Free Dead Reckoning by Mercedes Lackey, Rosemary Edghill Page A

brothers and sisters in the Divine Resurrection, I bring you greetings once more from the angels Cassiel, Dumah, Jehoel, and The Heavenly Throne of Revelation. Truly we are fortunate to live in an age where the Highest prepares to close the great book upon this earthy Jerusalem in preparation for the building ofa Jerusalem of Fire. It is by your hands and by your unstinting labors that an army of Holy Angels is being forged to go forth upon this sacred task—a sinless, stainless army whose bodies are of the substance of the Almighty’s first children, recalled to life without the stain of Eve or the mark of Cain to lead them astray—”
    Jett revised her opinion from “law clerk” to “preacher.” Brother Shepherd had the knack of hooking an audience, and the same ability Maxwell Finlay had to fill a whole room with his voice and still make you think he was talking just to you. He didn’t just stare at the back wall, either, but glanced around his congregation. When he locked eyes with her, Jett saw his were such a pale gray as to be almost colorless. The uncanny effect gave her chills.
    It hadn’t taken her long to decide “Brother” Shepherd was crazier than a cage full of bats. It didn’t mean he had anything to do with the zombies—she was prepared to believe that if he saw a zombie, he’d just start preaching at it. The fact he was still alive was a pretty good indication he hadn’t seen any. Maybe they
had
just crossed Jerusalem’s Wall on their way to parts unknown. She knew they’d come this way. White Fox hadn’t lost the trail or followed the wrong one.
    But the longer Brother Shepherd preached, the more worrisome his preaching got.
The last time I heard this much about fire, the preacher was talking about the Other
Place,
Jett thought sardonically. Brother Shepherd moved on from praising the congregation and describing the “Jerusalem of Fire” that was to come, to praising the army that would make it happen.
    “It is the Blessed Resurrected who will go forth to work the Almighty’s will! They will build the Jerusalem of Fire to which our Blessed Savior will return! You will say it is a great labor beyond the strength of mortal man—and I say to you, you are right! But the Blessed Resurrected draw their strength not from the things of this world, but from their baptism in the Divine Fire of the Jerusalem to come! The Blessed Resurrected are possessed of an angelic nature forged in Heaven’s own fires, a fire that burns away all earthly taint—”
    As Brother Shepherd continued describing the holy army of the blessed resurrected, something occurred to her that made Brother Shepherd’s speechifying a lot less entertaining. If you stripped off all the ‘holiness’ jabberjaw and Bible-talk, what Brother Shepherd was describing …
    “—by their angelic nature, the Blessed Resurrected need no Earthly substance! Those anointed by the fires of the Jerusalem to come neither eat nor drink—nor shall the Blessed Resurrected sleep while their work is unfinished, for their every hour is dedicated to the will of the Heavenly Throne of Revelation!”
    … was
zombies.
    His “Blessed Resurrected” didn’t eat, drink, or sleep. They were “silent before the walls of the fiery Jerusalem,” which meant they didn’t talk. They were “impervious to the pains of death,” and the only thing Jett knew of that didn’t have to worry about dying was something already dead. They were “perfectly obedient to the Will of the Lord and to the will of The Lord’s Appointed Captains”—and Maxwell had said the zombies in Alsop had followed a living general. But there were too many breathing people here for this to be a haunt of zombies.
    Could be coincidence
, she insisted to herself.
Could be.
She’d almost convinced herself it was when Brother Shepherd headed into the homestretch.
    “My truth is a truth revealed of the mind of the holy angels of the Almighty God! Alsop has long stood as a rebuke to