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“You idiots!” Chud sneered. “It’s me—see?” Turning the golden medallion The Charmer was mounted on, he pressed the shiny, glimmering surface into the palm of his hand.
The moment he made contact with The Charmer, he began to grow and his hair and beard became a thick silver again. His eyes were no longer squinty and features were suddenly handsome—also, the pockmarks disappeared from his skin.
“Oh—my Prophet!” the other Elder gasped. “Thank goodness! There is something you must know.”
“What? Be quick about it,” The restored Prophet snapped.
“Somehow every word you say—along with your image—is being broadcast to the big screen in the park—and all the other screens too!” the other Elder exclaimed. “We just found out but I’m afraid it’s been going on for some time.”
“What?”The Prophet nearly shrieked. “But how can that be? I’m not standing on the stage and the camera isn’t even turned on!”
The first Elder shook his head.
“We don’t know, my Prophet, but it’s happening.”
“Youdid this! The two of you did it!” The Prophet was suddenly pointing his blaster right at Mia’s chest. “I don’t know how but you got me to confess!You’reto blame!”
“No!” Sev shoved Mia behind him just as The Prophet pulled the trigger.
He saw the blast coming but he couldn’t move in time—didn’t want to move because he had to shield his partner. It felt as though something sharp and burning pierced right through him and a moment later he was looking down at the smoking hole in the left side of his chest—exactly where his heart was.
“Mia!” he gasped, his last thought for the safety of the woman he loved.
And then his eyes closed and he fell and knew no more.
FIFTY-TWO
MIA
“Drag him out of here and throw him through the wall of the Dome like all the others,” Mia dimly heard The Prophet say to the Elders. She felt like everything was very far away. Sev had shoved her behind him and then she had heard the blaster go off. The beam had passed right through him and past her—so close it singed her hair. Then she had seen Sev fall down and stop moving—but he couldn’t really be dead, could he?
No,she told herself numbly.No, it’s not true. It can’t be true. As long as I don’t look, it’s not true.
She kept her eyes off the ground, not looking down to where her partner’s body lay. As long as she didn’t look, it hadn’t happened.
“No, wait—don’t do it yet,” The Prophet said as some of the Elders bent down to grab hold of Sev. “I might need the body as a prop. I’m going to have to do some serious damage control here. But first—someone help me fix this.”
He waved the broken chain connected to The Charmer. There was a flurry of activity and soon he was able to put it around his neck again.
Mia felt a sense of relief. With the glimmering sparkle of The Charmer to stare at, she no longer had to concentrate so intently on not looking down at the floor. She felt her mind slipping away…going to a place where nothing bad could hurt her. Where nothing mattered but—
“Daughter, you must wake!”
Mia blinked and looked around. Where had that voice come from? Was someone talking to her? And if so, how come nobody else seemed to be able to hear it?
“I speak for your ears alone for you are the only one who can resolve this situation,”the voice said. It was a warm, feminine voice filled with power and grace.
“I…I don’t understand,” Mia whispered. “Who are you?”
“I am the Mother of All Life and I have come to help you do what must be done,”the voice said.
Mia’s eyes went wide. She knew that “the Mother of All Life” was what the Kindred called their Goddess—the deity they believed had created them all. Privately she had always discounted this, as she discounted and rejected all religion since she’d gotten away from the sect she’d been raised in.
“I…I don’t believe in God…or any Goddess, either,” she muttered.
“And yet, I am here,”the Goddess informed her calmly.“I do not need your belief to exist. And I believe in you, daughter—that is one reason I have come to help you.”
“Help me how?” Mia whispered. “Nothing matters now. Sev is…he’s…he’s…” But she couldn’t make herself finish the sentence—it was too awful to consider that she might never see her partner—the man she loved desperately, though she had realized it too late—ever again.
