35
CHAPTER 36
EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE
Near New Orleans, Louisiana
Three months earlier
The Voice of God pounded through his brain.
Kill.
Kill them both.
The man and the woman.
Sacrifice them.
Tonight.
This is your penance.
He lay on the sweat-stained sheets of his bed while neon light pulsed blood red through the slats of blinds that didn’t quite close over the windows. The Voice thundered in his ears. Reverberated through his head. Echoed so loudly, it drowned out the others—the little, screechy, irritating, fingernails-on-chalkboard voices that he thought of as belonging to bothersome insects. They too issued orders. They too disturbed his sleep, but they were small, annoying, and not as powerful as the Voice, the one he was certain was from God Himself.
A niggling doubt wormed through his mind, suggesting that the Voice was evil, that It might be speaking the words of Lucifer, the Lord of Darkness.
But no…. He couldn’t think this way. He had to have faith. Faith in the Voice, in what It told him, in Its ultimate wisdom.
Quickly he rolled off the cot and onto his knees. Deftly, from years of practice and sacrifice, he sketched the sign of the cross over his naked chest. Beads of perspiration collected on his scalp as he prayed for guidance, begged to be His messenger, felt a thrum from anticipating that it was he who had been sought out. He was God’s disciple. “Show me the way,” he whispered urgently, licking his lips. “Tell me what I must do.”
Kill.
The Voice was clear.
Slay them both.
Sacrifice the man and woman.
He frowned as he prayed, not completely understanding. The woman, Eve, he understood. Oh, how long he’d waited to do just what the Voice commanded. He envisioned her. Heart-shaped face with a strong, impertinent chin. The faintest hint of freckles bridging a short, straight nose. Intense eyes as clear and blue as a tropical lagoon. Fiery, storm-tossed hair.
So beautiful.
So headstrong.
And such a whore.
He imagined what she let men do to that athletic body…. Oh, he’d seen her before, peeked through the slit between her curtains and seen taut skin stretched over feminine muscles, skin that moved fluidly as she bathed. Her breasts were small, firm, and tipped with rosy-hued nipples that tightened as she stepped into the bathwater.
Yes, he’d watched her, spying upon her as those long legs slipped over the edge of the tub, unknowingly flashing him just a glimpse of the pink folds and red curls at the juncture of her thighs.
Thinking of her, he felt that special tingle that only she could entice from him, the hot run of blood that flushed his skin and caused his cock to thicken in anticipation.
If only he could run his fingers inside her legs, lick those tight little breasts, fuck the hell out of her. She was a whore anyway. In his mind’s eye he saw himself mounting her, his toned body taut over hers, his cock driving deep into that hot, wanton wasteland where others had spilled their seed.
He was breathing hard.
Knew what he was thinking was a sin.
But he wanted to ram deep into her just once.
Before the killing.
And he had the opportunity. Hadn’t the Voice instructed him to prove what a whore she was?
But what of the man?
As if the Voice had heard his thoughts, It whispered, You are the Reviver. The One I have chosen for this task to revive the souls of the weak. Do not fail me. It’s up to you who will live and who will die. Now, go!
Realizing he was still on his knees, he made another swift sign of the cross and felt a jab of shame that God might have read his thoughts and learned of his weakness where she was concerned. He had to fight the lust. Had to.
And yet, as he stood, stretching his honed muscles, he felt needles of anticipation piercing his skin, desire causing his groin to tighten almost painfully.
The Reviver. The Voice had given him a name. He rolled it around in his head and decided he liked it, enjoyed the thought that he was the decider, the one who ultimately chose who lived and who died. It was a good sign, wasn’t it, that the Voice had decided to name him? Kind of like being anointed, or knighted. The Reviver. Yes!
He dressed in the dark, pulling on his camouflage pants and jacket, ski mask and boots, the uniform he hung from a peg near the door. His weapons were already stowed in his truck, hidden in a locked drawer in the false bottom of his toolbox. Knives, pistols, silencers, plastic explosives, even a peashooter and darts with poisoned tips….
And something special, just for her.
He slid out of his dark room and stepped into the deep, mist-laden night.
He was ready.
Eve checked her watch.
Ten forty-five.
“Great,” she muttered between clenched teeth.
She was running late.
Despite the fact that the night outside the windshield of her Camry was thick with fog, she stepped on the gas. Her dented Toyota had nearly a hundred and twenty thousand miles on the engine but still leapt forward, ever reliable.
So she wouldn’t be on time. So what? A few minutes one way or the other wouldn’t hurt.
She took a corner a little too fast, cut into the inside lane, and nearly hit an oncoming pickup. The driver blasted his horn and she jerked on the wheel, slowing a little, her heart jack-hammering.
She forced herself to relax her grip on the wheel and take a deep breath. Roy could wait, she decided, thinking of the frantic phone call she’d received less than half an hour earlier.
“Eve, you’ve got to come,” he’d said in a rush, his voice tense. “To the cabin—you know the one. Where we used to go in the summer as kids. My uncle’s place. But hurry. I’ll…I’ll uh, meet you at eleven.”
“It’s late,” she protested. “I’m not going to—”
“I’ve got evidence.”
“Evidence of what?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here. Just come. Alone.”
“Hell,
