The Victim (12 page)

The pickup truck ten feet away bore down on her. She barely had time to scream as she stepped sideways to the right, out of its path. The driver must’ve seen the taxi sliding at him, but it was too late. The pickup hit the backside of the cab and rose in the air, hitting a man who had been standing behind Sarah. It momentarily lifted the man off his feet by his head. The man dropped to the ground, his head barely attached.

The pickup landed on all four wheels and skidded to a halt. Sarah’s knees unhinged. She dropped to the pavement, shook her head to rid her mind of the images and then looked up at the black overcoats.

The man who got hit in the head had been right behind her.

His face was white, covered in powder.

They’re here.

She spun and checked her surroundings. If one of those white-faced men got too close, she would die. She knew this and now understood what Vivian had done. By standing in the road, two vehicles speeding to make a yellow light had collided. That accident had taken out an attacker.

She got to her feet, legs shaking.

Another man in an overcoat lay on the cement, his head leaking dark liquid.

Correction. Two white-faced men down.

The taxicab’s backdoor opened and a man stepped out on shaky legs. A woman followed, her hair ruffled from the accident. She adjusted her top and pulled up her skirt. The driver of the cab got out and walked around his cab to examine the damage.

The pickup driver exited his vehicle from the other side of the intersection.

Then two men in black overcoats and white faces stood from a kneeling position behind the taxi where they had been examining their friend.

Anger surged through her.

“Who are you?” she asked from a dozen feet away.

“Good evening, Sarah Roberts,” the ugly one with the protruding forehead said. “We are the Rapturites. We’ve come to take you home. Won’t you join us?”

“What the fuck …” She took a step back. Then another.

They advanced.

A siren blared in the distance.

She reached for the weapon in her waistband, then remembered what Vivian had said. Sarah couldn’t use the gun. She couldn’t kill them.

But I can end this right here, right now. I can shoot them in the feet and leave them to the cops.

She brought her hands back to her sides. She had to listen to her sister.

Shit.

The ugly one waved to her. “Come, join us in Rapture. The time is upon us.”

“Yeah, sure,” she shrugged. “Okay, but first, I gotta go down to the whorehouse and talk to your mother. Looks like you’ve been a bad boy and stolen her makeup again.”

Ugly smiled. He got uglier. She cringed.

“If we miss you now, we’ll keep coming. Nothing of this earth can stop us. We fear no one.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“It’s because of you that we’ve done this.”

“Don’t blame me for you being an asshole. I didn’t cover you in asshole dust and force you two to be such idiots.” She almost tripped, then righted herself. “You came after me, remember, dickhead.”

Sarah kept the distance to ten feet or more as she continued to back down Bloor Street, both men still advancing. Someone yelled at her that she had to stay at the scene of the accident. Another man had started to follow them, curious what was happening.

“At the mall earlier today, did you kill all those cops because you have no fear? Is that what this is? Why are you after me in the first place?”

“Because you’re one of the good ones. You help people.”

“That’s your logic for wanting to kill me—I mean Rapture me?”

“Yes, God only wants the chosen few before Armageddon begins.”

She looked skyward. “See what fame gets you?” She sidestepped an idling parked car. The intersection had filled with people wanting to help. It was a standstill now. The sirens were closer.

“No more running, Sarah. Come to us and we’ll end this.”

She passed an opening to a back alley that led between the stores. She stopped walking backwards. She looked down at her feet and saw a cell phone lying there. Quickly, she picked it up. Its glass screen was cracked and one corner was dented, but it looked like it still worked.

“Yeah, okay,” Sarah said. “I’ll just walk over there and let you kill me. What are you? Fucking crazy, numbnuts?”

She tossed the phone in her pocket and ran down the alley as fast as her legs could pump. At the corner, she turned right. In seconds she was back on Yonge Street, close to where Waller had smashed into the Hummer.

Detective Waller was being helped out of the driver’s seat. He hadn’t seen her yet.

She pivoted left and started down Yonge as fast as she could, dodging bystanders, hopping over a fire hydrant, trying to put as much distance between her and the men in overcoats.

Half a block down, she looked back but couldn’t see them anymore.

Farther south, at her hotel where Waller had picked her up, the Buick was attached to a tow truck. They were lifting the front end, getting ready to move it off the street.

She ran through the hotel lobby and hit the stairs. At her room, she ran into the bathroom and threw up in the toilet. She sprawled on the cool tile and breathed in deep, trying to stave off another burst.

She couldn’t.

It took three more clenches of the stomach to empty its contents. Her limbs shook and her stomach ached. She needed energy. She needed food.

The phone in her pocket rang. She pulled it out and saw the cracked image of a pretty girl calling.

Sarah hit the answer button.

“Hello?”

“Who’s this?” the girl asked.

“Not saying,” Sarah mumbled. “Too worn out to care.”

“Then, can you just tell Justin I’m sorry. You can have fun with him if that’s what he needs to make things right. But then he should come home.”

“Girl, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Sarah hung up the phone and set it on the floor.

She needed to find out who the Rapturites were and what they wanted with her. How could they find her so easily? Are they getting help?

Her arm numbed.

She crawled out of the bathroom and grabbed the pad and paper from the nightstand.

Then she blacked out.

She woke to a note written with urgency. Either that or Vivian had channeled through her weakened body and what amounted to scribbles was all that came of it.

A man named Matthew was working through someone named Simon Peter. Vivian couldn’t explain all the details. All she could tell Sarah was that Simon Peter channels his brother.

Simon Peter is an Automatic Writer, just like Sarah.

“Holy shit.”

Sarah deduced the rest. Since she had used her abilities to make things right and help people, she had become known. It had given her notoriety. She guessed this was something Simon wanted and was jealous of her for it. Killing Sarah under some religious guise gave him a chance to be the only Automatic Writer out there.

But that was petty. It couldn’t be that simple. Something else had to be at play here, and Vivian wasn’t offering more. The end of her note said that Vivian was being blocked. There were rules on the Other Side. She wasn’t all-seeing. Her abilities to help were with Sarah and Sarah alone. She could guide her and try to keep her out of harm’s way, but in the end, things could still go wrong, like when she was kidnapped four years ago.

“Okay, so now what?” Sarah asked out loud.

Her sister remained silent.

Sarah couldn’t stay in the hotel room. She had to be on the move or hide out somewhere until further instructions. Every police officer on the continent would be after her now that she had walked away from Waller’s pickup. She left him there unconscious after stealing his gun. The Rapturites were hunting her and had some kind of celestial help, although none of that made sense to Sarah. Could entities work through someone on this plane to do evil?

She answered her own question. There were malevolent spirits that cause violent hauntings and poltergeists. Maybe Simon’s connection, Matthew, was angry at Sarah for something.

She yanked the phone book out of the TV stand drawer and flipped through the yellow pages to martial arts. It was just after ten in the evening. She would walk the streets of Toronto for the night, watching her back, not staying in one place too long, not allowing Simon to catch up to her.

In that time she would work her way to a Shotokan dojo. After what she witnessed Waller do to that cop earlier tonight, she needed to learn a couple of quick specialty moves to keep those needle-carrying, white-powdered Rapturites away from her.

There was a Shotokan dojo six blocks from her on Jarvis Street.

She collected herself, checked her hair, rinsed her mouth out to get rid of the taste of bile, and left the room, the cell phone in her back pocket and Waller’s gun tucked safely in her waistband.

The next time the Rapturites got as close as they did tonight, she would empty Waller’s weapon into them.

With her resolve back, Sarah walked through the lobby, grabbed a handful of the candies out of the bowl on the counter and hit the street running.

Chapter 15

Simon and Philip had followed Sarah as far as they could along the alley, but when they came out onto Yonge Street, Simon saw Detective Waller getting out of the front seat with the help of two strangers.

Waller looked around, searching for something. Probably Sarah.

Their eyes locked.

Brother Philip nudged Simon’s arm. “Where did she go?” he asked.

Simon nodded toward Waller who hadn’t stopped staring, his eyes growing wider.

“You!” Waller screamed, pointing now.

Simon backed away. Philip followed suit.

“You did this,” Waller shouted. He struggled against the men supporting his weight.

Simon was close enough to hear Waller telling the men to let him go. He was a police officer and he needed to arrest someone.

Simon touched Philip’s arm. “I think we need to leave. Matthew will come again. We will get Sarah Roberts another time.”

Philip nodded, showing his agitation.

Together they walked briskly back up the alley, out the other side and headed east down Bloor Street away from the accident where a large crowd had collected. Paramedics had already covered the bodies of their brothers.

Simon whispered a prayer for Andrew and James. Philip seconded Simon’s amen a moment later.

“We lost a lot of our friends today,” Philip said, near tears.

“We didn’t lose them,” Simon said. “All that has happened is God has taken them as he will take us soon enough. They were good men who have been Raptured.” Philip slowed his pace. Simon turned to him. “Are you okay, brother?”

“What if we’re wrong? What if you’ve been lucky at guessing things, or maybe you actually do have some kind of power to foretell the future.” He kicked at a stone by his foot. “It’s just, they were my friends. If what we’re doing is right and just, why are they being killed and not Sarah?”

“Brother James was weak,” Simon said. “Everyone could tell. At the apartment this afternoon, you saw his demeanor. Everyone did.”

“He had questions, that’s all.”

“What kind of questions?”

They started walking again.

“Like what happened to your parents?”

“Brother Philip, do you really want to know my family history?”

Philip turned sideways. “Actually, yes. If I’m going to agree to kill people for God, then maybe I deserve a little family story. Humor me while we walk.”

Simon raised his forefinger. “Rapture, not kill.”

Philip nodded.

“Okay. I’ll tell you a condensed family story. But first we have to find a place to take our makeup and toupees off. Deal?”

A police car headed their way. Simon suggested they spit into their hands and try to remove as much of the paste as possible and take off their overcoats. They tossed them in the nearest bush as the cruiser drove by, headed in the direction of the accident.

“Let’s get out of this area. Waller made us. He might have called it in. They could cordon off this entire area any minute.”

They picked up their pace. Within ten minutes, they were crossing the Bloor Street Bridge over the Don Valley Parkway.

They found a little bistro on the Danforth, near Pape Street. They rid themselves of their cosmetics and sat in the back of the bistro. After ordering bread and red wine, Simon started talking.