Judgment Stone (9781401687359)

by Robert Liparulo

  Nevaeh: You’re just trying to keep it for yourself.

  Ben: What?

  Nevaeh: Salvation. But I know Beth had something to do with your going home, and I’m going to find out what it was.

  Ben: Nevaeh, don’t—!

  But she was already walking away. He could just hang there and rot, jabbering to his heart’s content. She had things to do.

  [ 27 ]

  From the Varna Airport, the Clan hired two taxis to take them to the docks.

  “What for?” Bale’s cabbie asked in Bulgarian. “There are no hotels there.”

  “Shut up and drive,” Therion said behind him. Crammed into the tiny Toyota Yaris, he sat with his head tilted sideways, pinned between the roof and his massive shoulder. Skinny Lilit occupied the space next to him. His bulk pushed her into the door.

  Seated in the front passenger seat, Bale said, “We’re looking for a little excitement.”

  The cabbie looked at his watch. “Almost three. All the nightclubs are closed.”

  “You must be a family man.”

  The cabbie flashed rotting teeth at him. “My wife’s name is Bisera,” he said. “It means pearl, you know, and she is.” He shrugged. “A big pearl, but a pearl nonetheless. Three beautiful daughters and a handsome—” Therion slapped him in the back of his head.

  The way it flew forward and almost struck the steering wheel made Bale laugh. But he pulled a wad of euros from his jacket pocket, making sure the cabbie—rubbing his head now—saw it before he could start yelling at them to get out. He peeled off a twenty and handed it the driver, who wrinkled his nose at it and continued rubbing, casting icy glances into the rearview. Bale handed him another. “Listen, Family Man, why don’t you leave the excitement to us, huh?” He raised an eyebrow. “The docks.”

  “We’re the maritime capital of Bulgaria, we have lots of—”

  “Port of Varna,” Bale instructed.

  The cabbie activated the meter, clunked the shifter into drive, and pulled away from the curb. Behind them, the taxi containing Artimus, Hester, and Cillian followed.

  Bale touched the outside of his jacket pocket, felt the Stone through the material. He was itching to hold it again, see what kind of wild creatures were roaming about, if there was anyone nearby worth paying a visit. But sorting out his world from theirs gave him a headache. He would have to use it sparingly and make those times count.

  In anticipation of eventually finding the Stone—or one of a dozen other relics on his list—he’d investigated claims of miracles associated with relics: the point of the lance that had pierce Christ’s side, making Adhémar de Monteil, the bishop of Puy-en-Velay, undefeatable in battle during the First Crusade; a piece of the staff of Moses doing the same for Hannibal; a baby tooth of Jesus giving Napoleon Bonaparte glimpses of the future, which he used to strategize his military expansion of the French empire; Marc Antony using a thorn from Christ’s crown to resurrect his beloved Cleopatra, if only for a night. By the time Bale had arrived on the scene, each relic had been gone, lost or stolen, or—in the case of the thorn—disintegrated upon its use.

  The powers of resurrection and invincibility were attractive, but nothing like what he’d found the Stone could do. He couldn’t wait to use it.

  He hitched his arm over the seat and twisted to grin at Therion. “Remember that ship we blew up here?”

  “Crimean War,” Therion said, nodding. “A sixty-gun frigate. French, I think. That was something.”

  The cabbie glanced over, said nothing.

  Bale looked at Lilit. “Dracula’s ship was from here. The Demeter. The one that takes him to England? It runs aground, and the entire crew is missing, except the captain, whose corpse is tied to the helm.”

  Therion said, “Seriously?”

  Lilit elbowed him. “In the novel.” She glared out the window. “Idiot.”

  Half an hour later they were rolling along Bulevard Primorski: closed restaurants, grocery stores, pawnshops, and convenience stores on their right, warehouses on their left. Beyond the warehouses, the harbor was crowded with container ships and freighters. Towering above them, barely visible in the glow of security lights, the skeletal arms of cranes looked like a city under construction, all girders and no walls or floors.

  “Go slow,” Bale said. He rolled down the window and leaned his head out. After five minutes he said, “There.” He turned to the driver. “Hear it?”

  The driver shook his head.

  “Music. Stop here.” He got out, tossed two more bills through the window, and started following his ears. They led him down an alley to a metal door with a wicket door set in the larger one—about ten inches square at face level. A disco beat pulsed into the alley. He turned to the Clan, coming up behind him, Hester tugging on her leather mask. “There’s one in every city,” he said. “Just gotta know where to look.”

  He pounded on the door and held his wad of cash in front of the wicket, which opened, releasing a stream of music and smoke. A moment later a hand snaked through. Bale pulled away the money. He stuck a single bill in the hand, which disappeared back inside. The entry door opened.

  As soon as they were in, four of the six Clan members produced weapons from beneath their jackets: Therion, a shotgun; Artimus, a PP-19 Bizon—a Russian-made submachine gun as small as Artimus’s preferred but unconcealable BMG .50-cal was big; Lilit, a curved katana sword; and Hester, a crossbow with collapsible limbs, which she now snapped into place. Therion cracked the doorman in the head with the shotgun stock, and Artimus let loose with a three-second burst of machine-gun fire into the high ceiling.

  Several women screamed.

  Moving deeper into the club with his Clan forming a semicircle around him, Bale looked around, disappointed. The space was huge, able to accommodate a good-sized rave party—it even boasted squiggly neon lights running around the wall just above reach, flashing multicolored spots, and earsplitting electronic dance music. But the place was dead. He counted five women, six men—all of them sitting at small round tables near the bar, no one dancing—and a bartender.

  “Kakvo e tova?” he yelled. What is this? “Where’s the party?”

  The bartender raised his hands. “It’s on Friday, man,” he said.

  Bale laughed. “That’s all right! We can still have fun, can’t we?” He stepped closer to a man in his twenties, sitting with a woman at a table. “Can’t we?”

  When the man didn’t answer, Bale raised his hands as if to say, What’s the deal? He turned to Hester, her goggles and leather mask making her look robotic. He said, “The man won’t answer me.”

  She shot the patron in the leg with her crossbow. The arrow pierced his shin and protruded from his calf, eight inches on either side, give or take. He screamed and tumbled to the floor, holding his leg and rocking back and forth, getting blood everywhere. His girlfriend shot up and staggered back, knocking her chair over. She covered her mouth but didn’t scream.

  Bale liked her already. He gestured for her to come to him. Nodding up and down, she took a backward step, which puzzled Bale until he remembered Bulgarians nodded no and shook their heads yes.

  “Ella tyk,” he said. “Njama strashno.” Come here. I won’t hurt you.

  She moved in tiny steps, a few at a time, until she was close enough for Bale to drape his arm around her shoulders. He started kissing her neck. She pushed him away, and he yanked her back.

  Lilit and Artimus circled around the small group of people. Artimus abruptly raised the Bizon and fired past Bale, at the entrance. The doorman was up, opening the door, slipping out. Artimus’s rounds chipped away the brick beside the jamb, kicking up a plume of dust.

  Therion bolted for the door, reached it just as it slammed shut. He grabbed the handle and tugged. It opened a few inches, closed. “He’s out there holding it,” Therion said.

  Artimus came up behind him with the machine gun. “Move,” he said, but Therion said, “It’s metal, stupid.” Therion opened the wicket door and reac
hed through. A scream sounded from the other side. He pulled his arm in, revealing his fist entangled in the man’s hair. The doorman began screaming.

  Bale said, “Ah, the music of the night.” He waved his hand at the bartender. “Turn that other garbage off.” A few seconds later the electronic dance music snapped off, leaving only the doorman’s bellowing pain and the gasps and cries of the patrons.

  Bale’s new girlfriend glared past him at the door—where the screams had become heaving cries—and tried to pull away, but he held her firm. Her streaming eyes, wide as silver dollars, watched the events at the door with horror. “Don’t look, baby,” Bale said.

  “Bale!” Lilit cried out, raising her sword and starting for the bar.

  Bale turned to see the bartender hefting a shotgun, taking aim at Therion. Bale pushed his girlfriend into Cillian, who’d been casually observing the goings-on, and leaped toward the bar. He swatted the shotgun’s barrel as it fired, blowing out a chunk of bar top. Bale grabbed the bartender’s collar and slammed his face into the bar, simultaneously twisting the gun from his hands. He tossed the weapon to the floor, released the man’s collar, and seized his wrist. Holding the man’s arm flat against the bar, he nodded—no—and said, “Shame on you.”

  “Tell him to stop,” the bartender said, mumbling it through his hand. Blood coated his chin. He glanced at Therion and back at Bale.

  Bale cocked his head as the doorman’s cries fell silent. “I think it’s too late,” he told the bartender, then told Therion, “Don’t leave him like that,” indicating the thing half-wedged through the wicket, hanging down the inside of the door.

  Therion nodded and shifted around the hanging body, apparently figuring a way to get the hips through.

  The bartender was probing the gap where a front tooth was gone. Bale pointed to it on the bar, being helpful, then he fetched his girlfriend from Cillian’s embrace. The patrons were staring at one of the Clan or another, or had their faces cupped within their palms.

  He spotted a sign above a door: —rooms to let.

  “Let’s go,” Bale said, pulling his girlfriend toward the door. He snapped his fingers at another woman. “You too. Come on.”

  Behind him, Artimus yelled, “Everyone else! Up against the wall!”

  [ 28 ]

  In the dream, Jagger was hiding in an alcove behind a heavy curtain, among coats and robes on hooks. He peered through the curtain at the marble floors, walls, and columns of an opulent residence. Children laughed somewhere in the house and flashed by as they darted around. He’d been waiting hours, and when the Greek magistrate finally arrived home, he’d unexpectedly brought his family with him. From the sounds, his children had invited their friends.

  The magistrate, a rotund figure with an impeccably trimmed beard, came into view and headed for Jagger’s hiding place. His face was flushed with exertion, a grin pushing his cheeks into half globes under his eyes. Holding his robes up over his ankles, the magistrate trotted forward, casting quick glances over his shoulder.

  Jagger backed into the darkness and pushed himself into the folds of the hanging clothes. A few seconds later sunlight flashed into the alcove and disappeared again as the magistrate entered and closed the curtain behind him. Jagger looked through the folds to see the man standing with his back toward him, peeking through the curtain as Jagger had done. The man was trying to restrain his labored breathing with little success, the breaths forming hushed laughter as he watched the house through the curtain.

  And Jagger had thought he’d have to wait until the family went to bed. He took this fortunate turn as a sign that God wanted this to happen. He was always looking for signs, as did the others in the Tribe. Scattered among four additional homes in Athens, the others were waiting for their own targets or making their escapes, having finished their deeds. Five magistrates total, all of them colluding with Greece’s Ottoman invaders, betraying their country and their countrymen by relaying troop movements and the names of spies to the Sultan’s people. The Tribe had decided that the magistrates’ reward would not be the retainment of power—or at least their worldly goods—that they hoped for after the inevitable conquer of Athens, but God’s swift justice . . . and a dark tomb.

  Anxious to be done with it, Jagger stepped forward. He covered the magistrate’s mouth, simultaneously pushing his head back and slicing his neck from ear to ear. The magistrate kicked and spasmed. Blood sprayed onto the curtain and through its opening. He sheathed the knife and covered the wound with his palm. The blood was hot, as copious as wine from a broken jug. He felt the pulse growing weaker under his hand.

  Sunlight washed over him again. Jagger saw a little girl standing outside the alcove, holding the curtain aside. Her huge eyes took in the scene, and she began to scream.

  Jagger startled awake, sitting up in bed. His breath came short and fast; drops of sweat ran over his face and chest. He looked over at Beth’s sleeping form.

  Another dream.

  But he knew it was more than that. He had no memory of the events, but he was certain he had been there and done that. It was merely the most recent of a series of such nightmares, coming more frequently, always a different situation, time in history, and victim, and always ending in blood.

  He lowered his head back onto the pillow and placed his hand on his chest, feeling the wetness, the rise and fall of his lungs, his stampeding heart. He closed his eyes, certain he wouldn’t get another wink of sleep that night.

  Gunshots woke him and he bolted up in bed, disoriented, frightened. He reached for his gun on the nightstand, grabbed his prosthetic arm instead.

  That’s right, the gun’s in the safe in the panic room.

  It came to him that he’d never kept a gun on or in a nightstand, not since Tyler was born. Maybe sometime long ago he had.

  “Jag?” Beside him, Beth propped herself up and rubbed his back. Sunlight filtered through the curtains, making the room bright. “What is it?”

  A knock came from the apartment door, and he realized that’s what had awakened him, not gunshots. He pressed his hand over his eyes, squeezed his temples, and groaned. “I must have been in a deep sleep, but it feels like I didn’t sleep at all.” He remembered the nightmare and wished he didn’t.

  “It’s the stress, the grief,” she said, pulling his pillow over her face. “Feels like I ran twenty miles last night.”

  “Or it was the vision,” he said. “I think it takes a lot out of you. Maybe the mental strain of processing so much new information.”

  More knocking.

  Beth flipped the covers off, started to rise. He stopped her, saying, “I’ll get it.” He looked at his watch. “Seven thirty. We overslept.” At least two days a week they woke at four to attend matins, the monastery’s first service of the day. Other days they woke at six, in time for him to be at the dig by the time it got going at seven. But not today, not with Ollie in Sharm El Sheikh, at the same hospital Tyler had gone to after being shot. Tragedy here had become too common.

  “Owen said he’d be here about this time,” Jagger said. He pulled on his pants and selected a khaki shirt.

  It was Owen, as disheveled as Jagger remembered him. Unruly hair, bushy beard, flannel shirt with pushed-up sleeves—the gold tattoo of the burning bush, which all the Immortals had on the inside of their left forearms, showing—blue jeans, a tattered canvas satchel on a strap over his shoulder. He stood there sporting a cautious smile, inquisitive eyes.

  “Did I wake you?” he asked.

  Jagger stepped forward and gave the man a one-armed hug, which Owen returned. Remaining in the embrace, he said, “It’s good to see you.” He and Owen had spent only three days together, but to Jagger he felt like a brother. High emotion, intense shared experience will do that to people. Never mind that Owen’s sincerity and genuine concern for people made him instantly likeable. Never mind that he was a physician who volunteered his services in war-torn territories and where he was needed the most. Never mind that he was really
John the Apostle, had walked with Jesus Christ, and had written five books of the New Testament—as if one could put that out of one’s mind. But to Jagger, Owen was the man who had saved Tyler’s life. And probably Jagger’s and Beth’s as well, by snatching Nevaeh away as he flew his jet into the Tribe’s drone control center—which, just saying, also saved untold hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives. All of this wrapped up in the man Jagger now hugged, but it wasn’t until Jagger sniffed that he realized he was crying.

  Owen whispered, “If you genuflect, I’ll beat the living tar out of you.”

  “What?” Jagger said, stepping back and wiping at his eyes like flicking away flies. “Sun got in my eyes.” He smiled. “Get your butt in here.”

  Owen stepped in, held up a brown paper sack and a molded cardboard tray with four cups, and said, “Breakfast and coffee. From the hotel in the village, so I don’t know how good any of it is.” He set the goodies down on the coffee table. “I got here about an hour ago. Gheronda let me in the side door by the gardens. That front gate is truly messed up. He said they weren’t making bread today, so I went into town. The hotel’s going to bring up enough to feed everyone, though I don’t think anyone here’s hungry.”

  Jagger looked at the bag and shook his head. “I don’t think I could eat.”

  “John . . . Owen . . . what do I call you?” Beth stood in the bedroom doorway, clad in a terry-cloth robe. She stretched out her arms, walked to him, and gave him a long hug.

  Owen said, “I’ve been Owen so long, I might not know who you’re talking to if you call me anything else.”

  Tyler’s door opened and he peered out. “Dad?”

  “Tyler, come here, son.” Jagger waved him over.

  The boy padded out in his pajamas, grabbed hold of his father’s arm, all the while keeping his eyes on Owen.

  “This is Owen,” Jagger said. “We told you about him. He patched you up when you got shot. We used his helicopter to get you to the hospital.”