The Lights Over Jupiter Point: Book 1 Read online

  Tabitha shook her head at Trevor.

  "No! Let's go!"

  The two heard pots and pans banging in the kitchen. Suddenly, the man spoke again.

  "I suggest the two of you look out the living room window at what's in front of your house."

  Slowly, both Trevor and Tabitha walked to the living room curtain and peeked out. Standing in front of the house were the silhouettes of five women - each one holding a knife.

  "Fuck," whispered Trevor. He closed his eyes and backed away from the window.

  "Yeah. Come on in the kitchen. It makes no sense for you to stay out there. After all, it's your place."

  The couple walked into the kitchen and watched in amazement as Zagan went from cupboard to cupboard, searching for ingredients as if he were cooking dinner.

  "I'm glad you all decided to come on into the kitchen. Healthy conversation is good, ain't it?"

  Tabitha and Trevor watched in astonishment as the strange man moved around their kitchen as if he lived there.

  "Y'all will have to excuse me while I make myself a cheese omelet. You guys want one?"

  The couple shook their head as they watched the man help himself to the items in their refrigerator. Zagan pointed a knife at the couple.

  "Trevor, is it?"

  "Yes."

  "And you must be…Tabitha! Right?"

  Tabitha didn't speak. She affirmed Zagan's question by nodding.

  Zagan opened the refrigerator and took out three eggs.

  "I suppose I should introduce myself, right? My name is Zagan. I know it's kind of an unusual moniker, but I like it."

  "Why are you here?" asked Trevor.

  "Oh, I think your fiancé can answer that one for you, can't she?"

  "No, I can't."

  Zagan stopped chopping his onion and pointed the knife at Tabitha.

  "You see that right there? That's one of my pet peeves. Some people already have the answers, but try to play you like a dumbass just to annoy you."

  "Mr. Donavan?"

  "Bang! Correctamundo! Do you see? As long as we're honest with one another, we can be civil. Got it? Now please don't piss me off by lying again, okay?"

  Zagan poured the contents of his bowl onto the hot pan and began frying his omelet.

  "You want to know a strange fact? If I stopped at every house in a 3-mile radius, I'd bet you any amount of money that their kitchens are set up almost identical to this one. I mean, I could comfortably walk into any one of those kitchens, and in 10 seconds, I could find all the ingredients to make an omelet. Isn't that weird?"

  Zagan turned to Trevor.

  "Isn't it?" he asked.

  "Maybe," responded Trevor. Zagan continued.

  "I mean, don't you think that's weird? Are we so programmed that every one of us cooks our food the same? Develop the same tastes? Watch the same television programs? Ain't that shit a little weird to you?"

  Zagan finished cooking his omelet and slid it onto a plate.

  "Do you know how long it's been since I had a cheese omelet?"

  Zagan took a bite and dropped the plate on the ground.

  "Delicious. Tabitha. Why did you run?"

  Tabitha began to stutter.

  "I…I…didn't want to do it."

  Zagan turned to Trevor.

  "You think she's telling the truth?"

  "Yes."

  "Really?"

  "She said she didn't want to do it."

  "I don't know. If someone made me suck cock and fucked me against my will, I might be more than a little willing to see that dumb son of a bitch killed."

  Embarrassed, Tabitha's face turned red. Trevor became angry.

  "What do you want?" he asked.

  "I'm torn about the reason. There's a part of me that wanted to kill both of you on sight. But the more civil part of me wants to see if you're going to give me a reason to do it."

  "A reason?"

  "I just want to know if the two of you are going to give me the information I need?"

  Zagan lifted his palm. A drawer next to the sink opened, and two butcher knives floated out. The blades stopped in front of Tabitha and Trevor and started spinning rapidly.

  "As you can tell, I'm not from these parts. So, it behooves you to drive within the lines. Got it?"

  The couple stared at the man in their kitchen.

  "Tabitha, who helped you get away?"

  "I don't know his name."

  "Describe him to me."

  "He had on a hat and a trench coat. His eyes were green."

  "How did he help you?"

  "He took me to my car."

  After looking at Tabitha to see if she was truthful, Zagan shook his head in approval.

  "You see? That wasn't hard, was it?"

  "Trevor. Is there anything you want to tell me?"

  "I woke up at Jupiter Point. I don't know how I got there."

  "Have you seen this man that Tabitha speaks of?"

  "I can't be sure. I've seen a man with green eyes in my dreams. Same coat. Same hat."

  Zagan smiled, and the knives fell to the floor. Slowly, he walked around the couple standing in the middle of the kitchen floor. Before he left the room, he turned to speak to them.

  "You two seem to be in love. Do you share everything?"

  Trevor looked lovingly at his fiancé.

  "Yes," he responded.

  "Yes," Tabitha said.

  "That's so nice. Trevor. Did you tell her about the relationship you've been carrying on with her best friend?"

  Trevor's eyes shot to Tabitha's face. She looked crushed.

  "Oh, I'm sorry, Tabitha. You didn't know about that. Awwww."

  Tabitha stumbled with what to say.

  "But…is it…"

  Trevor couldn't speak. He simply looked at the ground.

  "Tabitha, go easy on him. After all, it's not like you told him about the money you stole from the bank or the fact that you missed your period after Mr. Donovan fucked you."

  Tabitha's eyes widened. Trevor looked at her in complete shock.

  "Sometimes, it's easier to be truthful with strangers than it is to be honest with the person in your bed."

  After Zagan walked to the front door and exited, Trevor and Tabitha stood in the kitchen staring at one another. Both of them looked crushed by the news they'd just heard. Soon the living room door opened again, and they heard heavy footsteps. Zagan stuck his head around the corner and spoke to the couple.

  "On second thought, I'd better kill you dirty fucks."

  With the flip of his finger, both knives rose from the floor. They shot into the eyes of both Tabitha and Trevor. Their bodies went limp and collapsed on one another. Two red balls rose from their bodies, and Zagan grabbed them and stuffed them in his bag.

  "Time to get that nosey son of a bitch!" he said and exited the house.

  Chapter 38: The Battle of Mateo & Zagan

  Mateo laid on the soft grass and let the rain splash on his face. His mind was quiet – temporarily. For so many years, he'd searched for souls through people's thoughts and dreams. The invasiveness of the process almost drove him mad in the beginning. He had to train himself to be open to receive the visions of the world around him – all of them. The bus driver. The teacher. The kids that were playing in the park. His mind accepted all of their visions and then segmented them. The good got placed in one pile, and the bad in another. Then he had to put his marker, a unique way to track down each of the souls he felt met his criteria for removal. The whole process was so exhausting that Mateo felt tired just thinking about it.

  As the rain fell on his face, Mateo licked the sweet rain from his lips and thought about his life. He'd been alone for 50 years now. His childhood seemed a distant event, like something he'd read in a book long ago. Suddenly Mateo wiped at his face in frustration. At that moment, he couldn't remember the sound of his mother's voice. Out of all the things he had to remember, he couldn't recall the exact sound of his mother's voice calling his name. Mateo c
alled out to his mother in the night, hoping the tone of his voice calling out to her would jolt his memory.

  "Mom," he whispered into the darkness. But the sound of his voice made the absence of memory even more profound. Mateo didn't even recognize his voice. This voice wasn't the voice that carried him through childhood. It was the voice of an imprisoned soul. A man that bathed in the murders he'd committed on behalf of his captors.

  Although he had no way out of the mission, Mateo refused to let the darkness into his soul. He fought back. Sometimes Mateo chose to give a targeted soul time to redirect their path. Other times he completely overlooked a target if he didn't deem the person's infraction severe enough to warrant his wrath. Although these tactics lessened the burden Mateo felt on his soul and encouraged him to rebel against his captors, he used these strategies sparingly. Mateo felt his captors were monitoring his behaviors and would inflict harm on his family if they found out he was moving against their overall mission.

  His captors dressed the situation as if the whole thing were a game, like a child collecting toys. No matter how righteous they pretended Mateo's mission was, the energy-filled globes within Mateo's bag represented a life taken; murder, plain and simple.

  Some people didn't deserve death, and he wouldn't play a part in sentencing an innocent to death just for the sake of hitting a quota. God's word still lived healthy within Mateo. And if he could fall upon his knees and speak to God without retribution from his captors, he would do so in a heartbeat. But he couldn't. They would surely kill his family.

  "Prison," murmured Mateo.

  That's what this whole thing seemed to be. As a child, God had been his best friend. Now he was indefinitely separated from him; forced to perform sins he knew God would never approve of; all to save his family. But there was an emptiness inside that he couldn't ignore. His relationship with God had all but disappeared.

  "He cannot save you," a voice whispered through the trees. Mateo sat up and looked around the forest. After a few moments, he closed his eyes and laid back down on the grass.

  "I knew you would come."

  Zagan stepped from behind a tree.

  "How ya doing, ole buddy?"

  "Just fine. You?"

  "I'm doing okay. Just a little bothered by a thing or two, that's all."

  "Bothered?"

  Zagan walked over to Mateo and sat down beside him.

  "I thought we were on the same team."

  Mateo's eyes blinked, and he could see an army of thousands of corpses walking towards him from deep in the forest.

  "We are on the same mission. Yes."

  Zagan's voice rose a little.

  "Then why in tarnation are you going behind my back trying to undermine me?"

  Mateo placed both his palms on the ground. Unnoticeably, a small green spark moved from both his thumbs into the soil.

  "We have the same mission, but different ways of accomplishing it."

  Zagan started to laugh.

  "Is that what you think? That you have a say in this thang?"

  "That's the way it got explained to me."

  "Well, somebody told you wrong. You see, we don't need you. You need us. That little bitch lied to you."

  Mateo frowned.

  "Oh yeah. We've known what Nixi and her mother Delores were up to all along. They're trapped, just like you are. They need us. They can't gain favor with the man upstairs without our help."

  "Is that so?"

  "Oh, so that is. I never liked that ugly bitch."

  "Look, Zagan. I don't want problems with you. As you can see, I'm doing things against my will. I'm a prisoner."

  "That's exactly how we see it. A person coerced to adopt a way of life through force will never be a true believer. And we're in the business of building true believers."

  Mateo looked to his left and saw thousands of glowing red eyes moving slowly through the dark forest towards him.

  "So, you want to kill me?" he asked as he raised himself from the ground. Zagan's eyes glowed like embers in a fire as he stared at Mateo.

  "In the beginning, taking your soul wasn't something that I wanted to do. You were operating smoothly within our system. But as time went on, you became ornery—a nuisance. You started trying to interfere. You fucked up my shit on two different occasions. Now, what do you think we're going to do about someone like that?"

  Mateo looked to his left again. He saw the shadows of thousands of demonic corpses inching towards him from the shadows. Zagan noticed and smiled.

  "Oh, don't worry. It'll only be ten times worse than it seems."

  Mateo began laughing. Soon, Zagan was laughing with him.

  "What's so funny, buddy?"

  "You."

  "Really? Why's that?"

  "You fool yourself into thinking you rule this world. But there's only one God."

  Zagan turned away.

  "Damn, you're such an arrogant prick."

  "I am what God made me."

  "I knew it was only a matter of time before you threatened to get him involved. That's why they gave me the green light to get rid of you. You're a goddamned snitch!"

  All at once, the caustic screams of thousands of demons echoed throughout the forest. The army of the dead rushed forward. Mateo watched as thousands of soulless bodies ran screaming towards him. Some of the corpses had deep gashes on their faces and necks; others had tongues lashing out of their mouths like wild lizards; some had blood pouring from their mouths and eyes; others were missing ribcages and limbs, and they all wanted to feast on the man their master had marked for death.

  But Mateo remained calm. Even as a few of the creatures gnashed at his face, Mateo dodged the attacks. There was no fear. He knew Zagan would come back for him and had spent most of the evening preparing for his onslaught. Calmly, Mateo waved his hand, and row after row the demons fell to the ground lifeless.

  "I am not afraid," Mateo said calmly. "But…I am also not passive."

  Zagan began laughing again.

  "What the hell does that mean?"

  "This."

  Mateo lifted his hand and made a slicing motion in the air. Seconds later, Zagan screamed out in pain as his intestines spilled in a bloody mess in front of him. The ground began rumbling, and black earth pushed up in a pile in front of him. Zagan clutched his stomach and laughed.

  "You're one sick son of a bitch," he said as he tried pulling his intestines back into his stomach for protection. But it was too late. Thousands of slimy black worms exploded from the earth and latched onto the pile of flesh hanging from Zagan's waste. The worms had long silver teeth that ate Zagan's entrails with the ferocity of rabid dogs. The sound of the small beasts feasting on Zagan's bowels was excruciating to hear, but Mateo never flinched.

  Soon the forest began shaking violently as if the two were in the middle of a stampede of elephants. Mateo jumped into a tree.

  "I knew you would call them," hissed Zagan. Suddenly the forest was filled with white wolves. The animals bit into the zombies and ripped their frail limbs from their bodies. The two giant wolves rushed towards Zagan, but he noticed them in time and ducked just as they dove through the air to devour him. They missed and fell down a large hill into a ravine.

  Suddenly Zagan stood upright and snapped his fingers. All of the worms instantly disappeared, and his body was once again whole. The wolves and zombies disappeared.

  "Your improvisation is so delicious! With the right training, you could truly be a magnificent hunter of souls," said Zagan as he walked in circles around Mateo. Suddenly, he stopped in front of Mateo.

  "There's just one thing you lack to be an exceptional hunter."

  "What's that?"

  "The gift of true evil."

  Suddenly everything went black. Mateo remained calm. Parlor tricks worked on weak-spirited people, but not on him. Soon the forest was flooded with a red light. Within a few moments, Mateo began to feel the forest getting warmer. He wiped the sweat from his brow and tried to determine the so
urce of the light. Mateo knew it was Zagan, but he couldn't find him. Mateo tried looking for him in the treetops, but the red light was too powerful; it was as if the sky as he had known it had been taken away and replaced with searing red rays. Mateo started feeling a little nervous. He'd underestimated the power of Zagan. Soon, a new problem came into Mateo's view: all sound in the forest had stopped! No birds were chirping; no crickets singing; no leaves blowing. There was nothing.

  Mateo tried using his powers to block the red light, but his attempts were unsuccessful. He started to feel things he hadn't felt since he was a child; weakness, incapability, fear. Mateo shook his head in frustration. For the first time in many years, he felt – human. Mateo didn't feel comfortable in anything. Mateo tried moving to a large tree to block the red light, but he immediately started wheezing. Confused and out of breath, he continued searching for Zagan. There was no oxygen in the forest. As he gasped for a breath of air, he saw a small dear stumbling towards him in the red light. Suddenly the deer fell to the ground and started convulsing. Within two seconds, it was dead. Mateo could feel panic setting in.

  Soon he couldn't tell up from down. He fell on his face and began trying to suck in the air from the forest floor. He wasn't sure how long he could hold out without oxygen, but Mateo had to find a solution before he collapsed.

  Boom!

  The sound came rushing back into Mateo's ears with the thrust of a sonic boom. He winced in agony as his eardrums pounded like tribal drums. The sounds were excruciating. He cupped his ears and tried to block out the noise. After a while, his ears adjusted. He recognized what he was hearing and instantly felt sadness welling up within him; he listened to the sounds of suffering; thousands of animals were choking to death under the weight of an environment without oxygen.

  "Chi-Chi!" yelled Mateo. Visions of his large wolf friend laying on the ground flooded his mind. He could see the large animal choking to death; Chi-Chi's litter of smaller cubs sprawled out all around his enormous body, gasping for air.

  "Stop!" Mateo yelled. But Zagan was nowhere to be found. All life inside the forest was dying, and there was nothing Mateo could do to stop it. Birds began raining down from the forest top like projectiles fired from a plane flying above the forest. He could hear the animals in the forest choking to death all around him.