Jesus glowed, similar to the people of Jerusalem but far more intense. Taras felt weak just looking at him. It radiated from Jesus like the light of the sun, and he had to squint his eyes nearly shut against the glare.
Taras blinked, thinking his own situation had driven him insane, but when he opened his eyes again, Jesus remained in front of him. “It’s not possible,” Taras said. “You are dead.”
“As are you, if I’m not mistaken.”
Taras looked down at his hands, so cold and lifeless, and realized he didn’t have a reply. “I suppose you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right.”
Taras remembered his part in the man’s death, and shame filled him. He raised his eyes and looked at Jesus, so calm and serene in the moonlight. “Why are you here?” he asked. “Have you come to take your revenge on me, Nazarene? If so, please get on with it. I’m late; I should have been sitting with Pluto in Tertius four days ago.”
Jesus smiled, and the light around him intensified so much Taras had to turn his head. “That is not why I came,” Jesus said. “Your mistakes are not entirely your own, though you must still take responsibility for them. I hold no anger for you.”
“Then why are you here?”
“To tell you it’s not beyond you.”
“What isn’t?”
“You know the answer to that already, Taras.” Jesus folded his arms and fixed him with a stern look, as though lecturing a dense child. “Your wish; it’s not impossible. The sun can do it. So can fire. If I’m not mistaken, the Bachiyr can also die by having their heads removed, and there are other ways, too. In other words, you have options.”
“Options?”
“Yes, options. Allow death to find you, or spend eternity running from the other Bachiyr, killing and devouring innocent people. They will hunt you, you know. Ramah, in particular, will not rest until you have been destroyed.”
Taras pondered that for a moment. He’d known about the Sun’s ability to kill him; his burned fingers told him that much. But he hadn’t been ready. Of course, at the time he didn’t know the extent of what he would become, either. Was he ready now? Could he step into the sunlight, if it came to that? Could he willingly walk into his death?
Jesus had delivered his words and walked away, taking his strange glow with him as he headed toward Bethany. He probably thought he’d left Taras better off than he’d found him, but instead Taras was more confused than ever. He’d stood by the entrance to Mary’s tomb and wondered if he was strong and brave enough to die. In the end, the answer was no. And he still wasn’t. He willed his hands to move, and placed them on the floor, palms down underneath his chest. With a grunt of pain, he began to push his body off the floor and up the length of the steel rod. The pain flared in his chest like a white hot poker, and he had to stop for fear of losing consciousness.
But as soon as it faded a bit, he shoved again.
Not yet, he thought.
When the pain flared through his chest again, he clenched his jaw shut and pushed still harder against the floor, rising off it in a haze of blood and pain. His vision blurred, and more than once his mind threatened to shut down, but he forced himself to focus on the task at hand, working his way up the metal pole one slick, red, painful inch at a time.
I will not die yet.
21
Ramah stood in the empty street, looking one way and then the other. Both showed him nothing. The dusty streets of Londinium showed no sign of his quarry’s passing. Theron and Baella could be in any direction, at any distance. He’d never locate them with his eyes alone, he would have to use a web psalm, though he dreaded the subsequent loss of blood. He would simply have to take some from Theron before he killed him.
Ramah stood in the middle of the street and closed his eyes, focusing his mind on the task at hand. He cast a mental web around his current position, and slowly expanded it to include the outlying area. The web kept growing, until it eventually covered an area one quarter the size of the city with him at its center. Once it was set, he poked along the filaments with mental fingers and willed his quarry to touch one of them. The strands were limited in their ability to gather information. He could only search for one person. Other individuals would merely register as a slight tickle of the web, but when the object of his search crossed a thread, he would know immediately.
He’d never seen Baella, but he’d known Theron for nearly a thousand years. It was easy enough to conjure an image in his mind of the former Enforcer. Since they were traveling together, he only needed to locate the one to find them both. Or so he hoped.
He pushed the strands out further, slowly feeling his way across the city streets. Dozens of small tingles registered on the web, but none more than a slight twinge. They were the normal humans who had remained behind. He forced himself to remain calm and still, letting the web expand at a slow, steady pace. Patience, he counseled himself. It would not do to drop his web and run randomly through the streets, he would never find them that way, and he knew it. It should not take much longer before There! A bright flash touched his web about half a mile to the east, back toward the gate. It could only be Theron. Ramah turned toward the flash and concentrated only on the strands of the web in its immediate vicinity. The rest of the web withered, lacking the mental energy to keep itself open.
The web psalm was a strong tool in the Bachiyr’s arsenal, and very useful, but it also drained a great deal of mental energy. Ramah could feel his body burning blood to keep the web active, but he couldn’t drop it yet. He needed Theron to cross another strand. The relation of the new strand to Theron’s previous position would tell Ramah exactly which direction the renegade was moving, making it a simple matter to cut him off.
There it was again! Still headed toward the city gate, and moving fast. They must know I am coming for them. Ramah dropped the web and ran. Theron and Baella were trying to leave the city. Ramah could probably catch them before they made the city gate, but it suited his purpose to let them leave. Once outside the city walls, there would be fewer humans, and fewer witnesses. Witnesses were messy. Easy enough to kill one, but not so easy to dispose of several dozen. Far better to have none at all.
Ramah slowed his pace, wanting to let Theron and Baella get far enough away from the city gate that there would be no one around once he caught up to them. Up ahead, a lone woman stood in the flickering light of a single lamp. A prostitute, judging by her garish attire. The sight reminded him of the energy he’d burned creating and maintaining the web. He would probably have to make another one once he left the city to locate the pair of renegades again, which meant he would need more blood.
The woman’s appearance proved most fortunate for the hungry vampire.
Taras clenched his teeth, fighting the nausea and blackness that threatened to overwhelm him. His entire world had been reduced to blinding pain as his body slid up, inch by agonizing inch, toward the end of the pole. His hands slipped in the gore beneath him, so he tried grasping the metal rod instead, with much the same result. Every time he gained a few inches, he would lose his grip and slide back down several more. It didn’t help matters that his hands shook with pain, making it difficult to grasp anything.
He slid back down to the floor, looking up at the two-foot shaft of metal through his chest, red and slick with his own blood. His vision grew more hazy with every passing second, and a sense of dread settled into his mind. How long had Ramah been gone? How soon before he came back? If he didn’t get off this damn pole soon, he would find himself at the mercy of that black devil, and from what he knew of Ramah, mercy was not one of his
