Epilogue The Abomination That Causes Desolation

The neogenic Abomination should have weighed hundreds of tons but it levitated out of the blue Mediterranean as if it controlled gravity. From under the English-speaking horn another small horn grew out and replaced it. The head had a seeping bullet wound but began screaming out profanities and blasphemies in English that drowned out all the others. Rick thought he had seen enough to never be horrified again but when he recognized Wayne Browner's face he stood up and gasped. He watched paralyzed as the Abomination snaked through the air towards the shore where a crowd waited. Rick now recognized Dean Browner waiting at the head of the crowd of genuflecting people on the shore.

"What is that thing?" a bedraggled man sitting next to Rick asked.

"Why doesn't Sebastiao come back and end this?" a pale woman pleaded and covered her face with her hands.

"That is Sebastiao." The instant Rick said the name the projection of the Abomination turned and spoke into his mind.

"I HAVE YOUR MOTHER" Rick reeled backwards as if he had been struck. Bracing himself against the cave wall he rose back up and witnessed five of the twenty-plus people in the chamber bowing down to the projection of the Abomination. The others were all screaming or had fainted. Rick stumbled out the chamber door and ran. He meant to reach his mother's chamber as quickly as possible. Around a bend in the tunnel he slammed into Nasarine and knocked her down.