Unholy Night Page 3

  The three soldiers drew their swords and started across the room, toward the row of hanging robes the women had pointed to.

  None of them had more than a few seconds to live.

  Peter could almost taste his victory. As a captain in Herod’s army, there were few priorities higher than catching the Antioch Ghost. And now it seemed he was within moments of doing just that. Such an honor would mean a promotion, of course. Money. Land. Maybe even a slave to farm it for him. Best of all, it would mean a ticket out of Tel Arad and an end to dealing with that fat, corrupt Roman, Decimus Petronius Verres.

  His men were kicking in every door, searching every house in the area. The Ghost couldn’t have gone far. They’d reached the square less than a minute after he’d reached it, and he’d stupidly left a dead camel as a starting point for their search. The fact that he’d taken the time to kill it for no reason showed just how vile their fugitive really was.

  Of course, some of his men doubted that their target really was the Antioch Ghost. But Peter knew. He’d been around long enough to recognize his methods. His choice of prey. Even before Flavia had described the man she’d seen robbing her father’s compound—tall and olive-skinned, with a strong build, dark hair to his shoulders, and an X-shaped scar across his right cheek—he’d known. He also knew enough to suspect that she’d left out the part about inviting him into her bed, but that wasn’t important. So when reports of a similar-looking man stealing a Bedouin’s camel came in, Peter had gathered as many soldiers as he could and given chase across the Judean Desert—choking on dust and praying that the Ghost didn’t beat him to Jerusalem, where he would’ve disappeared in seconds.

  Captain Peter had asked God for a miracle, and God had answered. Here he was in Bethel. The last place he’d expected to be when he’d woken up this morning. The place he would always remember as the home of his great victory…assuming God would help him just a little more. Once again, Peter appealed to the Lord.…

  Give me a sign, Heavenly Father. Help me bring this murderous thief to justice. Help me to protect the children of Israel and uphold your law, O God.

  Of course, he left out the part about being rewarded with money and land and slaves, but that wasn’t important. Once again, God delivered. For no sooner had Peter finished his prayer than a sound reached his ears. A beautiful sound that meant glory was at hand:

  Muffled screams coming from the bathhouse.

  The head landed in the water, its eyes still blinking as it sank to the bottom, and the women finally released their pent-up screams. They climbed over each other, trying to get out of the bath as a dark red cloud spread through it.

  Balthazar had waited until the advancing soldiers were within arm’s length before jumping out from behind the robes and swinging at the closest man. It’d been one of those lucky swings—one in a hundred, really—where the blade had hit the neck just right, between the vertebrae, and gone clean through. Before the first soldier’s head had even splashed down, Bal­thazar had kicked the second in the chest, knocking him onto his back. Then, just as the first screams began to echo through the room, he’d run the third soldier through the belly and out the back. He’d held the soldier—who wasn’t much more than a boy—up with his blade, watching his face drain from pink to ash white, then yanked it out, spilling his blood and entrails onto the tiled floor.

  By this point, the second soldier had managed to get back to his feet. But it was only a brief stay. Balthazar swung again and cut his throat. The soldier dropped his sword and clutched at the wound—the blood pouring through his fingers in sheets. His face turned that same shade of white, wore that same mask of fear as he came to that same old, dreadful realization. The one Balthazar had seen so many other men come to: This can’t be happening. This can’t be the day I die. And then it was done. The soldier fell face-first into the bath, his blood mixing with the other’s. Naturally, this only served to elicit more screams from the already-screaming women.

  Those screams will bring more soldiers any second now. Time to go.

  He stood for a moment, mourning the days and weeks he’d spent working to fill those saddlebags. Mourning the lost fruits of his labor. Then, another brief grieving period over, he ran like hell again.

  Failure is a pile of bodies and no profit…and this is shaping up to be a dismal failure.

  Balthazar ran out the rear of the building and into the small, dirt-lined courtyard, enclosed by a six-foot wall and a wooden gate that led into the street. It was empty, save for a massive brick furnace that abutted the bathhouse. This furnace, Balthazar knew at once, was the source of the white smoke he’d seen earlier. A male slave stood beside its open iron door, stoking the raging fire inside. Its hot air channeled into a system of ducts under the bathhouse floor, keeping the water nice and warm for the nude elite. Even where Balthazar stood, ten feet away from the flames, the heat was almost too much to bear, and the noise of crackling wood and rushing air was almost deafening. As such, the slave had been oblivious to the screams coming from the bathhouse and the shouts of Judean soldiers swarming outside. But now, as he looked up from his work and found himself face-to-face with a blood-spattered, sword-wielding Syrian, he abandoned his post and ran for his life—out the open wooden gates and into the streets. Balthazar was about to do the same thing when a disembodied voice cried, “Stop where you are!”

  He turned and saw a lone, boyish Judean soldier standing in the bathhouse’s rear doorway, his sword trembling in his hands.

  “OVER HERE!” he shouted to his comrades. “OVER HERE! I’VE FOUND HIM!”

  Balthazar wasn’t about to be held prisoner by a lone soldier with a trembling sword. And he certainly wasn’t going to wait around for others to arrive. He started toward the wooden gate.

  “Stop!”

  The soldier lifted his sword and held it out in front of his body, exactly as he’d been trained to hold it. He charged at Balthazar, exactly as he’d been trained to charge. But as he prepared to run his enemy through, just as he’d been trained to do, the soldier experienced something he was entirely unequipped and unprepared to handle: Balthazar rolled onto his back and used his legs to launch him into the air—

  —and into the open furnace.

  The soldier heard the clang of the iron door slam behind him. He heard the latch close. He tried to stand, but there wasn’t enough room to do more than crouch. Instinct grabbed hold of him, and he tried to push the flames away with his hands, but they were already burning. He could see his flesh blistering and blackening, sliding off of his bones like wax down the side of a candle. He could feel his clothes burning against his body, becoming one with his skin, his hair melting against his scalp.

  Balthazar could hear his screams through the iron door. He closed his eyes and turned away as the pounding of fists rattled it from the other side. When he opened them, there were ten soldiers standing in front of him.

  “Drop your sword!” one of them yelled.

  Faced with the idea of taking them all on, Balthazar placed the sword in his mouth—its blade still dripping with blood—turned back, and climbed the brick wall of the bathhouse. He could always fight his way across the rooftops, jumping from building to building until he found a horse, or a camel, or anything better than fighting ten men at once.

  But when he pulled himself onto the arched roof and got to his feet, he felt the hope run out of his body like blood from a severed head. There were nearly a hundred men in the square below, plus the corpse of his miraculous camel. The Cloud of Undetermined Wrath had become a crowd of very determined soldiers, and Balthazar had to face the fact that he was completely, hopelessly surrounded.

  His options were thus: He could fight to the death and take as many of these emperor-worshipping bastards as possible with him. Result? One hundred percent chance of death. Or, he could surrender and be all but certainly executed. Result? Ninety-nine percent chance of death.

  It was a no-brainer.

  Balthazar’s wrists had been
bound firmly behind his back, his clothes meticulously searched for contraband. With a soldier holding his arms on either side, he was marched across the square to where Peter waited with a deeply satisfied smirk on his face. The victorious captain hesitated a moment, taking it all in. Relishing it. He was face-to-face with the end to all his troubles.

  “The Antioch Ghost,” he said at last. “Scourge of Rome.”

  “You forgot ‘plunderer of the Eastern Empire,’” said Balthazar.

  Here it comes…

  Sure enough, Balthazar was rewarded with a jaw-rattling punch for daring to speak. But snide remarks were just about all he had left in his arsenal. For the first time he could remember, he couldn’t see a way out. There was no hidden weapon to pull at the last second. No well-timed distraction on the way. His fate was completely out of his hands now. He’d risked everything on a 1 percent chance of survival.

  “On your knees,” said Peter, drawing his sword.

  Oh well…it was worth a try.

  Balthazar didn’t budge, so the soldiers helped him, pushing down on his shoulders and making him kneel in the dirt. He braced himself, wondering if he would feel his spine break or feel the blade tear through his neck and throat. He wondered if he would still be able to see as his head fell to the ground and rolled across the sand. What a strange sight that would be…rolling along with no breath or body, fading to nothing as the blood ran out of me…

  Balthazar examined the faces of the Judean soldiers closest to him, felt the binds on his wrists with the tips of his fingers, smelled the desert air. He looked at the sand beneath his feet and the sky above his head, taking it all in. Relishing it. Here it was, the sum of his twenty-six years. He would die on his knees in Bethel—or “Beit El.” Or whatever the hell they called it. His blood would run into the dirt. The soldiers would spit on his corpse, hack it to pieces, and leave it to the dogs. And that would be that.

  Lesser men would’ve prayed at a moment like this. Would’ve begged God’s forgiveness as they were confronted by his imminent judgment. Balthazar took comfort in the fact that even now, he felt no such compulsion. Even now, in the final seconds of his life, he stood firm. And while he couldn’t help the fact that his heart was pounding harder than it ever had—which will make the blood shoot higher from my headless neck and hopefully right into this captain’s face—he refused to give his executioners the satisfaction of seeing him squirm.

  What’s this?

  Balthazar was suddenly confronted by a vision. A sea of stars dancing before him.

  It had already happened.

  Here he’d been, wondering about what it would be like when his head was cut off, and he’d missed the actual moment. The world narrowing, darkening into a single, distant point. Somewhere, far away—where the winds blew cool and the naked women bathed—he felt a sharp pain wash over him. And he could see something in that distant light, something moving. It was hard to make out, but yes, there was definitely something there. A man. A man leading an animal through the desert…a woman on its back…

  So…this is what it’s like to die. Funny…men spend so much effort, so much anxiety trying to avoid this moment. But really, when it’s all said and done, dying isn’t so bad. In fact, it’s kind of…

  The soldiers watched Balthazar slump forward, then fall to the ground, his blood running into the dirt. Peter examined the blunt handle of the sword he’d bludgeoned him with, making sure it hadn’t been soiled by flecks of blood or tufts of hair, then returned it to its sheath. He’d given the Antioch Ghost a ferocious whack on the skull, and it’d done the trick.

  Balthazar was out cold.

  Decimus had ordered the thief executed on the spot, his head brought back to Tel Arad to be displayed as a warning. And as much as Peter would’ve enjoyed that—as much as he would’ve liked to behead this piece of filth for slaughtering his men and making him spend an entire day in the desert—he had orders to take the Antioch Ghost alive.

  And those orders came from a power higher than a Roman governor.

  2

  Twin Palace of the Puppet King

  “When Herod heard this, he was frightened; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet.’”

  —Matthew 2:3–5

  I

  The spirit that had once called itself “Balthazar” was swimming.

  Swimming through an ocean without end, an ocean of space and time, where all that had ever been and all that ever would be converged into one. As Balthazar looked up at its infinite, shimmering surface, he could see the whole of creation reflected back, every detail of the universe—​from the stars in the heavens to the smallest insects of the earth. He could see every moment of his past and future. But as he swam, his movement created ripples in these images, warping them into ever-changing suggestions of the truth: Here was the man again, leading an animal through the desert…the woman on its back. Here was the distant star in the heavens and the trees with a secret. Here was the face from his past.…

  And the faster Balthazar swam, the farther into the future he went. The stronger the ripples became, the harder those reflections were to see: Here was an army of strange soldiers and a wooden beam, splitting in two. Here was a great city in flames and his brother, Abdi, as a grown man. At least that’s what it looked like.

  Balthazar was suddenly aware that he was no longer swimming. He was flying—floating above the earth, as if carried by a pair of outstretched wings. The shimmering surface he’d been looking up at was now miles below him, and the whole Judean Desert—no, all of Judea—stretched out as far as his eyes could see. Deep ravines were suddenly nothing more than jagged little lines in the sand. Soaring mountains were suddenly scaled with the tip of a finger. He could see flocks of birds beneath him, flying in formation above the waters of the Jordan River. He could see the tops of clouds and the shadows they cast on the desert floor.

  Balthazar had never felt such peace. Such freedom.

  I’m descending.…

  The tops of the clouds were growing closer. Almost close enough to skim with his outstretched feet. Closer…until the birds were above him, and Balthazar was immersed in the dense fog of the clouds themselves. And when he broke through the bottom, the desert was much closer than it had been. Close enough to make out the scattered bits of green that had managed to push their way through the rocks…and close enough to see the tiny procession of Judean soldiers and cavalry below.

  No…

  The victorious captain and his hundred men, trekking from Bethel to Jerusalem with their unconscious prisoner in tow.

  No, not there!

  Balthazar could feel himself being pulled out of this glorious world, could feel the memory of his former self come flooding back. And he could see the prisoner beginning to come around.…

  No…no, I don’t want to trade places with him! I want to stay up here! I want to st—

  Balthazar woke up retching. He felt the muscles of his stomach contracting against his will and its contents climbing up his throat. Instinct told him to cup his hands, but his hands told him they were still tied behind his back. He thought about fighting the urge—thought about bearing down and commanding his muscles to obey. But it was too late. His body had taken the reins. He was just a passenger now. And so the paltry contents of his stomach were ejected over his chin, down his front, and onto the tail of the horse below. The horse he was riding backward.

  This was immediately followed by a chorus of cackling and harassment on all sides. And though Balthazar couldn’t see the men who were laughing and hurling insults at him, as his eyes were still only half open and flooded with the involuntary tears of his involuntary purge, he had a pretty good idea who they were. Just like he had a pretty good idea where he was, and how he’d gotten here.

  He’d been knocked out with a blow to the head. That much was obvious, th
anks to the blurred vision and the skull that throbbed in a way he’d never thought skulls could throb—the pain broadcasting all the way to the tips of his fingers. And while he wasn’t able to check at the moment, on account of his hands being tied, Balthazar also suspected that the hair he felt clinging to his scalp was glued there with dried blood. He was dizzy and nauseated from the force of the blow and from dehydration—judging by his maddening thirst and cracked lips. His neck was too stiff to turn more than a few degrees in either direction.

  No, they’d cracked him on the skull, no doubt about it. And while he’d been off swimming through the infinite, Balthazar’s unconscious body had been lifted onto a soldier’s horse, their waists tied together so he wouldn’t slip off. Why they’d put him on backward was a bit of a mystery. He could only assume it was some kind of insult. Something the Judean cavalry had dreamt up for its prisoners maybe. But whether it was tradition or an insult improvised at the last minute, it was effective. Besides being generally disorienting, it gave the soldiers behind him a clear shot at his face, which they used to mock him with words and gestures.

  Also, having one’s nose directly above a horse’s ass wasn’t pleasant either.

  But obscene gestures and the persistent smell of manure aside, Balthazar was alive. For the moment, anyway. He was almost certain they were headed toward Herod’s Palace in Jerusalem, where he’d be presented like the prize that he was and then killed in any number of terrible ways before the day was out.

  If he could only turn around, Balthazar was sure he’d find Captain Peter riding at the front of the pack, grinning ear to ear, silently rehearsing his grand presentation to his king and counting the reward money in his head. Herod would do a little gloating, and then order Balthazar executed on the spot—that was, assuming the festering wound on his scalp didn’t kill him first.