The Omen

To the Honorable

Jeremy Thorn, next

Ambassador of the

United States to the

Court of St. James in

London, and his wife

Katherine, the gift of

a son...

DAMIEN...

Heir to the Thorn

millions, a beautiful

child of a beautiful

family. Until dark

doubts and sudden,

violent death begin

to chip away at their

ordered world.

WHO IS DAMIEN?

Epigraph

Let He Who Hath Understanding Reckon The Number Of The Beast;

For It Is A Human Number, Its Number Is Six Hundred And Sixty-six.

-BOOK OF REVELATIONS

Preface

It happened in a millisecond. A movement in the galaxies that should have taken eons occurred in the blinking of an eye.

At the Cape Hattie observatory a young astronomer sat stunned, reaching an instant too late to activate the camera that might have recorded it: the splintering of three constellations that produced the dark, glowing star. From Capricorn, Cancer, and Leo pieces had suddenly flown, finding each other with magnetic certainty, melding into a pulsating galactic ember. It grew brighter now and the constellations shuddered—or was it trembling hands on the eyepiece as the astronomer struggled to stifle his confused cry?

He feared he was alone with it, but in fact he was not. For from the very bowels of the earth there came a distant sound. It was the sound of voices; human, yet not, growing in devout cacophony with the heightening potency of the star. In caves, basements, and open fields they had gathered; midwives to the birth, some twenty thousand strong. With hands joined and heads bowed, their voices rose until the vibration could be heard and felt everywhere. It was the sound of the OHM, ringing upward to the heavens and inward to the pre-biblical core of the earth.

It was the sixth month, the sixth day, the sixth hour. The precise moment predicted by the Old Testament when earth history would change. The wars, the turmoil of recent centuries had been mere rehearsals, a testing of the climate to determine when mankind would be ready to be led. Under Caesar they had cheered while Christians were fed to the lions, and

under Hitler while Jews were reduced to charred remains. Now democracy was fading, mind-impairing drugs had become a way of life, and in the few countries where freedom of worship was still allowed, it was widely proclaimed that God was dead. From Laos to Lebanon brother had turned against brother, fathers against children; school busses and marketplaces exploded daily in the growing din of preparatory lust.