The First Prophet (2 page)
Her soft laugh was hardly a sound. “If I don’t at least try, it’ll be under
their
control. They’re here, Brodie. They’re all around us. I can feel them.”
Brodie didn’t let her see the chill he felt crawling up and down his spine. “I can
hold them off until our people get here. The sun’ll be up in less than an hour, and
the bastards aren’t invisible. Until then, even if they could they wouldn’t bust in
with guns blazing, not with you here.”
She was shaking her head, and her voice shook as well. “No, they want me badly.
He
wants me badly. They might take the risk of wounding me. I think they might. And
they’d kill you for sure, you know that.”
“Listen to me.” He held his voice steady, held both her hands tightly, and tried his
best to hold her gaze despite the way it darted around in building panic. “The windows
are shuttered and, like the door, are made of steel-sheathed solid oak with iron hinges
and locks. The walls are two feet thick. There’s no chimney. This cabin is a fortress.
They’d have to take it apart to get to us. That’s one of the reasons I picked it.”
She wasn’t listening, wasn’t hearing. “I have to…try. I have to stop them. What they’ll
do…You don’t understand, Brodie, what they’ll do to me. You can’t understand.”
“Jill, don’t. Don’t let them panic you into doing something that could destroy you.”
She snatched her hands from his grasp and backed away from him. “I’m afraid of them,
don’t you know that?
Terrified.
I know what they’ll do if they get me.
I know.
My dreams have shown me. Over and over again. They’ll hurt me. They’ll hurt me in
ways you couldn’t imagine in your worst nightmares.”
“I won’t let them hurt you—”
“You can’t stop them. But I can. I know I can.”
Brodie saw her eyes begin to darken and lose focus, saw her entire body tense as she
called on all the energies she had left in a desperate attempt to form some kind of
weapon that her panic demanded she try to use to save herself.
And even with only five senses to call his own, Brodie had a terrible premonition.
“No! Jill, don’t—”
Duran’s headset crackled softly in his ear, and he pulled it off and stared at it.
He was granted only that warning, and only scant seconds to understand what it portended.
For him, it was enough.
Without putting the headset back on, he snapped into the microphone, “Remove the headsets.
Now.
” And dropped his to the ground.
Before it had quite touched the pine needles underfoot, the elegant little electronic
device emitted an earsplitting shriek and burst into flames.
Duran looked toward the cabin and his men and saw
immediately that two of them had not been quick enough in obeying orders. One lay
about thirty feet from the cabin, stretched out on his back as though napping. But
from the neck up was little more than a lump of blackened, smoldering flesh.
The other who had hesitated just that instant too long was Duran’s lieutenant. He
had, clearly, managed to get the headset off quickly enough to prevent the worst from
happening, since it burned a foot or so away from him, but not soon enough to save
himself completely. He didn’t make a sound but held his head with both hands and rolled
around on the ground in a way that told Duran that at the very least his eardrums
had certainly been destroyed.
The others were rushing to their fallen comrades. Duran didn’t move. Instead, he stared
at the cabin that was now more visible in the breaking dawn, and very quietly, he
murmured, “You shouldn’t have done that, Jill.”
Her body was limp when Brodie picked her up and placed her gently on the couch. She
was breathing. Her eyes were open. When he checked, her pulse was steady.
But Jill Harrison was gone.
And she was never coming back.
Brodie had been warned this could happen, but he’d never seen it. And hadn’t believed
it possible. Until he knelt there beside the couch in that quiet, quiet cabin and
looked into eyes so empty it was like looking into the glassy black eyes of a doll.
Still kneeling at her side, he took out his handkerchief and carefully wiped away
the trickles of blood from her nose and ears. He folded her hands in a peaceful pose
over her stomach. Absently, he brushed a strand of her hair back from the wide, unlined
brow. He closed her eyes.
Jill Harrison. Not dead, but gone.
She had been twenty-two.
After a long, long time, Brodie got to his feet. He felt stiff, and so tired it was
beyond exhaustion. He felt old.
“God damn them,” he said quietly.
Duran was the last to leave, remaining there until his dead and wounded men had been
taken away by the others. He was about to get into his car when he heard the cabin
door open.
Brodie stood in the doorway.
Across the sixty or so feet separating them, through the morning chill, they stared
at each other in silence.
Though he knew the other man couldn’t hear him, Duran said softly, “This time, we
both lost.”
Then he got into his car and drove away, leaving behind him a young woman damaged
beyond repair and a man who was his mortal enemy.
ONE
It had once been an excellent example of an updated Victorian, but now it was only
a smoking ruin swarming with fire department personnel. As Tucker Mackenzie got out
of his car, he heard the hissing and crackling of embers as they were soaked by the
fire hoses, and the pounding of axes as smoldering wood was broken up, and he heard
the brisk voices of the men working to make certain the fire would not flare up again.
He also heard the whispers of the neighbors who were standing around in clumps, watching
her while pretending their attention was focused on what was left of the house.
She stood alone. She looked alone. Her pretty dress was a bit too thin for the hint
of cold that was creeping into late September, and she stood almost hugging herself,
arms crossed beneath her breasts, hands rubbing up and down above her elbows as though
to warm chilled flesh. Her dark, reddish hair was blowing in the fitful breeze that
also snatched at the long skirt of her dress, and she appeared to notice that no more
than she noticed she was standing in a muddy puddle left by the fire hoses.
Tucker hesitated, then walked over to her side. Before he could speak, she did.
“Are you the one who’s been watching me?” she asked in a curiously remote voice.
“What?” He had no idea what she meant.
“Never mind,” she said, as if it didn’t really matter. She turned her head to look
at him, scanning him upward from his black western boots to his windblown blond hair.
Her pale brown eyes rested on his face, wide and startled. More than startled. She
looked briefly shocked, even afraid, Tucker thought. But it was a fleeting expression,
vanishing completely and leaving behind nothing except her earlier numb detachment.
She returned her gaze to what had been her home.
“Someone’s been watching you?” When she didn’t reply or react in any way, he said,
“I’m sorry about your home, Miss Gallagher. What started the fire?”
She glanced at the fire marshal, who was standing some distance away scowling at the
ruin. “He thinks it’s arson,” she said.
“Is that what he told you?”
“No. He didn’t have to tell me.” She sent Tucker another brief look, this one mildly
curious. “Haven’t you heard about the local witch? That’s me.”
“I had heard that you were reputed to have psychic abilities,” he confessed. “I wanted
to talk to you—”
“Let me guess.” Her voice went flat, something ground beneath a ruthless heel. “Someone
you love has died, recently or a long time ago, and you want to communicate with them.
Or you’ve lost something you need to find. You’re suffering unrequited love and want
a magic potion to solve that problem. You or someone you know has a horrible disease
and you’re searching for a cure. Your life has gone off track, and you don’t know
how to right it. Or you want to make a million bucks and need me to pick your lottery
numbers…”
When her voice trailed into silence, Tucker said evenly, “No, it’s nothing like that.”
“You’re searching for something. They’re always searching for something.”
“They?”
Her shoulders lifted and fell in a tired shrug. “The ones who come and knock on my
door. The ones who call and write and stop me on the streets.” Again, she turned her
head to look at him, but this time it was a direct stare. “There are only two kinds
of people, you know. Those who run toward a psychic, hands outstretched and pleading—and
those who run away as fast as they can, frightened.”
“I’m neither,” he told her. “I’m just a man who wants to talk to you.”
The breeze picked up, blowing a curtain of reddish hair across her cheek and veiling
her mouth briefly. “Who are you?” she asked, again mildly curious.
“My name’s Tucker Mackenzie. I’m a writer.”
Her gaze was unblinking. “I’ve heard of you. What are you doing here?”
“As I said, I wanted to talk to you. I’ve been trying to call you for more than a
week but couldn’t get an answer. So I decided to take a chance and just come over
here. Obviously, I—didn’t know about the fire.”
“You’re a novelist. Is it research you’re after?”
“Not…specifically.”
“Then what? Specifically.”
Tucker hadn’t come prepared to deal with this. He had discovered very early in his
career that people liked to talk about themselves, particularly to a novelist. Under
the nebulous heading of “research” he had asked and listened to the eager answers
to an astonishing variety of questions both professional and personal. It was obvious,
however, that this taut woman would not accept vague explanations for his curiosity
and his questions.