Prophet of the Badlands (The Awakened Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Den, but her voice would let everything in the area find her. Tall buildings surrounded her with various degrees of decrepitude, some spilling their contents into the street while others appeared ready to collapse at a whisper.
    Her gait faded further to a slow rotating creep as she looked up at the structures. Within the wasp-hollows, tables, chairs, and other signs of man gleamed in the daylight. Amazed at how people could have made something so large, she lowered her gaze to the wall at her left, and touched it. She traced her fingers over the rough stone and wondered about the powerful mystics who must have been here to make the rock so flat and perfect. Energy within the material called out to her. The building was warm against her skin as she pressed herself to it, resting her cheek upon the surface between her hands. Eyes closed, she opened her thoughts to the spiritual imprint. Her vision swirled through flashes of history etched into the concrete by pain, desperation, and terror.
    Althea gasped and jumped away, shivering, staring with an accusatory glare at the wall. The images of many people dying in this place changed the presence of the city around her. The wonder and awe at the towering structures drowned in pitiful sorrow from feeling the final emotional moments of thousands of lives. She fell into a squat, wrapping her arms around herself as she cried, unable to stop the overwhelming tide of loss.
    A mournful call from a distant bird brought her attention back to the reality of being lost, hunted, and alone. She flung her hair out of her face with a twist of her head and looked around at the destroyed city. The surge of raw emotion had subsided, her feelings were once more her own. This had to be the reason she felt uneasy; something in this massive tomb hungered for more blood.
    She bounded to her feet and yelled. “Den!”
    Her voice echoed, weakening into the distance and chasing a group of birds out of their roosts amidst the steel girders above. A man’s voice grunted in pain to her left. Concerned, she jogged towards it, rounding a corner. The sight of two men clad in patchwork armor made of panels of leather and scrap metal halted her. Tanned skin gleamed in the relentless sun, smeared with dirt and marked with many old healed wounds. What scared her most were the rifles across their backs. The one on the left doubled over, but she sensed greed―not pain.
    He was faking.
    “Thar you is.” The standing one grinned at her.
    She took a step back, toes gripping the pavement. No one else was here, no one to threaten if she disobeyed. Before they could say another word, she sprinted off.
    “Hey. You ain’t s’posed ta do runnins!”
    “Yar,” yelled the shorter one. “Wez knowz da Prophet’s stories.”
    They chased after her, but she bought a few seconds by ducking through a gap in a wooden fence they had to break through. She hurried along a strip of smooth black stone between rows of blasted buildings and dozens of old cars, left where they crashed. A pause to pick a direction was brief; the sound of them smashing through the fence kept her moving. The men were too close. If she tried to hide here, they would surely see where she went. Half a block down, she spotted a narrow metal opening along the edge of where a strip of white stone bordered the dark path.
    She rushed over and crouched, peering into a pit below the ground. The two came out of the alley and charged; their sudden appearance drew a frightened gasp and destroyed her qualms. She slid through the storm drain feet first, letting go of the rim just as a man’s hand slapped into it.
    “Gar dammit!”
    Althea fell to a painless landing in semisoft mud. Scrambling to regain her footing, she looked up at the two faces in the slot.
    “I am sorry, but I cannot go with you. Den needs me.”
    The sense of security afforded by a gap too small for men to fit through evaporated as a circular section of ceiling above her opened, showering her