Age of Power 1: Legacy

  LEGACY

  A NOVEL OF THE AGE OF POWER

  By JON DAVIS

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in the book either are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  Copyright-2012

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Jon Davis to Amazon Kindle.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  The sky was clear and bright, with every star a luminous beacon in the night. Even the Milky Way was a gold and azure blaze that stretched out in all its glory. Yet, for all the beauty above, there was serious competition on the ground below. Looking over the scene, I saw the freshly fallen snow as it shimmered in a range of bright and cheery colors brought about by Christmas decorations.

  Red and green lights intertwined with artificial icicles that were hanging from the edges of roofs. Decorations of reindeer pulling Santa’s sleigh sat on the top of a few of those roofs. It was a common theme this year. But I saw that two homeowners had stayed unique and showed their religious faiths instead. One roof had bright-yellow lights in the shape of a cross while the other showed the celebration of Yule with a pentagram constructed of green blinking lights.

  The two religious symbols were across the street from each other, showing like a competition. I had to smile. That had to make for some fun debates. I continued to look up and down the streets, watching the drifting white mist of my breath soften and mix the colors into a rainbow haze. Lost in thought, I knew that I could look at the stars and Christmas decorations until sunrise. And I probably would have, if not for the shock of cold metal touching the back of my hand.

  I jumped at the feeling and glared back at the cause of it. My best friend, Brand Houseman, chuckled and waved the beer side to side.

  Then treating it as if it were a microphone, he said, “Earth to Vaughn Hagen. Are you there, Vaughn? Or are you going to just stand there with your head up in the clouds all night?”

  Decisions, decisions…oh who was I kidding? I reached out and grabbed the beer. Brand pulled it back as he gave an amused snort. He said, “Doofus. You’re a geeky doofus.”

  I chuckled and then said, “Hey, I like what I like. Give me the beer.”

  Handing it over, I took it and opened it. Taking a drink, I tipped my head up just as a meteor trail flared and died, but the cold beer was more important.

  After all, a guy does have priorities.

  Taking another sip, I continued looking for more trails until I heard Brand unzipping his backpack. I glanced over and saw him pulling out another beer. I said, “Brand, just one. We won’t be up here long. Save the rest ‘til later.”

  He looked at me with a grimace and said snappishly, “Well, if you’re going to take pictures, then do it. It’s cold up here!”

  I gave Brand a sidelong glance. I said, “You’ve been growly all day now. What happened? Did Sherry turn you down? I know you wanted to ask her out.”

  Brand grunted, and looked away. “Ah, she turned you down.”

  Brand suddenly glared back at me. “What?”

  His voice was flat with annoyance. “She turned me down, all right. Then she asked about you.”

  I stared at him for a moment, the idea of taking pictures forgotten for a moment. I couldn’t help grinning. He gave me a growl back. He said, “Do you want us to get caught up here? We don’t have all night, you know.”

  I chuckled for a moment and then asked. “Sherry would have been…what? The fifth or sixth girl, this year? Aww.”

  His eyes narrowed for a moment before he grinned at me. “Yeah, well, that’s what—five or six more than you’ve gotten? I think this would’ve been number…what? One?”

  I winced. Damn, but he had me there. Between the two of us, Brand was better looking. Now, I knew I was handsome—in a goofy smile sort of way—but Brand had it easy. While he was my height and even a little thinner, he had his mother’s gently pointed chin, which somehow softened the look of his crystal blue eyes. When the white-blond of his hair entered the equation, he became a magnet for girls. I’d had all of one date, and she was…well, she was fun to be with, yet it never went past that first kiss. Then she moved away. Go figure.

  After that, I hadn’t found anyone who enjoyed my company past a nice smile. I never seemed to be able to talk with a girl for very long before she lost interest. Brand was more easygoing around the opposite sex. He could talk casually with girls while I usually stammered and—um, oh look, a falling star.

  No, I didn’t like thinking about it.

  Reaching into my jacket, I pulled out my camera. I didn’t say anything for a moment. Snapping the picture, I looked at the screen and found that I had managed to get the trail just before it faded into the night. Then I looked down at Brand. He had his head cocked to the side, studying me.

  I waited for a moment, but he said nothing. Impatiently, I said, “What is it now?”

  He said, “You do look like Ryan Kwanten, the actor on True Blood. You ain’t anywhere near to his muscle build, but you’re about his height, and your hair is the same style and color as his. Though, I think your eyes are a darker shade of blue.”

  “And this came from…where?” I asked, confused by the comment.

  Brand snorted, and said, “Sherry. When she said she was interested in you, she mentioned that you looked like the guy. And now that I think about it, you do. I just never thought about it before when I watched the show.”

  I was startled. I said, “Wait, what? You watch True Blood. Why? It’s about vampires!”

  Brand laughed at my surprise. He said, “Bro, it has hot women vampires trying to bite people. Do you think I’m not going to watch hot looking women?”

  Huh. Sexy looking women aside, Brand usually didn’t enjoy watching shows with vampires, or any shows with monsters in them. Between the two of us, I was the science fiction and fantasy geek, not him. I loved those types of shows, and I watched them all the time. Brand was more likely to watch NASCAR racing, or a boxing match.

  But once I thought about it, I said, “Why, yes. Yes, it does have very good-looking ladies of the bloodsucking variety.”

  He waved a hand at my camera before he folded his arms underneath the arms of his coat. “I’m glad we agree. Now, take your damn pictures. I’m cold!”

  Good, he was starting to relax. But it was cold up here. So I began sighting for pictures. It was a good vantage point. We were in a squared off space at the top of a large four-story high church in my hometown of Riverlite, Iowa. The space hadn’t always been here. There used to be a large open-air bell tower at the front of the building. Growing up, I remember it ringing across the town for services and holidays.

  Eventually, they took it down. But instead of filling the left over space, the roofers had put in drainpipes to keep water from leaking into the church atrium and the n
ave below. Those drain pipes were how Brand and I had gotten up here tonight. It was a regular place for us, and we knew that, as long as we kept out of sight, we would be fine.

  Tonight, climbing up here was my idea. Normally, we wouldn’t be up here at this time of the year—what with the cold and snow. But I wanted the pictures of the holiday lights and the town to hold onto. Graduation was this year, and come next Christmas, I’d be in Chicago for my first year in Chicago University. If I could pick my major that is. Ah well, I’m sure I’d have it decided by August.

  I hope.

  I shook off the thought and took my pictures. This late at night, the streetlights had no competition. However, for the next few days, the city would keep the decorations lit twenty-four hours a day until right after New Year's Day. As usual, there were homeowners competing with each other.

  Looking at the yards, I could see lit candy canes, small Christmas trees, and panoramas of scenes from the Christmas stories I’d grown up hearing. Some scenes were silly. Rudolph fought hard against some elves in one yard, and two neighbors had decided to put as many lights as possible on the trees in their front yards. It was a wonder that the trees hadn’t burst into flames. I took a few pictures of the crazier looking efforts, thinking that, with all these lights, it would have to be a miracle if anyone was getting any sleep.

  Because I do have some taste, I focused on taking close-ups of the better-looking decorations. Still, while the lights were beautiful—especially with the fresh snow—the best sight, out of all the ones I’d seen, was the biggest decoration on Library Square. Lighting the whole area off Main Street was an extremely tall evergreen wrapped in various shades of white lights, and topped with a bright blue star. Blinking lights wrapped around the branches to come together with the electric blue light of the star to create dancing shadows around the tree. It made me think of the Christmases I had had with Mom and Dad before they had gotten divorced. Mom still decorated our tree like this.

  I continued taking pictures until I saw a police car driving slowly down the road just west of Library Square. Stupidly, I tensed, and brushed a finger against the flash button of the camera.

  “Get down!” I said to Brand.

  Kneeling below the edge of the recess, we held our breath, wondering if we’d hear a siren in the next few seconds. I really didn’t want Mom waking up in the morning, just to find out that the police had arrested her son, for trespassing and underage drinking. That would be the worst Christmas present ever. And because she worked at the town’s courthouse as a court stenographer, she’d never hear the end of it from her coworkers.

  After some long moments, when we didn’t hear anything, except for snow shifting against the tiles of the roof, I took a chance and glanced over the edge. The cop car sat there at the corner of Fifth and Main. Was the cop thinking on what he had seen? Was he about to head over here? Was he thinking of doughnuts? Dear gods, I hate it when they just sit there!

  Finally, the car turned west onto Main Street. As the cop drove away, I nodded to Brand that it was safe. He let out his breath in a sigh of relief and, pointing to the backpack, he said, “I’m getting a beer, don’t bitch.”

  “I’m not.” I said.

  Brand got to his feet. Brushing snow off his pants, he went over and pulled another beer out of the bag. I stayed kneeling for a moment, watching him. Okay, whatever was bugging him had nothing to do with Sherry turning him down. He’d just used that to push me off the real issue. I knew Brand. He wouldn’t want another beer. Not over the simple possibility of the police putting him under arrest. If anything, he’d normally just laugh about it. Not tonight, though. But the problem was, I couldn’t just demand an answer. With Brand, you had to coax things out.

  Shivering slightly, I decided to do it on the ground, not up here on a cold roof. I glanced at him, though, while putting my camera away. Then I froze midway to putting the camera in my coat. Just behind his left shoulder, as Brand drank his beer, I saw two more streaks of light in the night sky. I lifted the camera, but the trails faded by the time I hit the button.

  “Huh, there’ve been a few falling stars tonight.” I said.

  Brand glanced behind him, then back at me. He said, “Eh, it happens, doesn’t it?”

  “I suppose. We must be passing through a meteor shower or something. I think I’ll take a few pictures of the sky for good measure.” I answered.

  Ignoring his sigh of impatience, I took a few more pictures of both stars and decorations but noticed that no more meteors appeared. I looked around one more time, to see if I missed anything, and then, taking notice of another sigh from Brand, I put the camera away.

  “That’s it—we can head home now,” I said.

  Brand finished his beer then let out a burp. After that, he said, “Or we could walk around until sunrise.”

  I looked at him, letting the worry show. “Um…what’s going on?”

  Brand looked away, but said nothing. It was annoying when he acted like this. Brand Houseman could go from his usual fiery, hotheaded attitude to a sullen tense mood between one breath and the next. I’d grown up with it since we were kids, and while the sudden shift wasn’t new, I wasn’t sure about the reason this time. Nothing about tonight or today had been bad, with maybe the exception of Sherry. We’d gotten out of school. Now was technically the first day of Christmas vacation…oh, now I knew what it was. “With the holiday stuff in school, I totally forgot what else today was. I hardly took notice of the craziness, but Karla must have been driving you and your Dad nuts.”

  Brand laughed and said, “Got it in one, genius! Wondered if you’d noticed her freaking out—what with all the news articles she’d bookmarked on the Internet.”

  I sighed, “Brand, you know she’s going to feel silly in the morning. Everybody who believed the hype will feel like an idiot. Give her a break. By this time next week, she’ll be interested in something else.”

  Brand groaned, and then said, “Oh Christ, not another Doomsday prediction—anything but that! Haven’t we had enough?”

  I chuckled at the tone in his words. He looked at me, annoyed for a second before he laughed himself. It broke the tension, but I couldn’t blame him for his feelings. His stepmother had been getting increasingly afraid since the beginning of the year. She had slowly become obsessed about this date. Not even Mom, Karla’s oldest friend, could get her to drop the idea. Brand’s dad was patient with it, as long as she didn’t try to pull the same mad stunts, as others had.

  Adding to a number of insane gun attacks occurring over the last few years, a suicide cult showed up in a California mall with all guns blazing. Police stopped them, but not before the cult killed three dozen people. From then on, all the joking in the Houseman household had stopped. James Houseman had an intervention with Karla at that point, and while she swore she wasn’t planning to do anything melodramatic, father and son kept a strong eye on Karla.

  But although Brand had told me about their talking with her, I had just let it go. I honestly was not thinking about why he’d been tense until now. Still, I was right. His stepmother did deserve some sympathy. She’d been caught up in a fraud like millions of others had. And while she should have known that nothing would happen, Karla, and many people besides herself, still believed that some sort of doomsday was about to hit the world.

  Throughout the year, there had been numerous television specials on the subject. As far as I was concerned, it was just another attempt to make money. People watched the shows and gave the networks a chance to sell more products in the commercials. They did it for kids with toys, and now this was just the same thing, except this was using fear and amplifying it with melodramatic scenes of what ‘might’ happen.

  It would’ve likely faded long before now if not for the mall attack. It pushed the politicians into talking about it. After that happened, Congress and Senate became involved. To one political party, it didn’t matter. They agreed with the President’s comments about the situation. The President,
while he offered his deepest condolences to the families of victims in California, said nothing about the reason that the cult had killed people. Unfortunately, for the other side of the political spectrum, it became a reason to pray. One Senator called for a resolution that the predicted date should be a National Day of Prayer. To many people’s chagrin, the resolution passed.

  When I heard about it, I’d stopped watching the news, and avoided any Internet site connected to the whole thing. But Brand had to live with the fallout. Once this was all done and over with, Brand and his dad would probably ignore Karla while she quietly shredded the clippings, dumped the books on the subject, and erased her browser history.

  Trying to be commiserating, I said, “Sorry Brand, but it’s over with. Once dawn comes, life returns to normal. It passed already in some parts of the world.”

  He just stood there, looking away. I could see the conflict in his eyes, though. It was obvious that he was still angry about something else. Then it clicked in my mind that Brand had had his auto shop class today. I know everyone there had found out about Karla’s obsessions. She didn’t make much of a secret about it. They probably made fun of him throughout the entire hour of the class.

  Seeing the backpack told me what I could do to help. I reached down and unzipped it. Ignoring Brand’s surprised look, I pulled a beer out, opened it, and raised it to the night sky.

  I said, “Hooray for the world! We’re still here, and we missed another disaster.”

  I gulped the beer and winced, it was freezing! I coughed and handed it to Brand. He gave me a confused look.

  I just said, “Another beer isn’t going to hurt us. Salute the date, man.”

  “Doofus!” Getting to his feet, Brand finished off the beer. He then yelled, “Come on universe! Finish us off! We’re bored!”

  The sky split open in a line of bright white-blue fire. I whipped around, staring. I cringed as the line of fire resolved into a huge burning ball that passed directly over the town. Thunder from its passage roared throughout the town until it faded as it passed over the horizon. Darkness had time to return for a second before a white flash came from the place where it hit the ground. We covered our eyes from the bright pulse. I could hear Brand swearing. Then the wild light faded out as the night returned.