The Judas Line

Burke in the wind, we had the whole villa to ourselves.

“What do you have planned for the day?” she asked later as we toweled each other off.

“Off to see Julian,” I answered through the tangle of my longish hair.

“What’s he got planned?”

“I have no clue.” It had been a year since Julian had ‘torn me a new one,’ as the Americans like to say, over that business with the Lab. The aftermath of the Lab’s destruction had lowered the reservoir by three feet and raised more than a few eyebrows. It had even made the national news in the States. Julian had to scramble to find experts who would testify that it had been an ‘unforeseen seismic event’ of low magnitude that ‘nonetheless had unfortunate consequences to the local bedrock.’ A somewhat outrageous claim, but a generous pile of cash will convince people to believe or say anything. If our Family had a motto, that would be it.

Good thing for me the Crystal Drive proved to be every bit as useful as I said it would be. Unwilling to take advantage of global production of that new tech, Julian instead had sunk considerable sums of money into creating computers and networks that far outstripped anything even the superpowers could invent. That alone saved my life, just as I knew it would.

Annabeth ran her short nails up and down my chest, bringing new life to my nether parts. “Well,” she purred. “You keep your hide intact. I have uses for it.”

Just before I closed her lips with mine, I said, “Good, it’s all yours.”

If anything, Boris looked even more dangerous than the last time I’d stood in Julian’s office. Still big, still chiseled out of the same gutrock as all the other extreme hard-asses necessity and money had created to do the jobs no one else could do.

“Looking good, Boris.” I tipped the big man a nod.

A soft grunt and barely perceptible tilt of his head was the only answers he deigned provide.

“Glad you could come, son,” Julian said, back to me, facing the window/monitor.

“You called, I came,” was my reply.

“Indeed.” A tilt of his perfectly coiffed head to the desk. “Sir?”

“Yes, Julian. Do it.” The Voice sounded almost bored, but I could tell there was an vein of anticipation running through those glossy tones.

Boris came into view carrying a portable safe, one that looked like a tiny beige suitcase, and set it flat on the desk, hinge side toward me. Julian reached out with one well-manicured finger and punched what I supposed was a keypad I couldn’t see. A hiss of cold air puffed out from within as the safe opened, ruffling the carefully arranged stacks of papers. He pulled out a small, worn leather purse or pouch, the kind people used centuries ago. It chinked softly as he placed it on the desk.

“Open it,” he said.

“What?”

His scowl transformed his handsome face into something bestial. “Don’t be dense, Olivier. Open the damn pouch.

Shrugging, I took a step forward and picked it up.

It was heavier than I thought.

“What is it?”

The Voice answered, “Your final test, Olivier. The test to see if you are worthy to be the next head of the Family. Open it and see if you can use the Family Silver.”

Uh-oh. The Silver had been legend in the Family for millennia. An artifact of such might and baleful power that only a Family member could even touch it. It was said that if one outside the Family were to handle it, a gruesome death would ensue.

And there it was, resting in the center of my palm like a spider’s egg-sack, pregnant with untold malignant possibilities. Not wanting to drag the whole macabre thing out, I teased open the puckered opening and poured the contents into my other hand.

Coins. Silver. The size of American nickels.

Thirty of them.

“Holy shit!” I gasped, dropping the papers. In the other bed Jude snored softly, content in his sleep. Quickly I crossed myself and silently apologized to the Lord for my cussing.

Thirty pieces of silver, the same thirty pieces that had been used to bribe Judas into betraying Jesus? Had to be! According to Jude (oh the irony!), Judas was the son of Satan, an Anti-Christ borntooppose Christ, and that would certainly explain the Silver as an evil artifact. The story of Christ painted Judas as one of the most infamous characters in history.

According to Matthew 27:3-10, Judas had returned the money and committed suicide by hanging himself. In the Acts of the Apostles, he’d used the money to buy a field, but he fell and burst asunder like an overripe melon. That field was known thereafter as Akeldama, the Field of Blood.

Obviously, if Jude was correct (and I had little reason to doubt him, considering all that I had experienced in last few days), then his ancestor had not died shortly after the crucifixion, but instead had founded a dynasty of assassins and power brokers whose main goal was to foster the Anti-Christ.

My brain hurt.

So much information, so little time. If I were a drinking man, I’d be three sheets to the wind already. Smiling ruefully, I envisioned the members of my Ranger chalk in Iran and what they would say. “Suck it up, Soldier,” quickly came to mind. So suck it up I did, gathering the pages of the memoir and taking up the thread of the story.

?

Each silver coin shone in the soft light of Julian’s office, perfect and unblemished, yet roughly cast and stamped. A likeness of a man adorned one side while an eagle stood on the left side of the reverse, right foot on what appeared to be a ship’s ram with a palm frond behind. If I remembered correctly, it was the type of coin called a Half Shekel, a Temple Tax Coin.

Cold. Very cold. Almost cold enough to sear my palm, and greasy, sliding effortlessly over one another as if they were magnets with the same polarity. Quickly, before they could spill to the floor, I clamped my other hand over them, trapping them in the cave of my palms.

A hammer-blow to my brain rocked me backwards. Pain, pain like nothing else I had ever felt. Pain I couldn’t describe because it had no frame of reference in my world. Burning, drowning, disemboweling, impaling. All these and yet none of them; maybe it was a new elemental, a Pain elemental and I was experiencing the Primal.

On and on for days it lasted, searing my mind with acid and fire, robbing me of all other senses. Blind and deaf I lived in a world of unending agony, of flesh slowly being stripped from bone and nerves sliced with razors of fire, no end to the suffering in sight. If a knife had been put in my hand I wouldn’t have known how to use it, so lost was I in that universe of anguish.

When it finally stopped, I fell to my knees and sobbed with relief. Over. I didn’t care about the tears that fell to the floor, nor the snot that dribbled down over my lips and chin, I just reveled in the near orgasmic feeling of no more pain.

The first Word slid foully, sinuously into my mind like a snake, or a curl of smoke from a campfire that catches you unaware, accompanied by a feeling that my brain had been invaded by maggots. “Hate” was the Word that settled in for a visit and a cup of whatever my brain was offering. With that Word I could set brothers, lovers, anybody to fighting, exaggerating the smallest imaginary insult. “Hate” was the first Word the Silver had for me.

Next came “Enslave.” Bend others to my own ends, strip them of all free will and make them wholly mine, body and soul.

“Plague.” Cholera, smallpox, Ebola, you name it; I had it all in one little Word.

More and more Words tumbled into my poor head. Thirty of them, one for each itty-bitty coin that jangled in my hands. With those Words I could become the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse on steroids, Ragnarok squared, Armageddon on a stick and pass the ketchup, please. There was nothing that could be kept from me, nothing I couldn’t do.

With those Words, I could end the world right then and there.

It was then that I began to doubt the Voice. Doubt Julian.

Maybe I wasn’t made of sterner stuff, but as the Words clamored like an unholy choir in my mind, I began to