The First Prophet by Kay Hooper
PROLOGUE
They moved with the kind of stealth that came of long experience and grim purpose, and they didn’t waste a motion or make a sound. They numbered no more than half a dozen, not counting the man who stood back from the isolated cabin they had encircled and watched them. He had extremely well-developed night vision.
Through his unobtrusive, almost invisible headset, a whisper reached him.
“She’s not alone. Brodie’s with her.”
He barely hesitated before speaking softly into the microphone. “How long have they been here?”
“The vehicle is cold.”
“Then he’s had time to call in reinforcements.”
“Maybe. But we have lookouts posted, and no one’s reported any movement toward this position. We may have hours yet.”
“And we may not.” Duran glanced back over his shoulder at what daylight would have shown was a cliff edge no more than a few feet behind him, and a sheer drop to a boulder-littered canyon below. “Brodie chose well; this is an easily defensible position. For him. I don’t propose to be trapped here, and dawn is minutes away. I assume Brodie is armed.”
An unamused chuckle came from the headset. “He usually is. To the teeth. And he’ll go down fighting to protect this one.”
“I know.” Duran wondered absently whether his lieutenant had reached this conclusion because he knew the fragile young psychic inside the cabin very much resembled another young woman Brodie had nearly died trying to protect years before, but the next words he heard through his headset answered that question for him.
“She’d be as valuable to him as to us. If we’re right about her potential, she’s worth ten times her weight in gold.”
“Yes. I need to know what’s going on inside that cabin. Move closer. Carefully.”
Not being psychic himself had its drawbacks, Brodie knew. Like now. How the hell could he tell her she was wrong when he wasn’t sure?
“I have to try,” she insisted, her face too gaunt for a young woman and her eyes far too strained.
“You can’t.” He kept his voice matter-of-fact, having learned at least that psychics as a rule loved a challenge—and young women could rarely resist one. “You’re exhausted. You haven’t slept for two days or eaten since yesterday. Besides that, it’s new to you, not yet under control—”
Her soft laugh was hardly a sound. “If I don’t at least try, it’ll be under their control. They’re here, Brodie. They’re all around us. I can feel them.”
Brodie didn’t let her see the chill he felt crawling up and down his spine. “I can hold them off until our people get here. The sun’ll be up in less than an hour, and the bastards aren’t invisible. Until then, even if they could they wouldn’t bust in with guns blazing, not with you here.”
She was shaking her head, and her voice shook as well. “No, they want me badly. He wants me badly. They might take the risk of wounding me. I think they might. And they’d kill you for sure, you know that.”
“Listen to me.” He held his voice steady, held both her hands tightly, and tried his best to hold her gaze despite the way it darted around in building panic. “The windows are shuttered and, like the door, are made of steel-sheathed solid oak with iron hinges and locks. The walls are two feet thick. There’s no chimney. This cabin is a fortress. They’d have to take it apart to get to us. That’s one of the reasons I picked it.”
She wasn’t listening, wasn’t hearing. “I have to…try. I have to stop them. What they’ll do…You don’t understand, Brodie, what they’ll do to me. You can’t understand.”
“Jill, don’t. Don’t let them panic you into doing something that could destroy you.”
She snatched her hands from his grasp and backed away from him. “I’m afraid of them, don’t you know that? Terrified. I know what they’ll do if they get me. I know. My dreams have shown me. Over and over again. They’ll hurt me. They’ll hurt me in ways you couldn’t imagine in your worst nightmares.”
“I won’t let them hurt you—”
“You can’t stop them. But I can. I know I can.”
Brodie saw her eyes begin to darken and lose focus, saw her entire body tense as she called on all the energies she had left in a desperate attempt to form some kind of weapon that her panic demanded she try to use to save herself.
And even with only five senses to call his own, Brodie had a terrible premonition. “No! Jill, don’t—”
Duran’s headset crackled softly in his ear, and he pulled it off and stared at it. He was granted only that warning, and only scant seconds to understand what it portended. For him, it was enough.
Without putting the headset back on, he snapped into the microphone, “Remove the headsets. Now.” And dropped his to the ground.