Judas reached out to Jake, and Jake, in trembling agony, reached out and accepted it. His wounds began to heal—as quickly as when Lucas had fixed him. He miraculously made it up to his knees, keeping hold of Judas’s hand and shaking it vigorously. “Thank you, man. You won’t regret this.”
Judas sneered. “I never regret anything.”
“We’ll see!” Jake’s tone changed. He yanked Judas’s hand and pulled the man off balance. The exertion caused his guts to spill out again, his body not yet fully healed by Judas, but he did not let go. He kept yanking Judas off balance.
“Now, Si. Do it now!”
“What is the meaning of—” Judas fought to get his hand back, but before he could free himself, Simon appeared behind him and drove the iron nail from Jesus’s cross into his neck. The big man had been keeping hold of it ever since Lucas asked him too outside the gates of Jerusalem, and he hadn’t forgotten its power.
Judas was human, and therefore unaffected by the iron itself, but the wound in his neck was deep, and he was losing blood fast. He swiped out with his hooked blade but didn’t seem to have a target. Simon whacked the man’s arm with his big fist and sent the knife clattering to the ground.
Now Judas was dazed and unarmed.
Lucas finally broke free and raced over to help. He was about to strike Judas, his fists wound up and ready to unleash hell, but instead, he stopped and froze on the spot again. This time it was by his own doing.
No more blood. This has to stop.
“Judas, you’re finished. The Red Lord hasn’t arrived, and you’re mortally wounded. You might have a lot of power, but you’re not immortal anymore. Gladri removed the curse I placed on you two-thousand years ago. You’re dying. So stop fighting; it’s time to talk.”
Judas clutched at his bleeding neck, hissing in pain. His words were thick with saliva. “I will not make the mistake of… of listening to The Devil again. Just finish me off, you vile creature.”
Lucas took a step back, hands out in front of him. “I don’t want to see you die, Judas. I wronged you—and if you truly believe it will bring you peace, then pick up that blade and cut my throat. I won’t fight you.”
Jake and Simon looked at each other in horror, but Lucas hoped it wouldn’t come to that. It wasn’t a bluff—he would really go through with it—but more like faith in things turning out okay. They had to.
“Or you can finally let go of all your anger and try to find peace. I’ve been where you are, Judas. You blame other people for your crimes, and you are indeed a victim of the past, but what happens tomorrow is down to you. Forgive me, Judas, and I shall forgive you.”
“Are you crazy?” said Simon, standing with the iron nail ready to stab. “After all this guy has done? Max, Annie… Shaun!”
Lucas sighed at Simon. “Will spilling his blood change anything? If Judas decides to be different, he could one day do some good. If he dies, then death is all he will have ever given the world.”
Judas was shaking his head like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. It seemed to be dawning on him that he was actually dying and that the blood coming out of him was real. As much as he seemed afraid, he also seemed relieved, like a cancer had been removed from his soul.
His words were venomous, and yet they seemed to lack any genuine bite. “Are you mad?” he whispered. “Just kill me and be done with it! This world is not a place for mercy. If you don’t end me here, then I vow to end you one day, Satan. The Red Lord—”
“Is just another master you don’t want, Judas. When we met, you were a good man who wanted to protect this world. Be that man again. Earn the salvation I took from you and be proud of who you are once again. Only then can you truly beat me and overcome what I did to you.”
Judas was weakening, physically and emotionally. He collapsed onto his side, heaving and gasping. He waved a hand, and the shackles around Vetta’s legs and wrists popped open. She tumbled to the ground awkwardly, arms and legs tangled. With that done, Judas closed his eyes and moaned. “Just… get it… over with.”
“Let me heal you,” said Lucas. “Let me take away your pain. We can let Judas die, but Julian can live on.”
“No! No, I… I want to die. I want it to be done. Hell finally awaits me.”
Lucas knelt over him. “It doesn’t have to be that way. You have one last life to live, and you could make it count. You could outweigh all the bad with a single lifetime of Good. It only takes one man to change the world for the better. Just look what Jesus achieved. Be his student again and spread his teachings as he wished you to.”
Judas huffed and gave a pained laugh. Bloody drool slung from his mouth. “You compare me to Jesus?”
“Jesus was just a man. You can be just a man too.”
Judas nodded, eyes drooping. “Yes, I… I would like that very much.”
“Then just say yes!”
Judas was falling unconscious, cheek against the ground. “Y-Yes. Yes!”
Lucas reached out his hands, knowing he could heal this man—not just his bodily wounds, but also the ones inflicted on his mind. The power was still within him, he could feel it. He was more than merely human. All this pain and suffering could be put right.
In the corner of his eye, Lucas spotted Vetta crawling on her hands and knees. She retrieved something from the ground and began hurrying towards Judas. Something glinted in the firelight.
Lucas threw his hands up at Vetta and shouted. “Vetta, no! Don’t do it!”
But it was too late.
Judas jolted, the veins in his neck bulging as his own hooked knife plunged deep into his heart. Vetta had attacked him from behind, wrapping her arm around his shoulder and striking at his chest while he lay on the ground. She was a wild animal as she yanked the knife free so she could plunge it in a second time. And then a third. Eventually she was stabbing a corpse—over and over again.
Lucas reached out to her, hands trembling as he worried she might suddenly turn the blade on him, intentionally or not. “Vetta, love, it’s over. You killed him as dead as he’s gonna get.”
Vetta’s eyes bore into Lucas, feral and animalistic. She looked like a beautiful, frightening demon. Simon appeared beside her, placing a thick hand around her wrist. He did so gently, and slowly, so that Vetta eventually let go of the knife still jutting out of Judas’s chest. Then, all at once, she collapsed into herself, sobbing and shaking in Simon’s meaty arms.
Lucas watched as Judas slowly lurched forwards onto his face, and the sound of his skull clonking against the ground made him wince. So much blood. So much death. Not just now, but throughout human existence. Why had God made something so wonderful, only to obfuscate it with pain?
Lucas was determined to find the answer.
But not today. Not now.
Gladri lay on the floor, still alive, but his vast wings decaying to dust. Yet, despite his approaching death, the angel stared up at the ceiling calmly, contemplatively. Lucas dragged himself over to his brother with tears in his eyes.
“Gladri, you live still?”
“A while longer it would seem. Long enough to contemplate my failures, brother.”
Lucas shook his head. “You have none.”
“The Red Lord grows fat on my soul. What is left of me is soon to expire.”
“Your soul lives before me, Gladri. It speaks to me.”
Gladri blinked. “Not the part that matters. Soon I shall slip away to air and dust,” he sighed, “but you must live on, Lucifer.”
Lucas blinked and more tears cut down his cheeks. “I am sorry. It should be me lying in your place. I… I caused all this. When I went to war against Heaven, I gave Crimolok the opportunity he needed to invade. This all started thousands of years ago.”
“Who do you speak of, brother?”
Lucas shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. This is all my fault. I should be the one to suffer.”
Gladri spoke his next words in a tone of amusement. “No, brother. It is you who must liv
e on. You who is important. Dark days lie ahead, and it is to you this world will turn. Hold back the coming oblivion.”
“What are you talking about?” Lucas demanded. “You cursed me to be human to keep me from interfering. Heaven wished me to be impotent. Now you say I must act?”
Gladri closed his eyes, a peaceful smile on his thin, silvery lips. His wings were now mere cinders ebbing away to nothing, which left him looking like a tall and slender man with unnaturally pale skin. “Not impotent, brother—merely different. You have been given humanity as a punishment, yes, but also to help you with what lies ahead. Only humanity can protect humanity. Shield this world from harm, or all shall fall to ruin. The abyss awaits, but we must avoid it at all costs. Hastam in Caelum.”
The Latin phrase sent ice through Lucas’s veins. Had he misheard? “Brother, what did you just say?”
“Strike where you are needed, Lucifer. Wield God’s wrath as if it were your own. Do this, and redemption shall be yours.”
Lucas’s mind was awash with thoughts buzzing like a cloud of locusts. What Gladri was saying could not be true. Heaven sought to twist his fate yet again, but this time, he was willing to play along. He needed to put things right. That was the only way he could ever hope to atone. He placed a hand against Gladri’s alabaster cheek. The angel was ice-cold. “My name is Lucas, brother. If Heaven seeks my help, it can bloody well ask me for it properly.”
Gladri bucked, life at an end, but his gasps turned to laughter. “Impudence! Has endless penance done nothing to change you?”
“Not a jot!” Lucas grinned, but was also firm in his defiance. “I am the same as I have ever been.”
“Then perhaps this world has half a chance. So be it, Lucas. Heaven begs your assistance. Help us… Please.”
Lucas had been waiting for this moment for thousands of years. His eternity finally had an end in sight and time held meaning once more. Actions mattered. Tomorrow mattered. What he did now could finally make a difference. Heaven was finally willing to accept him as ally instead of adversary.
He smiled at Gladri and kissed his forehead. “Sorry, brother, I won’t help Heaven.” Gladri sputtered, but Lucas kept on. “But I will help these people. I will fight for them, for this world. For humanity.”
Gladri’s sputtering stopped, and he gradually settled, and then smiled. “That shall have to be enough then. Good luck, brother. May your days ahead be brighter than those behind you.”
“And yours, brother. Enjoy your peace.”
Gladri was dead. His wings disappeared, and his body began to crumble. Soon it would be as if he had never existed—a being old beyond imagination, gone in moments. Simon and Vetta sat in a huddle by the wall, watching in awe.
Sensing things were over, Simon spoke. “If… if Gladri had his soul taken, how was he still here to talk to you?”
Lucas watched his brother fade away to dust, and then looked up at his remaining companions. “Angels have a celestial soul born of Heaven and an inner-soul born of themselves. You cannot remove an inner-soul, for it is their identity. No one can take away who you are. It was Gladri’s power and essence that the Red Lord consumed—not who he was but what he was. The Red Lord is my younger brother, Heaven’s forgotten abomination, and he is more powerful now than ever. My task of taking him down will likely be impossible, but I will try. Feck it, I will give it all I got.”
“Why is it your job?” said Simon. “How could you hope to fight that thing we saw in the red sphere? It was terrible. Why do you have to fight it?”
“Because I’m Heaven’s Spear. And because I caused this. When I led a war against God, I weakened Heaven and distracted God from more powerful enemies. Billions have died since that day. I had no idea the damage I was causing.”
Vetta managed to find her voice. Some of the wildness had fled from her eyes, and she seemed less panicked. There was blood on her hands that she had been staring at. “What does this thing mean? Heaven Spear?”
Lucas shook his head, hardly believing what Gladri had called him—but the angel had been clear. “I am the second coming,” he said, awe-struck by the very notion. “Jesus Christ was the Messiah—humanity’s saviour. I am Hastam in Caelum—humanity’s protector. It means existence has reached its conclusion, and whatever happens next is unknown. Fate is whatever we make for ourselves now, and we’ll have to fight for every day.”
Simon knelt back down beside Shaun. Blood pooled all around him, but Simon didn’t seem to care as it soaked his jeans. He looked up at Lucas. “Was the angel telling the truth about Shaun going to Heaven?”
Lucas nodded. “Angels can’t lie—or rather, they can but would never dare to.”
“You were an angel,” said Vetta. “You lie.”
“Aye, and that’s why I don’t have wings anymore.”
Vetta moved over to Jake then and looked at him. His guts were poking out beneath his blood-soaked shirt, and his eyes were stuck wide open. “He saved me,” she said. “At the end, he saved me.”
Simon sat with his arms draped over the top of his knees and seemed solemn. “I’m glad he got to go out on a good note. Gives me something to remember him by.”
“Very few souls are born bad,” Lucas told them. “Jake was just the end result of bad decisions and worse luck. His life could have turned out a million different ways. I hope what he did at the end gave him a clean slate with Heaven.”
“I hope so too,” said Vetta, and then turned away from his body. She moved over to Lucas and asked him, “What now? How we leave this place?”
“Through the door.” Lucas pointed. At the edge of the shrine room now lay a normal wooden door with a brass handle. Whatever charms Judas had placed on the room had been extinguished. The torches had gone, and instead, a light bulb swung overhead. No one had noticed the change.
Simon staggered over to the door. “Can’t wait to go home and get my arse in the shower. Then I have to figure out a way to explain…” He looked back at his dead friends. “Everything.”
Vetta followed Simon, and Lucas saw no reason to stay either, so they headed out the door, relieved to find themselves in a normal looking back-office of a pub. Their relief continued when they made it out from behind the bar and found everything looking normal in the lounge. Unremarkable. Ordinary.
“Nice knowing you,” said Simon, picking up speed as he headed for the pub’s front entrance. He grabbed the handle so hastily he almost missed, but then he gave it a hearty yank and pulled open the door as his face turned upwards towards the sun.
The streets of Jerusalem met them.
It wasn’t over yet.
The Morning After
Simon took one look outside before turning around and shaking his head. It was unclear whether he was angry or broken. Vetta remained beside Lucas, staring out at the desert city.
“I thought it was finished,” she said.
Her words stung Lucas, not because they were unkind, but because they seemed so disappointed in him. After all they had been through, he still hadn’t been able to end this. “Judas is dead,” he said, “but the spell he cast isn’t. What am I missing? What source of power is so deep that it remains in place even after the wielder has died? It must be something truly ancient, something tied directly to Hell—or Heaven. Maybe…”
His mind began to put the pieces together. It was so obvious. Of course, there was only one object that could have given Judas such vast and endless power. An object tied to God himself—by way of his son.
The nail.
Lucas whirled on Simon who was now sitting at the bar. “Big guy! You still have that chunk of iron on you?”
Simon frowned, not understanding, but then seeming to twig. “You mean the nail? Yeah, I still have it. I’m hardly going to let go of the one thing that has got us through most of this shit. It’s right here…” He pulled it out and placed it on the bar. “In my pocket.
Lucas approached slowly, now more in awe of the nail than ever. This small chunk of iron
had Jesus’s blood on it. God’s only human son. It was ugly and twisted, and yet so beautiful. “I think this might just be the most powerful thing in existence. The reason Judas was so powerful was because he harnessed a link to Heaven, not Hell as I assumed. To harness Heaven on Earth is to possess a power equal to angels.”
Simon nudged the nail towards Lucas. “You’re welcome to it. Just use it to get us out of this, and then I would like to win the lottery.”
“I would like to win lottery too,” said Vetta, and she didn’t seem to be joking.
Lucas took the nail, sure now that he could feel it buzzing with power. “Maybe, let’s just start with getting us out of this first, yeah?”
Vetta looked worried. She had her arms folded as she spoke to him. “So, what do we do? You can use the nail to get us home, yes?”
Lucas looked at the nail in his hand and was forced to shrug his shoulders. “Judas used it to create a false reality. That’s pretty powerful mojo, even for someone as old as me. I need to try and remove the binding.”
“How?” asked Simon.
“Only God knows—and he ain’t talking. Suppose old Lucas will just have to wing it! Silence please, folks.”
Vetta and Simon didn’t talk, they just watched Lucas intently. Lucas asked for theatrics only to distract himself from the gravity of the situation. If he failed to remove the spell, they would be trapped there until they starved to death.
He squeezed the nail in his fist and concentrated—sought that stream of power that had helped him before, that narrow link to Heaven Gladri had left him with. The same link Jesus Christ had once been able to harness? Were they truly the same, two sides of a single coin?
No, Jesus was here to spread peace.
I am here to fight a war. Heaven’s Spear. I need to put a stop to this. There is too much work ahead of me to be delayed.
Lucas opened his eyes again. He wasn’t sure if anything had happened, but he had felt… something.
Vetta touched his arm and made him flinch. “Lucas, look!”
Blood on the Bar (Lucas the Atoner Book 1) Page 21