He didn’t put hands on him, though—Yule noticed that. He only got closer to the fallen man.

  “Daniel,” Yule said harder. “What’s happening? We need to know.”

  Finally, Daniel looked over to him. “I don’t know.”

  Jackson’s eyes were still looking up at the glass, bulging from their sockets, and his mouth was slowly opening … almost creaking.

  Yule knelt down beside Benton, though he did touch Jackson. He was careful, but he put his hands on either side of the man’s face. He didn’t turn him, but wanted to see if his touch would switch his attention. It didn’t. He gave no notice at all that anyone was near him.

  “Jackson,” Yule said. “Can you hear me?”

  The man’s mouth opened wider, his jaw almost completely unhinged at this point. He looked like some serpent trying to eat a huge beast in one swallow.

  “Jackson,” the Pope said louder.

  Seconds passed with no one saying anything, all staring at this strange looking man incapable of reacting to them.

  Finally, he blinked, and when Jackson Carriage’s eyes opened, whatever had possessed him was gone. No argument on Earth or Heaven could have changed Yule’s mind on that. Something had been there. Jackson blinked, and it was no more.

  Jackson’s mouth slowly closed and his face turned so that he stared up at the Pope. Yule’s hands still held his face. Jackson was breathing heavily in large, steady breaths.

  “What happened?” Yule asked.

  “She saw it,” Jackson said. “She saw what’s happening here.”

  “Who?” Trinant asked from above Yule.

  Carriage didn
’t break eye contact with the Pope. “Her. God, or the closest thing to Him.”

  Yule released the man and stood up, turning from the blasphemy but unable to shake it from his ears.

  God, or the closest thing to Him.

  His back to the group, Yule understood nothing of what was happening. He was lost in this sea of confusion, without either stars to guide him or a boat to keep him above the churning water.

  “Your Grace,” the general called from the other side of the room. Yule didn’t turn to look at her, though the emotion in her voice nearly made him. “Something is changing.”

  Yule listened as Trinant’s steps echoed across the room, heading to her general.

  God, this is in your hands. Not mine, nor any man’s, he prayed. What can we do in the face of all this? What can I possibly do except for put my faith in you?

  Yule turned, his eyes blank.

  God, or the closest thing to Him.

  What had they created? And more, what was she doing? Possessing God’s creations, bending them to her will when she was nowhere to be seen.

  Daniel was looking at him, Jackson still lying on the ground, his eyes closed now. His chest still moving up and down in deep breaths.

  Yule turned to Trinant, Benten having already joined her. The two were staring at the screen on Trinant’s desk.

  “What is it?” Yule called.

  Trinant looked up, and then to the large windows.

  Yule followed her gaze.

  The insane soldiers still filled the glass screens, though they had changed. Yule didn’t know when, let alone how. The last time he looked at them, most had carried gray strands on their hands, with many having nothing at all.

  Yule’s mouth opened as he saw the change.

  The strands had crept up their arms, were writhing up their shoulders. The static seemed to be climbing up and down their bodies, attaching itself to more and more of them. Those things alone were terrifying, but that wasn’t what turned Yule’s heart to ice.