This was the gathering. This was the 3000, as the reporters called it.
Now the crowd stood in complete silence, fixed on the stage, staring at Johnny, who stared back through his sunglasses, feeling with them.
Feeling what Kat felt. The electrical charge of expectancy. But she felt more than that. She knew because she'd
seen
this feeling before.
They were feeling the kingdom of light, which raged bright around them, just past their eyesight.
Beside Kat, a thin, gray-haired woman was crying silently from eyes that said she'd been here before. It was about time.
Kat swallowed and looked back at the platform. The two towers of speakers stood to either side, silent now. Two spotlights had been rigged to shine on center stage, and someone had set a potted fruit tree with some apples on it to the back.
Otherwise it was just Johnny. And those sunglasses, which everyone attributed to some kind of affliction that made his eyes sensitive to light. But Kat knew the truth.
Johnny could see best in the dark.
“Take them off,” she whispered to herself.“Show them the light, Johnny.”
The gray-haired woman glanced down, then faced forward again.
Johnny had already spoken for ten minutes, calmly explaining that if the authorities came, no one should lift a finger against them. If police wanted to take them to prison, they should go. Even in prison they could speak the truth.
He told them that the beacon of light that had been ignited in this valley had been seen by the whole worldâit was all he could ask for. The rest was out of his hands. Most people would vow to stomp out the light, and they would not stop until they believed they were successful. But a few would follow the light and step into the kingdom.
Then he fell silent.
And so did the crowd.
Someone whispered,“Thank you, thank you, Father,” nearby. The gentle sound of sniffing could be heard here and there. But otherwise even the children had been trapped in Johnny's silence. No squabbling, no crying, just . . .
. . . silence. Beautiful, sweet silence.
Kat wanted to scream at the top of her lungs. Raise her fists and just scream because she felt like she might burst if she didn't.
Instead she stood there and let her fingers tingle.
And let the silence work deeper.
Then Johnny spoke.
“Who has believed our message, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?”
Kat knew these words penned by a prophet several thousand years ago! Johnny had poured over them with her like an excited child. He had a copy of the scrolls found near the Dead Sea dating back to the time before Christ. The book of Isaiah, chapter fifty-three.
She knew the words and had become as addicted to them as Johnny was.
Kat gripped both fists before her chest and raised up on her toes in her excitement.
Show them, Johnny. Show them the light!
“He grew up before the world like a tender shoot out of dry ground.” Johnny's voice was soft and low, so that she had to lean into the words. They should have been screamed.
But in his softness, Johnny was screaming. Not a single soul could hear this and not know: Johnny was indeed screaming.
“He had no beauty, nothing in his appearance that would make man desire him. He was despised and rejected and hated by men. A man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. They hid their faces from him. Who was this man?”
No one dared answer. It was Johnny's prerogative, Johnny's honor. His voice trembled with each word, as if by uttering them he sowed magic in the air.
The sound of weeping began to wax through the valley, softly, like the hushed sniffs of a mother remembering the long-past death of her son.
Johnny lifted one hand and spread his fingers.“He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for the evil in our hearts. He was smitten and afflicted, and his brutal punishment brought us peace.”
A single tear leaked down from behind his dark glasses.
Show them,
Johnny. Show them!
“Who was this man?”
Still not a soul dared speak. Not yet.Who could dare interrupt?
“He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, cut off from the land of the living. He bore the sin of many and his name was Jesus.”
A roar erupted. From humming silence to ground-shaking thunder, these three thousand followers who'd entered the kingdom of light could hold back their agreement with the words of magic no longer.
They tilted their heads and opened their throats and filled the air with a cry that drew tears from Kat's eyes in rivers.
It was so dramatic, so over the top, so unearthly, yet so, so, so real. And Kat could hardly stand it.
“Show them!” she cried, eyes clenched, hardly aware that she was yelling aloud. “Show them. Show them, Johnny!” In this moment there was nothing she wanted so desperately as to see that light again.
“Show them, Johnny!”
The crowd's roar had peaked, and that last cry screamed above them all in its high pitch.
Show them, Johnny.
He slowly turned his head and looked down at her. A tortured smile spread over his face. He continued to speak but kept his eyes on her.
“He taught that he was the only way, and that following him made for a light burden, open to all: the poor, the disadvantaged, the sick, the lepers, the widows, the lost and hurting and wounded. And he taught that the path was narrow, missed by most. For that teaching they hated him, and he warned any who dared follow him that they, too, would be hated.”
Johnny took his eyes off Kat and scanned the people who stood in the lights of the surrounding porches and three overhead streetlights. The sun had vanished behind the western mountains, leaving behind a gray sky. The evening was cool, but Kat's skin tingled with heat.
Show them, Johnny.
“They will come for us because they hate us. Not because we are Christians or Muslims or Hindus, but because we would rather follow the teachings of Jesus and die than deny them and live.”
Kat had been so fixated on Johnny that she hadn't seen the woman who approached the right of the stage, staring up at Johnny. It was the woman who'd spoken to Holly yesterday. The government's agent, Darcy Lange, who'd come wearing sunglasses like Johnny, despite the dark.
Had he seen her?
“But I'm not asking you to die,” Johnny said. “I'm only asking you to follow the light that first rescued you from the darkness.”
“Is this the same light that I followed?” Darcy's voice rang out for all to hear. She walked toward the stage as Johnny turned.
“When I was a child, was this the truth that the priests shoved down my throat, Johnny?”
She stepped up the two crates that led to the platform.
“Are all my nightmares and my cold sweats the result of this light from heaven that has miraculously come to save the lost?”
They've come,
Kat thought.
“When all of this is over, will all your faithful disciples be left with the same fears that have haunted me for the last thirteen years?”
She faced the people and snatched her glasses from her face. Kat stared into her bright eyes.
“When they kill your daughters and sons who blindly followed you here, will you clap for joy and sing praises to the light?”
Kat wasn't sure what kind of power the woman possessed, but her voice sliced through her heart like a razor.
“Do you really want blood on your hands?” she cried.
The words might as well have been kicked from a mule. Kat caught her breath.
“You're fools! All of you, complete fools for believing all this nonsense about the sweet little baby Jesus!”
Kat wanted to scream again, this time in fear. How dare she say this?
Show her, Johnny. Show her!
But Johnny only smiled.
“Hello, Darcy.”
The woman spun back to him, jaw set.
“Welcome to the kingdom of light.”
BILLY BOILED with hatred but he was no longer confused, and that alone was worth any price he might pay for the evil roiling through him.
He burst into the command center with Kelly at his side and eyed Kinnard, who still wore his glasses. “I need to speak to you.”
Kinnard closed his phone. “Of course.”
Billy glanced around. “Where's Darcy?”
“She's not with you?”
Billy had offended Darcy. The thought that he should discuss all of this with her before he pulled the trigger crossed his mind, but Kelly touched his elbow and he pulled back from the thought.
“This is Kelly. You'll recognize her from the photographs on the wall.” He nodded at a corkboard that held a dozen pictures of the featured conspirators in Paradise. Hers was next to Johnny's and had a question mark under it.
“We have some information. Outside.”
Kinnard exchanged glances with the others and followed them out-side. “We're ordering the evacuation of Johnny in fifteen minutes,” he said, closing the door behind him. “Does thisâ”
“Change of plans,” Billy interrupted. A shaft of fear crashed through his mind and was gone. “We need to take them out.”
Kinnard hesitated before speaking. “Take them out.”
“Make an example of them. Before this becomes contagious. Meaning kill them. Drop a bomb down their throats. Take them out!”
He hadn't meant to hurl the words at Kinnard, but they came from a place of dark hatred that had fermented in his belly for a very long time.
“I'm not sure you have the authorityâ”
“You know very well that I have the authority to do whatever I think is reasonable to remedy this flagrant disregard for our nation's laws,” Billy snapped.“We have inside information that confirms the town is planning an all-out assault on any force that enters the town. They will let us enter and then slaughter us. Knowing this, I'm ordering a preemptive strike on Paradise. I want you to bomb them. I want you to kill them all.”
“Do you have any idea what kind of fallout we would be facing?”
“What did I tell you?” Kelly mumbled under her breath. She faced the mysterious CIA man who'd first saved Billy and Darcy from the killer in Pennsylvania.“Don't tell me the idea of cutting them down doesn't draw your blood to the surface. Their betrayal is unpardonable. One strike and this is all over. Just do it!”
Billy glanced from one to the other, surprised at the frankness of Kelly's demand, as if she were the true leader here.
But she was right. One strike would end it all, including Johnny's life.
Billy pressed. “Truth be told, I don't care one iota what you think we should do here, Kinnard. I want you to order the strike, and I want you to do it now. This is my responsibility, my call.”
“The snipers are in place, we could take out Johnny.”
“And create a full-scale revolt? Make a martyr out of a felon? Aren't you listening? They're armed to the teeth down there! The guns they dumped on the road were nothing but a lie. We need to end it. Now!”
For a few moments they stood in the night air, the woman born of Black and two men, deciding the fate of the world. At the least a very significant part of the world.
“You're sure?” Kinnard said
But the right corner of his mouth twitched, unsuccessfully betraying a grin of approval.
“Absolutely.”
Kinnard dipped his head once.“Okay. Okay, then. I hope you know what you're doing. The bomber is fueled. We can get it airborne in minutes.”
“Just do it.”
Billy glanced around. Where was Darcy?
He needed Darcy.
“WELCOME TO the kingdom of light.”
He was smiling, not a big grin plastered on his face, but a whisper of a smile that reached deep into Darcy's chest and filled her with rage.
The world was gathered and would peer in on this stage through the camera's eye. Enough military force to wipe out every living creature in this valley was gathered on the cliffs above them, waiting the order. Three thousand believers stood to her right, most probably willing to live or die for this so-called kingdom of light.
But all of them were truly at the mercy of two people now, facing each other on the stage. Johnny and Darcy. Two childhood acquaintances who'd grown up on opposite sides of the question that the whole world wanted answered, even if they long ago stopped asking.
Is it real?
Is there really another “kingdom” unseen by human eyes?
And what, please tell us, what does the here and now have to do with this
ancient prophet named Jesus?
Darcy knew the answers. No. No. Nothing.
True, she acknowledged there was more to the way the world worked than what we can see with our eyes. Her own gift was proof enough. But reality, in its purest form, surely had nothing to do with a solitary rebel who'd been put to death two thousand years ago!
But Johnny . . . he stood there with that gimpy grin because he actually, truly, completely believed all that hooey.
She took a deep breath, stilling the fury building in her chest. “Johnny, please. You have to listen to me. They don't know I'm here.”
“Why did you come, Darcy?”
She glanced at the people, expecting more participation from them. How had three thousand strangers fallen into lockstep so quickly? Well, she'd affected them with her one outburst, and she wasn't done with them yet, not by a long shot.
But Johnny first.
She looked into his glasses. “Maybe I shouldn't have come. Do you realize what's about to go down here? How many snipers have us in their sights at this very moment? They're going to use force if you so much as lift a finger, I thought you should know that.”
“Force?” Johnny looked at the people.“My friends, this is Darcy Lange, a representative of the United States government, and she says they're going to use force.”
“Please, I'm begging you, Johnny,” Darcy said, keeping her eyes on him. “It doesn't have to be this way. You've taken this too far.” Those who were looking at her eyes shifted uneasily under the power of her words.