Tyranny of Coins (The Judas Chronicles) (Volume 5) Paperback (19 page)

“Go to him, Jew Dog!” Krontos hissed from behind, I pushed away his hands as he reached for my ankles. “Go to him, and after your friend tears you from limb to limb, as he told me earlier he would, I will enjoy prosperity and peace again!”

I stepped onto the floor, moving to the gallery. Several more dark shapes drifted toward me from the dark expanse above the torch.

Sounds like an army of these suckers… what are they?

“Is there ever honor among miscreants like you, Krontos?” I replied, prepared to resume our battle from below. I pointed to the damaged banister, along with several large holes in the marble walls. A doorway looked like an armored tank drove through it, save for the strange decay around the edges. “Whoever did this is
your
friend,
not
mine! Only a diabolical assbag like yourself would….”

Then it hit me. Hard.

The demons, the destruction that was more of a molecular shift than a hole caused by a powerful force smashing into an immovable object—It all began to gel together in my mind.

FGR technology. Only a fusion generator/reconfiguration beam device could do this! Oh, holy shit!

Viktor Kaslow.

My worst nemesis ever, and one I assumed became dinner to a host of voracious entities known as Bochicha’s Emissaries, was back. He must’ve turned the tables on the Colombian deity and its angels, and then escaped to our reality.

How lovely.

I shuddered, recognizing Krontos’ little dig about another person being better at dimension manipulation than any of us, while also managing to confiscate the Stutthof-Auschwitz coin with relatively little effort. Now this person successfully invaded Krontos’ home and seemingly had gained the upper hand on him, too.

Lord help us all if the two should ever be united as one.

“So, you do know who is responsible for the destruction of my beautiful home?” The wicked smile returned to Krontos’ face, and he nodded as if reviewing the rush of random thoughts swirling in my mind. “I might consider such an alignment, if not for the destructive mayhem this Kaslow has caused in other dimensions. He is a brute, having no regard for the proper sequence of things.”

“Isn’t that a ‘pot calling the kettle black’ kind of thing?” I said, realizing I wouldn’t have long to rescue my family and friends if my Russian enemy sought to settle our personal score in the cold wee hours after Halloween. “Insane tyrants are all the same.”

No, really they’re not. Similar, maybe, but like anyone else, bad guys have their individual quirks that make it fairly easy to rank one above another when stacking them up. But debating the sins and merits of Krontos and Kaslow wasn’t why I said what I did. I had just stepped toward the room with the blown out doorway, trying to hone in on my coin’s call, as well as seeking clues where my loved ones were presently held. The signal grew weaker until I headed for the stairs to the third floor.

My left arm began to tingle, where the earlier sensation had been more of a bodily awareness. I thought about the room holding Krontos’ Nazi paraphernalia, and in particular, the cobalt glowing sun crosses. Avoiding the obvious connection any longer was foolish, even if the coins were not involved. The room was the logical choice to resume my search.

“Where in the hell do you think you’re going?” Krontos picked up his pace.

“I guess you’ll need to keep up if you really want to know,” I said, grasping the ice-cold banister and bolting into the dimness above while a myriad of new fears bombarded me. Igniting Krontos’ ire was the least of them, as the presence of Kaslow and the demons that craved the sweetness of human flesh were bigger concerns.

The dimness deepened toward pitch black as I stepped onto the third floor. I tried to remember the relic room’s location, ever-fearful Krontos might move it somewhere else by reality shift or sorcery. Not to mention the possibility Kaslow had found it already. Thankfully, a soft blue glow emanated from an area to my left, and when I encountered a door that opened with little resistance, I released a huge sigh of relief.

I stepped inside, surprised to find a warm breeze embracing me—so unlike anywhere else in the castle at present. But the glowing sun crosses were barely visible, as compared to my earlier visit.

“The reunion of three coins was your responsibility, Judas,” said Krontos from behind me. Several wall torches ignited simultaneously, filling the room with soft luminance. “But if my assumption is correct about your friend, Viktor Kaslow, then all will be well. I will have my Trinity of Death again and Kaslow will have you. I think that works out well for everyone!”

“What about Beatrice, Amy, Alistair, Roderick, and Cedric?” I purposely named them all, in the faint hope they could hear me bartering for their lives. “I’d go willingly to Kaslow in a trade, as long as they are allowed to return home safely. I want you to personally see them home in one piece and assure me they will be allowed to live out their days in happiness.”

“What? How is that supposed to work, Judas?” he said, snickering while he regarded me with disdain. “Even my disciples in the Third Reich understood goodness delivered without a wicked deed to cap things off was a project incomplete. What I can promise you is they will endure suffering beyond what they could ever anticipate, with enough discomfort to ensure they hardly think about you.”

He smiled almost sweetly. Perhaps if he had delivered his condemnation without such relish and anticipation of my loved ones’ suffering, I might’ve let it ride. Not likely, but possible, since I was without a clue where to check for my coins—which I had begun to see as the likely keys to our salvation. If they had somehow been transformed into the sun crosses as their present state, how could I possibly change them back to what they once were? Cursed as an immortal to live out my days without any way to permanently kill me, I could never thwart someone with Krontos’ or Kaslow’s vision. They would merely brush me aside on the way to wreaking havoc upon the world.

While thinking along these lines, a sharp pain entered my back, came out through my abdomen after piercing my liver, and exited from my back. I stumbled as I turned around. Krontos was there. A wide grin stretched his wrinkled face, and he held a medieval battleaxe in his hands, dripping with my blood along its tip.

“Kaslow won’t come out to play, I fear, unless I give him an invitation,” he advised, as I fell to my knees. A vital organ had been compromised and if he struck me again—say in the heart or head—my recovery would be dubious at best.  “Hold still and be a good boy… maybe your God will surprise you by letting you inside St. Peter’s Gates.”

More laughter. Mean and robust—enough to make me briefly consider whether Kaslow was truly more evil than Krontos. But one thing was painfully clear. With so many different options of how to kill me, whether natural or supernatural, I was running out of time. I had to make a move, and it had to be the right one.

I collapsed on the floor as Krontos prepared to finish me off with the axe. Lining the weapon up with my neck for an apparent decapitation, as he raised the axe to take a swing I mustered the last of my reserves and rolled away from him to the platform holding the crosses. Before he could stop me, I reached up and grabbed both crosses, pulling them down as I fell on my back.

It was a desperate move, knowing I’d have no way to transform the crosses into the coins, if that was in fact their original state. Each cross was at least one hundred times bigger than a silver shekel, and all either item had in common was the silver content and the mysterious blue glow.

But as my hands were losing their grip on the crosses, and my head grew light from the glow’s sudden rise in intensity, I noticed two small silver disks resting inside the ethereal blue flame.

My previous mistake was to assume the coins would be resting on something or lying in a box, perhaps stored in cerecloth. I never considered the damned things would be floating, just inside the top of each sun cross.

Krontos screamed, realizing I could see the coins, and warning me not to pursue the powerful thought in my head that followed my surprised gasp. He failed to prevent my hands from grasping the coins. I knew I’d be powerless to fight him off, and my death remained likely—especially given the rage when he reached me.

I felt his fingers tearing at my hands, along with the sting from voracious bites in his desperation to get me to release my tenacious grip. But the painful attacks were soon replaced by the vision I had come to expect with each redeemed coin. Only this time, it was far worse than anticipated. Had I known what would happen, I would’ve grasped one coin instead of two.

For those unfamiliar, in the past when I’ve touched my blood coins, I am taken back in time to Jesus Christ’s arrest and execution—forced to relive the torture, anguish, and full realization of suffering He would soon endure on the cross. Whether or not that included the terrible weight from the world’s sins is not for me to judge or expound upon. What I’ve experienced is the heavy sadness and indescribable sense of guilt for my role in His betrayal. Intensified with each coin I recover.

But now it was beyond that. Two coins together provided a hostile experience more emotionally painful than anything I could’ve ever imagined.

Though it lasted under a minute, the event will stay with me for the rest of my earthly days. The vision suddenly shifted, and instead of me observing Jesus from behind the woman’s veil—Mary’s hijab—I saw things from where Jesus stood. The labored breaths, taste of blood in my mouth, and blurred vision from the bleeding crown of thorns—I experienced it all! I
felt
what He felt, and it truly was too much to bear.

Something no human being could endure, it was almost as bad for this immortal. When it ended and I was pulled back to the present, I could only watch Krontos pummel my prone body with an attack as vicious as any territorial baboon. In retrospect, I believe he thought I died. Otherwise, I suppose he would’ve clawed out my defenseless eyes, or worse.

My eyes fluttered. He launched into a vile tirade with more anti-Semitic insults, adding references to what he witnessed his SS men do to women in the presence of their tormented husbands, forced to watch. Surely these comments were intended to be a preview of what awaited my Beatrice and Alistair’s bride-to-be, while the two of us watched—just as our Jewish brethren were forced to do seventy years earlier.

Unable to move, to my horror the ironclad grip I had on my coins began to loosen. I couldn’t hold on, and I watched Krontos’ expression of vehement hatred turn to enraptured surprise.

“Ah, that’s better,” he said, his tone peaceful as he reached for the coins. “Once I free them from your defiled fingers, I will deal with you once and for all, Yehudah. This should only take a moment…
Owww!”

His touch had merely grazed the one in my left palm after prying my fingers free, perhaps expecting the coin to drop into his open palm. However, it remained attached to my palm, as if glued to the skin. It was the same for the coin in my right hand, and a louder cry of pain resulted when Krontos grabbed it. He jerked his hand back, as if he touched a fiery coal instead.

“Damn you, Judas!” he shouted. “I’ll kill you if I must—let
go!”

“I’m… I’m not holding onto them,” I responded, weakly, still recovering from my most recent coin-holding experience. Something else was different, and difficult to define at first. “Honestly, I’m not.”

True. Both were adhered to my palms by some other force.

“Let them go!”
he shrieked.

“I can’t!” I shouted back. A fresh surge of energy flowed through me. “You’ll have to kill me to have a chance at them, Krontos. Do you know what will happen then? You’ve heard the legends, right?”

A sudden cloud passed over his countenance, and his hatred softened.

“That’s right,” I said, trying to keep my excitement down. “You kill me while holding these coins—or rather, while they’re holding onto me—and you’ll likely never see either one again. Wherever I go, they’ll automatically come with me.”

If I didn’t have so much riding on the line, I might’ve smiled at the look of dumbfounded horror on the fiend’s face. He backed away, nodding his understanding. I thought he might give me enough space to stand up. But a moment later the rage was back full force. He dove at me once more, clawing at my hands to try and tear the coins out.

A disastrous mistake on his part.

I expected Krontos to shriek in pain from touching the coins again. He surely expected it, too. What neither of us anticipated was the sudden surge of blue flames engulfing his hands. The flames swept up his arms and traversed quickly across the monster’s torso. As soon as the matching streams met near his heart, the angry blue fire burst into hundreds of new flames that engulfed his entire body.

He became a writhing torch, wailing in high-pitched shrieks unheard since his days as a squalling infant eight hundred years ago. The flames didn’t consume the body, and Krontos couldn’t free himself from this spell, despite waving his arms wildly in desperate attempts at an incantation. Nothing could save him. In the end, a cruel man had found equally cruel justice.

Chapter Eighteen