Sinner

by Ted Dekker

  “I must follow that light,” he said softly.

  “You should join us, Johnny.”

  Why did she keep coming back to that? Because she liked Johnny, deep down where she had no business liking him. He was so wrong, so misguided, and so deceived, but she found his conviction nearly irresistible.

  “Would you like to kiss me, Johnny?”

  He didn’t respond, so she turned back to Billy, smiling. “Does he want to kiss me, Billy?”

  She realized in a flash that this tack was entirely inappropriate. Billy frowned bitterly and his eyes were dark with anger. But before she could backpedal, his frown morphed into a wide scream of raw terror.

  It was as if a bucket of black fear had been thrown in his face, so sudden was the change. He stumbled back a step, threw his hands to his face, and shredded the air with a scream that made her hair stand on end.

  She spun back to Johnny. His eyes were fixed over her shoulders on Billy. Black eyes, as black as polished coal.

  She’d asked him not to use his eyes on her, but she’d said nothing about Billy, and now Billy was seeing whatever Johnny showed him.

  “Stop it!” she cried. But he stared on, unaffected.

  She slapped his face. “Stop it, I said!”

  He blinked and looked at her, now with white eyes.

  “It’s just the truth, Darcy,” he said, swallowing hard. “Please let me show you the truth. For their sakes, for the sake of those in Paradise. For all of our sakes!”

  “Oh, God!” Billy wailed behind her. “Oh, my God, my God . . .” He sounded like a father who was helplessly watching his children being brutalized. Weeping uncontrollably.

  “God, God, God!”

  She whirled back and watched Billy fall to his knees, gripping his hair with both hands, eyes clenched.

  “What did you do to him?”

  “The truth . . .”

  Darcy spun back. “If that’s the truth, the world doesn’t need it! Let him go!”

  “I don’t—”

  She slapped him again. “Let him go, now!”

  “I don’t have him!” Johnny yelled. His eyes flashed blue.

  “Oh, my God, my God,” Billy sobbed. “What . . . what was . . .”

  “Me, Billy.” The voice came low, guttural like a rolling boulder from the direction of the cabin behind Johnny, flattening all other sound in the canyon.

  Darcy’s heart crashed into her throat at the sound of his voice. A voice she couldn’t possibly forget. The one that had haunted her nightmares for thirteen years and made her weep on the therapist’s couch so many times.

  Black.

  Johnny jerked around, and she saw Marsuvees Black over his shoulder even as he turned.

  Black stood in the cabin’s opened doorway, dressed in a black trench coat, black polyester pants, black Stetson hat. Silver-tipped black boots.

  He stood there, leaning on the doorjamb with one ankle crossed over the other, chewing on a small twig. The left corner of his mouth suggested a grin, and his sparkling eyes confirmed it.

  “You do remember me, don’t you? Billy?”

  He looked at Johnny and the grin faded.

  “Keep your tricks, John-John. I’ve been staring at myself for thirteen years and I’m getting to like what I see. Granted, some of the older mes didn’t cut the mustard, so to speak, but I do think I’ve hit upon the right ingredients this time. Don’t you?”

  “Tell him to tell you who he really is, Darcy,” Johnny said. “At least give me that much.”

  “I know who he is.”

  “Pray, do tell,” Black said, and stepped from the cabin, strutting toward them. “Who am I, Darcy?”

  “You’re something written from the books, words that have taken flesh.”

  “More, baby, more. Don’t shortchange me now after all we’ve been through.”

  She said what was on the top of her mind. “You’re an incarnation of evil.” Then louder: “The demon in the dark, the ghost who whispers in the night. The bogeyman, if you want. One iteration of the figment of all our imaginations.”

  He stopped at that, as if disappointed, then walked on. “You reduce me to something that goes bump in the night? I expected more from you, Darcy. I’m not that plastic, not by a long shot.”

  “I want you to stop where you are,” she said. But he continued as if he hadn’t heard her, impervious to her voice. She began to fear him in earnest.

  “Raw evil,” he said. “Like a raw steak, just meat and blood. The devil incarnate. But there’s more, baby, so much more. You’ve gone and saved the juiciest detail for last, you naughty little girl.”

  Darcy was struck by the undeniable fact that Black’s very presence validated at least part of what Johnny had claimed.

  “Tell me who I am!” Black snarled, lips twisted and wet. Darcy wanted to run. Her hands went cold and her breathing stopped.

  Only then did she realize that he was staring past her at Billy. He was demanding that Billy confess the full truth.

  “Tell me, you worthless brat. Tell me!”

  “You’re me!” Billy cried.He was on his knees and his arms were spread and his face was twisted in anguish. “I made you!”

  Black strode past her and Johnny as if they didn’t exist.His focus bore into Billy, who cowered on the ground, shaking.

  “Almost. Let’s be precise here. You are me, Billy. Say it.”

  “I am you!” Billy cried. “I am you!”

  “You need me, Billy. Tell them.”

  He shook, robbed of breath.

  “Leave him!” Johnny yelled. “You have no right to him.”

  Black halted midstride, slowly turned around, black eyes like holes in his face, head tilted to one side. “Au contraire. I own him.”

  He turned, grabbed Billy by the collar, and jerked him to his feet. But instead of verbally abusing him as Darcy expected, he wiped the tears from Billy’s face, then pulled him close and hugged him.

  “It’s okay, Billy. You’re okay now. I’m here.”

  Billy hung on Black’s shoulder, limp like a rag doll and sobbing.

  Darcy felt numb. She couldn’t fathom the desperation that had brought Billy to this point, and seeing him reduced to such a pitiful state made her want to cry. She had to help him. But they’d come here to talk sense into Johnny, not face Billy’s demons.

  What if this was all just a trick played by Johnny’s eyes to make a point?

  As if he’d taken on Billy’s gift and heard her thoughts, Johnny leapt to his right, snapped up the fallen gun, and spun to Black.

  “Let him go.”

  Black whispered something into Billy’s ear, and he immediately began to calm. The man appeared not to have heard Johnny’s threat.

  “Back away from him!”

  But Black pulled back, gripped Billy’s head in both of his hands, and then kissed him full on the lips.

  Johnny cried in outrage and pulled the trigger. The gun bucked in his palm with a thunderclap. Black jerked once. Released Billy and turned slowly.

  For a moment Darcy thought that Johnny just might have hit him.

  Black’s face twitched like a horse’s hide, twitching at a fly. Billy stood with his head hung low, completely quieted.

  Marsuvees Black strode back toward the cabin, black eyes fixed on Johnny. And as he passed them he spit something out of his mouth.

  A copper-jacketed bullet plopped on the sand.

  “Welcome to the real world,” he said.

  * * *

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  * * *

  Day Twenty-One

  “NO, MA’AM, there’s not a bit of bend in him,” Billy said. “Do I need to explain to you how I know that?”

  In the National Guard command center, Darcy watched Billy talk on the phone with the attorney general while eyeing a string of monitor panels he’d ordered set up for his personal surveillance. His eyes flick-ered from aerial surveillance to thermal images from one of the observation posts and bac
k again. His transformation from wounded soul to enraged tyrant had become complete over the twenty-four hours since their encounter with Marsuvees Black, Darcy thought. And it frightened her.

  But this is what they’d signed up for, and she wasn’t about to backpedal now.

  Brian Kinnard leaned over a backlit table on which the incursion plans had been drawn up, speaking quietly with the captain, who was dressed in camouflaged BDUs. The Ranger battalion’s CO listened in but let them run with the conversation unless directly addressed.

  Billy walked to the corner, and Darcy hung close. He’d taken the lead and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Slightly resentful, but she couldn’t very well reprimand him for doing exactly what she’d begged him to do when they were back in Washington. He was forcing Johnny’s hand, and he was doing it with surprising command.

  His face reddened momentarily, and then he spoke into the phone with black-ice calm. “Then Congress will just have to get used to the fact that laws are worthless unless they are enforced,” he said. “Are you saying that you disagree with the use of force?”

  He nodded at whatever she said.

  “Exactly.My point.And as I’ve said, I’ve been inside his mind and I can tell you that this is going to get bloody. He has no intention of walking out of there with his hands up. The whole valley is drunk on his Kool-Aid. They’ll die for their cause and they’ll take down the first responders with much more than the pop guns they dumped outside the town for everyone to see.”

  Another pause.

  “Don’t worry about the Net. I know the movement is significant, but the backlash has already started. Over half the country thinks of Johnny and his cult as a band of lunatics. Darcy assures me that the sentiment will grow. If anything, this new hatred toward Johnny demands we take action before people start acting on their hate.”

  Billy faced Darcy and studied her with his green eyes. Glasses were a thing of the past for him: he wanted to know the thoughts of everyone in the command center at any given time. Only Kinnard and Darcy guarded themselves from his probing eyes, Kinnard because he insisted, Darcy because she didn’t want to unfairly influence Billy, though she wasn’t sure he cared any more. Maybe he thought he could resist her charm as Black had.

  “That’s fine, Lyndsay. But I’m asking you to expand our authority to the use of reasonable force. We gave them twenty-four hours from sun-set, but we might as well have been speaking to the dirt. The Net feeds have the whole world glued to that valley, and they saw me issue the ultimatum. If we don’t execute justice—”

  Billy listened for a moment.“Hold on.”He handed the phone to Darcy. “Talk sense to her, please.”

  She took the black cell and lifted it to her ear. “Hello,Miss Nadeau.”

  “Darcy,” the attorney general acknowledged her politely.

  “Why the hesitation?”

  “No, dear, no hesitation. But I can’t just turn over our police and military forces to two civilians, I’m sure you understand. I’m just establishing some ground rules.”

  “I think you’re missing the point. It’s time to make the president good on his word to deal swiftly with extreme prejudice. To do that, we must have certain authorities, surely you understand.”

  “Of course. Yes, but I want any decision you or Billy consider to pass through me. I, in turn, will need to get the president’s—”

  Darcy snapped at that. “How dare you throw the president in my face? He’s indebted to me. We know his dirty little secrets, and don’t think that we haven’t put them in a very safe place. Are you already forgetting your promise to let Billy and me do what is necessary to effect this change?”

  Her own anger surprised her, but the thought of smug Lyndsay Nadeau sitting in Washington, second-guessing them now, made Darcy want to fly back and forcibly remind the woman of her power.

  “You’re not suggesting that this is the favor I promised,” the attorney general said. “You’re asking for the head of Johnny Drake?”

  Darcy had all but forgotten their agreement to be granted whatever they asked in exchange for their help. That had been a last-minute negotiation, thrown into the pot for good measure.

  “No,” she said.“Don’t be stupid. I’m demanding that you give Billy the authority he’s asking for. Tell Kinnard to pass the order. Neither of us has any intention of abusing that power; please, you know it’s only a fraction of the power we already have. Or would you rather I rip Kinnard’s glasses from his face and tell him myself?”

  That brought silence.

  “I’m not threatening you,” Darcy said. “I’m just telling you that Billy and I are two people you have no choice but to trust.”

  Or kill, she didn’t say. An unnerving thought. A very real thought.

  Black’s statement to Johnny spun through her mind.Welcome to the real world, he’d said. Meaning what? No amount of thinking brought clarity.

  “Put Kinnard on,” the attorney general said.

  Darcy crossed the room. “Thank you, Lyndsay. We’ll keep you up-to-date. I can promise you no force will be used except in the most extreme case.”

  “If you do use force, remember,Mr. Drake first,” she said.“He’s already used force to resist arrest by blowing up the road and refusing to turn himself in. There would be some fallout, but frankly I wouldn’t mind. Someone has to take the fall for this.”

  “So you do agree, then.”

  “I never said I disagreed. The world has to accept the full enforcement of the law at some point. It might as well be now, before half the country gets swept up in this movement.”

  Hearing it like that, Darcy realized that the exchange wasn’t just about Billy jockeying for position. Paradise was much closer to an escalation involving violence than any of them realized.

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t get to that,” she said, and handed the phone to Kinnard. “The attorney general.”

  Is that what she wanted? Johnny killed? Or worse?

  Darcy returned to where Billy stood by the window, looking out over the tarmac, where six or seven helicopters waited in the dusk. The dead-line was less than an hour away—they would go in under the cover of darkness.

  “You okay?”

  Billy’s jaw muscles bunched. “Sure.”

  He’d refused to talk about his encounter with Black. The attack was nothing short of a rape, and Darcy had decided to give him space to deal with it on his own before interfering in any way. But she couldn’t ignore the incident any longer, regardless of what wounds it would open.

  “Walk with me.”

  She led him from the command center out onto the tarmac. A few army personnel carriers that had been used to transport guard forces to the perimeter around Paradise, roughly fifty miles south, now sat behind a barbed-wire fence, silent. Dozens more like them were parked along the two roads leading into the valley. Between the small operations base here and the staging area above the valley, the National Guard had the capacity to put a thousand soldiers on the streets of Paradise within thirty minutes of the order.

  The plan was to arrest Johnny and the town council peaceably unless they resisted. The three thousand who’d entered Paradise would be released with a stern warning, only if they went peacefully.

  But no one expected either Johnny or the three thousand to leave peacefully.

  Darcy walked along the fence. “She’s instructing them to give us the authority to use force. But we won’t, Billy. Not yet.”

  “No, not yet.”

  “You’re sure Johnny will resist? It doesn’t seem like him.”

  “And if I’m not mistaken, you seem a little distracted by him.”

  His accusation surprised her. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m just saying that he’s had his chances to fight and hasn’t, even though we know he has the skill.”

  “But he is resisting. He’s defied us both!”

  She couldn’t deny that. And why did she even want to?

  “Yes, he has. And Lyndsay Nadeau says we hav
e full rights to use force if he doesn’t comply in the next hour.” She took a deep breath and let it seep out through her nostrils. “But you and I both know there’s more to this story than what the rest of the world sees.”

  He didn’t agree or disagree.

  “So what really happened yesterday, Billy?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I mean with Black.”

  “Ask Johnny.”

  “Why?”

  Billy shrugged. “It was all his doing.”

  “You mean his eyes.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So we didn’t really see Black walk out of that cabin? It was just a figment of our imaginations?”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  She’d pondered the possibility all through the night.

  “I’m not sure it adds up.”

  He stopped and turned, eyes fiery. “And your voice does add up? My hearing? What about any of this adds up, Darcy? The way we got these powers? The monastery? The fact that over half of this planet’s population believes in some supernatural God or force that can bend spoons and open a blind man’s eyes and make another man blind with light? Does any of that add up?”

  “No. But the man we saw yesterday came from our own pens, Billy! We saw him ruin Paradise once. He’s haunted us ever since that day, and now he’s returned to destroy us!”

  “You mean Johnny,” Billy said. “Black’s come to destroy Johnny.”

  She blinked. “So you acknowledge that he’s real and he’s really here.”

  He shrugged again.“You checked the cabin with Johnny after he walked back in. You tell me where he disappeared to.”

  “Judging by the way you’re acting, I might guess he crawled up inside of you.”

  Billy’s face paled. She might as well have gut-punched him.

  “I didn’t mean that. That was unfair. But you have to tell me what happened, Billy. He . . . he kissed you, for heaven’s sake!”

  “Stop it!” he yelled. Tears sprang to his eyes.

  His silence on the matter had been out of shame, and her speaking of it was like salt to the wound. But she had to know what Black’s role was here.

  “I’m sorry. But if Black’s real and really here, in the flesh, then shouldn’t we take that into account?”