The First Prophet Read Online Free PDF Page B

was under
     the impression that the judgment of the Council demanded quick action. Tyrell said—”
    “Tyrell reports to me,” Duran said with an edge to his quiet voice. “The decision
     is mine.”
    “You thought she could be salvaged?”
    “What I thought is not your concern. You follow orders.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Duran waited a moment, his gaze boring into Varden. Then, almost casually, he said,
     “I want Sarah Gallagher.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “And you’re going to get her for me, Varden. Aren’t you?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Good,” Duran said. “That is good.”

    Tucker drew a long, slow breath, trying with calm and logic to keep the chill inside
     him from spreading. “When who kills you, Sarah?”
    “I don’t know who they are. Whenever I try to concentrateon them, to see them, all I see are shadows. Misshapen, sliding away whenever I try
     to focus on them, impossible to identify as anything except…shadows.” She shook her
     head a little, helpless. “This is all new to me, in case you didn’t know that. I was
     mugged last March, and a head injury put me in a coma. When I came out of it, I started
     having the waking nightmares.”
    He nodded, familiar with the facts because a newspaper story had reported them—and
     had brought him here. “I understand that. What I don’t understand is what, exactly,
     makes you believe that someone is going to kill you. What did you see?”
    The bell on the microwave dinged, and Sarah turned to set her coffee aside and get
     the stew out. “Haven’t you ever had nightmares, Tucker? The surreal kind, full of
     frightening images?”
    “Of course I have. They made zero sense. And they sure as hell didn’t predict the
     future.”
    “My waking nightmares do.” She was clearly unoffended by his skepticism.
    “Okay, then, tell me what you saw. Why are you so convinced you’re going to be killed?”
    Sarah didn’t respond for several minutes as she transferred the thawed stew to the
     pot on the stove and began stirring it as it heated. All her attention seemed to be
     fixed on the task. And when she did begin speaking, Tucker thought that her voice
     was very steady the way someone’s was when they were telling you something that scared
     the living shit out of them.
    “Because I saw my grave. Waiting for me.”
    “Sarah, that doesn’t have to mean—”
    She nodded jerkily. “There are other things I don’t remember, images that terrified
     me. But the grave…that was all too clear. It has a tombstone, and the tombstone is
     already inscribed. It has my name on it. In the…waking nightmare…I’m falling toward
     it, into it, so fast I don’t see the date of—of my death. But the month is October,
     and the year is this year. And just as the darkness of the grave closes over me, I
     hear them applauding. And I know they’ve won. I know they’ve killed me.”
    “They?”
    “The shadows.”
    “Sarah, shadows can’t hurt you.”
    She looked at him with old eyes. “These can. And will.”
    Tucker watched her as she turned to check on the steaming stew and put the thawing
     bread in the oven. There was a lot for him to think about. On the face of it, his
     first inclination was to ascribe her “waking nightmare” to something she’d eaten or
     a vivid imagination; as badly as he wanted to believe in precognitive abilities, he
     had yet to find a genuine psychic, and years of frustration had inured him to disillusionment.
    He certainly had no proof that Sarah Gallagher was indeed psychic. The information
     he had gathered seemed to indicate that she was, and those witnesses who claimed to
     have heard her predictions prior to later events seemed both reliable and reputable.
     But there was no way to be sure that her “predictions” had not come from someas-yet-undiscovered means of foreknowledge that had nothing to do with so-called extrasensory
     perception.
    Each of the “predictions” he knew of could, after all, be rationally