And now the time was upon him.
The soldier would kill him, but only if he put up a fight. He was not a man to strike down an unarmed opponent. So Judas bent and picked up a discarded blade, an ancient chipped scimitar.
His last bodyguard tried to join him, lifting an assault rifle. The man’s partner, Henrik, had died in the cavern back in Cumae, but this one had lived, escaping with him.
“Go,” Iscariot ordered.
“My place is always at your side.”
“Forgive me.” Judas swung the sword and decapitated the man. He stepped away from the body. No one would interfere with his destiny.
The Warrior of Man’s eyes widened in surprise, but he didn’t slow down.
Others closed behind him, including Dr. Granger, holding a sopping rag to her shoulder.
“Stay back, Erin,” Jordan called. “This is my fight.”
The woman looked as if she wanted to argue, but she didn’t.
Judas lifted his bloody sword into a guard position. “How often must I kill you, Sergeant Stone?”
“I could ask you the same question.”
His sword shone white-hot in his hands, sparking with spats of fire.
Judas shivered in anticipation.
The soldier circled him, suspicion plain in his face, as if he suspected some trick.
You must play your role, Warrior. Do not disappoint me.
To ensure that, Judas lunged for him, and the man parried. He was unnaturally quick. Knowing this, Judas fought harder, no longer needing to feign incompetence. He had been trained under many different sword masters over the centuries.
He attacked again and again, enjoying the true challenge, his last. It was fitting to find a worthy opponent. But that was not his destiny. He allowed his guard to drop, as if by accident.
Jordan struck.
The blade pierced Judas’s side.
The same place where a Roman soldier had stabbed Christ on the cross.
Judas offered a quick plea of gratitude before he fell to his knees. Bright red blood poured from his wound. It soaked through his shirt. He dropped his sword.
Jordan stood before him. “We’re even.”
“No,” Judas said, reached to his leg. “I am forever in your debt.”
He fell to his side, then rolled to his back. Gray sky filled his vision. He had done that. The world surrounded by ash and blood. The sun was minutes from setting. Nothing could stop what he had started.
My death heralds my success.
He took it as a sign, his reward for opening the gates of Hell and bringing about the final Day of Judgment.
The burning pain in his side was unlike anything he had ever experienced, but he drank it in. He would soon be at peace. He welcomed it. He let his eyes drift closed.
Then a shadow fell over him, bringing with it the smell of lotus blossoms.
Arella.
He opened his eyes and looked upon her beauty, another reward for fulfilling his destiny.
Her warm hands took his. “My love.”
“It came to be just as you foretold,” he said.
As she leaned over him, her tears fell onto his face. He savored each warm drop.
“Oh, my love,” she said, “I curse the vision that brought you to this.”
He sought her dark eyes. “This was Christ’s will, not yours.”
“This was your will,” she insisted. “You could have walked a different path.”
He touched her wet cheek. “I always walked a different path. But I am grateful for the years that we walked that path together.”
She struggled to smile.
“Do not blame yourself,” he said. “If you can grant me but a single favor, grant me that. You are blameless in all this.”
Her chin firmed, as it always did when she held her feelings inside.
He reached up through the pain and curled a strand of her long hair around his finger. “We are but His instruments.”
She placed her palm against his wound. “I could fetch water from the spring to heal you.”
Fear shot through his body. He searched for clever words to persuade her against such a path, but she knew his ways. So he settled on one word, placing all his will into it, letting the truth shine in his eyes.
“Please.”
She bent and kissed his lips, then fell into his arms one last time.
4:49 P.M.
Erin’s throat tightened as an angel wept for Judas.
Arella cradled him and stroked his gray hair back from his forehead while murmuring words in an ancient tongue. He smiled up at Arella, as if they were young lovers instead of two ageless creatures caught at the end of time.
Rhun touched Erin’s shoulder, looking to the darkening sky.
His single touch reminded her that, while the battle was won, the war was not over. She looked to the sun, sunk deep into the horizon to the west. They were nearly out of time to undo what Iscariot had set in motion.
She stared at the man who had started all of this.
Iscariot’s blood flowed from his side, weeping out his life. In the growing darkness, she noted the soft glow shining within the crimson, remembering seeing the same when he had accidentally cut his finger in the cavern under the ruins of Cumae, by a sliver of the same blade that slew him now.
She remembered Arella, casting out the same golden radiance when she rescued Tommy. And even Tommy’s blood had glowed faintly on the beach in Cumae.
What did that mean?
She looked from Tommy, who stood still by the well, to Judas.
Did that mean they both carried angelic blood?
She remembered that both Tommy and Judas had also encountered a dove, symbolic of the Holy Spirit, an echo of the bird Christ had killed. And both were about Christ’s same age at that time.
And then Arella’s words earlier.
Michael was rent asunder. You carry the best of the First Angel within you.
Erin began to understand.
Tommy didn’t carry all of Michael inside of him, only the best, the most shining and brightest, a force capable of granting life.
Another vessel carried his worst, his darkest, with a force that killed.
She saw that the shine of Iscariot’s blood was distinctly darker than Tommy’s blood.
Two different shades of gold.
She turned and gazed across the crater, at the glass exposed by their digging, at the round plug that once sealed the well. Like the crater itself, one half was dark gold, the other lighter.
She remembered thinking it looked like an Eastern yin-yang symbol.
Two parts that make a whole.
“We need them both,” Erin mumbled.
She peered at Arella. Earlier, the sibyl had stayed silent because she knew Iscariot needed to come here, too. Had Arella even drawn that symbol in the sand so he would know to come to this place?
Bernard drifted closer to Erin, his clothes ripped and bloodied, but he must have sensed the growing understanding inside her. “What are you saying?”
Rhun looked on, too.
She drew the two with her, along with Jordan. They needed to hear this, to tell her she was wrong.
Please, let me be wrong.
Rhun turned that dark, implacable gaze of his upon her. “What is it, Erin?”
“The First Angel isn’t Tommy. It’s the archangel Michael, the heavenly being rent asunder. Split in two.” She gestured to the crater’s glass. “He must be reunited. We must fix what was broken here.”
That was Arella’s warning to them—or the reign of man would end.
“But where’s his other half?” Bernard asked.
“In Judas.”
Shock spread through the group.
“Even if you’re right,” Jordan asked, “how are we going to get them back together?”
Erin focused on Iscariot, dying on the sands.
She knew that answer, too. “Their immortal shells must be stripped from them.”
Jordan gaped at her. “They have to die?”
She lowered her voice to a whisper. “It’s the only way. That’s why the sword was left here, why we had to come here.”
“Iscariot has already received a mortal wound,” Rhun said. “So the blade must afflict one upon the boy?”
“Do we dare do that?” Jordan asked. “I thought we decided in Cumae that Tommy’s life was more important than even saving the world.”
Erin wanted to agree. The boy had done nothing wrong. He had tried to help an innocent dove, and in return he had seen his family ripped from him, and he had suffered countless tortures. Was it right that he must die here as well?
She could not send this child to his death.
But it was also one life against the lives of the just and unjust around the world.
Jordan stared at her.
She knew if she gave him the word that he would carry it out, reluctantly but he would. He was a soldier—he understood about sacrificing for the greater good. The needs of the many outweighed the needs of the one.
She covered her face.
She could not watch more innocent blood be spilled. She had watched her sister sacrificed to false belief. She had caused Amy’s death because of her own ignorance of the danger she had put her in. She would not take another innocent life, no matter how much her mind told her that she must.
“No,” she gasped out, decidedly. “We can’t kill a boy to save the world.”
Bernard suddenly moved toward Jordan, going for the sword. But Jordan was as swift now and lifted the blade to the cardinal’s chest, its point over his silent heart.
“This will kill you as surely as any strigoi,” Jordan warned.
Bernard glanced at Rhun to back him up, to join him against Jordan. The cardinal wanted that sword.
Rhun folded his arms. “I trust the wisdom of the Woman of Learning.”
“The boy must die,” Bernard insisted. “Or the world dies with him. In horror beyond earthly imaginings. What is one boy against that?”
“Everything,” Erin said. “Murdering a boy is an evil deed. Every evil act matters. Every single one. We must stand against each and every one, or who are we?”
Bernard sighed. “What if it’s neither good nor evil, only necessary?”
Erin clenched her hands into fists.
She would not let Tommy be murdered.
“Erin.” Jordan’s worried blue eyes met hers. He nodded over to the well.
Tommy made a placating motion with his palms toward Elizabeth, keeping her there. He then stalked over and studied each of them.
“I know,” he said, looking exhausted. “When I touched the sword and decided to bring it out of the well . . . I knew.”
Erin remembered the fire in his eyes as he held the sword.
“It’s about choice,” he said. “I have to choose this, only then will all be set right.”
Hearing this now, Erin realized how close they had come to ruin. If she had unleashed Jordan or if Bernard had grabbed the blade, if either of them had thrust the sword into the boy without his consent, they would have lost all.
This thought gave her a small measure of comfort, but only very small.
What Tommy was saying meant that the ending would be the same.
A dead boy on the sands.
“But Iscariot didn’t agree to be stabbed,” Rhun warned.
Erin stiffened, realizing Rhun was right.
Have we already lost?
Jordan swallowed, lowering the sword, knowing Bernard could no longer force the matter. “I think Judas did agree,” Jordan said. “During the fight, he was matching me move by move. Then suddenly he let his guard down. I didn’t realize it at the time, just reacted, stabbing him.”
“I suspect he always sought death,” Rhun said.
“So then what do we do?” Jordan asked. “From here I mean?”
Erin saw how his eyes could not even meet the boy’s.
Tommy shifted, apparently to keep his back to Elizabeth, glancing over his shoulder to be sure, to keep her from seeing. Tommy noted Erin’s attention. “She will try to stop it from happening.”
Tommy lifted the tip of Jordan’s sword and placed it to his chest. He looked up at Jordan, trying to smile, but his lower lip trembled with his fear, struggling to look so brave, so sure in the face of the unknown.
Jordan finally found the boy’s face, too. Erin had never seen such agony and heartbreak etched in the hard, wry planes of his face.
“I can’t do this,” he moaned.
“I know that, too,” Tommy said quietly, his voice quavering. His eyes looked toward the west, to the sun, to the last light he would ever see.
A wail rose from beside the well. “Noooo . . .”
Elizabeth rushed toward them, suddenly sensing what was about to happen.
Tommy sighed and thrust himself upon the sword—taking the last light of the day with him as he died.
53
December 20, 4:49 P.M. EET
Siwa, Egypt
Rhun caught Elisabeta around the waist as she ran up to them.
Tommy collapsed to the ground, sliding off the blade, spilling red blood across the dark sand. A bright golden brilliance pooled there, too. Across the crater, a similar radiance shone from that side, a darker gold that framed the figures of Judas and Arella.
“Why?” Elisabeta sobbed, clutching him.
Rhun drew her down next to the boy.
The sword had pierced his heart clean through. Rhun heard now its last feeble quiver, then it stopped.
Jordan crashed to his knees across from him, dropping his sword, clutching his left side.
Erin leaned down. “What’s wrong—?”
Rhun felt it a moment before it happened—a welling of great power beyond measure—and threw his arm over his eyes, shielding Elisabeta with his body.
Then came a bright explosion.
Glory seared his eyes.
His blood boiled in his veins.
Elisabeta screamed in his arms, the sound echoed by the others in a chorus of pain and fear.
Brought low by this radiance, on his knees, Rhun begged for forgiveness as he prayed through the pain. His every sin was a blight against that holy brilliance, nothing could be hidden from it. His greatest sin was a blackness without boundaries, capable of consuming him fully. Even this light could not vanquish it.
Please, stop . . .
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the light gave way to a merciful darkness. He opened his eyes. Lifeless bodies of strigoi and blasphemare were scattered around the crater; even those that had fled beyond it had fallen dead at the explosion. Rhun stirred as pain still raged in his body.
It burned with the holiest of fires.
He searched the crater. Erin was crouched over a fallen Tommy, with Jordan kneeling next to her, holding his shoulder. They both looked shaken up, but unharmed by the brilliance. Being untainted, they had likely been spared the brunt of its force.
Elisabeta lay crumpled in his arms, unmoving.
She was strigoi, without even the acceptance of Christ’s love to shield her from that fire. Like the other damned creatures, she must be dead.
Please, he prayed, not Elisabeta.
He gathered her to his chest. He had stolen her from her time, from her castle, imprisoned her for hundreds of years, only to have her die in a lonely desert far from anything or anyone she had ever loved.
How many times had his actions cursed her?
He stroked short curly hair from her white forehead and brushed sand from her pale cheeks. Long ago, he had held her just so while she lay dying on a stone floor at Čachtice. He should have let her go then, but even now, deep down he knew he would do anything to have her back.
Even sin again.
As if in response to this blasphemous thought, she stirred. Her silver eyes fluttered open, and her lips warmed into a hesitant smile. Her gaze was momentarily lost, displaced in time and place.
St
ill, in that moment, he knew the truth.
In spite of everything, she loved him.
He touched a palm to her cheek. But how had she survived the burning brilliance in her cursed state? Had his body shielded her? Or was it his love for her?
Either way, joy filled him as he fell into her silver eyes, letting the desert fade around them. For the moment, she was all that mattered. Her hand rose. Soft fingertips touched his cheek.
“My love . . .” she whispered.
5:03 P.M.
Erin looked away from Rhun and the countess. Her gaze was still dazzled by that blast of light, swearing for a moment she saw a sweep of wings sailing upward from the sands. She gazed up at the stars.
Stars.
She straightened and turned in a slow circle, watching the pall clear from the night sky, spreading outward in all directions. She pictured the darkness being swept clean, all the way back to Cumae.
Had they succeeded in closing that opening gate?
Jordan stood up next to her. He flexed and stretched his left arm, shaking the limb a bit, reminding her of a more immediate concern. She remembered him crashing to his knees and clutching his side, like he was having a heart attack.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
He looked down at the boy, at the blood.
“When he fell, it felt like something was ripped out of me. I swore I was dying.”
Again.
She examined Tommy’s pale face. His eyes were closed as if he were merely slumbering. Back in Stockholm, the boy’s touch, his blood, had resurrected and healed Jordan. She noted the pool of blood here no longer glowed. It simply seeped coldly into the sand.
She reached over and squeezed Jordan’s hand, feeling the heat there, glad of it. “I think whatever angelic essence Tommy imbued in you was stripped back out during that blast of light.”
“Where’s the sword?” Jordan asked, glancing around at his feet.
It was gone, too.
She again pictured those wings of light. “I think it’s been restored to its original master.”
Bernard joined them, his eyes on the skies. “We have been spared.”
She hoped he was right, but not all of them had been so lucky.
She dropped to a knee and touched Tommy’s blood-soaked shirt. She brought her fingers to his young face, looking even younger in death, his features relaxed, finally at peace. His skin was still warm under her fingertips.
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