Prophet Margin (28 page)

All his guilt was gone. All his greed had been soaked away. All the sooty little iniquities of an avaricious life smudged across his soul had been purged by the lemon fresh detergent of metaphysical redemption.

Also, he'd just enjoyed an incredible bout of dogma-approved bonkage with his favourite wife Sianne.

But more than anything, he was happy because of the message that had just been broadcast through the public speakers all across the city, the prophet's beaming face smiling from every monitor.

"Loyal believers!" it had said, coinciding almost exactly with the critical moment of the aforementioned bonkage. "This is your prophet speaking!"

Even through the walls of their meditation cell, the pair had clearly heard - and joined with - the enormous cheer that reverberated throughout the city.

"I speak to you now with the most glorious news! He that is on high, He that is beyond time, He that is the great god Boddah, has fulfilled the last of his holy prophecies!

"The computers that monitor the skies around us have detected a miracle. Friends, as we speak, the mountain of fire that the Boddah predicted speeds towards us. The fourth and final sign is at hand. In three hours, the great lie that is time will perish!"

The city had, predictably, cheered.

A little later, and Abrocabe was wending his way through the partying crowds, drink in hand, whooping and laughing along with those he met; exchanging ridiculous greetings like "See you in the second reality!" and "Boy, I sure can't wait till all this goes up in smoke!"

The one small fly in his ointment was that he'd wanted to shake hands with his close friend Jay "Biggie" Bolster, whose help and support had been invaluable since his arrival. He'd checked all the usual places - the dining cabin, the meditation suites, the various monitor screens - and couldn't find him anywhere. As something of a last resort, he headed for the courtyard at the centre of the city, where - only that morning - he'd witnessed the defeat of the White-Eyed-Warrior.

The courtyard was deserted now: the strange statue at its centre (which, he remembered, Bolster had been fussing around moments before the warrior's appearance) stood alone and forlorn, speckled with blood. The crowds of gun-wielding cultists had long since dispersed to join the party, leaving their guns lying around. Above it all, the viewscreen now displayed a huge clock, counting down the seconds until the mountain's impact. A little less than two and a half hours remained.

Scratching his head, seriously considering returning for one last 'chat' with Sianne, it was then that Abrocabe spotted a fold of grey material poking from the foot of the doorframe leading inside.

It was Bolster. He was out cold, nose a misshapen lump, snotty blood painting a clownlike smile across his top lip. Abrocabe glanced inside the building, unsurprised to see the Book missing from its usual place: the prophet had, after all, removed it.

No, what surprised Abrocabe was that behind the book's normal resting place, revealed in its absence, there stood a small doorway.

In fact, what really surprised Abrocabe was that the doorway was hanging off its hinges, the wall around it was partially collapsed, and the stairs leading upwards, quite visible through the devastation, had all but parted company with the structure of the building. Gunmetal walls showed through the cracks.

Thinking through a haze of adrenaline, Abrocabe remembered Bolster's words to him, the first time he'd ever come to this place:

"The book is a prize worth protecting, yes, but the prophet's quarters are near here. We are naturally keen to ensure his safety."

Someone was after the prophet.

With his heart threatening to beat itself out of his rib cage, trunk coiling anxiously in front of his face, Abrocabe Zindatsel wondered vaguely whether it was a little late in the day to start playing the hero, and gingerly climbed the stairs.

It was only when he was nearing the top, when the lower half of the stairwell had collapsed behind him, that he began to wonder whether he should have picked up one of the guns in the courtyard.

"Of course we've missed out the most important omen."

Grinn rocked the firebrand from side to side, alligator lips peeling back. Johnny stared at him with undisguised contempt.

"Wh-what have you done to me?" he said, voice still weak.

"I'll get to that. Let's backtrack. Omen one, the skies go red. Omen two, a big snecking fish, which only I - the prophet - can destroy. So let's talk about number three." He smirked. "It's my favourite.

"Sitting in macrojail, flicking through all this religious crap, I found myself staring at something quite extraordinary. You're a businessman yourself, yes? You know as well as I do how fickle luck can be. Well, the words that caught my attention that day read: 'white-eyed-warrior'".

The smile that swept its way across his cheeks - a solid gash parting his face as far as his ears - creaked open like some awful bear trap. "It was the third sign," he said, "the death of the white-eyed-warrior. Lucky, lucky me.

"Oh, it didn't have anything to do with you, of course. The illustration looked nothing like you quite apart from anything else, but it's the words that matter, Alpha. It's always the words. And those words really couldn't have been any better."

"T-two birds," Johnny grunted, face flushing. "One stone."

"Quite. Fulfil a prophecy - a very lucrative one - and get rid of you in the process."

"A-and all it t-took was... was getting me to come here." In his mind, still thick with the cloying fuzz of sleep, Johnny strained to slither his way through the unpleasant things slowly occurring to him.

Grinn laughed like a purring tiger. "Quite right. I think perhaps you're beginning to realise how enormously gullible you've been. Yes?"

Johnny winced. "I... I don't underst-"

"Yes you do. Yes you do!" he clapped his hands together, like a child. "Think about it. Just bumping into Standing Algie like that? And him with a neat little nugget of information to boot? Then finding that convenient splodge on the shark tank, chasing around after Stanley, finding his secret lair, blah, blah, blah. And all by chance, all by coincidence?
Please
. You know me better than that."

Slowly, like some ancient predator leaning down, mouth tensed to close around its squealing prey, Grinn pulled himself close to Johnny's face, the firebrand sputtering between them.

"Did you seriously think," he hissed, spittle like a cold rain, "that I'd leave you so many clues by mistake? You seriously think you'd have found me if I didn't want you to?"

Johnny tried to snarl. "T-that's bullsneck. I found you once! I did it again."

Grinn sniggered.

"And yet I was waiting for you," he chuckled, pushing the fire close to Johnny's face, forcing him to slump away. "You remember? I had the teleport override all ready and waiting, sucking you up and spitting you out right where and when I wanted you. One of my flock is the CEO of Finchleycorp, you know. They make the teleporters. He's been very helpful.

"Let's see now. From the beginning. Standing Algie, ah yes: I had him implanted with a control device. He'd helped me steal them, after all - it only seemed fair. It was easy enough to misdirect him, accidentally crossing the path of a hunting Strontium Dog. What bad luck! And then when you had him at your mercy, I simply spoke through him, giving you Koszov's name, kick-starting the whole thing."

Johnny remembered the strange brainwave oscillations as Algie spilled his guts.

"Oh yes," Grinn smarmed, as if reading his thoughts. "The control implants have been very helpful. Standing Algie, the assassin I sent to the Kostadell Zol, the cultists I sent to kill your friend at his ridiculous little convention. I didn't want him coming between us, Alpha."

"R-romantic."

"Ha! They failed, of course - more's the pity. But your pet Viking hasn't exactly saved your hide, has he? He'll be joining us shortly.

"And then, Stanley. Dear, dear Stanley Everyone. He led you on a merry chase, didn't he? Mostly under his own steam, bless him, though I confess he needed a little reminder of his obedience once or twice."

In the flickering light, Grinn's face seemed utterly devilish: a toothy cavern that smiled and smiled, eyes twinkling with unrepentant malice.

"The point is," he hissed, all trace of warmth gone from his voice, "that I've been pulling your strings every step of the way.

"I knew you were coming, Alpha."

Johnny's mind did a backflip.

"W-why not just tell me you were here?" he spluttered. "Why not dare me to come and get you?"

Grinn waved a dismissive hand. "Because you aren't as stupid as you look. You're not the type to walk into a trap. No, you'd show-up mob handed, you'd bring an army, you'd alert the GCC. You'd do something sensible. Something predictable. I needed you alone. I needed you
killable
."

He leaned closer still, breath hot and damp on Johnny's face.

"For the money, Alpha. I did it all for the money, remember? It had to be just as the book foretold. Cameras, spectators, believers. If they don't believe what I'm telling them, they won't give me their money. It's as simple as that.

"So I thought, what if you thought I was in hiding? What if you seriously thought you could take me by surprise? Would that be worth you taking a risk? I think it would.

"And your penchant for teleporting... Well, your reputation precedes you, Alpha. It was simply a matter of waiting for you to beam-on-down." One pencil-thin eyebrow arched daintily. "You took longer than we thought."

Johnny glared at him, wrestling the strangling sense of failure. All that was left was anger. Resentment.

Make it personal, the voice hissed in his mind.

"You should have killed me," he said, knuckles clenching.

"I have," Grinn smiled. "One way or another. Yes, I could have shot you and let you die in front of all those people. Should have, probably. But everyone needs a vice, Alpha. I have power. I won't apologise for it.

"And look, I know how it goes. The moustache-twiddling megalomaniac forgoes the opportunity to kill his nemesis so he can smug it up instead. I'm nothing if not a traditionalist, Alpha.

"You caught me. You put me away. You beat me, Alpha, and I will not-" he paused, blinking to restore his calm. "I will not let you die until you see just how utterly I've beaten you. You're a scab. You're a snecking boil on my arse, which has itched ever since they locked me away.

"I needed you to know I'd won. I needed to see the boil lanced. It has been. They say the mark of a successful man is being able to combine business and pleasure. All this," he gestured around the room, the corridor beyond, his white robes, "is the business. But you? You're the pleasure."

He settled back on his haunches, waving the firebrand like a child playing with a sparkler. "I shot you with a lo-impact muscular rigor cartridge," he said, shrugging. "Breaks the skin, doesn't go in deep enough to kill. It freezes you from the inside out - like a miniature stasis field. That's Finchleycorp too, by the way. Incredible what you can do when you have puppets in high places."

The firebrand slammed into Johnny's jaw without warning, singeing his face and leaving him sprawled, crying out. The pins-and-needles in his fingers were receding, the necrotic sensation ebbing away. He could breathe almost without effort, now, and only the incessant shivering remains.

"The effects are wearing off," Grinn continued, matter-of-factly, "but it doesn't matter. You'll see why in a moment." He stood up, dusting off his robes, replacing the firebrand. Then, winking, he dug a hand into his pocket.

Johnny tensed, expecting the blocky sheen of a gun, the thunderous jolt of a discharge; the cold, empty, eternity of nothing.

Make it personal!
the voice shrieked.

It wasn't a gun. Instead Grinn produced a slim remote control. "Nothing to worry about," he chuckled, pressing a button.

Something fizzed in the air beside him, flopping to the floor.

"Wulf!" Johnny cried.

"He'll be fine," Grinn shrugged. "Eventually. He's been stuck in a teleporter array for several hours. I'm told he may be a little... disoriented."

Wulf shrieked something panicky and incomprehensible in Nordic (Johnny recognised the word "cucumber" amongst the guttural growls).

Grinn moved towards a dark alcove where a set of iron bars covered a doorway.

"Y-you're going?" Johnny said, shocked.

Grinn paused, looking back with a smile. "Oh yes. Ha. I know, it's quite the cliché, not even staying to watch you die. But, then, I don't need to, do I? You won't be leaving this room, Alpha. You'll die here." He shrugged. "Then again, you're a resourceful fellow. Perhaps you will escape. Perhaps you'll come after me and make me rue the day I ever indulged my ego.

"Mind you... an asteroid big enough to tear this world in half will shortly be arriving, killing absolutely everything. So you see, I really must be off. And should you escape from here, think of me whilst the skies rain fire.

"I don't need to watch you die, Alpha. I've beaten you. That's gold."

Make it personal!

"I'll find you, Grinn!" he growled, "I'll get you."

"I doubt it." The door hinged open silently, responding to some unseen command. "An old friend of yours wants to say hello."

The shark flurried into existence above Johnny's head, button black eye rolling.

"So long, Alpha." Grinn said, walking away.

TWENTY-THREE

By the time Roolán reached the upper levels of the temple villa, the rage bubbling away inside him had cooled; simmering into a murderous knifepoint. Blasting his way through the door on the ground floor - taking out a number of the surrounding walls in the process - had vented a lot of his unvoiced frustration. Trying to identify its source proved fruitless: revenge, maybe; the desire to prove himself, or perhaps just the urge to hunt, to destroy, to kill.

Whatever.

All he knew was: this was it. This was where he found out whether he had what it took to be a killer.