Authors: James Byron Huggins
Chapter Fifteen
Josh and Rachel sat motionless upon the divan as the lone Nephilim that rested before them enjoyed a pomegranate, relishing every drop of the green flavor, squeezing it so that the juice trickled drop by drop—life after life of a corrupted world—into its mouth.
Beyond them, the Great Hall was magnificently and brightly illuminated with hundreds of candles. There was no trace of shadow. The arena was prepared so that color and action could be fully seen and fully remembered. For the first time Cassius was aware that the Nephilim would treasure this battle, which was good because it also meant it considered Cassius a serious challenge.
The Nephilim lifted the last piece of pomegranate when it obviously sensed Cassius
’ slow, calm approach from the far end of the Hall. Then it stared directly at the centurion who walked from the darkness of a corridor.
Wearing the silver armor of the marble centurion, the blood
red robe descending almost to the floor, Cassius walked directly toward the altar and the beast.
The breastplate emblazoned with the gold lion enclosed Cassius
’ chest, and he wore the leather-steel gauntlets. Upon his feet he wore the knee-high sandals. His sword, the gladius, was sheathed low at his left side, and a long poniard was sheathed on his right. He held one of the polished spears from the wall. Cassius stopped a great distance from the altar. His face and his gaze were stoic, patient, unaffected. When he spoke, he revealed nothing.
“
Good evening, Noble Jaqual.”
Jaqual laughed gustily in a deep voice so unlike the voice that had risen from his spindly form until now.
“
Tanat XXXotential Centurius est
!” He laughed. “It’s been a while …”
Cassius angled slowly toward the altar.
An experienced eye could easily detect his tactical use of surroundings. For at every step there was a column, a display, a couch, or table between himself and the Nephilim. If Jaqual launched a sudden attack, he would be forced to hurtle or demolish two or three obstructions, giving Cassius seconds—all the time in the world—to execute a counterattack. But Jaqual clearly had no intentions of rushing his satisfaction.
No one else was in the Hall.
“The others?” Cassius asked.
“
Ah,” Jaqual gestured, “unfortunately, I was forced to lock them in the wine cellar for the moment. You know how it is— so many to kill, so little time.”
His hands, quite human in appearance, hung relaxed at his sides.
“Did you know you almost caught me once?”
Cassius carefully closed.
“Really.”
“
Really.” The Nephilim laughed. “You don’t remember? 1892? That castle in London? Yes … you were trying to kill
me
. But like a bad marksman you killed my brother, instead.”
Cassius nodded
, “To finish what David began.”
Jaqual smiled, and jagged white fangs not there a split second ago were
clearly visible. The change had been instantaneous— something in the blink of an eye. Then the Nephilim’s voice assumed a fatalistic tone. “Raphael is …?”
“
As you will be … in a few moments.”
“Pity,”
Jaqual grimaced. “He was a useful vassal.”
Josh made a faint motion to rise and move toward the side of the divan and Cassius instantly raised his hand. Gently, Rachel reached out and pulled her brother back. Cassius knew Jaqual was not threatened, but he wanted to keep him distracted.
“Why now?” he asked, stepping even closer. “I didn’t know that it was you. If fact, you would have been the last one I would have suspected. Your masquerade was perfect.”
Jaqual picked his fangs with a splinter of bone.
“Ah, well, I didn’t know what my poor, pathetic Raphael might have told you. He never
was
very smart. In fact, none of this would have happened if he hadn’t panicked when you arrived. But he feared that you might recognize him and then the hunt would begin all over again. Oh, I tried to tell him he was making things too complicated—dragging that fool cripple all over this holy place. But nooooo …He wouldn’t listen to
me
.” His stare was ironic. “That’s the problem with being a thousand-year-old teenager. You think you know everything.”
Still moving, Cassius was within twenty feet of the children.
“Why didn’t you help him? The two of you could have probably finished me in short time.”
“
Well, I did assist in my own humble means.”
“
Yes; you even let Raphael wound you at the start of this to play out your charade. But I wouldn’t consider that ‘helping him.’”
Jaqual smiled, as if to say,
“It was nothing.”
“
But then Raphael panicked.”
The Nephilim shrugged.
“To tell the truth, I knew he would. You see, I easily recruited the wayward Raphael, who had always survived by my foresight, anyway. But there are others—others like myself—“ A smile implied the unspoken threat, “—who were yet to gather under this roof so that we might re-organize, in a sense … But now, alas, I suppose I will be forced to find more hospitable lodgings.”
“
To create your own nation again?”
“
Oh, no, nothing so ambitious.” Jaqual’s gaze shifted from white to red—again, instantaneous. “To be completely honest, Centurion, there’s another reason entirely.”
Positioning himself so Jaqual could not see the corridor Gina had just exited on the distant side of the Hall, Cassius took a risk and stopped moving. He knew that when he stopped moving Jaqual would be twice as focused, afraid his opponent had found some unanticipated line of attack. And Gina would need the distraction if she had any hope of even getting close to the children without the Nephili
m’s inhuman senses detecting her presence.
Cassius was right. Jaqual
’s face became more sharply angled, as if he had prompted the first stage of his monstrous transformation.
“
What reason would that be?” Cassius asked.
The Nephilim shook his head, as if in pity.
“I have grown tired of you, Cassius—both you and your war and the manner in which you endlessly prey on my kind to reconcile your guilt. Even before you arrived I had devised the means of your demise. All that was required was for the remaining brethren to join me, and then we would have helped you rest in peace. But then they opened the abbey too soon.” He laughed. “Yes, I knew you’d come, Cassius, when you learned the abbey was open once more. I simply wanted to eliminate the trouble of a ‘fight,’ so to speak.” He smiled. “I much prefer a slaughter.”
Cassius couldn
’t see Gina. She had disappeared amid the pillars.
Then, without removing his eyes from the centurion, Jaqual spoke to the children.
“Please tell your mother she can come out. She sounds like a charging rhinoceros.”
No one moved and then Gina stepped from behind a pillar a hundred feet from the altar. She had slipped out of her shoes so she could move without sound.
“Thank you,” Jaqual said, and then his eyes narrowed. His mouth turned down. And where there had been patience, there arose an old and bitter anger.
“
We could have ruled the world together, Cassius. But you had to serve that Hebrew dog to the bitter end. Do you really think He’ll forgive you for what you did to him?” He shook his head, as if in disbelief. “Fool! You saw Him feed thousands! You saw Him raise the dead! Then you nailed Him to that tree for your emperor! If one of us is evil, Cassius, it isn’t
me
. I certainly had nothing to do with the death of the Nazarene. That blood is on the head of your people.”
“
I serve another King, now.”
“
Too late!” Jaqual snarled, eyes blazing red. “You have always been the fiercest fighter! The perfect warrior! The sea of men you’ve killed would have lined
both
sides of the road from Jerusalem to Rome! Yes, Cassius, entire cities! Entire nations lay in ashes because of you! As if you had the right to decide the fate of nations! An entire world, Centurion, has wept at the blood you have shed!” Jaqual continued with malicious calm. “And then there’s always Golgotha … the most precious blood of all.”
Cassius did not move, and in a blink
…
Water and blood appear so much the same in the darkness, Cassius noticed with such clarity as the dull thuds continued. And yet the man did not move, but for deep gasps that lifted his chest on the wooden beam already soaked in His blood. Cassius looked out to gaze across the hundreds and hundreds of cloaked shapes, a remarkable sea of pale faces in the dusk—painful faces, faces that could be no more painful than the face of this man—this man who had caused all this.
Cassius’ teeth came together hard as he turned back to the man, and he moved a soldier aside so that he might look into the man’s eyes, so that he could look into His eyes once again to confirm what he had seen before—a hundred times before. But that was the fascination of the man’s eyes. No matter how many times Cassius had seen Him—and most of the time he had not seen the man’s face directly—he had watched Him gazing on some old woman, some child, some tax collector or harlot—Cassius had been…confused. Wondering what knowledge, what great secret the man had but never revealed.
Before cataracts had whitened Cassius
’ vision, he had prided himself on the clearness of his eyes. He had purpose-fully stared blue and clear upon those he confronted. The power of a man is in his eyes, he had been told, but not with this man.
No, this man never revealed himself with His dark eyes circled with dark rings as if He had not slept in ages, as if the grief He knew had permanently cast bruises beneath His eyes. But even when He did not look upon someone, there was a force beyond this world, even in the gaze He did not cast. A power—it was the only way Cassius could reckon whatever it was—that held history, even time itself, in its grasp, as if all this were always within His power.
And gazing upon the man as He lay upon the ground, Cassius prayed more desperately than he had ever prayed that the man would die, but the man would not die….
No, He would not die.
Until He chose.
Opening his eyes from a single blink, Cassius stared upon Jaqual once more. The centurion
’s smile was despising. “You feared Him, Jaqual. You feared him then and you fear him now.”
Jaqual snarled.
“So did you! But I had cause to fear Him! I even had cause to kill Him! You had no cause but for expendable Tiberius!” He laughed, equally despising. “What an idiot! You sacrificed eternity for a laurel wreath that fades like grass!”
As another vision arose before Cassius, he shook his head, aware suddenly that there was more at work within his mind than guilt. His teeth were tight as he bent his head toward the Nephilim, concentrating to remain within the moment. But the power was strong—vision after vision of depthless black storm clouds and thunder that rumbled across the sky, as if it began above where he stood.
His soldiers were laboring over the nails they hammered into the huge square timber. They had driven iron spikes through the man’s arms easily enough but had hit a knot or some unseen density at His ankles that refused to allow the spike to enter.
Cassius cast a glance at the storm, moving impossibly fast now over Golgotha, as the Hebrews called it.
“Finish it!” he roared to his soldiers, who jerked their heads upward at the enraged voice. Cassius ripped his gladius free as he stalked around them, cursing. He didn’t seek to understand the cause of his horror, for he did not want to.
“
Idiots!” he shouted as he struck a soldier aside and pointed threateningly at another. “You have ten seconds to finish this or you’ll be dead by morning!”
Cassius could threaten them with death. He could threaten them with anything, and it was a power he exercised without mercy in that hour. He did not worry about the consequence of what he said. He only cared that every fiber of his being, every nerve, felt naked and exposed to the lightning that struck from sky to earth to him.
Raising the hammer far above his head, the soldier struck six rapid blows, and the nail protruded downward from the beam. Whatever the spike had struck within the wooden crucifix had bent the iron like wax. Cassius had never seen such a thing. It was too much.
“
Raise Him!” he bellowed, and as ten men struggled to lift the crucifix, lightning turned the night to day for a moment that cost Cassius his mind. He shut his eyes and raised forearms across his face to the brilliance of a world that threatened to …
to invade this one
….
“
Cassius
!”
Cassius jerked his head to the side. It was Gina.
“Don’t listen to him!”
Again Cassius found Jaqual.
He was stunned and amazed at the power of the creature, which he acknowledged was far more than the power of flesh. He only had to barely consider that the Nephilim had brought this storm that had not broken in three days and nights. That he had lived twice as long as Cassius and knew twice as many dark secrets. That he had effortlessly blinded so many within this abbey for so long. Yes, its power was great.