Victory of Coins (The Judas Chronicles, #7) (2 page)

Meanwhile, since a year ago spring, Beatrice and I have begun the healing process of losing our only shared offspring. I daresay it has pulled us closer than we’ve ever been—something completely unexpected since she already was my ‘soul mate’, for lack of a better term. Even more surprising, though, is the fact that a new life has begun inside of her—our child. Or, our
second
child, I should say, since Alistair will always hold first place in our hearts. We won’t know the baby’s sex for at least another month, since according to Beatrice’s gynecologist she is only at fourteen weeks in her pregnancy.

Too early to know what The Almighty has blessed us with, and yet too late to be taking afternoon strolls through ancient war grounds in the South’s stifling summer heat.

“I’ll drive,” said Jeremy, once we returned to the parking lot where Roderick’s latest Escalade waited. Jeremy’s ornery smile caused Roderick to hesitate in handing the keys to him. “I promise to take us straight to Vicksburg, and only stop for gas and restroom breaks, and for dinner, of course.”

Roderick remained reluctant for a moment, but then shrugged and handed him the keys.

“We can stop in Tuscaloosa for dinner, unless you wish to press on to Jackson first,” Roderick advised. “But we’re done with the battlefield tour for the day.”

“Okay... but if Beatrice is up for it tomorrow, can we check out the sights in Vicksburg?” Jeremy persisted, while I stifled a chuckle. He reminded me so much of Alistair when groveling like this. “We’re still going to go through Shiloh and Fort Donelson in Tennessee before visiting a couple of Kentucky sites and Appomattox, Virginia on the way back home... right?”

“That’s the plan,” Roderick agreed, his tone weak from weariness. “We’ll stay one night in Vicksburg and the next night in Paris Landing, near the Kentucky border and right around the block from Fort Donelson... at least that’s Bea’s current proposal. Right Beatrice?”

“Sounds good,” she said, trying to get situated in her seat next to mine behind Jeremy and Amy in front. Roderick would have the rear bench seat all to himself. “I think I’ll be fine in a little while.”

“Hey, don’t they have a casino in Vicksburg?” Amy asked, reaching for her phone to check it out on the Internet. “I seemed to have read something about it.... Maybe we can spend an hour playing slots and some blackjack tonight!”

“If Beatrice feels up to it, we’ll join you all,” I said, keeping an ever-watchful eye on my wife who seemed unable to find a comfortable position in her seat. “If not, I’m sure Rod wouldn’t mind chaperoning the two of you.”

I smiled playfully when Jeremy appeared offended. He and my druid pal had been at odds now and then since the holidays last year, when Roderick had unintentionally insulted the Golden Eagles about their Blackfoot heritage... something about being a minor tribe in historical significance as compared to the Cherokee, Apache, and Iroquois nations.

“Are you sure you want to keep going, darling?” I asked Beatrice, gently, when she grimaced again. She reached for my left hand and gripped it with both of hers. Despite the Tree of Life’s crystals in her near-constant possession, the pregnancy difficulties she had experienced more than sixty-five years earlier with Alistair were being repeated, step for step. The spasms were often excruciating, and it pained me deeply to watch helplessly as she suffered an attack. “We can head back to Abingdon and rest for as long as you need. We’ve still got the trip along California’s Pacific Coast Highway to look forward to in the fall.”

“I can do this, William,” she assured me. She smiled as if seeing something in my worried expression that amused her. She reached up and gently caressed my face with the back of her fingers—one of my favorite things to do to her. “A good night’s rest at the Frei-Lindsay House in Vicksburg should do the trick.”

I caught a look from Roderick as he fastened his seatbelt behind us. Despite the shield of his tinted Ray-Bans, his raised eyebrows and slight frown said enough. He had warned this wasn’t such a great idea—at least until the newest Barrow child was born. And, he was completely unhappy with me for giving in to the double-team of Jeremy and Amy, who were less than keen to put this trip off to the fall and move the ‘California Dreamin’ tour off until the following spring. Even now, they stubbornly kept a brisk pace in trying to catch every historic Civil War site within twenty miles of whatever highway we were traveling on, as if fearing their semi-immortal status was about to expire any day.

Roderick’s disdain actually began the moment we announced her pregnancy to the group. Cedric Tomlinson was the most excited, fishing out a pair of cigars from an old steamer trunk that held his most cherished belongings in this world. Amy and Jeremy, of course, were just as thrilled. I was excited, too... until Roderick told me it was a foolish and potentially regrettable move.

“But Krontos and Kaslow have disappeared,” I told him, when we met alone in the front parlor of his grand plantation home that was visited long ago by two-thirds of the gentlemen who scribbled their signatures on The Declaration of Independence. “Have you seen them? Hell, have you even sensed either one’s presence during the past year, Rod?”

“Evil doesn’t simply disappear, Judas,” he said, his demeanor and tone perturbed. “It is either vanquished by a fierce fight, or it bows to holiness.... But it never vanishes out of disinterest.”

At first, I couldn’t understand what this had to do with Beatrice and me starting over as parents. We could never replace the loss of Alistair, and truly it was never the intent. But as usually is the case with my druid buddy and his keen clairvoyant talent, he immediately discerned the specifics of my confusion.

“It can be a noble thing to bring a new life into this world, my brother,” he said, his annoyance melting as he spoke. “But I fear for you. I fear for Beatrice, too. It’s completely understandable that we must wait for these last two coins to resurface. But, my heart tells me that you must be diligent in keeping an eye out for them. And, the presence of a newborn, which must be raised and cared for, could distract you from that diligence. Is it not a potential affront to The Almighty, that you are thinking of settling in for the next twenty years—perhaps the next seventy-six of what is presently a standard lifetime—when you should instead be seeking your full restitution with Him?”

Hadn’t thought of it that way... and I wasn’t convinced The Almighty would see it that way either. Of course, this led to more discussion, and me digging my heels in until Roderick threw his hands up in frustrated surrender.

“I hope you don’t regret this, Judas. I hope not....”

The disgusted look then was the same one in the present moment, as Jeremy set out for Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I nodded and turned away, or more truthfully, back to Beatrice and her swollen belly that contained our potential salvation. Yes, Roderick was right—I did hold out hope of earthly happiness. And, I would be remiss to lie and say it didn’t come with moments of doubt that it was the right choice. But it was in fact a choice that had already been made.

We stopped in Tuscaloosa for dinner, and Beatrice had me call ahead to the B&B in Vicksburg to advise we wouldn’t arrive until just after nine o’clock, since their staff left for the night at seven-thirty. Fortunately, there wasn’t anything of critical importance from the Civil War that drew the Golden Eagle’s immediate attention—at least not important enough to push our check-in time any later than it was already going to be.

We arrived in Vicksburg at 9:00 p.m. sharp. Although the neon lights from a casino on the edge of a Mississippi River tributary called to our non-pregnant youngsters, in the next few minutes following our arrival at the Frei-Lindsay House the desire for a night of revelry died. Completely.

“Well, this is really nice!” Beatrice enthused, as we stepped into our quaintly furnished room on the second floor. The innkeeper had left our keys in an envelope tucked inside the storm door to the main entrance. “I love the décor—looks even better than the pictures on-line. And, look! There’s a bottle of champagne on ice over here on the table. How thoughtful....”

Admittedly, I was busy checking out the appointments in the room, such as the Jacuzzi bathtub in the adjacent bathroom that might bring some relief to Beatrice’s weary limbs and aching back. I didn’t hear her sobbing until I noticed her shoulders were heaving from behind. She and I were alone in the room, as Roderick and the Golden Eagles’ rooms were across the hall from us.

“What’s up?” I gently put my hands on her shoulders, to try and quiet the tremors. Emotional moments had been quite frequent during the past couple of months, and I didn’t immediately think her angst could be caused by anything else. Until I saw the letter sitting next to the ice bucket holding the expensive bottle of champagne.

“H-he... he’s been here,” she whispered hoarsely.

“Who are you talking about?”

But I already knew that answer before picking up the parchment that might’ve cost more than the bottle of pricey bubbly. It was quite old, and of a grade that only the wealthiest people had access to back in the early to mid-nineteenth century. By my guess, it came from this country instead of being imported—although difficult to say for sure....

None of that mattered. What did matter was who left it here for us to find. Someone with access to information that not even a powerful government steeped in covert operations could procure. Someone quite familiar with the workings of the supernatural and natural worlds, and could move easily between the two. And, worst of all, someone whose script was quite familiar and who forever would hold a king-sized grudge against me.

Viktor Kaslow.

––––––––

“H
ow in the hell did he know we’d be here?”

I asked the question to no one in particular, even though Roderick, Amy, and Jeremy had since joined Beatrice and me in our room at the Frei-Lansing House. The magic of our supposedly light-romantic stay had been usurped entirely by our unexpected gift and its giver.

“Perhaps a better question would be why in the hell did Viktor Kaslow choose this moment to make his presence known?” observed Roderick. He stood next to a tall mantle, where he casually rested his arm holding a glass of ginger ale he had brought from his room. “I doubt he is the Civil War buff he claims to be in the letter.”

“I don’t know about that, Rod. I seem to remember how certain Nazi and Russian generals from World War II held a deep admiration for General Grant and General Lee,” I said. “And Kaslow now wants to send us on a journey to Shiloh? He had to know we were already heading there soon... Looks like we’ll be leaving here tomorrow—a couple days earlier than we had planned.”

I moved back to the table where the untouched bottle of champagne was still perched inside the ice bucket. The ice rapidly melting, I recalled how the cubes were largely intact when Beatrice and I first entered the room. Whoever had left the hospitality gift and the letter did so within an hour of our arrival—more than thirty minutes after the inn’s staff had left for the night.

Was Kaslow himself in our room before our arrival? Worse, was his essence still there... perhaps watching our worried discussion from nearby with sordid amusement?

The letter remained where Roderick had left it, after he, Amy, and Jeremy took turns reading it. Beatrice didn’t have the stomach to get past the first paragraph, because of a severe revulsion toward Kaslow from her previous encounters with him.

The longest correspondence ever between the Russian and me, I now focused on the bottom of the second page....

I am leaving a poem, William and Roderick, for you both to consider. It comes from a young man who died at Shiloh, back in April, 1862... I find Cpl. John Parker’s letter inspiring, and purchased the original copy at a recent auction held not far from where you used to live, William, in Washington D.C.....

“I don’t want to go to Shiloh anymore,” said Beatrice, right after I silently mouthed the Civil War battle site specifically mentioned by Kaslow that is now a national military park and cemetery renowned for its haunting beauty. “In fact, I don’t want to go anywhere else. I’d just like to go home... right now.”

She eyed me sullenly from the bed, where she sat next to Amy, who shared her distressed expression as they all watched me intently. Perhaps everyone expected me to discover a hidden secret inscribed upon the parchment that each of us had missed until then. Roderick was the expert for that sort of thing, and if he hadn’t noticed anything encrypted the first time he perused the letter then he and I likely wouldn’t detect it on a second pass.

The only thing that might’ve contained a secret was the poem itself—an odd verse that seemed as though it was missing much of the original content, given the style of the day. I had reviewed it several times before Roderick arrived in our room accompanied by Jeremy and Amy right behind him....

Enjoy the poem, William and Roderick. It’s called, “The Lot of a Soldier”....

––––––––

“T
hat’s just plain creepy,” Jeremy observed, after I read the poem aloud, since most everyone wanted to hear it again. We were like TV game-show contestants trying to figure out the deeper meaning behind Cpl. Parker’s ominous ode, while an unseen clock ticked away.

“Perhaps it is nothing more than a haunting moment,” said Roderick, his brow furrowed as if repeating the lines in his head while trying to catch the riddle that Kaslow hinted at. Knowing our longtime nemesis, it would be something subtle and maybe a stretch to understand. The Russian had always been given to eccentricity made worse by the crystal fragment from Iran’s Tree of Life embedded in his chest. “Or, it could be the raw, naked truth expressed by a man who knew his chances of surviving the war was a crap shoot at best.”