Unholy Night Read online

  “Just a goat, sir.

  The officer was on the verge of convincing himself that it was nothing, when another squeal came from one of the stalls on the right. This one almost a laugh.

  No, Lord…please…

  Under a thin covering of hay and manure, Mary had her hand pressed to the baby’s mouth, trying desperately to stifle her son’s cooing.

  “It’s just the animals, I assure you.” Joseph had lost his calm. He could feel himself beginning to sweat, feel himself getting nervous and jittery.

  “Hold him.”

  The other two grabbed Joseph and forced the pitchfork from his hand. They held him against the wall while the officer drew his sword and began opening stall doors.

  “I’m telling you, it’s just the anim—”

  “Quiet!” The officer turned to his men. “If he talks again, kill him.”

  One of the soldiers drew his sword and held it against Joseph’s throat. The officer turned back to the stall door. The last one on the right side of the stable. He opened it…

  There, beneath a black and white spotted goat and a thin layer of hay and manure, was a girl covering a baby’s mouth with her hand. Mary screamed as the officer pulled the back of her robes, trying to yank her away.

  Joseph pulled free of the soldier’s grasp, ran at the officer, and jumped on his back. He got an arm around his throat and pulled as hard as he could, knowing that he’d be run through with a sword from behind any second. It didn’t matter. Let them run him through. Until they did, he planned to keep squeezing—keep choking this man until his last breath, in the hopes that Mary might free herself and run.

  The officer dropped his sword and grabbed at Joseph’s arm with both hands. He managed to pry one under Joseph’s arm and pull it loose. His breath restored, he found the strength to throw Joseph over his back and into the stall with his wife and baby. Quickly, the officer looked down for the sword he’d dropped…

  But it was gone.

  He turned and found himself face-to-face with two men he’d never seen before. Two men who were standing on either side of the Antioch Ghost. The same Antioch Ghost he’d captured and dragged into Herod’s Palace from Bethel. The same one who was supposed to have been his ticket to a better life. He also saw the bodies of his men on the stable floor, their throats cut.

  “But you’re…you’re supposed to be dead,” said the captain.

  But I am, thought Balthazar. Don’t you understand? I am dead.

  Balthazar cut the captain’s throat.

  Joseph climbed onto the back of Melchyor’s camel. Gaspar made his animal kneel and helped Mary onto its back, the infant in her arms. Balthazar rode alone, with a sword in each hand.

  They could make it if they went now. If they crossed the road and kept going, straight into the desert. But those screams continued to echo through Bethlehem. There were still dozens of soldiers out there, searching from house to house. Slaughtering children who’d barely known the earth. Mothers and fathers who were giving the last of themselves to save them. Now, at this very moment.

  That screaming wouldn’t stop. Not until time itself stopped. You couldn’t get sounds like that out of your ears. Not completely. Never completely. They would always be there, faint whispers in that underground dungeon, where all the bad things belonged. Balthazar knew this. Just as he knew that they could make it if they went now. Just as he knew that saving all of them was impossible. And still, he couldn’t bring himself to move.

  Gaspar could see it on his face. In the way he clenched the reins until his knuckles turned white, staring south into the village. “Balthazar…we can either die trying to save them all, or we can save this one while there is still time.”

  Gaspar was right, of course. Balthazar had faced this choice before. The choice between dying a noble death and living to fight another cowardly day. The temptation to die could be overwhelming. The temptation to let the anger wash over you, to baptize you into a new, glorious existence. Burning briefly and brightly. But it was just an illusion. For no matter how many you killed in those final moments, it was never as many as you would have killed over time. That was the trick of it. The longer you lived, the more of them you could eventually kill. It was easy to forget a truth like that with the anger burning a hole in you.

  There was still time. He would save this one. He would fight another cowardly day. And he would find a way, someday, to burn their whole world to the ground. Maybe even find a way to get those screams out of his ears. Balthazar swore this to himself and kicked the side of his camel.

  They would ride straight into the desert this time. They would push their camels as fast as they would go, and they wouldn’t let up until they reached Qumran. The Essenes would keep them safe for at least a night or—

  “You! Stop!”

  Balthazar turned back. A pair of horsemen had spotted them from the south, one of average height and build, the other simply gigantic. Both were chasing them, side by side, up the road from Bethlehem with their swords drawn.

  “Keep going!” said Balthazar to the others. “Stay with them!”

  He turned his camel around and charged at the two horsemen—his left hand on the reins, his right behind his back. He would save this one. Gaspar and Melchyor would keep it safe, and he’d catch up with them in the desert as soon as this was done.

  Balthazar rode straight at them, his camel’s nose pointed directly between their horses. He’d ride straight into them if he had to, but he wasn’t going to flinch. The soldiers were less than twenty feet from impact when they realized this and turned their horses to either side to go around him. As they did, Balthazar took his left hand off the reins, reached behind his back, and grabbed the two swords—holding them out to his sides like wings. Like a man with wings. Knocking both soldiers off their horses and into the dirt.

  He circled back and dismounted, a sword in either hand. The smaller one was still trying to stand up, still trying to shake the impact off. But the bigger one was on his feet and on him in a hurry. With a low grunt, he ran at Balthazar and thrust the point of his sword toward his chest. But Balthazar was able to move out of its path and make him miss, tripping him in the process.

  The smaller was up on his feet again, swinging wildly at Balthazar while his partner recovered. But the fall had taken a lot out of him, and Balthazar cut him to shreds, avoiding his armor and slicing deep gashes in his bare arms. When the bigger came at him again, he took a cue from Melchyor—dropping to his knees and hacking away at both of their legs, until the smaller fell onto his back and the bigger retreated out of reach.

  “You tell Herod,” said Balthazar to the bigger man, “that the Antioch Ghost is laughing at him.”

  The soldier’s already fearful eyes grew even wider.

  “You tell him I’m laughing.…You tell him I’ll stand over his grave.”

  The soldier considered this, then ran back toward the village, determined to fight another cowardly day. Balthazar watched him go a moment—a giant running on shredded legs—then turned his attention to the soldier squirming below him. The soldier pulling himself along the ground despite the deep gashes in his limbs. He was trying to get away, and yet he knew there was no chance of that happening.

  “We…we were ordered…”

  “You were WHAT?”

  “We were ord-ordered to do it, by Herod himself.”

  “Ordered to do what?”

  “To…k-kill all the male infants of Bethlehem.”

  Balthazar raised the sword above his head and held it there. He gripped the handle’s leather straps so tightly that his entire arm shook.

  “Any man who follows an order like that doesn’t deserve to walk the earth.”

  Balthazar brought it down and struck the soldier’s face with the broad side of the blade. The first blow broke the soldier’s nose, cracking a dam behind his nostrils and sending a flood of red over his chin. The second broke his left eye socket and all but liquefied the eye inside it. Before Balthazar
could land a third blow, the soldier’s instinct finally caught up with his shock, and he held his hands out to protect himself. Balthazar pulled the sword back and swung across his body, striking the soldier’s left wrist. The hand attached to it fell toward the road but was caught by a few strands of sinew and skin before it landed. Balthazar resumed striking him in the face, again and again and—

  His jaw’s broken you should probably stop hitting him he’s unconscious Balthazar you can stop hitting him now his teeth are shattered stop Balthazar he’s dead he has to be dead by now what are you doing Balthazar why are you still hitting him there go the brains out the top of his skull stop Balthazar he’s not the one who did it I know but he’s the same he’s just like the one who killed—

  A hand grabbed Balthazar’s wrist from behind as he raised the sword for another strike. He spun around, ready to kill whoever dared touch him. Ready to bash their brains right out of their ears.

  But it wasn’t a Judean soldier. It was the carpenter, looking down at him from the back of Melchyor’s camel.

  “He’s dead.”

  They were all looking down at him. All but Mary, who’d turned away from the gruesome sight with the baby held tightly to her chest. Balthazar yanked his wrist out of Joseph’s grasp.

  “Others will be coming,” said Joseph. “We have to go.”

  Once again, he knew. He knew they had to go…but he couldn’t get his feet to move. In fact, he couldn’t get anything to move. Balthazar was having trouble catching his breath. He felt faint. Weak. They were all looking at him with strange expressions.…

  “Balthazar…you’re bleeding.”

  Who’d said that? The carpenter? Gaspar?

  He looked down at his robes. There was a growing patch of blood on the right side of his chest. He pulled them apart and saw the wound. A puncture from a sword between his ribs. With his every breath, minuscule air bubbles formed in the bright, rich blood running from the wound.

  The soldier hadn’t missed.

  The sun had barely crested the eastern hills, but Balthazar could feel it setting already. Night was coming, and with it, some much-needed rest. For a moment, he thought that the strange, brilliant star in the east had returned.

  This time, he was the only one who saw it.

  6

  The Dream

  “Get up,” he said. “Take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

  —Matthew 2:13

  I

  Six fugitives rode east, into the rising desert sun. Only four of them were conscious.

  They rode over a lifeless planet of rocky hills and jagged ravines, of beiges and browns tangled together in a senseless embrace, blending into one as they approached a horizon they would never reach. It was a place devoid of vibrancy. A place where joy had been banished. Even the cloudless blue sky seemed drained of its color.

  Balthazar was draped facedown over the back of Gaspar’s camel. He was pale, drenched in sweat. Blood continued to seep from the hole in his chest and pool on the animal’s fur. Gaspar kept one hand on his reins and one hand on Balthazar’s back, trying to keep him from bouncing off as he led the party over uneven terrain. Melchyor rode behind them, a sword hanging at his side, the blood of five men still wet on his robes. Joseph was last, with Mary behind him, cradling the sleeping baby in her left arm and clinging to her husband’s robes with her right.

  Gaspar didn’t know the way to Qumran. He didn’t know the Judean Desert very well at all, just the roads that had been beaten through it by time and desire. The roads that connected Jerusalem to Jericho, Jericho to Antioch, Antioch to the rest of the known world. But the desert was a different story.

  Out here, spinning columns of dust could rise without warning, dancing across the earth and blinding all they touched. Out here, scorpions and snakes waited to poison the unfortunate souls who crossed their path, and the nearest water was often days away. Heat, exhaustion, and thirst had a way of burrowing under a man’s skin. Of eating away at his will, until the urge to lie down and sleep in the blinding sun seemed rational. The urge to remove those stifling robes and walk naked seemed wise. There were countless stories of men drinking mouthfuls of sand, tearing at their own flesh and cupping mouthfuls of blood to their cracked lips to quench the thirst that had driven them mad. There was a saying in Judea: “The desert is filled with the bones of strong men.”

  The hills became steeper as the fugitives continued west. The desert slowly rose up on either side, enveloping them in rock. Swallowing them. Like drops of water being squeezed out of an ocean and into a narrow channel, the fugitives were funneled into a ravine—a giant fracture in the bones of the earth, twisting its way through the twisted beiges and browns.

  They’d followed the ravine for just over a mile, steering their camels through its jagged walls, when the baby started crying, and Mary realized that it had been hours since he’d been fed.

  They stopped and sat in the shade offered by the rock walls around them—Mary with the infant hidden beneath her robes, Joseph beside her, taking small sips from a stitched leather canteen. Gaspar had lowered Balthazar to the ground, washed his wound out with water. But no sooner had he wiped away the clot than blood began to run out of the puncture again. It was hopeless.

  None of them spoke a word. Melchyor sat cross-legged, drawing pictures in the sand with his sword. If he felt any lingering effects of what he’d just seen, any remorse over the lives he’d taken, his face didn’t betray it. He seemed completely divorced from the world around him, completely at peace with his situation.

  Gaspar, however, was clearly distressed. Not by the visions of slaughtered infants. He’d stored those away in a place where they could never be found, down in the tombs where he kept all the wretched things he’d seen and done. Rather, he was distressed by facts.

  The fact that no road in Judea was safe to travel. The fact that he didn’t know the desert well enough to disappear into it or survive off of it. The fact that his best chance of escape was currently lying on the ground, dying. The fact that they would run out of water in a matter of hours.

  And then what? The carpenter and his wife would only slow them down. The baby would die from exposure or dehydration within a day or two, followed by the girl, until all that was left were three madmen cupping mouthfuls of blood to their cracked lips—that was, assuming Herod’s men didn’t find and slaughter them first, which was more likely than any other scenario. It was hopeless. All of it.

  It was Balthazar who finally broke the silence with a series of wheezing, unconscious coughs. When the fit was over, Joseph could see blood running from his mouth. His color was getting worse. He was beginning to shiver.

  “Is he going to die?” asked Joseph.

  “Yes,” said Gaspar.

  Joseph was struck by his matter-of-factness. It was as if he’d asked about the color of Balthazar’s robes, and not his life.

  “‘Yes’? That’s it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Isn’t there something we can do?”

  “I have seen men with this wound before. There is nothing that can be done. He will not live to see nightfall.”

  “But he saved our lives. All of our lives. We’re in his debt.”

  “And that is why I carry him with me, instead of leaving him to die alone.”

  “Carrying him on the back of a camel isn’t going to help him. There has to be something we can—”

  “I told you he is DEAD!”

  The word bounced off the walls of the ravine and into the unknown twists ahead. It was followed by another considerable silence. Only the sounds of the camels shifting their weight on their feet, of Melchyor scraping his sword through the dirt.

  “After what we have done,” said Gaspar, “Herod will send all of Judea after us. He is dead, and we are alive. We still have a chance. He does not.”

  “No,” said Mary.

  Gaspar had almost
forgotten the girl was there. He considered her with his deep-set eyes. She was so slight, so weak. He could break her arms and legs like pieces of charred firewood if he wanted to.

  “He came back for us,” she said. “I won’t just sit here and watch him die.”

  “I told you…there is nothing we can do for him.”

  “Yes,” said Mary, “there is.”

  Gaspar had no idea what she meant. Joseph wasn’t sure either, until she turned to him and said, “Zachariah.”

  When Mary was very young, her uncle Zachariah had been a physician—sewing up wounds and treating coughs in the little village of Emmaus, ten miles northwest of Jerusalem. He was in his seventies now, enjoying a quiet life with his wife, Elizabeth, and their young son. To Mary’s knowledge, he hadn’t so much as wrapped a bandage in over ten years. And his own health had been in decline. But they had to try.

  Mary turned back to Gaspar. “I know someone who might be able to help him. A physician. A relative who can be trusted.”

  “Where is he?”

  “In Emmaus.”

  Gaspar shook his head.

  “It is too far.”

  “We can be there in two hours if we take the roads.”

  “The roads? Have you not listened? Every soldier in the Judean Army will be on the roads looking for us.”

  “The roads leading in and out of Bethlehem, yes. And when they don’t find us there, they’ll start looking on the other roads and in the desert. But not in a little village like Emmaus. Not yet.”

  I could break your bones like charred firewood.…

  “We can stay out here until we’re dead, or we can try to reach Emmaus—​where there’s food and water. Where there’s a place to hide and a chance to save him.”

  “If we do not get killed first.”

  “Just get us that far. Get us to Emmaus. We can take care of ourselves from there.”

  Gaspar tried to think of a better option. But he knew she was right. If they hid in the desert, they’d all be dead in a matter of days. If they tried to reach the village, there was a very good chance they’d run into soldiers on the roads. But at least they’d have a fighting chance.