5: The Holy Road by Ginn Hale Read Free Book Online Page A

of the trees, unpacking their lunch and sneaking a cigarette. At the time, John hadn’t known that. Only later, while the ambulance sirens tore through the warm air and she clung to him crying, only then would he notice the smell of Virginia Slims on her. It would make him realize that she, too, had secrets she kept from the family. It would make him wonder if anyone was ever perfectly honest.
    But none of that had happened yet.
    He stood on the outcropping of stone, high above the deep waters. He grinned, feeling the warmth of the sun on his skin and basking in the brief moment before his leap. He took in a breath, preparing for the rush of fear and excitement that would surge through him the moment he’d step off the rocks.
    Both Laurie and Bill screamed when they jumped, but John never did. John’s father had proudly pointed that fact out to Bill’s father a year before. Since then John had taken pains to maintain his silence. He pushed the air out of his lungs and stepped towards the edge.
    Then something above him caught his attention—a flash, like some distant mirror catching the sun. John looked up as a blinding white bolt slammed down into him.
    He saw their skeletal faces then, heard them hissing and whispering through him. He felt them searing words into his bones, binding him. The boy who John had once been screamed, while the man he now was clenched his jaws shut against the burning pain. Very distantly, he heard Laurie calling out to him. Her voice sounded like a thin whistle caught within the hundreds of growls and whispers that the issusha’im poured down over him.
    Blood to bone, we binds it.
    Where it goes Kahlil finds it.
    Bleed the seas, burn the skies,
    Tear the earth before its eyes.
    Where it walks, Kahlil follows,
    No respite in shades or hollows.
    Fires burn, rivers flood,
    Still it calls Kahlil’s blood.
    Break iron, shatter stone,
    Still we binds it, blood to bone.
    White light seared into him. The weeds and flowers near him burned to ash. The rock beneath his feet cracked like glass. John watched as his skinny body arched up as if caught in powerful electrical current. Then the light was gone and he collapsed. Later, his mother would tell him he’d been struck by lightning. She would say that he had been so lucky to come away unscathed and that a host of angels must have been watching over him.
    If she had been able to see those angels, made of skulls and bones strung together on thick wires, with bright red drops of blood pouring from them like rain, she might have thought otherwise. John himself had been terrified by the idea of those angels watching over him.
    And now he knew. They hadn’t been angels or lightning. They had been the Issusha’im Oracles, binding him to the Kahlil. So now the Kahlil could cross through the Great Gates and would be drawn though the chaos of time and space straight to him.
    John stared at the canvas panels beside his bed. The prayer bells had stopped ringing. Everything was so quiet that he could almost imagine that nothing existed beyond the enclosure of white canvas. The world was just him, lying in a small rectangle on a soft bed.
    The dull glow of sunlight pushed through the panels, illuminating a corner of his bed. Very distantly, John heard the calls of birds. Most had already started on their migrations south. Only tiny blackbills remained. In another month they, too, would be gone. He could smell incense and the aroma of baking taye. No matter what he might want, the world intruded. Lying here behind a curtain would not keep it at bay. It would not keep him safe from the world.
    Nor would it keep this world safe from him.
    Before last night that thought wouldn’t have even crossed his mind. But now he knew that he was the Rifter. He knew what the Rifter did. It tore down mountains, turned skies to soot. He had already felt the sky shudder and crack in response to him. Stone and soil had answered his motions. He had pulled rain from the air. It had