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By ClericWolf - Part 1|2|3|4
“A single
focused rock can topple a mountain of hope.”
~ Grammaton Cleric: Ezekiel Kayne
Preston’s
investigations had been all for naught, every lead he tried to follow
and every clue that he found led to a dead end. Without the
mind-numbing embrace of Prozium, Father’s plan seemed to be working,
his spies reported a ‘rattled’ and increasingly ‘paranoid’ John
Preston. The man was going out of his mind and scrabbling for any
thread that might give him resolution, they were confident that they
had succeeded in breaking the one that opposed them.
As the months rolled off the calendar like fallen leaves the ‘cold god
of death’ as many had come to call him, had turned to those things that
numbed the pain, the vices that Father had forbidden – alcohol being
the great nepenthe now. He sat quietly in his barren room, cut off from
his friends and allies – all alone and brooding, his face darker than
the night sky above New Libria.
Another shot of whiskey found its way in a cold shiver down the man’s
throat and he stared glassy-eyed at the picture of his beloved Robbie
and Lisa, torn from him in a fire-filled conflagration before he could
really get to know them both again. He silently cursed the fates and
threw the glass against the wall, he asked himself were all these
emotions truly worth it?
As the glass shattered into tiny sparkles of diamonded light Preston
closed his eyes and took a deep breath, remembering the last time he’d
spoken to his friend Tara. He had cut her off just like everyone; with
his enemies out there he needed no-one else to be caught in the
crossfire.
And so it was that his opponents watched and waited for the man to fall
even further into this dark miasma, almost gleeful in a way that their
plan had turned out much better than they could have ever planned. But
what is it one says about the best laid plans of mice and men? They
often go astray, due to the most unforeseen of circumstances.
In the dark lair of Father and his minions a discussion curled through
the air like the damp smoke from a perched cigar. The subject of course
was none other than the fallen angel of death, John Preston.
“Is it time yet?” Ezekiel strode into the meeting with a glowering
expression, all the signs of his previous control were slipping as the
rebels stocks of Prozium had dwindled to just a few phials – they were
all experiencing the new-found emotions, the destructive power of anger
and the seductive caress of hatred.
Father looked up from his speech and gave Ezekiel a wan-smile. “My
friend we were just discussing the very subject, would you like to join
us?”
Ezekiel Kayne snorted and pulled out a chair with a snap of his black
gloved hand. “I would…”
Father ignored the other man’s disobedience and promised himself that
it was only the lack of Prozium that made his dependable right hand man
act like a buffoon. The rest of the renegade Clerics from the
pre-chaotic Libria sat in silence and held their tongues.
“I believe that soon it will be the time in invite our friend into our
home, to once and for all settle this debacle and plant the seeds of
Libria’s re-growth. While we number but twenty stalwart souls, we are
the last of the true Clerics and the last of the true Librians.” Father
began again with his soft cajoling voice whispering the sweet treacle
words, as if any lie he could turn into a vibrant truth.
“About time,” Kayne hissed softly.
Father sighed and continued on with a darker tone. “John Preston must
be made to pay for the crimes he has committed against us, against our
beloved Libria.” He ranted like this for a good hour while the rest of
his Clerics sat wrapped in every word.
The rest all save for Ezekiel, the darker heart of this man had always
been one of his strengths but without the drugs to keep it in check; he
was already starting to have ideas above his station. He pondered idly
that if he really wanted, he could remove Father and deal with this
business himself once and for all.
“So what do you think?” Father turned to Ezekiel and questioned him
directly.
“I think we talk too much and we should find Preston, kill him and end
this,” Kayne shrugged his shoulders and sneered.
“The plan,” Father began.
“Is flawed,” Kayne countered.
“What?” Father could not believe his ears as the Grammaton Cleric
flagrantly disobeyed him once more.
“You heard me old man, it’s flawed, we have destroyed our enemy and in
turn we have lowered ourselves to nothing more than – thugs,” Kayne
stood up and waved a hand to encompass everyone present in a sweeping
arc of motion. “Bombs and terror tactics are the recourse of the
diseased mind, it’s you who has lost the way and it’s you who has
become the cancer at the core…Our Father.”
Father’s jaw tightened and he gripped the edge of the table with his
hand, his knuckles went white and he stared in disbelief at the younger
man.
“You dare!” Father kept a tight reign on his emotions, he would not let
himself be goaded, his world was not going to come crumbling down.
“I do more than that,” Kayne had reached his limit, with no Prozium to
guide him Father’s soft words and narrow-minded attitude had rankled to
the man’s core, he snorted and in a smooth motion his sidearm slid out
– it took one shot – just the one and the coldness of the action left
the rest of the assembled in shock.
Father’s body rolled back and he crumpled to the ground, a single red
dot upon his forehead like some baptismal mark of death.
“What have you done?” One of the Clerics rose to his feet and stared in
horror at Ezekiel’s smoking pistol.
“I have reset the balance of power. Father has grown long in the tooth
and in any pack when the old are no longer useful, they are left in the
wilds to die. I am the right hand of his word, we will do things as
they should have been done in the first place – no sneaking and no
knives in the back – bombs and poison are the tools of the weak.”
Ezekiel Kayne did not mourn his mentor’s passing; he was full of the
new found sense of power acquired through the basest of betrayals.
“You have a plan?” The same Cleric questioned, hopeful of a reasonable
answer.
“I do,” Kayne looked to the dead body. “Remove this thing and I will
outline it.”
With some trepidation the other Clerics did as they were ordered, they
were all suffering from withdrawal now and their skills were
deteriorating rapidly. Ezekiel could keep the law and order of the gun
from now on, none of them could challenge him for leadership.
“It is done,” Fallon sat back down and folded his arms. “Tell us what
you plan to do?”
“We rely upon you for direction now,” another Cleric added in an
attempt to quell the rising fear in his belly.
Ezekiel Kayne surveyed them all and tapped his fingers
together with a swift motion; he offered each and every one of them a
cold smile. “We kill John Preston, Jurgen and topple this makeshift
‘illusion’ of government, with our might we can do anything – we are
Clerics of Libria not children of tomorrow!”
“Yes!”
Slowly the assembled stood to their feet and began to clap, the fuel of
this sound only added to Kayne’s conviction and he nodded grimly. Yes,
this is how it should have been in the first place, he should have been
the top of the pack from the beginning, Father was an old man, weak and
feeble – he had no vision left – vision came from within and not some
mouldering tome.
John’s dreams had been liquid and nightmarish; in his head he replayed
the deaths of everyone close to him. Errol Partridge had died at
Preston’s hands. His wife had died because he was not strong enough to
stand against Father’s law. His children had died because he had tried
to build something good from the ashes of Libria.
His nightmares took a turn for the worse and began to seem almost
prophetic, Ezekiel Kayne and Father laughing over a strange elongated
box. He’d heard about such things, before the furnaces – the dead were
interred in the ground.
Preston woke with a start to hear an angry buzz in the back of his
head; it swam with a terrible and convulsing pain. The throb was
powerful and insistent, almost like a rolling thunder in his brain – he
looked at the empty bottle of whiskey and blinked, is this what he’d
become?
A book lay on his bed by his side, he threw it across the room and
glared at the cover, a well known tome lent to him by the female
Cleric. Tara.
He checked his face in the mirror and noted the sallow cheeks, rheumy
eyes and the irregular patches of stubble upon his chin. He shaved
quickly and took a comforting shower, hoping to wash everything away
with the soft-warm caress of the water.
He replayed everything once more in his head as he stood under the
shower head and closed his eyes, putting both hands against the back of
the wall and letting the water flood him. His breathing slowed and he
began to focus more rationally, reaching inside the part of himself
that contained his years of training and understanding, the part of
himself that he’d almost forgotten – how could he have been so blind,
the answer to his problems was simple enough.
They wanted him dead…
They wanted Libria back to how it was supposed to be…
They couldn’t kill him, he’d proven too strong, so they destroyed his
spirit and took his children away.
His jaw tightened and he hit the back wall with the palm of his hand,
the pain never truly went away from Robbie and Lisa’s deaths. A new
wave washed over him and he fought to control it, but somewhere between
the self-pity, loathing and grief he saw a tiny shred of hope.
He went back to the final part of his dream and shut down the shower,
towelled himself off and dressed in record time. He picked up the phone
and called two people, Tara and Jurgen asking to meet them in the
abandoned church where he’d first begun his road to freedom, at the
cost of a dear friend’s life.
The time and place was set…
The hours rolled by as Preston prepared. Then he drove to the location
and sat down on the floor. The inner area of the church was quiet as
the night embraced it, the stars poking through the cover of cloud like
tiny diamonds against a velvet cloak.
He was able to read passages from the very same book that cost
Partridge his life, knowing that his enemies were watching him; their
spies lurked in the further reaches of the ruin. He could almost sense
them through his training, this was perfect, and this is what he wanted
them to see.
He closed the book and checked his watch, checked everything and nodded
grimly for one last time. Then he whispered just enough so any listener
could hear it.
“I am truly sorry my old friend,” Preston said and put the barrel of
his sidearm to the side of his head.
They saw a defeated and humbled Preston as nothing more than a shadow
against the wall, lit by the callow light of the moon that now streamed
in through the ruin of an old window. His shadow and the agonizing
‘bark’ of the gun.
The timing couldn’t have been more perfect, just as the sound
reverberated through the once holy place Jurgen and Tara burst in,
their reaction was a perfect footnote to the end of the illustrious
John Preston’s career and Fallon and Michaels watched it all from their
hiding place.
Tara’s agonised scream of, “no!” coupled with her feverish attempts to
wrestle from Jurgen’s sudden vice-like grip was like music to their
ears. Ezekiel would be pleased; they would be rewarded for informing
him of Preston’s ignoble end.
With this in mind the two watchers made their swift escape from the
church and returned back to the lair, back to the underground catacombs
and passages beneath the New Libria. They wasted no time in their
return journey moving as if possessed by a spirit of determination
unlike any other, until at long last they stood before the Cleric’s
room.
Michael’s hand trembled as he raised it to knock upon the door, rapping
lightly upon the surface for three times only. From within the room
came a stern, “enter,” spoken in dour and taciturn tones.
They stepped within and were greeted by Ezekiel Kayne dressed now in
the strict lines of a uniform akin to the one Father wore.
“I trust,” he began with acidic intent. “You have some form of news for
me?”
“We do, Fallon and I were following your orders – to observe John
Preston,” Michaels looked to his partner for support and then back to
the glowering apparition. “We followed John Preston to the old church
where after a few hours, he took his own life.”
Ezekiel had been bored up until this very moment and he sat down hard
upon the nearest chair and remained in silence for a long time, until
the barest of laughs bubbled forth from his lips.
“John Preston…is dead?”
“Yes Sir,” Fallon nodded and looked to Kayne. “Is that not glorious
news?”
Ezekiel shook his head and spat the words out like venom. “No it is
not!” He bellowed. “We were supposed to be the ones that killed him,
not Father’s ghost!”
“Sir?”
“Don’t you see, Father’s plan worked and he sits now mocking us…mocking
me…I can see his bloodless corpse, all bloated and swollen with
self-satisfaction, the ruination of John Preston has become my own!”
Ezekiel’s grip and sanity were starting to shift; he began to giggle a
little and stood up. “Why didn’t you two stop him?”
“Stop him?”
“Yes, you could have stopped him, or did you want me to look like a
fool?” Ezekiel had always been a couple of steps away from madness,
paranoia borne of the lack of Prozium finally kicked in and the ranting
Cleric eyed both men with a mounting sense of betrayal.
“You planned this!”
“No, Sir! I, we did not!” Fallon tried to defend them, tried to reason
with Ezekiel and failed…
Two gunshots echoed in the lower catacombs as Ezekiel’s madness claimed
him fully, he laughed and kept putting bullets into the corpses until
he sat down hard again and looked at the smoking pistol in his hand.
“You will not lie to me, cheat me or betray me?” He asked of the gun,
the metal felt warm and responsive against his fingers.
A thin curve of smoke almost smiled in a reassuring manner, he tucked
the pistol away and walked over the two bodies. “I must pay my
respects.”
The news of John Preston’s death shocked the society of New Libria and
unleashed a cataclysm of newly discovered emotion across the face of
the city, it echoed to every corner of every building – even touching
those Clerics who now followed Ezekiel, albeit in a different manner.
As now was the tradition and custom in New Libria, John’s body was
prepared and dressed in his immaculate white suit, loaded into an
elongated box and dropped into the ground. His funeral was a massive
state occasion and everyone turned out to pay their respects, the
procession was lined all along the streets and right up to the new
graveyard, where already headstones were standing in mute silence like
old and forgotten soldiers.
Jurgen and Tara were there along with the Governess and other assorted
dignitaries, those people that had been close to John. There were more
tears that day than have ever been recorded in the history of mankind;
there wasn’t a dry eye amongst every citizen of the city. Of course
those that did not count themselves as citizens were celebrating the
defeat of their nemesis.
Ezekiel Kayne had watched this whole affair with a detached air of
boredom, the whole ritual screamed against everything he knew. He would
have to re-educate so many people and of course there would be some
losses, after all, you need examples to illustrate how the herd should
follow.
He hung back from the society like a carrion bird and trailed the
procession until it reached the graveyard, where the newly ordained
priest gave a strange speech and blessed the dead man in the name of
some god or other, things had fallen so far and so quickly Ezekiel
mused.
A few more tearful goodbyes and one by one they left the graveyard,
Tara and Jurgen were the last to go standing quietly at the headstone
until she could take it no more and collapsed into a tear-filled heap
in the other man’s arms. He held on to her the best he could but as
always, his lack of emotion provided scant comfort in her grief.
When they finally left Kayne did not make his move, he remained under
the cover of the other buildings until night cast a bitter chill over
the city and plunged the graveyard into a cloak of shadow. It was only
then as the first of the stars dared to creep out under an opium moon
that Kayne crept forth from his hiding place as the whispers of rain
trickled from the skies.
It did not take long for the weeping clouds to disgorge the full fury
of their torrential anger upon the ground, soaking it within minutes
and turning the graveyard into a muddy sloshing mess. Heavy droplets
splashed into puddles as Ezekiel made his way to the headstone of
Grammaton Cleric John Preston, pulling back the hood of his coat so he
might gaze upon the newly dug ground.
“I had hoped,” he began and knelt down at the front of John’s grave. “I
would be the one to kill you John, you were one of the best, but not as
good as me,” the man’s ego blistered through the rain as the water
soaked his hair, plastering it to his skull.
The sky answered with an angry roar of thunder and a lash of lightning,
bringing memories full circle in the Cleric’s mind back to the
awakening of Libria.
“You almost had us John,” he chuckled. “But in the end you were slain
by a ghost, imagine that, the irony of it all – Father’s own plan
worked to bring you to ruin but it robbed me of my prize.”
“I had to kill him John, there was no other choice, and like you he
lacked vision and was weak.”
“But he robbed me of my prey, even in death. Can you hear him laughing
John?”
“Can you?”
“Are you laughing John?” Ezekiel looked to the sodden ground and caught
sight of a spade lying close by. “Are you even in there John?”
He had not been able to see them inter Preston, or prepare him. He
hadn’t been able to get past the security; it had been tighter than
under Father’s reign. A slight notion burned to the forefront of his
mind, what if Preston wasn’t in that box – what if he’d been hunting
the catacombs and killed his men while he was gone, what if he’d found
the starved body of the bomber, left to rot since Ezekiel needed him no
longer.
What if?
Failure was made of uncertainty, should haves and might haves. He must
know! And his hand automatically reached for the handle. Then slowly he
forced himself to dig, dig and find out, all the while the storm raged
on as if the heavens were angry at him, for despoiling this place with
his presence and his malign intention.
He dug in the pouring rain for the better part of an hour, shifting
dirt over his shoulder into piles behind him until the black coffin lid
appeared out of the ground, the sides of the hole already caving in as
he jumped down upon it, landing with a heavy thud.
The lid was torn off and hurled aside just as a white flash lit up the
skies, revealing Preston as pale as death in the bright flare. The
shock of seeing the corpse forced Ezekiel out of the hole and he landed
with a thud on the pile of dirt at his rear.
“So you,” he took a deep breath. “Did do it, you were buried here like
some common earth-worm, instead of being consumed in an all cleansing
flame!”
Another bright spark of lightning lashed across the clouds, blotting
out the stars for a moment and blinding Ezekiel as he looked upwards.
“Is this your anger John?” He questioned the unforgiving weather.
“No,” it answered. “This isn’t anger; it’s not about anger or hate
Ezekiel Kayne.”
Ezekiel’s stomach tightened into knots as the white apparition of John
Preston stood up from the coffin and pointed towards him.
“Are you satisfied with what you did?”
“It was Father’s plan to use the
bombs,” Ezekiel muttered and tried to stand, the wet ground threw him
off balance and he floundered before he finally got his feet.
“And you didn’t stop him?”
“I did in the end!”
“Too late for Robbie and Lisa,” the ghostly white figure shook its
head. “I always knew that Father was alive, even when I spoke to the
Vice Council. DuPont failed to see your ruse, and I almost missed it.”
“Now you and he are dead!”
“The cost Kayne, the cost was paid in the blood of my family but you
wouldn’t know, understand or care what it’s like to feel that kind of
loss!” Preston’s apparition snarled and he circled Ezekiel now forcing
the other man to stand close to the edge of the grave.
Where was his Clerics training and where was his iron resolve? The
pallid apparition of Preston hovered like a spectre before his eyes,
accusing him and driving the other man to depths of fear that without
Prozium took hold like a steel vice.
“So what now, are you going to shoot me John, you’re a ghost, you can’t
kill anyone!” Ezekiel laughed in the storm and wiped the rain from his
face. “Wait a moment, your face, its running?”
Preston smiled that smile, the slight twitch of his lips he reserved
for a moment before his own emotions left him, purged in the blink of
an eye. Father’s plan had worked up until Preston’s dream, the dream
that had been a result of reading the book at his bed, a book that was
penned by William Shakespere and told of a horrid betrayal, murder and
ghosts.
It was that very book that had given him his idea; he called Jurgen and
set a bold plan into motion.
Now the culmination of the ruse stood at the edge of the grave size, in
a vicious storm with the angel of death all dressed in white before him.
“Our Father,” Ezekiel began and moved his hand towards his weapon.
“Who art no more,” John uttered and his own pistol snapped forwards
from the hidden wrist holster, the clip already locked in place.
There were two shots, and only one of them struck home – it was enough
however to send the former Grammaton Ezekiel Kayne tumbling backwards
and into the coffin where he landed badly. His knowledge of the Gun
Kata could have saved him if Preston’s terror tactics, amplified by the
lack of Prozium had not been enough to drive him out of his mind at the
last moment.
The still smoking pistol followed Kayne into the coffin and landed by
his side, he couldn’t quite make out the shape of John Preston above
him, his eyes were full of water and the smell of blood lingered in the
air.
John Preston stood at the edge of the hole and emptied his clip into
the dying man, the trigger clicked once and in a mechanical gesture he
snapped the gun away. Jurgen melted out of the shadows nearby along
with several Sweepers, he’d been watching all along just in case things
had not gone Preston’s way.
“Is it over?” He asked the other man as John walked past him, offering
a shrug of his shoulders.
“We still need to round up the rest,” his voice was monotone and lacked
any real feeling.
“We can do that, you need to live John,” Jurgen said pointedly and
looked past towards where Tara stood, a little way by a black car.
“What’s left for me?”
“Self pity isn’t you John, look around. You have lost so much and now
you stand to lose even more,” Jurgen’s gaze fell on Tara again and he
shrugged his shoulders. “It’s up to you how you live John; it’s up to
you how you choose to continue from this point on.”
John Preston stopped walking and looked at the woman in black; her
makeup was streaked with the rain and her tears. Out of all of the
people that knew his death had been faked, thanks to his controlled
breathing and a tiny breather in the coffin itself – Tara was someone
who genuinely thought Preston was dead.
She didn’t know whether to cry with joy or shoot him on the spot, her
emotions conflicted back and forth until she broke down and wept again.
He went forwards and comforted her best he could, looking back at the
former Resistance leader and the Sweepers. He put his arms around the
woman and held her closely.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered and put her head on his shoulder. “I had to
draw them out. I was scared they would go after you next, it was a
logical choice.”
“I know,” she wiped her eyes and kissed his forehead. “I don’t blame
you, truth be told I think I would have done something similar.”
“Your book gave me the strength to fight, a plan to work from,” Preston
smiled at the light kiss.
“My book?”
“Macbeth,” he replied resolutely and laughed a little, finding humour
in the idea. “I created a ghost to draw them out and it worked.”
“It hurt a lot of people,” Tara said and huffed softly.
“I know and for that I am truly sorry,” Preston shivered as the wind
shifted and the rain came down even more harshly.
“What now?” Tara asked him and stepped out of the embrace.
“I was hoping that we could go for a coffee and something more
important…”
“Oh?”
“Say…something like…the rest of our lives?”
“I don’t know. I am pretty pissed at you John Preston, but I’ll settle
for punching you in the nose when you least expect it for giving me the
impression you were dead!” She was half-laughing and half-crying when
she said these words.
Preston put his arm around her shoulder and guided her towards the car,
looking back towards Jurgen and the Sweepers. They seemed to be making
good use of the coffin to seal Ezekiel’s body away for good.
“The last we shall see of him, but perhaps not his like,” Preston
opened the door and ushered Tara in. “We need to get you into some
drier clothes and I could do with a change.”
“As long as you don’t go running out on us again, we were worried John.”
“I won’t,”
Preston started the car and pulled out of the graveyard heading back
towards the main city. “I guess I have to go on air tomorrow and
explain the ruse?”
“Yes…” Tara answered glumly. “There are going to be some pretty upset
people wanting your head over this John, the Government for one.”
“I did what I had to,” John said and fixed his gaze onto the road now.
“We all did,” Tara replied solemnly, “even down to mourning the loss of
a hero.”
The black car wound its way slowly and carefully through the streets of
Libria under the watchful eye of the storm, the lightning curling in
fingers of blue and white to caress the clouds as the thunder roared
onwards – drowning out the sound of the car’s engine. There were so
many things left for Preston to do, this was not the end of his journey
but it marks the end of this particular tale for now – a fitting
footnote in the struggle against oppression and ignorance, sometimes to
achieve the end result – you must be willing to go the extra mile,
ignore the system and know what orders to follow and when to turn away
from blind obedience.
A price is always paid; nothing ever goes by without
incident.
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