Jebediah's new coven members. I backed away and whispered a Mesopotamian spell, the syllables coming so easily in this land of ruthless and relentless warriors. My ears rang as Nip continued his keening moans. Hassidim pressed around, their bearded faces and muttering voices boxing me in. None of Jebediah's mad children were here, and so far as I could tell, none of the dead had come to attack. My fists began to throb with the need to kill.
At the last moment I saw the cloudy dark eyes and lengthy black hair held back in a shawl. I had to bite down hard to keep from saying the slaying curse already poised on my tongue.
It was the woman from the Chapel of the Nailed. She too had been crying. I could see that the sudden and terribly heightened sensitivity had affected her as well as everyone else in the square. A gold cross around her neck flickered in the sunlight. Hassidim scowled. She grimaced as the din increased, and though she didn't want to get too near me she was forced to so we could hear each other.
My chest tightened. This wasn't an accidental encounter. Coincidence didn't exist anymore.
Even as a Christian she'd undoubtedly visited the TempleMount before, but it was clear she didn't enjoy being in the square, so close to the Western Wall. This was not the place for her to pray. In a city that still had quarters and remained ghettoized, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher belonged to the Christians and the TempleMount to the Jews and the Haram to the Muslims. People died for crossing lines in the sand. It was one of the reasons why these people would never have peace.
She struggled with her decision to speak to me. Slips of paper floated down and brushed her cheek. She kept looking from side to side as if she might break into a run. I felt the same way.
She didn't want to be here, and when she peered up at me from beneath the shawl I knew she was thinking the same thing I was-that our meeting in the chapel hadn't been a fluke. Finally she said, as if still not quite believing, 'My father. He told me he knows you.'
'I don't know anyone in Israel.'
Frustration skewered her features, and I thought she might burst into tears or give me a roundhouse to the jaw. Either was understandable, considering the situation. She looked up, wondering why the papers were falling around us.
'How did you find me?' I asked.
She frowned, thinking about it. 'He told me you would be here.'
In that moment she was so beautiful that I almost felt happy in a way I hadn't for ten years. I couldn't control myself and watched as I took her shawl in my hand and pulled it from her head. Her rich black hair loosened and slipped over her shoulders. Her eyes widened and so did mine. I couldn't believe I'd done that.
'I'm sorry,' I said.
'It's all right.' She took my arm again, squeezed once, and let go, just as she had done in the church. 'My father wishes to talk to you. Please come to see him. He needs you.'
'Who is your father?'
'His name is Joseph Shiya. I am Bethany. He's-'
I nodded. 'Dying.'
Her father was on his deathbed, and the summons of the dying held great authority and command. Her entreaty had a potency with repercussions, just as my oath on MountArmon had.
'Yes,' she said. 'He is.'
Again she swept aside her hair in that same gesture that made me think of Danielle. It struck such a resonant chord in me that I felt a painful heat rear in my gut. She stared at me with a puzzled expression.
I looked up and saw that Self and Nip were gone. I scanned the plaza and the Hassidim had turned back to their prayers, the near-frenzy broken.
'It's all right,' I told her. 'I'll come with you.'
'I'm not sure that I want you to.'
'I don't blame you.'
'He will not even see a priest. I don't know who you are, or why he needs you so desperately.'
'I'm not certain either, but your father is dying and he has something to say.'
'That's true.' Her gaze filled with a swarm of confusion. They were the eyes of my mother. 'Please, follow. This way.'
We walked through the city, down along David Street to the Christian quarter. A couple of times I spotted Self following at a distance, weaving into alleys and shop doorways. He wasn't quite hiding but he refused to come any closer. Nip was nowhere to be seen. I wondered if this was a new game or ploy of some kind, and I didn't know what to make of it.
Bethany Shiya lived near the Jaffa Gate. The sun was setting by the time we arrived, and my raw skin had started to cool. Shadows lengthened across the wall, scrambling along the stone. I looked at the road heading toward Jaffa, leading on to the Mediterranean, and I thought of the entire world beyond. Bethany took my hand and led me on.
She ushered me up a series of steps and into her home, and I knew who her father was even before I walked into the bedroom to see him sprawled shivering beneath several blankets.
I wasn't alarmed by the pattern these circumstances had taken, but I didn't find any comfort in them either. I had told Jebediah that you could not separate large events from the small, but I found myself trying to tug at this tapestry of misfortune and miracles and hold the detached threads.
On the bed lay the man who had led me from the fire.
The ragged plowed lines of Joseph Shiya's face had deepened and darkened even more. His ashen skin looked like clay that had been pounded by an insane child. He gasped horribly for air, the wet sucking sounds filling his chest.
And yet his resolve, force of will, and beatific nature came through, even now at the hour of his death. Such sanctity made him imposing and dignified even as he dwindled to nothing. Perhaps he truly was the reincarnate of John of Patmos, who kept the Christian faith alive during its harshest years of persecution.
'It's you,' he wheezed. 'I'd hoped to be dead before my daughter returned with you.'
So it was going to be like that.
I took a breath and swallowed down my rising irritation. 'She said you asked to see me.'
'And so I did.'
I sat in a chair beside the bed and waited. Bethany brought me a glass of ice water. I finished it quickly and she took it from me and returned with a glass of wine. She asked if I was hungry and I thanked her but waved her off, listening to the old man's labored breathing. She closed the bedroom door and left me with him.
Death spun its gray mask over Joseph Shiya's features. His fear was palpable but I knew he wasn't scared of dying or afraid of me. This all had something to do with Bethany, and the terror enveloped him like a shroud. His shallow breath clogged in his throat with a heinous rattle.
'It's a miracle you survived the flames.'
'Yes,' I said.
'There were many who died.'
'Yes.'
'And not a mark on you.'
I'd have thought that a man who wouldn't live through the night might get to the point immediately, but he felt more comfortable avoiding his dread.
'How is it you were there?' I asked. 'God is not finished with me yet.'
'He never finishes with any of us.'
'This is true,' Joseph Shiya told me, with some steel entering his voice.
'You sound angry about it.'
'Some men's destinies are larger than others,' he said. 'Their sacrifices greater and much uglier.'
'I'm getting a little tired of all you guys telling me about my fate.'
He attempted to sit up in bed but couldn't make it. I moved my chair closer and tried to help but he felt so brittle in my arms I thought he'd snap in half. His hand crept out from beneath the blankets and dropped to my leg. 'Not only yours. All of us who do our duty. Men like Barrabas, Judas, and Pontius Pilate. Their lives were no less entwined than ours. Tell me, where would Christ's path have led him without these men?'
'To some place with less pain,' I said. 'And what would the fate of the world have been then?'
I let loose with a weary sigh and let it just keep rolling and rolling out of me. 'Did you ever consider that we
