The Sunset Prophecy (Love & Armageddon #1) (34 page)

“
That’s where Matt had his fight,” Cindy said. She began to sob. She kneeled next to the couch and stared into Thalia’s eyes and pleaded, “We need to go to the arena. My best friend was at that fight.”

The seemingly frazzled host looked
away from the teleprompter and spoke to the audience candidly, “Folks, I don’t know what to say.” He then stared down at a piece of paper that trembled in his hand. “Caltech is reporting dozens and dozens of small quakes every twenty to thirty minutes. Also, we are getting reports of severe damage in parts of Hollywood. Apparently, it has been confirmed, by experts at the Griffith Observatory and J.P.L. that dozens of small meteorites actually hit parts of the city.” The newscaster took a deep breath and paused. He then peered into the camera and channeled a solemn version of Cronkite, the patriarchal and comforting version, the one who looked into America’s eyes soon after JFK’s assassination and said, “Southern California, it seems, is at the epicenter of Mother Nature’s wrath. Please be safe and please be prepared for any further cataclysmic events.”

His
news team partner, an imposing woman with chestnut-colored hair, and who looked and fit the part of an alpha matriarch, CEO of some Silicon Valley tech company, looked off-screen and conversed with the producer using pantomime and whispers. Her mouth quivered as she placed her fingers up to her earpiece. “Tom, we have breaking news...thousands of citizens have begun marching toward MacArthur Park. A perimeter of National Guard, FBI and hundreds of L.A.P.D. and Sheriff’s officers are converging on the area as well. They have informed us to tell everyone to stay in their homes and do not...I repeat...do not join in on the protest as all major streets in the area are officially closed to traffic.” She looked at her colleague and shook her head. “This is disturbing, isn’t it? I hope for all Angelinos that this protest is peaceful.”
              Cindy flashed Paolo a distressed look then grasped Thalia’s hand and squeezed it tightly. “There has to be something we could do.”

Thalia
closed her eyes and remained silent.

“
Anyone hungry?” asked Bernadette. “I have some Pop-Tarts?”

“
No, not right now,” Cindy said, despite her gnawing hunger. She hadn’t eaten in what seemed an eternity, but in fact, it had just been a little over a day. She glanced at the television and the news anchors sat silently in their chairs. Their eyes and ears on the information that continued to trickle in. Then the female news anchor revealed the person responsible for the rally at MacArthur Park after her producers researched the Twitter feeds, the Facebook posts, and every other message board online worth a visit. “Apparently, the protest does have a leader of some sorts. It has just been confirmed that the thousands gathered at the park are there to listen to a Logan Drake speak.”

“
Logan Drake?” Cindy asked, out loud. “Keelen might still be with him.”

“
I...I don’t see why that couldn’t be possible.”

“
Does that name seem familiar to you?” Cindy asked Thalia.

Thalia
shook her head. “No, I don’t know a Logan at all.”

“
We need to go to MacArthur Park,” Cindy said.

“
Thalia, before you go, is there a way you can get me that audition I always wanted?” asked Bernadette, who helped the goddess stand up from the couch along with Paolo and Cindy.

“
Now’s not the time,” said Paolo who opened the front door.

“
It’s okay,” Thalia smiled gently. “Stand-up comedy, Bernadette; try a stand-up routine.”

“
But I can’t tell jokes, I’m not that funny.”

“
There is a writer next door...he’s pretty good. You should team up. Your delivery is immaculate”

“
The mailman?”

“
Yes, he’s not confident in his work. You should ask to read his material. Trust me.”

“
Of course...I...I...will. I appreciate it. Please, I want to try your advice. Please, don’t let the end of the world happen.”

Cindy peered at the kitchen table and noticed Bernadette
’s car keys. “Do you mind if we borrow your car?”

“
No...please, it would be an honor,” Bernadette said, racing toward the table, snatching the keys and handing them to Cindy.

Cindy helped Paolo take
Thalia toward Bernadette’s late-model Nissan, before heading toward MacArthur Park. The sky above their heads turned gray and cloudy. A super cell was forming, an odd sight, considering the craziest weather L.A. had seen was a small ice fall almost a hundred years ago. The circular clouds, shaped like large saucers, began to flow over the city like a rolling fog. Paolo looked up through the windshield and said, “This is not good.”

Cindy looked at
Thalia, “Do you know what those clouds mean?”

“
Tornados,” Thalia said. “A real large one or numerous small ones. Either way, Los Angeles is in for rough weather.”

37

Deprogramming

A
few days had passed since Logan Drake had decided to come forward with all that he’d witnessed and learned by leaking out of his paintings, infiltrating the offices and networks of the world’s powerful and those who controlled the destiny and lives of the many. By doing this, he thought mankind had a sliver of a chance to change the direction of their fate. Adonai’s kingdom relied heavily on the corruption and the division between the haves and the have-nots, the righteous and the wicked, and thousands of years of unchecked tribalism. Logan knew that if he were to bridge the gap of the multiple divisions within humanity he would have to single out an underlying leviathan of oppression, something so large, its tentacles undeniably long, overreaching and suffocating.

Logan
pulled Keelen by the hand as they traversed the crowd that streamed into the park. The spring morning skies had turned gray, as if the city had fallen ill with a sudden bout of glaucoma, each hour darker than the one before. Ominous heavy clouds, low to the ground, hovering a few feet over the tallest buildings in the city, carried with them a wind that lifted every piece of trash off the streets and converted them into grief-inducing projectiles. Keelen ducked an empty energy drink can that was aiming straight at her head before she laid eyes on the sea of people that walked in and around the emptied lake at the center of the park.

Logan maintained a light jog. He pointed toward a large grassy incline, the only open green patch in the park.
“That hill looks like a good place to lay down a sermon, don’t you think?”

As they reached the tail
-end of the crowd, Keelen didn’t respond. Her lips were flat, brows without lift, and face stony. She looked numb, as if she were a victim of Stockholm Syndrome.

Logan stopped.
“Keelen?”

“
I need to sit down.” She plopped herself down on the sidewalk and crossed her legs. Although large and disorganized, the crowd’s movement was peaceful and deliberate. Their forward march avoided Logan and Keelen as if they were single-minded swarm.

“
You gotta get up,” Logan begged.

“
I’m tired.”

He kneeled down and held both of her hands.
“Come on...we’re almost there.”

She shook her head. Her eyes lifted.
“I don’t know what’s real anymore.”

“
You need to snap out of it or reality won’t be kind to us.”

“
I’m cold,” she said. “It’s cold...why is it so cold?”

Logan put his arms around her torso and lifted her off the ground. She pressed herself hard against his chest and consumed his warmth, listened to his breaths and tried to locate the rhythm of his heartbeat.
“You don’t have one,” she said. “How?”

“
I don’t need one.”

“
What are you?”

“
I’m a demigod. My mother was a goddess, my father was an actor—a mortal. I used to reside in a world named Pit. My name is rooted in Greek; Theolodus is my name. Does that name seem familiar to you? No?” he asked. “Anyway, my brother, Adam, is Lelantos. We share the same mother, but his father is Jrue, one of the most powerful beings in the entire dimensional universe from which this planet and others like it exist. You are on the verge of disappearing completely. Your entire physical makeup will not even be granted the luxury of living as dust or atomic residue. I am here to make sure that does not happen.”

“
...and here I thought I knew you...somewhat,” Keelen chuckled, an underlying sense of dread in her tone. “I guess everything they taught me in Sunday school was correct, huh?”

“Not really. I don’t think
they had any mention of plump gods or spiraled-eye demons in the New Testament.”

The crowd surrounding Logan and Keelen slowed. Their eyes connected on the young handsome man who was assisting the equally striking girl. The mass of gatherers instantly remembered the description of Logan given to them by the movement
’s de facto leader, Mirabel Hernandez—the same lady with white jumpsuit and the badly dyed hair, who was the fortunate and humble recipient of Logan’s message at Perry’s Restaurant.

“
I’d say partially true,” Logan said, while pulling out a pen from his hip pocket. He then opened Keelen’s palm and wrote the coordinates,
34° 17′ 20″ N, 117° 38′ 48″ W.
Logan closed her hand and said, “This is where you are going to take me, do you understand?”

“
Wait...what? Why?”

“
Nod and tell me you understand.”

Keelen nodded but remained flustered at Logan
’s cryptic request. “Why...again, why all this?”

“
Have you ever wondered about where you go after you die?”

“
Yeah, well...I don’t know, really. I mean, I used to believe what my mom and dad believed. When I die...if I am good, I go to heaven...if I am bad, I go to hell, but honestly, I used not believe that stuff, but now, after seeing what I have just seen...you and those creatures...I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

Logan curled his fingers underneath Keelen
’s chin and focused deeply into her eyes, penetrating them with his entire being. “You need to have conviction from this point on. This is the truth. You are being harvested. God...actually, let’s call him Adonai, because that is who he is. He isn’t good or bad. He is just trying to survive like you and me. But his world...those who depend on him...need your kind to survive. Only a handful of human beings, since the dawn of time, are granted an existence of eternity, the rest of you will be absorbed and your souls replenished to keep things going for Caeli. There is a world between Earth, Caeli, and Pit. This is where you go when you die. No one can access this world, not me, Adonai, Jrue, but we do know it exists. Matt is probably there. This ‘purgatory’ is what Adonai wants and needs. It’s what Jrue and Pit refer to as the valley of souls. The only way it can be accessed is to trick a significant portion of the population into believing that they will be granted salvation.”

Keelen
’s eyes glistened and her body limped. Her face lost all color, and for the first time in her life she was terrified of her own metaphysical thoughts. Well, there was that one time she tried LSD, but when her consciousness stabilized, she knew it was just a trip. This was reality, though. What Logan had told her threw her entire understanding of the universe into a tailspin. She then bent over and began vomiting all over Logan’s shoes.

“
I expected this,” Logan sighed, as he gently patted her back.

Slowly, the marching crowd began to circle Logan and Keelen. Murmurs and questioning arose collectively, expressing the same thoughts.
Is that Logan Drake? His eyes...that’s him? The slim, athletic build? That’s Keelen Grant...from the video. Quick, take a video of him to see if he shows up on film. Someone get Mirabel.

A smile flashed across his face as the years of living in self-punishing anonymity were coming to a close. There was always a
tiny part of him which wanted to embrace fame and revel in it. However, unlike his brother, Logan knew that in order to accomplish his goals, he’d have to bury a demigod’s instinctual desire for exaltation. Hundreds of people gathered around the demigod and the actress. Behind Logan, people shoved each other and complained as a small collective made their way through the tight maze of flesh. The gathering calmly gave way, eventually making room for a clique of short Hispanic women; one of them Mirabel Hernandez, who received Logan’s message at Perry’s Steakhouse. She pushed through the murmuring crowd and stood at the feet of demigod. She marveled at the young man, as she held the piece of paper he had given her into the air. Not only was Logan’s message the main draw for the recurring protests, but the fact that he didn’t show up on film also attracted the mildly curious.

Mirabel scampered up to Logan, noosed him with a hug and shouted,
“Mr. Drake, what you have done is a miracle.” Logan beamed and appreciated the gesture by patting Mirabel on her head, not in a condescending way though, she was just short. Everyone within arm’s reach reached over and touched his shoulders, arms, and torso. Little ones came up to him and tugged on his pants legs and the laces on his shoes. He was like a therapeutic, tactile doll for sensory-deprived children.

“
My father died of cancer, but we’re able to keep our home,” a woman said. “I didn’t have to buy food with my credit card for the first time in months, thank you,” a father said. “I’ve learned to forgive,” an old man said. “Oh my God...look he’s not in the video I took on my phone,” a young teenage girl said to her friends.

Keelen pulled herself up and wiped her lips and saw the love for Logan Drake pouring in from the mass of strangers on the street. Others touched her hair, as if she were a goddess. She calmly pushed their hands away and said,
“I’m no one special. I just know him, that’s all.”

As Logan was inundated with praise and adulation, he glanced up at toward the skyline that surrounded the park. The tallest building, whose shadow covered a third of McArthur
’s Park open lawns, was an empty skyscraper that was once was held by a now-defunct mortgage giant— a zombie husk, which through the help of needlessly hoarded money and interest, sat stubbornly overvalued and unused on the market. On its roof, a group of men stood rigidly and on point, decked out in paramilitary gear, but also joined with a thin man wearing a fine, black suit. Augustus Fisker stared down on the gathering with his binoculars, like a raptor looking to pick out the weak from the strong.

A white and blue L.A.P.D.
Eurocopter was parked behind him on the helipad.

The crowd followed Logan and Keelen toward the park in an orderly fashion, as countless more continued to stream in from all the streets that led into th
e park.

38

Honor thy Fire

“
Y
ou have failed,” roared the heavy, roiling flame from inside the chimney. Fed by every wooden chair that used to occupy Adam’s penthouse, Jrue’s flame appeared more pronounced and cantankerous than ever before.

“
He’s coming back...he promised,” Adam begged, cowering in front if the fireplace, shielding his eyes with his beefy arm. “He’s...he’s settling something...for a girl, a human girl.”

The fire spittle sparked beyond the stone arches of the hearth, melting the marble floor of Adam
’s salon into some sort of Neapolitan spackle. The chubby god backed away from the multi-colored lava, tearing up, knowing in his heart he had committed a huge mistake by listening to his brother, thus angering his father and duty beyond celestial reasoning. But again, as he thought back to the precise moment in time when Logan asked for permission to strive for earthly conclusions, something larger than himself put him at ease with his decision. As if a divine hand came down and assisted Adam in betraying his own mind. “I’m sorry, Father...it just felt like the right decision...he might come back.”

“
His intention is not to return to Pit. Do you not see what your brother is doing?”

“
I know...I know… he is trying to disrupt the Prophecy.”

“
So, you do know what he is trying to do, and you let him leave?”

Adam stayed silent as he lowered himself to the ground and slumped on his behind. He bowed his head in defeat rather than in reverence. His tree
-trunk legs extended out in front of him, as the fire seared the soles of his shoes. He peered into the flames, a pathetic and surrendering scowl painted his face. “What do you want me to do?”

“
Ignite me. Feed my flame. I shall raze the city as I did the Acropolis. If souls are what Caeli needs to leave this plane, then souls they will receive. I will not place Pit in harm’s way. I cannot defend her. We are too weak.”

Adam shrugged his large shoulders.
“But I’m out of furniture and the building is covered in plaster and there are sprinklers on every floor, and there is no time to bring more material here to fuel you further.”

“
You must take my flame.”

“
Where?”

“
To the forest hills north of the city, close to where Adonai’s son is set to return. I will use the dried, cracked timber as fuel. Then I will descend upon the city and finish what the Prophecy has begun.”

Adam scratched his head and looked at the fire dispassionately, seeking one reason in his head to refuse throwing in his lot with his father and dismissing humanity along with his brother for eternity. Not
getting ripped apart, atom by atom, was a compelling-enough reason, he thought. But conspiring with Caeli, now that was an action he had a hard time dealing with. “My Lord, you are aware that you are cooperating with Adonai by doing such a thing, there has to be another way?”