Struck

  “This good woman already knows everything she needs to know about me,” he said when he broke the kiss. “But, very well.” Prophet took Mom’s hand and held it as he turned to me once again. “God saw fit to gift me threefold, Mia. The first time I was struck, He took my sight, but He gave me the ability to hear His holy word. The second time I was struck, He put the power in my hands to spread His word among the lost and the unrighteous and have it be believed. The third time I was struck, He gifted me again, with the power to link my Light with that of my Apostles, one to another. To connect us, so there is nothing we cannot accomplish. So that we can combine our unique powers to create God’s storm.” His clouded eyes drew me in. “And I’ve passed that gift on to you, Mia. I’ve awakened you and opened you to us. Now you can share your power with all of us.”

  Prophet squeezed Mom’s hand, and she breathed in and sighed out contentedly. “Now God has granted me a fourth gift in you, Sarah Price.”

  I looked at Jeremy, or Jeremiah, or whatever he wanted to call himself. I wondered what he wanted me to take from Prophet’s words. I wondered if he could sense Old Mia’s quiet rage, deep below the surface.

  After breakfast, I excused myself and returned to my room. I went out onto the balcony to think, even though thinking was … uncomfortable. There were so many things I shouldn’t think, and every time one of those forbidden thoughts tried to find its way into my mind I felt wrong, like I was betraying Prophet. But they kept trying to get in: thoughts of Mom and Prophet and how he had kissed her. Of Parker as my enemy. Of Jeremy, and how naked he looked with his hair tucked behind his ears and without his glasses, without his disguise. I wanted the other Jeremy back. But that was bad! Jeremiah, the one in white without his Clark Kent glasses, was a traitor to Prophet and his cause. The other Jeremy was a mysterious boy who could have made things so much easier by killing me, but couldn’t go through with it. A boy who watched over me, who tried to protect me from a future I didn’t want, whose touch awakened things in me that were bad, bad, bad.

  I leaned against the balcony railing and let my head fall into my hands. The air gusting off the ocean made my skin tingle with warning, even though I knew now that there was no storm waiting behind the horizon. The storm inside me wanted out. I had a purpose, and it was nearly time to fulfill it. That was God’s plan, to tear apart the world like it was no more than a botched drawing on paper, easily tossed aside so we could start again with a fresh sheet.

  If Prophet was to be believed—and of course he was—then that was God’s will.

  So why did I feel like this was all wrong?

  “Mia?”

  I spun around. “Mom.”

  “I didn’t mean to scare you,” she said, coming up beside me and winding her thin arm around me.

  “It’s okay.” I could feel her ribs from the weight she’d lost, and I didn’t find the comfort in her that I used to. She was not as substantial as she once was. “Mom, what do you think about all this?”

  “All this?”

  “Yeah, the … the weird stuff. The Light and the storm and everything else Prophet talked about.”

  “What do I think …?” Mom said, drawing the words out. She sounded the way she had when she was taking her meds. Drugged. Sedated. Far away.

  I pulled back so I could look at her face.

  “I think,” Mom said finally, “that God works in mysterious ways, and that He speaks to Rance”—she smiled and put her hand over her mouth like she’d let some secret slip—“to Prophet, and that Prophet understands God’s will. We have to defer to him if we want to walk in God’s Light.”

  “What about Parker?” I asked her. “Aren’t you worried that Prophet won’t let you love him anymore now that he’s our enemy?”

  Deep furrows appeared in her brow, and the concern in her eyes was finally real. “I will always love Parker.”

  Relief flooded through me. “You will?”

  “Of course.” The frown line between her eyes deepened. “I don’t want to think about Parker. It’s too confusing.” She turned to me and held me by the shoulders. “Mia, what’s wrong?”

  I didn’t want to talk about what was wrong. What was wrong was in my head. In Old Mia’s head.

  I changed the subject. “What’s going on with you and Prophet? You seem … close.”

  “I’m in love with him,” Mom said simply.

  I took one quick step back, and her arms fell. “But you’ve only known him a day.”

  A flicker of discontent crossed her face, and then: “Don’t you love Prophet?” the question came out like a shove.

  “Yes, I love him,” I answered quickly. “He’s Prophet. He’s the Prophet. He’s God’s messenger.”

  “He’s more than that.” She raised her hand and her fingers found the lines of scar tissue on her face. “He only sees the good in me. None of the ugliness.”

  I thought of the lightning scars covering my body and nodded. “That sounds nice.”

  “He says he wants me with him all the time. He doesn’t want me to leave his side, not ever. I had to slip away to see you while he was talking to his Apostles.” She frowned a little. “I wonder if he’s realized I’m gone. I should get back to him now. He wants me with him all the time.”

  “You said that already.” I watched her force her mouth back into a smile.

  “I did, didn’t I? I’m just so excited about tonight. This is happening so quickly.”

  “You mean the storm?”

  She shook her head, and her smile turned secretive. “Prophet is a wonderful man.”

  I opened my mouth to agree with her, but nothing came out. I was saved by a knock on the door.

  What was happening to New Mia? I needed another blessing, I decided. I needed Prophet to set my mind straight.

  I wondered if there was any way to put Old Mia in a coma. Permanently.

  Hesitantly, Jeremy—Jeremiah—pushed open the door. He didn’t look at me, but at my Mom. “Ms. Price,” he said, “my father requests that you return to him now.”

  Mom glanced at me. “He wants me with him all the time,” she repeated again. Then she hurried out the door, leaving Jeremy and me alone.

  Jeremy closed the door behind him.

  And locked it.

  “We have to talk,” he said.

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” I said. “You’re a traitor.”

  The anger was back where it belonged, in Jeremy’s eyes. He crossed the room to me, stood so we were chest to chest. My body lit up with his proximity. Jeremy grabbed the back of my head, fingers disappearing into my hair. His touch was rough. But it was gentle. It was contradictory.

  And his kiss was the same way.

  His mouth opened mine.

  His tongue tasted mine.

  The heat between us was nuclear. We melted each other; melted into each other; and then—

  The world disappeared.

  The bedroom disappeared.

  Jeremy disappeared.

  And—

  * * *

  I opened my eyes at the top of the world, on the roof of the Tower, close enough to touch the night. Hundreds of rovers crowded the roof, their frantic energy making the air simmer, arms whipping and bodies convulsing to the madness of the beat.

  I stood in the center of the chaos, each of my hands clasped by the young Apostles in white on either side of me, thirteen of us joining hands to make a perfect circle.

  Jeremy met my eyes, and the sadness in them would have torn at my heart if I had been capable of feeling anything at that moment besides the elation of my Light joined with that of the other Apostles.

  “The power is in our hands,” we chanted. “The power is in our hands and our hands do the work of God.”

  Our voices were absorbed in the driving beat pumping from the speakers, and the rovers danced on, unaware of what was coming.

  What was here.

  The storm.

  The air had begun to change … to move and thicken. I smel
led ozone and wind and burning … something burning. An electric fire. The pressure dropped. We turned our faces to the sky, and watched black clouds boil where before there had been a clear velvet night.

  My heart pulsed fire, and light pulsing in the clouds matched my heartbeat. Thunder crashed, an explosion that drowned the rovers’ music. But the thunder only increased their frenzy. They danced on, shouting at the sky, taunting the storm.

  I looked at Jeremy, saw he was no longer a part of the circle. He stood at the edge of the roof, Prophet looming behind him, holding a glinting silver knife against Jeremy’s neck. The same knife Jeremy had brought to my room.

  “Jeremy!” I shouted over the bass and the thunder. I struggled to loose my hands from those of the Apostles who held them, but our grips seemed fused. Welded together. I shouted at Prophet as I pulled against the circle, “Let him go!”

  Prophet shook his head, mouth curved down in sadness. “He betrayed me. I loved him as my own son. I trusted him, and he turned his back on me.”

  Lightning fractured the sky with bloodred light.

  The rovers, finally impressed, screamed. For a moment the lightning blinded me. Then I blinked and color bled back into the world. I looked to Jeremy again, and saw red. At first I thought it was just the afterimage of the crimson lightning. But no, it was darker. Liquid. Blood was pouring from a deep gash in Jeremy’s throat, and the knife in Prophet’s hand was red now instead of silver. I screamed and broke from the circle, running toward Jeremy, lightning shattering the sky all around us now, the world cracking open like an egg. There was so much blood. So much blood.

  “This is the end,” Prophet said. “Now we begin anew.”

  Prophet lifted Jeremy’s body. Jeremy’s eyes never left mine until Prophet dropped him over the edge of the Tower.

  “Noooo!” I reached the ledge and saw Jeremy falling as lightning ruptured the air around him. Far below us, lightning punished the ground, red branches of incandescence reaching into the chasms where the earth had been laid open during the quake. Then the world began its violent tremble, and the trembling escalated to convulsions. The Tower began to sway, and then to buckle, crumbling toward the earth. The storm continued to rage, and the lightning to hammer the ground, and I knew I had made this happen, but I couldn’t stop it.

  It was too late.

  This was the end.

  I felt a snap inside my skull, like something stretched beyond capacity splitting in two. The pain was tremendous, like having the two halves of my brain pulled apart. I cradled my head in my hands, eyes squeezed shut. I could still see lightning on the backs of my eyelids, red veins of fire. Pressing fingers into my temples, I peeled my eyes open to find myself still in Jeremy’s arms, his mouth so close to mine I could feel his warm breath. He had his hands in my hair. His kiss was still hot on my lips. But the vision had ended.

  My head was clear.

  Old Mia was back. Jeremy had awakened her with a kiss and a nightmare. The peace Prophet had granted me was gone, replaced by fear and hate and rage and desperation, filling me up inside until I felt like I might burst from the pressure. I squeezed my eyes shut again and buried my face in Jeremy’s chest. Jeremy held me so tightly it was almost painful, crushing me into him. At some point he moved me to the bed and sat me down next to him. He kept his arm around me, and his heat soaked into me like sunlight but brought no more visions with it.

  “You died,” I said, my voice raw. “He killed you. Your father killed you.”

  “I know,” Jeremy said.

  “That can’t happen!”

  “Shh. It won’t.”

  “But it did! I saw it! He’s going to find out the truth!” And what was the truth? It came to me as I said it. “He’s going to find out you betrayed him. That you tried to keep me away from him, not bring me to him.”

  “No, he’s not. Not anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  He turned his head away. “Because you’re not going to tell him.”

  “No … I wouldn’t have.” I shook my head, but I knew the truth. Eventually, I would have told Prophet that Jeremy was a traitor.

  But there was still so much I didn’t understand. How had Jeremy come to be an Apostle? When had he turned against Prophet, and how had he broken Prophet’s hold on him? How had he kept Prophet from finding out he was a Judas among the Apostles? And, most confusing of all, how had Prophet not gleaned the truth from both our minds?

  The line of questions went on and on. I didn’t realize I was speaking them aloud until Jeremy held up his hands.

  “We don’t have much time,” he said. “The others will begin to wonder what I’m up to if I don’t come down soon.”

  “They don’t trust you,” I guessed.

  Jeremy went to adjust his glasses before realizing they weren’t there. I’d always thought it was ridiculous that no one recognized Clark Kent when he was Superman. Now that I’d fallen for such a simple disguise, it didn’t seem so ridiculous. No wonder Mom had fixated on him when she’d seen him out the window. And no wonder he’d been so reluctant to accompany me to the revival. But he had done it. For me. Because the only way he could have stopped me was to kill me.

  Maybe it would have been better if he had. Safer for everyone. For the whole world.

  “They sense that something about me is different,” Jeremy said. “Iris is the worst of them. She doesn’t trust anyone but Ivan and Father.”

  “I noticed,” I said, shivering as I thought back to breakfast, how I’d told myself that Iris would get to know the new me and accept me. Rage swelled inside me at what Prophet had done: brainwashed me so clean I had almost disappeared. And Mom … her mind was so fragile. Would it even be possible for her to come back from Prophet’s brainwashing?

  Jeremy went on. “Iris has reason enough not to trust me. I’ve been missing a lot lately, and she’s still furious about what happened at the Rove.”

  “About the fight?” I asked.

  “About me not showing up for their little demonstration. As far as she knows, anyway. Iris thinks I’m losing my faith. She doesn’t know the half of it.”

  “What did Prophet and the Apostles think you were doing?” I asked. “Those days when you didn’t show up for The Hour of Light, or when you didn’t come home at night? Did … did Prophet know you were with me?”

  Jeremy shook his head. “Father talks as though he has access to every thought we have, but there’s too much going on in a person’s mind, too much confusion, for him to sift through all of it. He picks up enough to make us think he knows every secret, but it’s a lie.”

  I breathed a little easier. “So it’s possible to hide things from him.”

  “Yes. But it’s not easy. Once you try not to think something, it’s usually the only thing you can think. As far as where Prophet thought I was when I was with you … for the most part, I come and go as I please. I’ve always been his favorite.” Jeremy’s tone was bitter. “He makes allowances for me that he won’t for the other Apostles. But when I left yesterday …” He looked at me. “I hadn’t planned on coming back.”

  I felt a knife twist of guilt in my stomach.

  “It’s not your fault,” Jeremy said, reading the dismay on my face. “I should never have let you go to the revival in the first place. If I’d been honest with you from the beginning things might have been different. We might have left town days ago with your mom and your brother and none of this would be happening now.” He shook his head, a tortured look on his face. “But I was afraid to tell you the truth. Afraid of what you’d think of me.”

  I picked my gaze up off the floor and brought my eyes to his. “Why?” I asked.

  His hands clenched tight, and I sensed the light coming off him start to change. It dimmed, like the sun obscured by smog. He searched my face. I didn’t know what he was looking for, but I hoped he found it.

  “I want you to understand why I let Prophet use me this way. His predictions … those weren’t entirely his. They wer
e mine. Or they were half mine. I would see these terrible things that were going to happen, and Father would hear a voice he said was God’s telling him when they were going to happen, and …” He trailed off, looking miserable.

  “You were a team,” I said softly.

  Jeremy lowered his eyes. “If it weren’t for me, he would never have grown this powerful. But you have to understand, for a long time I loved him like he was my real father. I put him on a pedestal. If anything, I hate myself for that, even more than I hate him. After my mom died, I was in and out of foster care. When Rance took me in he saved me from some very bad people. I realized quickly that the only reason he chose to adopt me was because I’d been struck by lightning, and because of my ability, but I didn’t care. He made me feel safe. Protected.” He looked in my eyes. “You understand what that’s like now? What he can do to your mind?”

  I nodded, and Jeremy took a deep breath before continuing.

  “In the beginning, life with Rance was better than anything I’d known, even with my real mother. For the first time I had a family. Not just a family, but a whole congregation of people who seemed to love me. My new life revolved around Bible study and the Church of Light, but I didn’t mind. When I got a little older, things started to change. I began to see things differently.

  “Father had strange ways of interpreting Bible passages. His notions were always slanted toward the idea that every thousand years or so, the people of the world became so wicked, so corrupt, that there was no saving them, and the only way to keep the world from becoming hell was for God to bring about some kind of cleansing. It had happened before, with Noah and the flood. The others in the church, and especially my adopted brothers and sisters, hung on Father’s every word. I didn’t want to be the dissenter, so I kept quiet for a long time, but finally I couldn’t stand it anymore. During one of Father’s sermons, I dared to disagree with him.” He paused, took a breath and released it. “That didn’t go over well. Father got very quiet, and then finally sent me to my room. I stayed there until he came to see me. He told me I had to set an example for the others, and by contradicting him I had undermined his authority. ‘It can’t happen again,’ he said, and then he … he gave me a blessing to strengthen my faith.”