Blood of the Faithful Read online

  ALSO BY MICHAEL WALLACE

  Other titles in the Righteous Series

  The Righteous

  Mighty and Strong

  The Wicked

  The Blessed and the Damned

  Destroying Angel

  The Gates of Babylon

  Hell’s Fortress

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2015 Michael Wallace

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477821145

  ISBN-10: 1477821147

  Cover design by Cyanotype Book Architects

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014913872

  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

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  AFTERWORD

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  The sun had dropped into a pool of red and purple flames in the western desert before Ezekiel Smoot emerged from the sandstone maze and approached the back of the temple. His younger brother Grover had received his endowments earlier in the day, and Ezekiel had unlocked the back door of the temple before departing with his wives and the rest of his extended family. It had already been late afternoon, and he guessed nobody would come around and check the lock. When the handle turned in his hand, he knew he was right.

  Ezekiel slipped into the cool, dark hallway. His heart was pounding, and he worried that his unauthorized entrance into this holy spot was sacrilege. Five years had passed since he’d first entered the temple at the age of twenty-two to receive his own endowments, and the space still felt mystical, forbidden. But he’d been commanded to enter by a dream. He didn’t dare defy it.

  The darkness enveloped him, so thick that it felt like hands squeezing the life from his bones. Chances were, his father had flipped the breaker off on his way out, but Ezekiel didn’t dare try the light switch and find out.

  It was April of the third year of the collapse, and the spring rains were light. To conserve the reservoir ahead of an uncertain summer, the Christiansons cut electricity to the valley at sundown for all but essential uses. And since the only thing that seemed to count as essential was Jacob Christianson’s clinic and surgery, a light flickering through the temple windows would arouse suspicion.

  So Ezekiel groped his way down the hallway by touch. He had carefully studied the temple corridors that afternoon at Grover’s endowment and made a mental map in his head so he wouldn’t get turned around and confused. He made his way past the endowment room, the baptistery, the offices, and the hallway that led to the sealing rooms. He found the hall that led to the Holy of Holies, the sacred room beneath the spire of the temple.

  A warning voice sounded as he hesitated at the head of the hallway. At first it seemed like his own worries, his own doubts. But the longer he stood rooted in place, the more the warning became an actual voice whispering into his ear.

  Turn back. Death awaits those who defy the will of the Lord.

  He had to fight it off. Even here, in this holy place, the devil was not without power over the weak-willed and unfaithful. Years ago, Jacob Christianson’s brother Enoch had been murdered in these very halls when the Kimball clan made a violent play for control of the church. No doubt the Kimballs had heard Satan’s voice then too.

  I am not Satan, I am the Destroying Angel of the Lord. Woe be unto those who defy me, for they shall be thrust unto hell.

  “Get thee behind me, Satan,” he whispered.

  The voice faded, but not the sinking feeling of dread. He almost turned around.

  Ezekiel’s wives would be arriving at the home of his father, Elder Smoot, carrying cornbread, mashed potatoes, and apple pies. The extended family was gathering to commemorate the death of Ezekiel’s older brother, Bill, killed last year by a missile strike from a drone aircraft. With so many wives and children filling the Smoot compound to bursting, they wouldn’t immediately notice Ezekiel’s absence.

  His hand went to his jacket pocket, where he had a small flashlight. The few remaining batteries in Blister Creek were reserved for two-way radios and other emergency use, but he’d found a camping flashlight that could be recharged by shaking it up and down for a minute or so.

  He resisted the urge to use it. Still too dangerous. The hall had windows.

  At last his hands found the carved oak door that opened into the Holy of Holies. He traced the carved sunstone on its surface until he located the cool iron handle.

  For a long moment he was unable to move, afraid.

  Only the prophet and members of the Quorum of the Twelve could enter the room. Here they met, here they communed with angels. Rumor had it that the Lord himself would hold counsel with the prophet.

  “Come on, move.”

  The sound of his own voice slapped Ezekiel from his paralysis. He took out his flashlight, shook it, then pushed open the door with one hand and turned on the light with the other. The LED bulb cast a thin blue beam across the Holy of Holies. He stepped in and let the door close behind him.

  Wooden benches ringed the room. Varnished wainscoting rose above the benches to the height of a man, after which the ceiling disappeared into the darkness, rising into the spire that topped the temple. His light swung to the center of the room.

  An aged cedar chest sat in the middle. Various symbols had been carved in its side: a moon with a face, another sunstone, all-seeing eyes, a compass and square. Cherubim, their wooden wings overlaid with gold leaf, perched on either end of the chest like sacred guardians.

  The chest had no lock. It needed none. If a man violated the sanctity of that chest, it was said, the cherubim would come to life and rip him apart. Inside lay the sword and breastplate of Laban. Only the One Mighty and Strong could put on the breastplate. Only he could heft the sword in his hand.

  Was that man Jacob Christianson? Was he the One Mighty and Strong foretold by prophesy?

  Jacob’s father, Abraham, the old prophet and patriarch, had died in a violent struggle with the Kimball clan five years earlier, when Ezekiel was not yet married. Any doubts people had about Abraham’s son Jacob taking over seemed to have vanished at the funeral, when the young man spoke with power and autho
rity. People were openly weeping, claiming they could hear Brother Abraham’s voice emerging from his son’s mouth.

  But that night Ezekiel had found his own father creaking in his rocking chair on the porch, anxiously tapping a boot. A cloud of frantic moths and other flying bugs assaulted the porch light over his head, but he paid them no mind.

  Father looked up and blinked when he saw Ezekiel. “I don’t know. I just don’t know,” he said. “Is he ready? Is he strong enough?”

  “Jacob?” Ezekiel asked. He hadn’t given it much thought, but his father had long expressed reservations about the younger Christianson.

  Father nodded.

  “What is your worry?” Ezekiel asked. “That he only has one wife?”

  “Yes, that. For a start.”

  “Can’t imagine that will last long. Now that he’s prophet, everyone will be happy to offer their daughters.”

  “They’ve already offered daughters. Jacob declined to enter plural marriage, says he’s happy with Fernie.”

  Ezekiel stared. “Happy with one wife? That’s crazy.”

  At that time, Ezekiel was still in that anxious point of life when he didn’t yet have permission to marry his first woman. Jacob would later eliminate the practice of casting out the excess young men, but back then, until you were given your first wife, there was always the chance you would find yourself among the Lost Boys.

  It was natural to be envious of Jacob, with so many beautiful young sisters and half sisters. Men would gladly trade their daughters and sisters for someone like Eliza Christianson. Ezekiel had a dozen sisters too, and plenty of men had wanted to marry Lillian and Lisbeth, but his father and his older brother, Bill, had been the beneficiaries of those trades, not Ezekiel.

  It staggered his imagination that a man would be offered wives and not take them. How else would you grow in stature in the sight of the Lord? How else would you fulfill the promise of Abraham, to see your posterity as numerous as the sand on the seashore? Become a king and priest in the world to come? Even a god?

  “What are you saying?” Ezekiel asked. “You don’t think he’s the prophet?”

  “Jacob is clever enough, and that fools people into thinking he’s wise. And they respect him because he is a doctor. He’s a gifted speaker and commands loyalty from his family. And women trust him too.”

  “None of those are bad things, Father.”

  Ezekiel was struggling to explain the thoughts churning through his mind. His faith was so absolute that he couldn’t understand how Jacob could be left at the head of the church if he had not been called by God. He pulled up a chair and waited for his father to explain himself.

  For a long time Elder Smoot did nothing but rock and scowl, his mouth thinned behind his bushy whiskers.

  At last he cleared his throat. “Do you know what Brother Jacob said when I asked him if he’d received a heavenly confirmation of his new calling?”

  “Did he say no?”

  Father grunted and shook his head. “He said to never trust a man who claimed he’d seen an angel. Most likely he was either lying or insane.”

  A deep worry settled into Ezekiel’s gut. “That doesn’t sound like a prophet.”

  “No, it doesn’t. Look, I might be wrong. Maybe it’s self-doubt. That’s no sin.”

  “For a prophet?” Ezekiel asked. Now his own doubts—not in the church, but in Jacob—were spreading cancerous tendrils through his testimony.

  “Even for a prophet. Moses doubted when the Lord called him. And Jonah, before he was swallowed by a whale. Peter denied Christ three times before the cock crowed. And in the Book of Mormon, Alma the Younger was struck down by the Lord before he repented.”

  Ezekiel felt a little better. “That’s true.”

  The porch door swung open. Ezekiel’s mother stood there and both men started.

  His mother was a Kimball, but her loyalties now lay entirely with the Smoots, and her husband had been one of the dead prophet’s closest allies and confidants. That made her an ally of the Christiansons as well. At dinner, she’d prayed long and hard expressing her gratitude that Abraham had left the church in the capable hands of his eldest son.

  From the look on her face it was clear she’d been listening. “Trust in the Lord,” she said. “That is all you need to do. Everything else will take care of itself.”

  Elder Smoot could be a hard man when it came to questioning from his wives and daughters. He had plenty of respect for women’s work: cooking, cleaning, child care, managing the domestic economy. And a woman was just as spiritual as a man, Father had said many times. Perhaps more so. But only a fool would trust a woman’s advice about the weightier matters of the church or community. That was for men to discuss, men to decide. A woman’s job was to follow and obey.

  But if he was irritated that one of his wives had interjected herself into the discussion, he didn’t let on. Instead he said, “Are the women united? Do they agree that Brother Jacob is the answer to our salvation?”

  Mother smiled. “I don’t speak for all women. But most are excited to have a young man with energy. We need a strong leader now more than ever.”

  “No doubt the womenfolk think him handsome,” Father grumbled. “And they all want him for a son-in-law, if not a husband.”

  He rose to his feet with his knees popping. Ezekiel followed his lead.

  Mother put her hand on Elder Smoot’s arm, and looked back and forth between father and son. “The lights are on at the temple,” she said, “and Jacob’s car is parked out front. I think he’s in the Holy of Holies, wrestling with his testimony. Give him a chance.”

  Smoot let out a deep sigh. “Very well. He deserves that much.”

  For a time after the final defeat of the Kimballs, it had seemed that the Smoots would fill the role of rivals to the Christiansons within Blister Creek. Elder Smoot sparred with Brother Jacob and his allies on the Quorum, and resisted every attempt to give women more power in the community and church. But then, at the moment when Ezekiel’s father should have hardened his opposition—after the violent death of his oldest son, Bill, on the highway south of Blister Creek—Father seemed to make his choice.

  Never mind his dead son. He’d cast his lot with Jacob Christianson. Father had become convinced that Jacob was the One Mighty and Strong, prophesied by Joseph Smith to lead the saints at the End of Days.

  And now, in the Holy of Holies, with the light already fading on Ezekiel’s flashlight, the time had come to put Father’s faith to the test.

  Ezekiel reached for the chest. In his dream, the wood had turned hot under his touch until it burned like a piece of metal left baking in the desert sun. But now it was cool, the wood old and rough. He lifted the lid and peered inside. The smell of cedar and old newspaper came out. But he could see nothing; the light was too weak, almost dead now. He held the lid open with one hand and shook the flashlight with the other to recharge it.

  In the dream, he had opened the cedar chest to see the sword glowing red and the breastplate white, like the sun. When he lifted the sword, blood had dripped off it. Whose blood, he couldn’t say, but he knew, in the way one does in dreams, that he had been the one to do the killing. And he knew that there was more killing yet to do.

  It was a terrible risk to open the chest. More terrible still to touch the sword and the breastplate. Only the prophet could touch them. The cherubim would strike down any other man who dared. And even the prophet was forbidden from wielding them until the Great and Dreadful Day.

  If you raise the sword, you are the new prophet. If you are wrong, you will surely die.

  Soon there was no more excuse, and he stopped shaking the light and turned it back on. Then he aimed the light and peered inside the chest. His pulse throbbed in his ears, and his breath came fast and nervous.

  There was no breastplate. There was no sword. In fact, there was nothin
g in the chest but a yellowed newspaper.

  A nervous, honking laugh burst from Ezekiel’s mouth. The dream had commanded him to come here and take up the sword and breastplate. And unlike most dreams, it had not faded over the subsequent days. Instead, he could not stop thinking about it, about what it meant.

  “But it was nothing.” His voice echoed hollowly in the tall, empty room. “A dream. You are not the pharaoh, and you are not Joseph with the Coat of Many Colors. You are a fool, a dreamer.”

  He picked up the newspaper. It was the Deseret Evening News, with the date of January 4, 1896.

  UTAH A STATE

  THE PROCLAMATION ISSUED BY PRESIDENT CLEVELAND

  ONE OF THE AMERICAN UNION

  OFFICIAL MESSAGE THAT AROUSES JOYOUS ENTHUSIASM IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE

  He tossed it back in and shut the lid of the chest. Then he sat quietly on one of the benches ringing the room as the light slowly faded again. What about the sword and breastplate? Where had they gone?

  Brother Jacob must have taken them. Any other man would have died the instant he touched them.

  But Jacob had never wielded them. Not when the Kimballs launched a cruel attack to take over the church. Not when the government defiled the temple with armed troops. Not when the time came to drive the starving refugees from the reservoir. Not once had he called down the power of the Lord to help the church. Instead, he always relied on the arm of flesh: modern weapons, allies from the FBI, his own cunning.

  Jacob must have taken away the sword and breastplate precisely so they wouldn’t be used. So that another, more righteous man wouldn’t wield them for the purpose for which they’d been created.

  Yet Jacob hadn’t died upon touching them, either. How was that possible?

  Ezekiel had backed his way out of the room and was picking his way down the hallway when the answer came to him. Jacob had touched the breastplate and sword without dying because the Lord had called him as prophet. He hadn’t wielded them righteously because he was a fallen prophet.