The Harbingers: The Damnation Chronicles, #4

By Joseph Sweet

In Sackets Harbor, New York, on a beautiful summer day, all hell is about to break loose. Men and women from other worlds similar to this one have passed through a portal outside of the earth's atmosphere and are hurtling toward the surface. These have been gathered by fallen angels to topple a corrupt false god and though that is no longer their goal it may yet need to happen. This world may be all that is left of what was once a number beyond the mathematical capabilities of the average human mind. And it will soon be gone unless Marcus and a handful of powerful beings, with an army of gathered souls can manage to save it. An amnesiac former arch-angel of death in human form, a shape-shifter, Rose, Marcus and some others will have to sacrifice nearly everything to survive. But will they work together or fall to the darkness that is closing in on this world? And when all is said and done, will they have been the harbingers of light and life, or of death and eternal darkness?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joseph Sweet
• Release date: Oct 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301463053

Joseph Sweet

Joseph Sweet was born October 31 1976, and has been writing seriously since the age of sixteen. He currently lives in the upstate NY community of Watertown. Aside from writing he plays guitar and keyboard, writes and sings his own songs, and is an amateur photographer. He has worked in Television and radio doing voices and making and editing commercials, played in several bands, and acted in theater, but his greatest passion is and always has been his writing.

Book preview

The Damnation Chronicles

Rose and Marcus Book 4:

The Harbingers

BY JOSEPH SWEET

Smashwords Edition

WRITTEN BY JOSEPH P. Sweet

Copyright © 2007-2024 Forsaken Press and Joseph P. Sweet. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, electronic or mechanical, including but not limited to photocopying, or internet posting without written permission from Forsaken Press, or the Author, except for review purposes, or that deemed fit by the author for promotion. All persons, places, and organizations mentioned herein, except those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious. Any similarities to any persons, places, or organizations - living, dead, undead, or otherwise - are purely Coincidental. No trees were harmed during the writing of this e-book.

Revised Edition May 2024

ISBN 9781301463053

Forsaken Press

[e-mail]

Dedicated to you, dear reader; without you, where would we authors be?

To Vince, Bill, and all the others I’ve lost along the way; we’ll see each other again someday.

To Wendy for her tireless work in proofreading/editing.

For my sister who still thinks every book should be dedicated to her.

I could go on with this all day, but I think the following says it all, and those on both sides will know who I’m referring to.

For all those who, through kindness or cruelty, neglect or thoughtfulness, and other intentions - good or bad - have made me the person I am today. Were it not for every single one of you, I would not be all that I am. And I am finally at peace with that.

Other titles by Joseph Sweet

Fiction

The Damnation Chronicles:

Book One: The Damned

Book Two: Redemption

Book Three: The Gathering

Book Four: The Harbingers

Last Days:

Book One: Requiem For Humanity

Book Two: Endangered Species

Novellas:

The Invasion

I am the Life

Collections:

Hell 101

The Fall

The Edge Coming Soon

Short stories:

A Road Through Hell

Artificial Redemption

A Storm of Light

Crash Landing

Darkness, Born

Deadly Memory

Death in the Storm

Escape to Mars

Feeding Time

Forsaken

Hell 101

Just Like Going to Sleep

Last Train

One Last Goodbye

Plague

Scavengers

The Awakening

The Edge

The Future?

The Drawer

The Fall

The Last Day

The Stalker

Wendigo

Yes there will be blood

Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Part Seven: The Return

Prologue

Chapter One: Dreams and Consequences

Chapter Two: Paradise Lost

Chapter Three: The horror begins

Chapter Four: Blood, Tears, and Flame

Part Eight: Death Incarnate

Chapter One: Purpose

Chapter Two: Can't Fight Fate

Chapter Three: Common Goals

Chapter Four: Bringers of Death

Chapter Five: The Sweet Smell of Fear

Part Nine: The Way the World Ends

Chapter One: Raising the Dead

Chapter Two: Tipping the Scales

Chapter Three: Sacrifice

Chapter Four: When the World Ends

Epilogue

Afterword

Bio

Part Seven

The Return

...T hy very prayers, as they come from thy lips, taint the atmosphere with death. Yes, yes; let us pray! Let us to church, and dip our fingers in the holy water at the portal! They that come after us will perish as by a pestilence...

Giovanni from Rappaccini's Daughter

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

As moonlight bleeds

through scattered cracks

it dimly shines

on winding tracks

through places none

should ever see

and doth ignore

tormented pleas

of those who all

have lost their way

and scream and beg

and cry in vain

and wander on

forevermore

unable still

to reach the shore

Damnation Chronicles

Hades’ Memoirs

Prologue

In Sackets Harbor New York, it is a summer morning like any other. Bright sunshine falls upon half of the earth during a day that is almost Norman Rockwell-like with its perfect blue skies, only barely blemished by an occasional wisp of cloud. It is seventy-eight degrees, warm but not sweltering. People are going about their daily routines. And looking down from above the buildings as they scurry to and fro like rodents in some collector’s display case, it does seem perfect; perhaps a bit too perfect.

There are the occasional arguments and fights, of course. All over in different parts of this world, and even nearby here, but out of sight. There is Domestic violence, robbery, hard work, cruelties, and kindnesses that go along with daily life, but from this vantage point, those things are hard to see. From a distance, as the song says... from a distance.

Seize the moment, as they say, but not quite in that context. Take a moment to absorb it all. Look there at the nice grey stone structure that houses the local bank. Across the street at an old house that may have been there a hundred years or more - The comedy club, the post office, and a quaint little sandwich shop. You can picture it all, if you try, existing in some painting of happier times. If such a time existed. And you might wish to memorize it all for later reference. While it’s all still there that is. Here down Main Street, Sackets Harbor, New York, the businesses are gearing up for what they expect to be a busy night. Life in this summer tourist town always has been good in that respect. It is a beautiful place, indeed, with a magnificent harbor full of boats of all kinds, gift stores, restaurants, and coffee shops. It is a very well-kept town built on its historic part in the battle of 1812. See it very well if you will, for it will not be here much longer. The quaint little gift shop with candles and soaps across from a candy store, the antique shop that’s only open on certain days and sometimes only by appointment. The seafood restaurant, the brewery, the museum, all of it will soon be in ruins.

Even now men and women from other worlds similar to this one have passed through a portal outside of the earth’s atmosphere and are hurtling towards the surface. Fallen angels have gathered these to topple a corrupt false god and though that is no longer their goal, it may yet need to happen. They were brought here by their new leader in an attempt to save their lives, but some of them will unknowingly become the harbingers of death and destruction in this world.

Moving away from Main Street, the town becomes a bit less flashy. And now, passing over the apartment complexes in the old Madison Barracks, we will cross The Old Military Road into a fairly large graveyard.

This would appear to be in stark opposition to the life we just spoke of, but it is where this story will soon pick up. Here in this place of death, two have gathered to remember. They stand, hands interlocked, looking down on the grave of Marcus Blake. One remembers the man he had known in this world, and the other remembers the brother she only vaguely remembers from another one who had sacrificed everything to save her life.

For these two, everything is about to change forever, as with the rest of the inhabitants of this world, though this couple will be more directly involved.

In a matter of minutes all that they know to be real will change, followed closely by the destruction of all which surrounds them.

Forces are gathering that would destroy this world and what is only a handful of worlds like it. They are all that is left of what had been a number beyond the mathematical capabilities of the average human mind.

Not far from this place, hiding in plain sight, an army of shapeshifters led by an immortal former demon-god, now going by the name of Christopher Sykes, is preparing an all-out attack against the human population.

Hundreds of miles away, in Texas, a former Archangel of death with no memory of his prior existence - now going by the name of Samuel Doe and in the body of a 31-year-old man - is about to discover that the nightmares he has been having for so long were but warnings of what he was becoming all along.

Perhaps he is where this should start as he will inevitably be a key player in either the ultimate demise or salvation of humankind.

Chapter One

Dreams and Consequences

5

Two Years ago

San Marco, Texas.

In a world yet untouched by the coming apocalypse, Sam awoke in a cold sweat. The screams of a dying mass of people still rang in his ears and it was his fault. He threw himself up and into a sitting position at the edge of the bed, reached for the journal on the windowsill next to him out of instinct, and then changed his mind. What was the use? Writing down his dreams wasn’t helping at all. And they were usually the same. In most of them, he had the powers of a god. In this one, he had accidentally destroyed a world.

There was no telling where it was coming from. He, like a lot of people, had dreams that he could fly, shoot lightning from his fingers, teleport, and many other things. But lately, they were getting worse. Now he dreamed regularly that he was some sort of destroyer of worlds. This he knew, or at least had to believe, was on no level of his consciousness a desire of his, so why was he dreaming it?

The shrinks were full of shit. They said that dreams were a culmination of thoughts from the prior day, or pent-up emotions working themselves out in his sleep. He wasn’t so sure.

If he could just remember where he had come from or something from his life before the age of sixteen, he imagined that he would have the answers.

He remembered so clearly his awakening in the hospital, having been found wearing clothes that were too big for him. Upon awakening, he had screamed the name Sam over and over again, according to the nurses who had been on staff that night. They’d had to sedate him to get him to stop. That part had always been foggy, but what he did remember clearly of it was that something was missing. Sam was only part of what he had been trying to remember. Later, he could only assume that the rest had been his last name and personal information. Whatever it had been, it seemed to have disappeared from his mind forever. That had been back in nineteen ninety-five.

Social workers and a shrink had guessed his age to be about 16 and a panel of psychiatrists and teachers had guessed him around that age as well – though very advanced for his age. They’d placed him in school, but he’d never gotten along well with others, and bad things tended to mysteriously happen to those who pissed him off; bizarre accidents for which he and the teachers had no explanation. He’d been adopted and taken in by a rich couple who’d not been able to have children of their own. This, he had been told, was unusual for foster parents, but they’d treated him as though he were a member of the family. And then one night a car accident left him with all that they had owned. Some people had looked after him, but after a time he had graduated to doing it all on his own. It was better that way. He wasn’t built for other people it seemed, nor were they for him.

Suddenly the sound of what he would always think of as an air raid siren came to him, and he quickly made his way to the window fearing that his dreams had somehow manifested themselves in the real world. Most people considered this sound to be a storm warning, but old war movies had locked the term in his head. It never ceased to give him chills whenever he heard it. His foster parents, whom he had grown to love more than anything in this world, had been obsessed with older movies.

The sky outside was black.

He knew from constant warnings and prior experience that the sirens usually didn’t go off until after a tornado was on the ground. If you were lucky there might be a three-minute warning at the most.

For a moment only a paranoid fear crept over him that the storm in his dream had come to life outside, that he had dragged it out with him. Surely that was ridiculous, but for a moment he wondered.

He quickly made his way out into the living room and toward the basement when he heard a scream coming from outside. Against better judgment, he headed for the front door. Maybe there was still time.

Outside it was dark, as though it were the middle of the night and not early morning. A quick gust of wind practically pushed him right back inside onto his ass. He was saved only by quick reflexes as he grabbed the door casing with his right hand.

Not far away he could see one of the neighbor girls trapped next to a shed behind their house. Most likely it was the wind that was keeping her from bolting toward the storm cellar not far away. Given her weight and height, she probably wouldn’t have made it, but Sam thought he could.

He quickly ran out into the storm, and not far out, saw the tornado, which appeared to be headed this way. There was no time to think about it, but later he would realize that if he had ignored the scream and headed for his cellar, he would most likely have died. Little did he know that death simply was not in the cards for him.

She was calling out to him as he closed the distance, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. The sounds of the storm were drowning all else out. The winds were so bad now that he wasn’t so sure they would make it, but he scooped the crying girl up and made a run for the storm cellar. The wind got hold of the door as he started to open it and it was flung violently the rest of the way open. He practically dove in with her. It wouldn’t be long now before walking out there would be impossible. He had expected there to be light. Maybe a lantern or something, but there was none, and in seconds the reason why became obvious.

They were the only ones down here.

Where were her parents? Where was her little brother? He thought the answers were obvious - little girl, wandering alone, in the middle of one of the most violent storms known to humankind - surely her parents were hurt; or worse, dead.

Vera? he asked the traumatized child, Where’s your mommy and daddy?

She just shook her head, obviously frightened beyond the capability of speech. She looked down and to the side. Sam thought she knew quite well where they were and didn’t want to say. But she was a child, and he didn’t think of himself as cruel, so he let it go for the time being. If they were injured, there may be very little, if any, time.

Sam weighed the options, wondering if he had any. The tornado was close. Could he make it into their house and check for them, and back again? Could he live with himself later if he found out that he would have been able to, and they died because he didn’t? Was he actually in possession of that much of a conscience? All were good questions, but there was only one right thing to do.

Turning to Vera, he said, Honey, get back over there in the corner and wait for me to come back.

She did as she was told without question.

Sam opened the door carefully and managed to get a few feet outside before a gust of wind almost threw him. The house wasn’t far, but in this, it might as well have been a mile away. He knew he should be taking shelter instead of risking his life for someone whom there was no good reason to believe he could save.

In the years following his awakening in the hospital, he had been cold and emotionless, unable to grow attached to any other human. Shrinks and teachers had assumed that it was due to some past trauma that he was blocking from his memory and that at some point it would all come rushing back.

It hadn’t, of course, but over the first couple of years with his foster family, he had grown to love and trust them, and it honestly had felt like the first time in a long stretch going back past creation into infinity. He knew this, of course, to be an exaggeration. Or so he thought.

The Johnsons had been very close to his new family and through cook-outs and camping trips, they’d become a close second to his foster parents. He’d discovered a potential within him to love and care about the lives of others at that time and had latched onto it as though it could be snatched back away from him at any moment.

Now, though a confused part of him wondered briefly why, he knew that he couldn’t just sit by and let them die if he could help it at all. They had been the reason for his staying here in Texas instead of moving to the summer home in Upstate NY. He slowly closed in on the front of the house, realizing that he would probably not be able to make it back to Vera, and just hoping that she would be okay by herself until the storm was over.

A part of the upper front of the place had already been destroyed. The trunk of a tree had ripped its way into the upstairs. He walked through the open front door, where Vera had most likely exited in a daze, and wondered just what he was going to find. Not far into the kitchen, there was a great deal of blood, but no bodies. He followed the trail into their living room, where Francis - the girl’s father - lay dead. Something had sliced open his throat and right shoulder. He lay sprawled in a mess of blood and broken glass.

There was no time to check for a pulse. He knew the man was dead. He also knew that he should be feeling something right about now, but there was nothing aside from a desire to see if there was someone here that he could help. Perhaps it was adrenalin, but he didn’t think so. He’d felt torn apart when his foster parents had died, but no tears had come. At some point, the realization came that he was beating himself up more for not being upset than for actually feeling anything about their deaths at all. He’d been told it was just shock. But he didn’t believe that. What he did believe was that he was cold and emotionless - inhuman, some would say. Some nights, lying there in the dark, just before sleep would take him, he would reach a state where, just for a moment, his mind would open up and he would be certain that he had known that day in the hospital. He had held within his mind all of the answers. He had known what he was. And then it had all been gone. Then he would fall asleep, content that he would awake once more with the answers, but it never happened.

A light and barely audible sobbing could just barely be heard over the sounds of the storm outside, which were like a freight train bearing down on him, an earthquake, and a jet engine at the same time. For a second, he stopped there and listened, certain that he had imagined it, but it came again and he quickly began moving toward it. Sam quickly made his way to the stairs and started up toward that sound. The sound grew louder as he ascended the carpeted steps.

Once at the top, he realized how bad the damage was. The tree trunk he had witnessed sticking out of the building from outside was much bigger than it had looked. It now lay stretched between the room that it had initially crashed through, into the hallway where he now stood, and past him into another dark room. The house on this level was in ruins. He was able to climb over the trunk and into a destroyed room that the two children had shared. Having been here many times before, he knew the layout of the place almost as well as his own home.

He could almost see the scene play out in his head. The mother and father had come running at the sound to find one of the children dead. The mother had not been able to leave her fallen son, and the father had taken the daughter downstairs, knowing that he couldn’t reason with his wife just then. Maybe he had hoped to come back in time, once his only surviving child was safe. But he hadn’t made it out of the house.

Sam closed in on the sobbing woman.

Mrs. Johnson?

She didn’t look up at him. Her world had ended and lay broken at her feet, covered in a blood-soaked white sheet. She didn’t care, for the moment, what happened to her. Maybe she already knew that her husband was dead, but there was no way to know for sure at the moment.

Sam didn’t know what he was doing. A vision came to him suddenly. A memory of a dream turned nightmare, where he had laid his hands upon a dead man, and brought him back to life. I can fix this, he thought, although he felt foolish for it an instant later. Did he sense something in the air; some presence, or energy, lingering still? ‘It’s the boy.’ he thought but felt as though someone or something else was talking through him and didn’t trust it. Nevertheless, he found himself reaching out quickly, urgently, almost as though not of his own volition – as though he sensed that there was no time to be spared. He found himself placing his hands on one tiny, lifeless arm that was sticking out from beneath the bloody sheet. An overwhelming sense of wrongness fell over him as he did so, but what wasn’t wrong about this situation? He somehow knew what was going to happen and that it was real, as though he’d done it a thousand times before, yet was the first time all at once. A sense of futility passed over him, causing him to doubt himself, but what if it worked? A normal person would have just thought himself crazy and not even tried.

He might have failed if he had attempted to do anything specific just then. Still, he was operating on instinct - some knowledge buried deep