Unholy Night (28 page)

H
erod strode into his bedchamber, which was far smaller than the cavernous one in his “pleasure palace” in Jerusalem but still a respectable thirty feet square. Soft, cloud-filtered light streamed in through a pair of glass windows on the seaward wall, casting a sleepy glow on the carpets that encircled his oversized bed and its silk pillows and making his long, freestanding silver mirror beckon.

After cutting two strips of flesh off of the Antioch Ghost, the magus had suggested they take a short break from the torture. It was important to give the victim time to recuperate after the first big shock to the system. It was equally, if not
more
important to give him a false sense of hope. Hope that the worst might be behind him, when in fact, the worst hadn’t even begun. Herod had been happy to oblige, especially since the break had given him a chance to visit his bedchamber and its silver wonder.

Herod wasn’t taking any chances with his prisoner. The Antioch Ghost had proven too smart and slippery for his Judean guards. Even though he was tied up and weak, he couldn’t be trusted. Before adjourning, Herod had ordered two Roman soldiers to remain in the cell with him at all times. No, he wasn’t risking anything. Not when the Hebrew God was meddling with them. Not when everything was coming together so beautifully.

Herod stood in front of the mirror and removed his robes. He wanted to look at every part of himself, wanted to admire the speed with which he was healing. His lesions were all but gone; the sickly flesh that had been stretched over his skeletal rib cage was now hearty and healthy. Even his teeth, those blackened, crooked little vultures, had grown whiter.
A miracle.

It was a little strange that none of his courtesans had complimented his appearance yet.
They’re probably afraid to be too hasty. Or perhaps they’re afraid to make any mention of my appearance at all.
He smiled at the thought.
I can’t blame them. It’s been a sensitive subject for years. But the women…I can tell that the women are already eyeing me differently. I can tell that they’re quietly overjoyed…
as am I.

The magus was quietly overjoyed too. He reclined on a couch in Herod’s throne room—
our throne room—
enjoying a cup of wine. A harmless little luxury. One of several he was considering taking up in his new role as ruler of Judea.

Pride was a dangerous thing. The Jews had a saying, didn’t they? About pride being prelude to destruction? So be it. The magus was allowing himself a little pride today, for he’d finally succeeded in doing the impossible. With a little patience and a lot of distant persuasion, he’d manipulated two of the world’s most powerful men into giving him exactly what he wanted: a chance to rebuild. A chance to pull a lost religion out of the ashes.

His fellow magi—
my brothers, requiéscant in pace—
had spent centuries locked away, studying the dark power of a bygone age. Back when miracles had been commonplace. A time of burning bushes, of plagues and floods. For centuries, they’d kept the world out, mastering this darkness. Sharing their secrets with no one. But the world had changed. Empires had grown out of the desert. Man had conjured his own magic: controlling the flow of rivers with dams, curing sickness with medicine, building towers that touched the heavens. The miracles had ceased, and try as the magi might to remain separate and pure, the world had forced its way in.

Their temples had been burned. His brothers had been hunted down, accused of heresy and put to death, until the once-thriving magi had been all but erased from the earth. Until all that remained was one lone disciple. One man with mastery over ancient darkness. And that, quite frankly, was a lonely existence.

Herod had been right about one thing: The world had no use for men like him anymore. But the king was weak. And his greatest weakness was that he thought himself wise. All it had taken was a little enchantment. A little trickery. As ancient spells went, it was relatively simple, and it worked only on those desperate enough to believe its effects. Fortunately, the king was such a man.

In reality, Herod’s illness was irreversible. Whatever curse had coiled itself around his innards was far stronger than anything the magus could conjure. But while he couldn’t actually make the puppet king healthy again, he could make the king
think
he was healthy. In Herod’s bewitched eyes, his lesions and sores were fading away, and his health was roaring back. In the eyes of the
rest
of the world, he was the same repulsive creature.

Yes, his courtesans and whores might think it strange that their king was suddenly so ebullient and spending so much time admiring himself in the mirror. Yes, they might think it strange when he skipped about with renewed vigor or remarked on his renewed appearance. But the beauty of it was, no one would dare tell him differently. And even if they did, Herod would simply think them mad.

Judea’s puppet king had become the magus’s personal puppet. And he would remain so, even as the disease he could no longer see or feel ate him to death.

And it will. Soon. Unless Augustus kills him first. Kills him for stealing his prized magus away.

And when Herod was gone? The magus would be there to take full ownership of the throne. A kingdom all to himself. An army, guided by ancient darkness, to challenge Rome. And a chance to rebuild an ancient brotherhood that had been all but lost to history.

A strange silence permeated the dungeon, broken only by the sound of rainwater seeping through the ceiling and falling to the stone floor, the crackling of the clay oven and its suffocating heat. Balthazar hung limply from the wooden beam above, trying to take his mind off the agony that radiated from the two strips of raw, exposed muscle on his sides. Even the slightest movement of air caused a severe pain that tensed his body and took his breath away.

He looked up through strands of wet hair and saw that the room was empty, save for two Roman guards posted on either side of the door. His torturers had excused themselves.
Apparently, watching a man suffer is hard work.
Water dripped steadily from the ceiling, seeping through the cracked mortar between the bricks, where it clung in defiance of gravity until each individual droplet grew fat enough to fall. Some of those droplets ran down the rope that held him aloft by his wrists. Some fell onto Balthazar, running down his body, mixing with the blood on his skin and aiding it on its way to the floor, where puddles had begun to form.

Balthazar was having trouble focusing his eyes through the mixture of seeping raindrops and the involuntary tears that came when the waves of pain crashed ashore. He heard the cell door creak open and saw the ghostly white outline of a large man enter.

“So, here he is,” said the man, taking off his cape and handing it to one of the guards. “Here’s the great ‘Antioch Ghost’ in the flesh. I had to come and see for myself.”

He was older. Grayed, though still upright and muscular. He was an officer of some kind, a general maybe. A career soldier in the twilight of his fighting years.

“I was stationed in Antioch some time ago,” he said, moving forward. “I found it to be a filthy place, truth be told. And, please, I mean no offense.”

Soon would come the slight hunch, the withering of muscles. Next, the weight would fall off of his bones with alarming speed, dark spots would appear on the tops of his hands, and he would use a cane to carry himself a few last wintry steps to the grave. But not yet. There was still power left in this man. Balthazar could tell, just by the way he carried himself.

“The river, the Colonnaded Street…the forum. Antioch had its charms.”

There was something flittering and gold under his chin. Something that caught the torchlight and threw it back in all directions.

“It’s just that…as beautiful as it was, I could never get over the people. They reminded me of…rats. Thieving little rats.”

Balthazar felt whatever strength he had left retreat. He felt his breath leave his chest and his body go numb.

It was a pendant.

Abdi’s pendant.

S
ela didn’t know whose knife it was. She only knew it was pressed dangerously, painfully against her throat.

“To your feet, slowly,” said the voice. “You so much as twitch, and I’ll cut your throat.”

She rose, damning herself for being caught unaware. Damning herself for staying long enough to get caught in the first place. They’d held freedom in their hands, but they were all dead now.
Ripped away.
And for what? A moment of stupid sentimentality. She never should have led them here. She should have done what she promised Balthazar and hurried them to Egypt. “Don’t look back!” he’d told her.

She was standing up tall now, still unable to see the man who had a knife to her throat. In the corner of her right eye, she could see Joseph and Mary being forced to stand in the same fashion, with knives to their throats—Joseph with his hands held high over his head, Mary holding the baby beneath her robes and muttering, “No, no, no” again and again.

No,
thought Sela.
Not like this.
They’d gotten Balthazar. They’d gotten Abdi. They could have Joseph and Mary for all she cared. And they could have her. But they didn’t get to have the baby.

Not a chance.

She exploded, grabbing the wrist of whoever held the knife and forcing it away from her neck. In the same motion, she spun around so that she was facing her attacker, a Roman sentry—
no surprise there
—and brought her right knee firmly up into his testicles, so hard that she was sure she’d rendered them forever useless. The soldier couldn’t help himself. He dropped the knife and brought both hands instinctively to his groin. And as he doubled over in the customary fashion and vomited, Sela brought her knee up again, this time to his face, where it jarred several of his front teeth loose and turned his nose into a mere suggestion of its former shape. He fell, unconscious, and Sela quickly picked up the knife he’d dropped.

This, of course, had drawn the attention of the other two sentries, who left Joseph and Mary and rushed at Sela, their blades out front. But while two of them rushed her, only one made it more than a step—for Joseph jumped on the back of the second and put him in a headlock, choking him from behind. Sela moved out of the other sentry’s path just in time, his knife grazing her face. He tried to regain his footing and come back for another attack, but he slipped on the wet rock and had to put one hand on the ground to keep from falling over.

In that vulnerable moment, Sela thrust her knife into his kidney. She was surprised how easily it went in and how quickly the sentry went down, screaming out and clutching at the wound. She looked down at the two soldiers she’d just sent to the ground, then spun around and saw the third, red-faced and about to pass out for lack of oxygen. Joseph remained on the sentry’s back, choking him with all his might, even as he thrashed and pulled at the carpenter’s hair.

“Run, Mary!” he said. “RUN!”

Sela froze, not knowing whether she should help Joseph or speed Mary and the baby away. She looked down at the bloody knife in her hand and thought about charging at the sentry Joseph was choking.
But if I missed? And why is Mary just standing there, looking at me and pointing?

“Sela!” cried Mary. “Behind y—”

Sela’s eyes crossed, and the sound of rain and waves grew suddenly distant. She stood perfectly upright as the whole world tilted on its axis, bringing her face to the ground with a thud. She’d been struck on the head. She knew this somehow, even though the pain had yet to register, and her hair had yet to become matted with the blood that poured from her skull. A pair of sandals came into view, jumping over her and half running, half limping toward Joseph. Though Sela couldn’t see his face, the limp told her that the sandals belonged to the first soldier. The one she’d rendered childless.

Despite his injury, it seemed he’d summoned the strength to rise, clobber the back of her skull, and rush to the aid of his fellow Roman. She watched as he tackled Joseph, bringing all three men to the ground. She watched as he pummeled the carpenter with a series of punches. And as Sela watched these sideways events transpire, helpless to affect their outcome, another pair of sandals came into view—droplets of blood and rainwater running down their owner’s legs and ankles.

Stabbed Kidney…it’s the one with the stabbed kidney.

Sela also saw the bottom of a wooden club. It disappeared from her field of view as the sentry raised it high. A moment later, everything went dark.