“Good throw, Anna,” I croaked, forcing air into tired lungs.
“Stuff it, Olivier,” she answered in a surprisingly smooth and dangerous voice, like velvet over steel.
Sarge’s craggy, hard face came nose to nose with mine. “You kick her butt, boy. If you can’t then you aren’t worth pissing on.” Hate, bitter soul-hate like a cancer, shone out of his eyes. I guessed it was the thing that drove him to kill and kill again. None of those kills would never, ever be enough, even if the blood of his victims eventually drowned him. “She’s a woman,” he whispered fiercely. “A whore!”
I suppressed the rush of contempt for him that suddenly surged through me, although it must have shown because his face shut down with an almost audible slam and he turned away, trembling slightly.
“Ready, Olivier?” Annabeth’s smooth voice came from behind, carrying a wealth of smugness.
“Stuff it, Annabeth,” I said, spinning, fist flying out to catch her on the chin and dropping her to land sprawling on the practice mat.
Needles of hot water attacked my scalp as I positioned myself beneath the showerhead, shedding sweat and grime in rivulets down my torso and legs.
Two hours of sparring, an hour of weapons-both hand and pistol-followed by meditation to calm the nerves, to keep them on an even keel though the most stressful situations.
Hands harder than flint touched my back, ran up the ridged lines of my shoulder blades and caressed my neck. I turned and met Annabeth’s hot mouth, our tongues dueling with the same fervor we’d demonstrated on the mat. My hands found her butt, lifting her in the air with a grunt and I slid into her, her warm wetness inviting, welcoming.
I fell back to the cold tiles of the shower as we tore at each other in our mutual torrent of lust. Thrusting, clawing, we bit and ripped, our young bodies suffused with enough hormones to allow us to survive the rush. The old, I reckoned foolishly in my naivete, only had memories to console their twilight years.
Afterwards we soaped each other’s backs in the quiet post-coital lassitude. “You sure Sarge and Burke didn’t see you come in?” I asked.
“Burke left for the hotel and Sarge disappeared to wherever that creepy American creeps off to.
“Good. I want to keep you all to myself.”
When she laughed it gave my ears an orgasm. “No way I could bed Burke-he’s too cruel, a vicious bastard. And Sarge doesn’t screw, he kills. That’s how he gets his rocks off.”
All true. Just thinking about Sarge having sex seemed like a violation of all natural laws. With Sarge and Burke in the wind, we had the whole villa to ourselves.
“What do you have planned for the day?” she asked later as we toweled each other off.
“Off to see Julian,” I answered through the tangle of my longish hair.
“What’s he got planned?”
“I have no clue.” It had been a year since Julian had ‘torn me a new one,’ as the Americans like to say, over that business with the Lab. The aftermath of the Lab’s destruction had lowered the reservoir by three feet and raised more than a few eyebrows. It had even made the national news in the States. Julian had to scramble to find experts who would testify that it had been an ‘unforeseen seismic event’ of low magnitude that ‘nonetheless had unfortunate consequences to the local bedrock.’ A somewhat outrageous claim, but a generous pile of cash will convince people to believe or say anything. If our Family had a motto, that would be it.
Good thing for me the Crystal Drive proved to be every bit as useful as I said it would be. Unwilling to take advantage of global production of that new tech, Julian instead had sunk considerable sums of money into creating computers and networks that far outstripped anything even the superpowers could invent. That alone saved my life, just as I knew it would.
Annabeth ran her short nails up and down my chest, bringing new life to my nether parts. “Well,” she purred. “You keep your hide intact. I have uses for it.”
Just before I closed her lips with mine, I said, “Good, it’s all yours.”
If anything, Boris looked even more dangerous than the last time I’d stood in Julian’s office. Still big, still chiseled out of the same gutrock as all the other extreme hard-asses necessity and money had created to do the jobs no one else could do.
“Looking good, Boris.” I tipped the big man a nod.
A soft grunt and barely perceptible tilt of his head was the only answers he deigned provide.
“Glad you could come, son,” Julian said, back to me, facing the window/monitor.
“You called, I came,” was my reply.
“Indeed.” A tilt of his perfectly coiffed head to the desk. “Sir?”
“Yes, Julian. Do it.” The Voice sounded almost bored, but I could tell there was an vein of anticipation running through those glossy tones.
Boris came into view carrying a portable safe, one that looked like a tiny beige suitcase, and set it flat on the desk, hinge side toward me. Julian reached out with one well-manicured finger and punched what I supposed was a keypad I couldn’t see. A hiss of cold air puffed out from within as the safe opened, ruffling the carefully arranged stacks of papers. He pulled out a small, worn leather purse or pouch, the kind people used centuries ago. It chinked softly as he placed it on the desk.
“Open it,” he said.
“What?”
His scowl transformed his handsome face into something bestial. “Don’t be dense, Olivier. Open the damn pouch.
Shrugging, I took a step forward and picked it up.
It was heavier than I thought.
“What is it?”
The Voice answered, “Your final test, Olivier. The test to see if you are worthy to be the next head of the Family. Open it and see if you can use the Family Silver.”
Uh-oh. The Silver had been legend in the Family for millennia. An artifact of such might and baleful power that only a Family member could even touch it. It was said that if one outside the Family were to handle it, a gruesome death would ensue.
And there it was, resting in the center of my palm like a spider’s egg-sack, pregnant with untold malignant possibilities. Not wanting to drag the whole macabre thing out, I teased open the puckered opening and poured the contents into my other hand.
Coins. Silver. The size of American nickels.
Thirty of them.
“Holy shit!” I gasped, dropping the papers. In the other bed Jude snored softly, content in his sleep. Quickly I crossed myself and silently apologized to the Lord for my cussing.
Thirty pieces of silver, the same thirty pieces that had been used to bribe Judas into betraying Jesus? Had to be! According to Jude (oh the irony!), Judas was the son of Satan, an Anti-Christ borntooppose Christ, and that would certainly explain the Silver as an evil artifact. The story of Christ painted Judas as one of the most infamous characters in history.
According to Matthew 27:3-10, Judas had returned the money and committed suicide by hanging himself. In the Acts of the Apostles, he’d used the money to buy a field, but he fell and burst asunder like an overripe melon. That field was known thereafter as Akeldama, the Field of Blood.
Obviously, if Jude was correct (and I had little reason to doubt him, considering all that I had experienced in last few days), then his ancestor had not died shortly after the crucifixion, but instead had founded a dynasty of assassins and power brokers whose main goal was to foster the Anti-Christ.
My brain hurt.
So much information, so little time. If I were a drinking man, I’d be three sheets to the wind already. Smiling ruefully, I envisioned the members of my Ranger chalk in Iran and what they would say. “Suck it up, Soldier,” quickly came to mind. So suck it up I did, gathering the pages of the memoir and taking up the thread of the story.
?
Each silver coin shone in the soft light of Julian’s office, perfect and unblemished, yet roughly cast and stamped. A likeness of a man adorned one side while an eagle stood on the left side of the reverse, right foot
on what appeared to be a ship’s ram with a palm frond behind. If I remembered correctly, it was the type of coin called a Half Shekel, a Temple Tax Coin.
Cold. Very cold. Almost cold enough to sear my palm, and greasy, sliding effortlessly over one another as if they were magnets with the same polarity. Quickly, before they could spill to the floor, I clamped my other hand over them, trapping them in the cave of my palms.
A hammer-blow to my brain rocked me backwards. Pain, pain like nothing else I had ever felt. Pain I couldn’t describe because it had no frame of reference in my world. Burning, drowning, disemboweling, impaling. All these and yet none of them; maybe it was a new elemental, a Pain elemental and I was experiencing the Primal.
On and on for days it lasted, searing my mind with acid and fire, robbing me of all other senses. Blind and deaf I lived in a world of unending agony, of flesh slowly being stripped from bone and nerves sliced with razors of fire, no end to the suffering in sight. If a knife had been put in my hand I wouldn’t have known how to use it, so lost was I in that universe of anguish.
When it finally stopped, I fell to my knees and sobbed with relief. Over. I didn’t care about the tears that fell to the floor, nor the snot that dribbled down over my lips and chin, I just reveled in the near orgasmic feeling of no more pain.
The first Word slid foully, sinuously into my mind like a snake, or a curl of smoke from a campfire that catches you unaware, accompanied by a feeling that my brain had been invaded by maggots. “Hate” was the Word that settled in for a visit and a cup of whatever my brain was offering. With that Word I could set brothers, lovers, anybody to fighting, exaggerating the smallest imaginary insult. “Hate” was the first Word the Silver had for me.
Next came “Enslave.” Bend others to my own ends, strip them of all free will and make them wholly mine, body and soul.
“Plague.” Cholera, smallpox, Ebola, you name it; I had it all in one little Word.
More and more Words tumbled into my poor head. Thirty of them, one for each itty-bitty coin that jangled in my hands. With those Words I could become the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse on steroids, Ragnarok squared, Armageddon on a stick and pass the ketchup, please. There was nothing that could be kept from me, nothing I couldn’t do.
With those Words, I could end the world right then and there.
It was then that I began to doubt the Voice. Doubt Julian.
Maybe I wasn’t made of sterner stuff, but as the Words clamored like an unholy choir in my mind, I began to be afraid. The Words were not just baleful magic at my disposal, but a power that not only hated the world but hated me as well and would discard me like a candy wrapper when its purpose was served.
Two thousand years earlier the Voice had promised his only son Judah (only in the Greek is he called Judas) that there would be born unto his line the Redeemer, the one who would topple the Lying God from his Throne and set the world to rights. That Redeemer would rule the world and all would be perfect.
Blah, blah, blah.
I knew then, with utter certainty, that it would be the Patron, the Voice-not the Redeemer-who would rule. Just as the Voice had entered Judah all those years ago to rid the world of the Lying God’s son, the Voice would enter the Redeemer, but this time, unlike two thousand years ago, that possession would be permanent.
Perhaps it was the gift of prophesy, or clairvoyance, some prescient notion, but I knew that the Voice would tear the Redeemer’s soul from the moorings of his body and fling it to the farthest corners of the Abyss.
And I knew, without a doubt, with the acquisition of all thirty of the Words, that I would be the Redeemer.
I would be the Anti-Christ.
There are times in your life when you have an ‘oh no!’ moment, usually in a microsecond before something bad happens, like a car crash. You say ‘oh no!’ then wham, your brand new Lexus introduces itself to a tree at forty miles an hour.
For me, my first ‘oh no!’ moment was when I realized someone was actually trying to kill me my second day in Iraq. A 7.62 mm slug whizzed past my ear at 2,346 feet per second, upsetting my whole outlook on life.
Finding out that Jude had the potential to become one of the greatest evils that had ever walked the earth was my third ‘oh no!’ moment and definitely the worst.
More “oh no!” moments awaited me before our journey’s end.
Time for prayer.
Chapter Fifteen
Jude
“You have that look on your face,” I observed as I finished packing the duffel.
Mike thinks he can look innocent, but his poker face is almost as bad as mine. “What look?”
“The look that says ‘I just found out that my buddy Jude was destined to become Satan’s puppet on earth.’ ”
He sighed, shoulders slumping. “You have to admit, it’s a lot to swallow,” he mumbled, not looking at me.
“Yeah, I wasn’t bursting with joy when it first occurred to me, Mike. Believe me, it isn’t easy to cope when all you believed has been stripped away in an instant. At least you’ve had the benefit of a couple of days of prep, man.”
He grabbed the keys to our beater truck from the side table. “Still, Jude, it’s a load, a big load, to handle. I feel like I should hate and revile you, but I still love you. Despite all that I have learned.” Tears clogged his throat and I knew a conflict of Catholic dogma and personal feelings raged within him.
So I did the only thing I could think of, the only thing I could do. I grabbed him in a big bear hug and held on as if he was my only port in a storm.
For a moment or two he resisted, his big shoulders tense, hard as basalt, but slowly he melted in my grasp and hugged back. Laughter began to rack his body, hitching the big muscles of his back and stomach, an explosion of ironic mirth that leapt from him to me until we both stood shaking in each other’s embrace.
“A priest and the Anti-Christ walk into a bar …” I began.
Mike disengaged, wiping his eyes, and punched me lightly in the gut. “You’re right, it sounds like a bad joke. Humor from the Apocalypse.” He held a hand up, dangling the truck keys from a finger. “Come on, let’s go.”
That day we arrived in Denver, where I had hidden another spooker buried deep in the earth in a vacant lot I owned on Colfax Street just west of I-25. This time, instead of summoning an elemental and having a nice confab, I just had Earth bring the box to the surface where I used the molecular knife to cut it open. Halfway through the thread broke and I had to spool more out. At the rate I broke the threads, I guess I had another three hundred years before I needed more.
Inside the box was another thirty thousand dollars. However, the money wasn’t the prize; the false ID was. The previous spooker had a phony ID I’d created in ’97, but it was for Tariq al-Muhammad, which would be a red flag in the post 9/11 world, so I needed a new one in case I came under scrutiny. The Jude Oliver persona was burned and I needed to become someone new.
Say hello to Morgan Heart.
Morgan had a SSN, passport and even an old Colorado driver’s license, as well as a Mastercard and Visa. The cover was flawless, the best money could buy.
“Can I see that?” asked Mike, pointing at the knife.
I handed the cylinder over. “Careful. You’ll slice yourself up a treat if you’re not careful.”
“Been kind of curious about this.” He pushed the button. “Don’t see anything.”
“One molecule thick is far too small for the naked eye, but it’s there.” I smiled as Mike gingerly handled the cylinder.
“What powers it? I imagine it must use a lot of juice, keeping the thread carefully spooled and contained in the magnetic bottle.” Mike handed the knife back.
“It’s surprisingly energy efficient, actually. Runs on two watch batteries and they only need to be changed once a month under normal usage.”
He stood and brushed the dirt of his knees. Instead of his usual black outfit with collar, he had dressed like a lumberjack-blue jeans, red-c
hecked flannel shirt, boots and a brown Gore-Tex jacket. We had plenty money to spare. I could have dressed us in Armani.
“I’m surprised, Mike. You haven’t asked me what’s next.”
“We’re going to get the Grail, I know that,” he said quietly. “Now that I understand what’s at stake, I know we have to see this thing through.”
“Yeah.” I pocketed all the IDs except the driver’s license and stood, leaving the box where it lay. “Just making sure.”
“No worries, Jude.”
“Morgan.”
“What?”
I held up the outdated driver’s license. “It’s Morgan Heart now. My Jude Oliver persona is history now.”
“Morgan Heart?”
“Yeah.”
“Morgan Heart?”
“You said that already.”
A cheesy smile spread across his face. “That is the lamest alter-ego I’ve ever heard. Sounds like a porn name.”
“It’s what was available.” Grumble grumble. “What do you know from porn names?”
“I had a life before my calling, Morgan. You would’ve been better off with Bruce Wayne or Clark Kent!” His laughter bounced off the tired brick buildings that surrounded the garbage-strewn lot. People walking by on the sidewalk paused for a moment to stare at the big unshaven man with the funky moustache.
“Laugh it up, Mr. Funny Guy,” I mumbled, flashing a rueful smile. Whatever may come, Mike was still my friend and all was right in the universe.
The laughter wound down like a spring that was slowly losing tension. “Okay, Morgan, where to now?”
“To finish what we started, man.” I stared at the cold gray sky, watching the plumes of my breath billow forth. “We go to Bend.”
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