Steal the Lightning: A Field Ops Novel (Field Ops #3)(24)

“Oh—six months or so. Not sure, exactly.”

“Six months? Jesus—”

“Jeeeeee-sus!” echoed the cobra lady. I began to feel I knew her much, much better than I wanted to.

“Trust me,” said Silverman. He gestured to the front of the tent. “It’ll get interesting, like I said. Keep watching.”





Chapter 22

Faces in the Water




So I watched. I listened. There was little new in Cleary’s speech, which I suppose is good, if you’re claiming the authority of a two-thousand-year-old book. He knew his audience. He knew their fears, their hopes; and most of all, he knew their sins. Who there didn’t have impure thoughts? Neglect their family? Do drugs, or drink too much? Lie to their boss, their kids, their spouse, their parents? He got them all wound up, and then, everyone wriggling in embarrassment, he spun it all onto its head. Now he spoke of freedom, liberation, and redemption, new life through Christ—he played that crowd just like an orchestra, building the crescendo, note by note. And while the spotlight lingered on his tall, handsome figure, the lights elsewhere had all dimmed down, and the choir and band had left the podium, and the canvas wall behind was being slowly drawn aside, inch by inch, like theater curtains.

There was movement out there in the dark, but I couldn’t make out what it was.

Silverman dug me in the ribs. “Get ready.”

The crowd began to moan. A woman just across the aisle let out a wail that sent the chills right through me. Somebody yelled, “Glory! Glory! Glory!” on and on. A frenzy seemed to take the crowd. There was tension in the air. I felt the hairs rise on my arms. I felt the electricity. I knew that feeling. I knew it from my job . . . There were voices, sounds of people moving in their seats, and more—a kind of white noise, a hiss that made it hard to think, impossible to concentrate. I had a taste of metal in my mouth . . .

“God knows you!” Cleary yelled. He was screaming to be heard. “He knows you, each and every one of you, He is with you, He is with us all, behold, behold—” He raised his arms over his head. “The glory of the Lord!”

And then the lights went up. Not in the tent, but in the dark beyond, scattering the shadows, flooding them with silver light.

I could see treetops. I could see something shining, leaping, falling . . . Rising, maybe ten, fifteen, twenty feet into the air, then slipping sideways, tumbling down— The water.

The water was alive. The still, flat pond we’d seen less than an hour before—it bucked and swayed like an ocean in a storm. It reared up, gleaming, rainbows flashing in the spray, then veered off, and fell. It was as if the liquid were a skin below which some immense and violent force lay trapped, something alive, or near to it, thrusting and heaving in its efforts to break free.

Everyone was on their feet now. Silverman held his phone over his head. The noise rose, formless, wordless, people howling, screaming, stretching forwards, reaching out, and I noticed several big guys on security had stepped into the aisle to hold them back. The mood was frenzied—and the force outside responded to it, changing, taking on solidity, and shape.

We were looking at a wall of rain, but it was rain that didn’t fall. It hung, twisting in ribbons, its strands forever folding in upon themselves, creating figures, images, brief flickers that seemed half-familiar in that stark, white glare. Faces and hands appeared and flowed away, one face merging with another, forming a third, a fourth, and the faces growing more distinct—here, a man with heavy jowls, and there, a woman in a wide hat, and a couple dressed for a wedding—the crowd gasped with each new iteration. They saw themselves. They saw their loved ones. They saw enemies—they saw anyone who had ever been of any great significance to them. They shouted names. They shouted messages. And I got the feeling that all of them saw something just a little different, reading meaning into abstract forms, patterns that were gone in moments, changed to something else. I saw a woman drop down as if dead, and the security staff race in and carry her away. I saw a man shaking his fists in the air, trembling in some kind of a seizure.

“It’s mirroring the audience,” I said, but even then, I knew that wasn’t it: the audience were mirroring themselves.

The place was in an uproar. Some guy lost his footing and his whole row went toppling, spilling out into the aisle, and right away security were there, getting everybody back in place fast as they could. I could feel the excitement, like magnetism, drawing me forwards, pulling me towards the lights, the rain, the ever-changing shapes— I knew that it was time to go.

I took Angel’s arm, nodded to the exit. I had Silverman move to let us out, thinking he’d stay, but he followed us, still trying to capture it all on his phone, walking backwards, panning to and fro across the crowd.

All went well, until we reached the way out.

There were two guys standing there. Neither was the guy we’d met before, when we were sneaking round the back, but they weren’t your run-of-the-mill security, either. Both wore suits. One wore a Panthers cap, incongruous with his jacket, shirt and tie. I thought we were going to be herded back to our seats, but they ignored Angel and me, and homed straight in on Silverman.

“Phone, please.”

Silverman pocketed his phone. The guy with the cap grabbed his arm. They tussled for a moment. I wasn’t really pals with Silverman, but even so, this rubbed me the wrong way. So I leaned up close and yelled into the Panther-guy’s ear. “Don’t you recognize the reverend here? Don’t you know to whom you’re speaking?”