You Only Die Twice - By Christopher Smith Page 0,25

don’t we? Of course, we do. We evolve. And I certainly haven’t said that in years because we changed our minds on technology, which He gave us. Do you remember that? Are we clear on that? We grow with the times. We use what we have at our hands to bring down the damned and then we move forward to the next one. If that means using technology built into our phones, then we received that technology for a reason. Got it?”

“Fine.”

“Mark your location.”

“If you’d take the time to look at your maps, you’ll find that I already have.”

“Don’t take an edge with me, Ted. I won’t have it.”

“You won’t have it? What the fuck does that mean? Here’s the deal, boy. Don’t you ever have an edge in your voice when you talk to me. Is that clear? I’m older than you. My soul is older than yours. I’ve been at this longer than you. I’ve been worshipping God longer than you. We have a relationship you two will never have. If the Lord Jesus Christ God Almighty is on anyone’s side, it’s mine.”

“Bullshit.”

“That’s your interpretation.”

“No, it isn’t. It’s a fact. I’m the Chosen One. He told me so Himself. I’m also not the one who fucked up. I’m not the one who lost her. That would be you, Ted. Because of some damned moose that turned you into a pussy, that would be you. It’s all on you. You lost her. You. Not me. And He knows it should she somehow escape.”

“She’s not going to escape.”

“And you know that how?”

“Because she’s still in the woods.”

“And you know that how?”

“Because He told me so.”

“No, He hasn’t. Don’t lie, Teddy. When you lie to me, you lie to Him.”

“I’m telling you, she’s still in the woods. Nobody has lost―”

The line went dead. Unbelieving, Ted Carpenter stared blankly at the phone. Kenneth Berkowitz had just severed their connection. He actually dared to hang up on him.

Furious, he put the phone back into his pocket and swung around to listen for his footfalls. They should be coming at any moment, shouldn’t they? After all, if God had Berkowitz’s back, he should be hearing them right now because the goal was to kill Cheryl Dunning and time was of the essence. God knew that. If He was watching this―and of course, He was―then Kenneth should be at his side now.

Only he wasn’t.

There was no sound of anyone rushing toward him. No hero to save the day. So, Berkowitz was full of shit. He hung up on him out of arrogance, which Ted Carpenter considered a sin. And what was this crap about him being the Chosen One?

He wondered if it was better to go forward alone. He’d certainly done God’s work on his own before. But until this moment, he’d always respected Kenneth. They shared the same ideals. They got each other and worked well together. Without him, Ted knew that he never would have made the sort of progress they were making now.

Still, that conversation crossed a line. He couldn’t tolerate being hung up on or treated as if he was second rate. Kenneth had taken things too far. He was trying to assume the lead. By hanging up on him, he essentially said that he considered him incompetent, something Ted had heard from his father since he was a boy and one of the main reasons he killed him when he turned seventeen.

Certainly, cutting his father’s throat while the man was shaving in front of his bathroom mirror, where he could witness his own death unravelling before him in fans of blood, proved that his son wasn’t completely incompetent. He was, after all, capable of cutting a man’s throat and taking his life.

Those were the words he whispered in his father’s ear as the blood jetted onto the mirror, shock registered in his eyes, his knees buckled and he dropped to the tile floor, where Ted watched him bleed out while his father reached for his throat to stop the torrent of blood spraying him, his son and the room, and where he kicked and writhed until his sorry, miserable life left him and he was dead.

He thought of a quote from Deuteronomy 23:1: “No man whose testicles have been crushed or whose organ has been cut off may become a member of the Assembly of God.”

If Kenneth challenged him when he arrived, if he came to argue with him or to belittle him, he at least knew one way to