The Judas Line

Click. I sat there in the General Manager’s office for a good minute until the annoying drone of the dial tone shook me out of my reverie. Julian was coming and that could mean one of two things: a) My ass was about to be turned into a lace doily or b) He wanted to commend me on a job well done. a) would give me a quick disappearing act while option b) allowed me to live a few years longer.

I sure hoped it was option b), because this was one meeting I could not afford to miss.

?

Pages and pages of crisp white paper slipped through fingers numbed with shock. Jude had murdered a man! I looked at him sleeping peacefully on the bed, lips parted slightly. All these years I hadn’t seen him as a person who could actually kill someone. Granted Dr. Gillan had been a slimy little toad, but crushing his throat and leaving him to choke to death? And enjoying it?

Who was the man whose story was recorded on these pages? Arrogant, cocky, cold and manipulative … not the person I traveled with. Was that what he used to be, or what he now hid beneath a veneer of friendship?

I knelt and began to pray, not just for my soul, but for my friend’s as well. God had led me to Jude, I knew it like I knew the faces of the men I served with in the Iraqi desert, my brothers born of trial and blood. Therefore I would trust in God and my instincts to help me lead Jude/Olivier upon the path of righteousness.

But that didn’t preclude keeping a close eye on him.

Chapter Ten

Jude

Showering came only after I used Avoidance, which, to me, smelled like hospital disinfectant. For a while the spell would mask my presence from … well, everyone, but a lifetime of casting Avoidance every time I feared contact with water looked daunting. Something would have to be done about the Primal Water Julian possessed.

My Cabo Wabo t-shirt was a loss, so I made do with a dark gray, skintight, long-sleeved Henley. Mike still wore his dog collar and black duds, looking as if he hadn’t gone to sleep at all. Which made me realize he probably hadn’t; instead he had most likely read more of my memoirs. From the covert glances he shot my way, I thought I knew which part he’d just finished.

Damn.

How did you talk to your best friend about a man like Gillan and the contemptuous ease with which you ended his life? Could Mike understand? Would he? Hell, it’s been years and I still didn’t quite understand, and I was there!

“Mike,” I began.

He held up a hand. “Not now, Jude.” The look he gave me held buckets of disquiet. “I have to sort some things out for myself, okay?”

“Okay, man. Whatever you need.” If he needed time, time he would get.

Mike held up the silvery crucifix that had dispelled the demon, twisting it to and fro in the harsh light of the room. Sighing, he placed the chain around his neck and let the crucifix dangle to rest between his pecs.

“Where to now, Jude?”

I rubbed my chin. “We go to see Leslie Winchester.”

His icy blue eyes grew wide. “Leslie Winchester? The Leslie Winchester?”

“That would be her.”

“Cinnamon Relic Leslie Winchester, one of the greatest rock bands of all time Leslie Winchester?”

“Yes, that Leslie Winchester?”

He sat down abruptly on the corner of his rock-hard bed. I hoped he didn’t have hemorrhoids. “I used to listen to Cinnamon Relic all the time. I had their Greatest Hits record. Nearly wore the vinyl down to nothing listening to it.”

“Well, you’re sounding like a broken record, so there’s some synchronicity there.”

“Har-de-har-har… What’s she doing in Las Cruces?”

“She lives here, well actually in Mesilla, in a castle she had built special.”

“A castle?”

“She’s crazy about them, fancies herself a noblewoman of the middle ages and wants to live as one, or some such nonsense.”

Mike pondered the insanity of aging rock stars for a moment. “I’m keen to meet her, but why are we going?”

“I believe she has the Grail.” I licked my dry lips and repeated, “The Holy Grail.”

Mike shook his head ruefully. “Of course she does. How silly of me not to have known.” He blew a sigh through his nose. “Well, let’s go.”

“That’s it?”

“What?”

I scratched my head. “I thought you’d be more-”

“Flabbergasted?” he asked.

“As good a word as any, but yes.”

Mike fingered his crucifix and stared at the ceiling for a beat. “Listen Jude, I’ve seen you summon elemental beings, use Words that give you amazing abilities, and I’ve read about an amazing device called a molecular knife that you say exists.” Another sigh. “I am quickly running out of skepticism. It seems that my reservoir of disbelief is running dry.”

Good point. Time to reduce the skepticism ratio even more. “Thanks for the reminder.” I fished the knife in question out of my duffel and thumbed the button.

“Is that it?” Mike asked, drawing close, eyes wide.

“Yes.” Approaching the metal box I’d recovered from Earth, I leaned over and drew a line around the edge of the box on the side with the handle. When the minute line met itself, I pulled hard and the handle side came free.

“Wow …” Mike whispered in awe.

I flicked the knife off. “Yeah.”

“Double wow.”

My hands dipped into the box and pulled out fat wads of cash until I had three stacks of ten thousand dollars each. Next came audiotape, the old fashioned reel-to-reel kind favored in the ’70s.

“What the heck, Jude?”

I held up the cash and the audiotape. “The audiotape is an original John Lennon Blues number he recorded in a little dive in New York, the only copy in existence. Combine that with the close to eighty grand I have, she’ll sell the Grail to us.”

“Why would she sell the Grail? It’s worth a heck of a lot more than that.”

“Leslie Winchester doesn’t know she has the Grail. Unless you are one of the few who can see the world as it really is-a magus, for instance-then you would not see the cup of Christ.”

“So how do people see it?”

From my duffel I produced a plastic Wal-Mart bag and stuffed the money inside. “I don’t know, Mike. You might see it as a crucifix, or a dinner plate, and it would feel and weigh like what you beheld, man.” Once I had the contents of the box squared away, I grabbed the keycard to the room. “Walk and talk, Mike. Walk and talk.”

He followed me down the hall to the elevators. “How did you know she had it, if it looks like something different?”

In the elevator I hit the button for the first floor. “A year ago I came into possession of a library belonging to a magus named Edgar Truesdale.” At his skeptical look, I raised my right hand. “I swear it was all legit, part of an estate sale. The old man died of a stroke. With the library came his personal papers.”

“A member of your Family, then?”