The Dark Messiah (The Second Dark Ages Book 1) Read online

  Jeremiah rode into the main yard about two hours before sunset. He pulled off the saddle and rubbed down his horse. He put Black in a stall and stuffed some oats into the feed bag, then dug around in a sand filled tub to find a carrot which he gave to Black as a treat.

  He nodded towards Jake, one of the men who, in his opinion, was a question mark and headed towards the back of the house.

  Towards the office.

  Sarah Jennifer wasn’t some old woman willing to take in just anyone. No, she was an ex-tactical member of the FDG - the Force de Guerre. Still young, she had suffered some neurological damage during an operation, and they couldn’t get her back to prime reaction speed again. She wasn’t willing to be dead weight on the tactical teams and refused to take an office job.

  It just reminded her too much of what she couldn’t do anymore.

  Jeremiah arrived at the back and pulled the string which rang a bell inside her office. Soon enough, her voice came out of a tube next to the door. “You got my attention, who is this and what do you need?”

  He was pretty sure she knew exactly who was standing here, but her ability to keep secrets was legendary. For example, none of them knew how many weapons she kept as an ex-merc. To keep that a secret this long? Pretty damned impressive.

  He grinned for anyone who might see him talking, “It’s Jeremiah, SJ.” He lowered his voice, “I got a message from TB’s goons to relay to you.”

  Her voice, confused, came back through the tube, “TB?…Oh, that jackass.” Jeremiah could almost picture her blue eyes rolling under her blond hair, “Come in, let’s discuss scuzzbucket’s latest threat.” With a clunk, the door unlocked, and Jeremiah pulled it open and walked in. The door closed, and a small bar automatically locked into place behind him.

  The hallway was only ten foot long, with a door at the other end which opened into the house proper. He took two steps and turned right. Inside the room, about twenty feet long and fifteen wide was a small round table to his right with three chairs for meetings. Sarah Jennifer, a pencil in her right hand, was tap-tap-tapping the desk as he walked in.

  She noticed his sand and sweat covered body and got to the point, “Ok, what’s bull-shittiest-maximus want this time?”

  “Your ass, or your land, probably both,” Jeremiah told her. He grabbed one of the two chairs in front of her desk and pulled it back to sit down, “Sucks to be you!”

  She snorted, “I understand it used to be that women wanted men to appreciate them for their intellect, not their tits. Now, my intellect is third string behind my land.”

  Jeremiah kept his mouth shut.

  The tap-tap-tap of the pencil continued, “That’s not all, is it?” She asked him, watching his fidgeting hands. “You got something you don’t want to say. What’s asshat got planned now?”

  Jeremiah looked up at the ceiling and then back to Sarah Jennifer, “The two heavies told me you got a little time to make a decision, one week. You either decide to marry him, or sell to him. If you go past that, then he reduces what he is willing to pay, and the insinuation is ... it won’t be a wedding bed at the end of the deal, but there will be a physical consummation.” Jeremiah looked pissed that he even had to pass on such a despicable threat.

  Sarah Jennifer’s eyes narrowed, “So, sell or rape?” Jeremiah returned her gaze and nodded his head in agreement, “Well, at least the disgusting pig is finally showing his true colors.” She blew out a breath. “He’s got about thirty in his group?”

  “Last I heard, it was thirty-two. But, if he decides that isn’t enough he could get some cheap hands willing to pull a trigger and maybe get ten more from closer to old Denver. That is if he decides it’s going to be a pain in the ass to root us out. However,” Jeremiah turned to look out through her wall in the direction of the hand's sleeping quarters, “I can’t promise you more than three for damned sure, and five if I’m giving a couple the benefit of the doubt.”

  Her lips compressed and she followed his gaze where it led.

  Out, toward the building where her hands slept at night.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Outside an old military Base - West of Old Denver, Colorado (United States Post-Apoc)

  Confusion was his first reaction.

  Michael looked around and considered confusion to be his second, third and damn near the fourth reaction as well.

  What happened?

  He walked, bare ass naked, through a base that had seen better days. When he pulled open a door, and it dropped off of its hinges, he had to admit it had seen better years and most likely decades.

  Perhaps a better century?

  Michael walked into the old command center. It was dusty, a broken window in the front allowing the weather in. A few leaves were lodged in crevices.

  Empty.

  He pressed his lips together and moved further into the base inside the mountain, trying to understand what was going on. Each office he checked was cleaned of anything relevant. He found no computer equipment and more than that, he found none of the lights to be in working order.

  It was chilly, so the time of year had to be fall, at least. It took him a while and the only thing he ran across was a small supply room. He did find clothes of a sort. They were old work clothes, a single suit. He snagged an available tan pair but made a face.

  They weren’t his preferred style. However, he was clothed, and that had to be worth something at the moment.

  He walked across the base, the car parking lot empty and went to where he had lived with Bethany Anne. The building was not only empty; it was boarded up. Not a type of boarding because windows were busted, no, this was boarded up to keep people from going through something important inside.

  This was professional, and it had the faintest marks that showed warnings about radioactivity. Which seemed ludicrous. His time in the Etheric enhanced his ability to discern energy, and there was nothing related to radiation that he could feel.

  Well, he hoped there wasn’t. His lack of hair was bothering him, and all he needed to do was get a fresh dose of radiation to screw any chance of his hair growing back. He could still regenerate from wounds, that he had figured out after falling out of the Etheric and using the limbs of a tree to slow his rapid descent.

  He willed himself to turn to Myst, that amorphous state which allowed him to disappear and fly, moving through gaps that only air could flow through.

  Except, he was still standing right in front of the boarded up living quarters, looking stupid.

  He turned to look around the area he was standing, but there was nothing but the old, run-down base and a bird that was flying overhead about a quarter-mile to the north.

  And, he wasn’t in his Myst form at all.

  “Ok, something broke that used to work,” he muttered, “like my hair growing.”

  He made a fist and tapped on the board where the door should be. The noise from his knock confirmed his guess, it was hollow behind here.

  He made a fast, sharp punch and the board cracked. He did this twice more and reached in with his left hand, pulling out pieces of the board noticing the thickness of the wood.

  They really didn’t want anyone in here.

  Tossing the chunks of wood behind him, he grabbed a few more pieces and pulled, yanking them off. He found a metal crossbeam and smiled. Something he could really get a grip on. He set his feet, his eyes glowed red, and he pulled, the strain on his muscles felt good, felt warm, felt like…

  CRACK!

  A massive, ten-foot-high by a four-foot-wide chunk of the wood was breaking out of the protective surrounding. Michael frowned. He felt both stronger, and weaker at the same time. It was as if his energy was deeper, like his connection to the Etheric was beyond his previous ability.

  But his muscles didn’t work nearly as well. He flexed his arms, rolling his shoulders to test his body and had to agree.

  “Now, this is damned embarrassing,“ He was out of shape for the first time in over a thousand years. “Can’t let Bethany Anne see me like this. I’m hairless, and in desperate need of some serious exercise,” he huffed in exasperation.

  He took a step to the side and yanked three more times on the steel beam, and finally, the huge chunk of the wall cracked, and he tossed it to the side, dust coming up from the ground where it made a resounding crash.

  Behind the opening was the door that went into their apartment.

  “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” he checked the door knob, and it was locked. “Of course it is,” he kicked it open. What was inside surprised him.

  The front living room had the couches removed. There was a round table, with two chairs.

  The table stood in the center, a piece of paper in the middle. Michael walked past the table and went to the bedroom.

  It had their bed, made up. He looked around, but there was nothing else in the room. It seemed an empty room one might find at an old motel, it was so devoid of anything personal. He opened the closet, but it was empty.

  “No clothes, couldn’t you have at least left behind some clothes, baby?” he muttered. He stepped into the bathroom.

  Clean.

  He stepped out and made his way into the brighter main room. Heading straight for the table and the note, it was time to see what this was about.

  “Dearest Michael,

  Your clothes, if you should need them, are in the locked area near the Team BMW workshop. You should be able to Myst through the opening we left you at the top. I don’t know what you would want to wear, so I left you everything from suits to jeans and a few items in between.

  John and the Group left you a surprise.

  Further, there are weapons for you as well.

  I leave you these things because you made me a promise, one I expect you to fulfill. r />
  You had better return to me, or when I am done with the Kurtherians, I will figure out how to go back in time and kick your ass.

  All my love and my heart,

  Bethany Anne.”

  Michael stood there for minutes, reading and re-reading the note. She expected him to return and she was waiting. He calmly folded the note and put it in the pocket on his chest. The outfit he had on might be ugly, but it had a lot of pockets.

  He turned and walked out of the suite and took a slight left. He needed to go about a half mile around the front and to the other side of the airplane hangars where Team BMW’s area used to be. Apparently, his love had taken the fight out into space. And by the look of things, something must have happened here on Earth either before or after she left.

  Something that had caused them to leave Earth, and apparently for her to lock up their area and make it look like it was dangerous to check out. He suspected they had washed it down with radioactivity sometime in the past.

  Nothing he could feel, anyway. He sure hoped he wasn’t wrong and didn’t glow in the dark. That’s all he needed to see in the mirror.

  A bald head that reminded him of a light bulb at night.

  South of Douglas Mountain, old Colorado (United States Post-Apoc)

  The seven men decided to camp away from the main house this evening. Two of them nodded to each other and the first, the one with dark hair, walked out away from the fire to guard against the chance of someone trying to sneak up on them.

  It wasn’t likely to happen, but this evening, it was as much to protect against those from their own group coming up to the fire and listening to the talk as it was to protect from others who might wish them ill.

  The second man, David Tellison, waited ten minutes to make sure his friend was properly down the path. Once the time was up, he walked beside the fire which the other five guys were sitting around, drinking a form of coffee that they made out of bark off some tree and clapped his hands to get their attention.

  He looked around at the men eyeing him, “Ok, I know the rumors have been heard by everyone. So, I’m here to figure out what you guys are going to do when Boss Childers’ men attack Sarah Jennifer. I’ll tell you this straight up. She has been good to me, but she ain’t been good enough to me so that I take bullets for her. I ain’t waiting to be stuck there, guns in front and guns in the back of me.”

  Jackson spit over to the side, behind the log he was sitting on, “I figure he has what, forty guns?”

  David nodded, “That’s the low count, he can afford more.”

  Jackson chewed on a bit of jerky, “Wouldn’t be right to leave Sarah Jennifer and run over to Childers’ group.”

  “I’m not suggesting we go join Childers, even I know that would be a dick move,” David retorted.

  “Dick move or not,” Buddy spoke up, from his log next to Jackson, “It’d be easy money.”

  David nodded to Buddy. The man was strictly out for himself, and David figured if the best he could do was make sure six out of the seven here didn’t join Childers, then that was something for Sarah Jennifer.

  That night, five more decided to leave the employ of Sarah Jennifer and seek their fortune somewhere else.

  Somewhere that didn’t have thirty or forty men gunning for them.

  —

  The small town was less town as it was a stronghold. Men and women came in, some left again, others stayed. Either they were persuaded this was a safe location … or they remained, as slaves.

  The young woman, attractive, used her sense of touch to grab the next plate.

  Others asked the Boss why he kept an obviously deficient girl in the camp?

  Too many thought that a blind girl couldn’t listen and think for herself. But in that, they would be wrong. She hadn’t always been blind, that was a new development which had occurred when her group had been attacked. She had left her pack against her dad’s wishes and decided to travel the Fallen Lands. Seeking her fortune, he told her, was a damned fool’s journey.

  She had yelled back that she would just be a damned fool then.

  Now, she couldn’t see. For her kind, it was almost unheard of. She should have healed from the damage by now, or be dead.

  She wasn’t dead. The hours in front of a tub of water washing dishes and occasionally in front of a tub washing clothes, was proof she was still alive.

  But she could hear, much better than normal humans and she had heard the Boss’s answer.

  He was just waiting until she was old enough so he could bed her. Didn’t the rest of them see how beautiful she was going to be? He was waiting, he told the men, for the flower to be as beautiful as she would ever be before plucking it.

  Jacqueline always kept a knife secreted on her body.

  This flower, she had decided, was going to have thorns.

  Deep under the base.

  The E.I. woke up.

  It had been in a passive mode for almost eighty-two years, by the records it kept. The typical intrusions into the base had been logged, and it had obediently uploaded the information to the E.I. resources in outer space. Placed there by TQB Enterprises when they had used this base.

  Well over a hundred and fifty years before.

  The base E.I. was hidden behind tons of rock that had been dropped before the old government could try to force their way into this hidden server room.

  However, the E.I. was still connected, still recording, and still updating the files to the E.I.s in outer space.