Messiahs Read online

  Messiahs

  The King & Slater Series Book Seven

  Matt Rogers

  Copyright © 2020 by Matt Rogers

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Onur Aksoy.

  www.onegraphica.com

  Contents

  Reader’s Group

  Facebook Page

  Books by Matt Rogers

  Preface

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Afterword

  Books by Matt Rogers

  Reader’s Group

  About the Author

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  Meet Ruby Nazarian, a government operative for a clandestine initiative known only as Lynx. She’s in Monaco to infiltrate the entourage of Aaron Wayne, a real estate tycoon on the precipice of dipping his hands into blood money. She charms her way aboard the magnate’s superyacht, but everyone seems suspicious of her, and as the party ebbs onward she prepares for war…

  Maybe she’s paranoid.

  Maybe not.

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  Books by Matt Rogers

  THE JASON KING SERIES

  Isolated (Book 1)

  Imprisoned (Book 2)

  Reloaded (Book 3)

  Betrayed (Book 4)

  Corrupted (Book 5)

  Hunted (Book 6)

  THE JASON KING FILES

  Cartel (Book 1)

  Warrior (Book 2)

  Savages (Book 3)

  THE WILL SLATER SERIES

  Wolf (Book 1)

  Lion (Book 2)

  Bear (Book 3)

  Lynx (Book 4)

  Bull (Book 5)

  Hawk (Book 6)

  THE KING & SLATER SERIES

  Weapons (Book 1)

  Contracts (Book 2)

  Ciphers (Book 3)

  Outlaws (Book 4)

  Ghosts (Book 5)

  Sharks (Book 6)

  Messiahs (Book 7)

  LYNX SHORTS

  Blood Money (Book 1)

  BLACK FORCE SHORTS

  The Victor (Book 1)

  The Chimera (Book 2)

  The Tribe (Book 3)

  The Hidden (Book 4)

  The Coast (Book 5)

  The Storm (Book 6)

  The Wicked (Book 7)

  The King (Book 8)

  The Joker (Book 9)

  The Ruins (Book 10)

  “The inclination to aggression is an original, self-subsisting, instinctual disposition in man.”

  Sigmund Freud

  Prologue

  Water ran down the man’s bald head.

  Water taken from the rapids of a nearby river in the Thunder Basin National Grassland, untrammelled by human interference. Water from the earth itself, in beautiful northeast Wyoming, some of the most quiet and serene land in the United States.

  A modern frontier, home to those savouring solitude.

  You can lose yourself in the grasslands, in the prairie, simply because you don’t wish to be disturbed.

  Or you can find the barren stretches deliberately, because you don’t want anyone to see what you’re doing.

  Maeve Riordan hovered over the bald man, her shoulders back to accentuate her posture. He knelt with his head bowed, as if unworthy of catching a glimpse of her.

  She reached down with a perfectly manicured finger, touched it to the base of his jaw, and tilted his head upward.

  He stared up at her with unrestrained amazement.

  Her voice trance-like, she said, ‘Are you ready to join the cause?’

  He nodded, tears in his eyes.

  She bathed him in a smile, offering warmth he’d longed for, warmth that had always eluded him, leaving an acid heart in its absence.

  ‘Then you are home,’ she said, monotonic. ‘Mother Libertas welcomes you.’

  The tears flowed freely, mixing with the river water, further wetting his face.

  She said, ‘Are you ready to recite the creed?’

  He nodded against her finger. ‘There’s nothing I want more.’

  ‘First…’

  She reached into a small pocket of the farm dress that flowed down below her knees and withdrew a glass vial, no bigger than her index finger. Within was a cloudy substance, maybe a dozen millilitres in total, golden in colour. Like sweet nectar or honey. Artificially tinged, but he didn’t need to know that. Neatly imprinted in the glass of the vial was the word: BODHI.
/>   She unscrewed the tiny cap and handed it to the man as delicately as she could.

  ‘What is this?’ he said.

  ‘It will set you free.’

  Her words were verbal nectar to complement the physical substance, and he drank it down without hesitation. Maeve’s husband’s complex food engineering process made the stuff taste like the sweetest candy, with no hint of the bitter pharmacological concoction constituting the bulk of the vial. He’d honed and refined the blend over the years until it was indescribably good, like an orgasm to the dopamine receptors.

  It would hit the new disciple like nothing he’d ever felt before.

  But the barrage of drugs took time to bind to receptors, so she lowered the bald man’s head back to the floor and whispered soothing reassurances in his ear, coaxing him back into a meditative state. She waited twenty long minutes, then brought the same finger back to his jaw. His eyes flew open. They were swelling with … something.

  Soon the compound would have him in its seductive grasp.

  She said, ‘It’s time for the creed.’

  Squeezing his eyes shut again, he shivered in anticipation.

  Maeve whispered, ‘Mother, lift me from despondency.’

  He echoed her words. ‘Mother, lift me from despondency.’

  ‘Mother, free me from complacency.’

  ‘Mother, free me from complacency.’

  ‘Mother, bloom my power.’

  ‘Mother, bloom my power.’

  ‘Mother, bloom my spirit.’

  ‘Mother, bloom my spirit.’

  ‘Mother, give me strength.’

  ‘Mother, give me strength.’

  ‘Mother, be with me.’

  ‘Mother, be with me.’

  ‘Mother, awaken.’

  The man’s voice rose. ‘Mother, awaken.’

  ‘Mother, awaken!’

  ‘Mother, awaken!’

  ‘MOTHER, AWAKEN!’

  His echo of the last command was a scream to match hers. ‘MOTHER, AWAKEN!’

  She gripped him by the throat, applying just enough pressure to send the blood rushing to his face, took a knee in front of him, and stared deep into his eyes. She didn’t look away. She didn’t waver. To do so would ruin the illusion.

  She bared her brilliant white teeth. ‘Do you see, my child? Do you see?’

  The Bodhi hit him in all its glory.

  He cried irrepressible tears of joy, laughing and moaning until the whites in his unblinking eyes turned bloodshot.

  She said, ‘Answer me.’

  ‘Yes,’ he sobbed. ‘Yes, I see.’

  ‘Come with me.’

  She took him by the hand, helped him to his feet, and led him out of the small antechamber. They moved through the long shadow down a corridor, then Maeve opened a door insulated with soundproofing material. It was deliberate foresight. Disciples-to-be completed their initiation in the sacristy of the church in perceived silence, and when the Bodhi peaked in their brain they were introduced to the sensory assault of the main space. Having never heard a peep beforehand, they became convinced that the procession had descended from the heavens.

  Maeve led the bald man up onto the altar, so he could see the transept and the nave.

  A sea of disciples, maybe two hundred strong, filled the pews.

  The chant was deafening, every syllable synchronised, the power of their collective voices appearing to shake the room.

  ‘MOTHER, AWAKEN!’

  ‘MOTHER, AWAKEN!’

  ‘MOTHER, AWAKEN!’

  The bald man cried more tears than he ever thought he could.

  Maeve gripped his throat again and pulled him close so she could speak into his ear. ‘Join them.’

  A wide-eyed woman in the front row beckoned. The bald man descended the steps at the front of the altar and walked up to her. He took her hand and lifted his free hand to the sky. He joined the chant, screaming his lungs out.

  The faint aroma of body odour seeped through the hall — no one but Maeve noticed. In the grip of ecstasy, ordinary cleanliness falls aside, and she didn’t blame her disciples for their neglect. What they lacked in presentability they more than made up for in raw untamed passion for the cause.

  And that, she knew, was all that was vital.

  A soft hand pressed down on her shoulder. If it was anyone else it would have been punishable by immediate self-flagellation, but she knew the touch of her husband without having to turn. It didn’t surprise her that he was there, watching from the shadows of the perimeter, refusing to join the chanting. His role in the organisation mirrored what the KGB achieved so effectively in Soviet Russia.

  What’s the use of all that devotion if dissidents have the ability to tear belief apart at the seams?

  Dane Riordan leant in close so she could hear him above the furore and said, ‘A word.’

  She followed him back into the sacristy, sealing them off from bass-rich bellows of, ‘MOTHER, AWAKEN!’

  Before they made it to her office, she turned in the middle of the corridor.

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘Is this important?’

  ‘I chased up the family situation of the newbie, as you asked.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Parents won’t miss him. The father’s a copper miner and the mother’s an opiate addict. Neither have the energy to worry about anything other than their job and their next hit respectively. It’s backbreaking work in the mines, and it’s backbreaking work selling yourself for another pain pill.’

  ‘This is all wonderful,’ Maeve said, accentuating the sarcasm, ‘but why’s it made it to my ears?’

  ‘Because that was only context leading up to the sister. She’s worried sick.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘Her name’s Karlie. She’s twenty-four, a janitor in—’

  ‘Where is she now?’ Maeve said, colder.

  Superfluous details had no purpose.

  Dane smirked. ‘Taking no shit today, huh? She’s at the motel in Gillette.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Ours.’

  ‘Coincidence?’

  ‘Yes. She’s not a major problem. She’s just nosy. Quizzing locals for information, putting out feelers. She won’t find anything, and she’ll go south back to Laramie eventually.’

  ‘If we let her off the hook she might make too much noise. Better if our business model isn’t even discussed in quiet whispers. And if there’s a chain of noisemakers, then there’s a pattern.’

  Dane said, ‘I really think—’

  She seared him with her gaze. ‘You’re getting soft on me? After all we’ve built?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Get it done. Give Wyatt what he needs.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  His eyes said I’d like you to reconsider but his lips remained sealed.

  Finally he said, ‘I’ll give the orders.’

  ‘Good. Send two of our most ardent fanatics. Be sure they make it quick.’

  Dane nodded and bled away, heading for the quiet of the office.

  Maeve returned to her disciples.

  Brandon said, ‘Room 46, right?’

  From the driver’s seat of the old Ford pickup he looked at the motel across the street. It was a single-storey number, built half a century ago, maintained by the owner with scrupulous care over the majority of his adult life. Wyatt Nelson ran a one-man operation, handling all the administration and room service himself, figuring if he had the time to take care of everything it’d only be lazy to hire help. It was dark in Gillette, the sun disappearing hours previously, and only two windows blazed in the motel’s facade.

  The “Vacancy” sign burned bright neon in the night.

  In the passenger seat, Addison said, ‘Yup. 46.’

  They glanced at each other.

  Brandon was four years her junior — nineteen to her twenty-three — but she’d always treated him like the big brother. He had initiative and she had impulse;
he had foresight and forward thinking and she had an unending desire for instant gratification. He’d taken care of her when their parents hadn’t, and six months ago when he’d spoken of a revolutionary movement hidden in the grasslands south-east of Gillette, she’d taken it at face value. Now she wasn’t so sure, but it was far too late for doubt.

  Brandon was all-in, and she pretended she was, too, mostly because she had no idea what she’d do without him.