The Forsaken - The Apocalypse Trilogy: Book Two Read Online Free

turn would get the advantage and he would
die. That was the essential equation of his life. Pain punished
cowardice and rewarded conviction.
    Distantly he could remember the face of his
father—the high priest of pain—howling with fury as he administered
this arcane knowledge with fists. But those earliest glimpses of
the power were so entwined with ancient anger and emotion that they
were dangerous, and so discarded. Regardless, the exquisite purity
of the pain inherent in those harsh lessons was an integral part of
the man he had become. It had survived his transition from the old
life to the new—from the world before the Change, into the world
that came after.
    Before the Change he had made his money
killing wayward husbands and wives, faithless gangsters and
faithful policemen and politicians. The money was good in those
bygone days, and kills more gratifying. There was satisfaction in a
hunt that took skill and risk that finished with a corpse that
stayed dead. The power of pain made sense then and he had
luxuriated in its might. But the Change had altered that. With the
rising of the dead had come a change in business, and a loss of
control. Since he could no longer earn money killing as a
punishment or for silence he found that he could not exploit his
talent to the fullest and he sank slowly into a depression that his
darkest violence could not break.
    He tried to pull himself from it. His killing
became more extravagant, more vicious and bloody with little
spiritual impact. A target could be silenced, but the process would
better suit a butcher than a professional gun. The Change seemed to
be more powerful than pain. And for a time he tried to combat this
growing impotence by taking greater chances with his work. Finally,
he was forced to peer into the dim recesses of himself—to try to
unlock the mystery of this power—this power that had seemingly
deserted him.
    It was through this contemplative approach
that he had found the light—or it was the opposite of light—though
even that was a misnomer for it was not darkness either. His brain
simply lacked the sensory apparatus to explain or categorize what
he found. He responded with ambiguous descriptions that fell far
short of the truth. It was a black illumination—a full emptiness.
It was everywhere and nowhere. Finally, it was invisible until seen
from the darkest place in his soul—a place where there was no
language. Then, even as he applied his first inept words to the
paradox, he realized with some alarm that it had discovered him .
    A force that transcended the power of
pain—and yet harmonized with it—pounced upon him and altered what
he was. Something changed inside his mind below the basement of him
where nightmares lurked in a dark eternal undercurrent. It was
obvious and anonymous, but something changed.
    Its very intangible qualities made if
difficult to know how or where the alterations took place, but
sometimes the very lack of evidence proved they had occurred.
Despite this alien influence, his essential character had remained
unchanged, though it now had a direction. With the new power had
come a knowledge that he could not understand but felt
instinctively—a knowledge that the world now worked in paradoxes
that resisted explanation. The truth was different from his belief. Life was pain. Pain was life. But only to the living—only to
his race, the Second-born of the earth. And this realization had
taken him to the place in which he now resided.
    His old life—much like his old name—became
outmoded, small and petty in comparison. He did not take pride in
what he now did; he was too old for that. But he knew that his
talents took him down a road that gave him greater rewards than
mere money. His job description had changed with the seeing of the
dark light. The power of pain held its greatest potency in its
relationship to divinity. He simply had to seek a better
prey—something worthy of the pain he could inflict.
    The assassin