Struck (31 page)

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 smelled 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 were 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.”

My stomach shrank. I knew where this was going. “He brainwashed you.”

“He’d been doing it all along, in subtle ways, but I hadn’t realized it until then.”

“And the suggestions only work if a part of you wants to comply.”

He nodded again. “A part of me did. I wanted to be a good son. I didn’t want to undermine him. So every few days he would give me a blessing, and I behaved the way he wanted me to.”

“How did you break the cycle?” I asked.

Jeremy leaned his elbows on his knees and rested his head in his hands to massage his temples. “From the beginning, he told me I should always come to him after I’d had a ‘revelation,’ and tell him everything in precise detail, so that’s what I did. He’d started his show by this time, but
The Hour of Light
didn’t take off until he began using my revelations. That was fine. We were doing something good. Religion was the perfect tool to mask what was really going on, and to get people to listen. And our predictions saved thousands of lives.”

He swallowed hard and reached to adjust his glasses again. But the glasses, his disguise, weren’t there. It was just him now.

He looked at me with all the sadness and anger one person could contain without losing his mind.

“I had a vision of the Puente Hills Quake. I saw a storm appear in the sky above downtown, and lightning struck the ground, and then everything began to shake and the … and the towers, all but one, fell.”

My breath slowed. I nodded.

“I saw it a week before the quake hit.”

36

IT TOOK ME
a moment to find my voice. “But Prophet didn’t warn about the quake until—”

“Until it was too late.” Jeremy’s whole body was clenched, shaking with rage like he was experiencing his own private earthquake. “As soon as I woke from the vision, I went to Father to tell him what I’d seen. I demanded he inform the mayor first, before he announced it on
The Hour of Light
, so the city could begin evacuation procedures. He agreed to make the call, but before he did anything, he wanted to give me a blessing. I was upset, and he was afraid I might do something rash, go running through the streets, shouting at people to get out of the city.” Jeremy’s trembling stilled suddenly. “Next thing I knew, I was waking up and the earthquake was over. The city was in ruins and so many people … so many were dead. It was exactly what I’d seen. What I was supposed to prevent.”