The Sacred Blood

“I’m on it,” the guy said, and pulled his phone from his belt with the speed of a gunslinger.

Then something strange happened.

Another phone came to life, but the ringtone certainly wasn’t Amit’s. It was coming from the assassin’s pocket. Amit crouched over the body. As he pulled out the phone, the guy’s key ring came out along with it.

Without thinking, Amit hit the receive button. He answered abruptly in Hebrew, as he guessed the assassin would. “Yes?”

“We need you back at the Rockefeller immediately.”

Then the connection clicked off.

The Rockefeller? Amit stuffed the security guard’s Beretta into his belt and pocketed the phone and keys.

Racing back inside, he knelt by Jules.

“Crap,” she grumbled. “This was my favorite T-shirt. I look great in this T-shirt.” She laughed nervously, half in shock, half in amazement. Strangely, there wasn’t much pain. “Did you get him?”

“He’s dead,” Amit said with little emotion.

“Good shooting, cowboy.”

Amit pulled away her hand and began to lift her shirt.

“Easy . . . ,” she said in a shaky voice, hands trembling fiercely.

“Now I’m definitely going to get a look at what you’re hiding under here,” he said to comfort her. He raised the sodden shirt up below her left breast. Luckily, the bullet had only grazed her abdomen, just below the ribs. The blood was already thickening. “You’re going to be okay. I’ve got an ambulance coming for you.” Torn, he looked over his shoulder. “I hate to do this, but I’ve gotta—”

“I’m fine,” she told him. “Just . . . kiss me before you go.”

He looked at her quizzically. Despite her fear, there was desire in her lucid eyes. He gently cradled her chin and brought his lips to hers. Not his best work, he knew, but as passionate as the situation permitted.

The moment he pulled away, he knew things had irreversibly changed between them. And her genuine smile made something melt inside him.

“Now go get them,” she said.

56

******

Though Joshua quickly reached out for his mother’s arm to steady his wobbling legs—the musculature had no doubt atrophied during the months he’d been confined to the wheelchair—the result was nonetheless overwhelming. Charlotte gasped.

“A miracle, would you not agree?” the rabbi quickly cut in.

Such a quick turnaround was hard to attribute to anything else, she thought. “Is this some kind of trick?” Charlotte was so caught up in the transformation that she’d just now noticed that the boy’s right hand was wrapped all around in bandages. The nail biting wasn’t that bad. So what had happened to the kid’s hand?

“You’re familiar with ALS, Dr. Hennesey?”

“Of course,” she said.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, was an aggressive neurological disorder that attacked the motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord, which regulated voluntary muscle movement. The incurable wasting disease gradually affected mobility, speech, chewing and swallowing, and breathing. Its later stages brought on severe pain. Though ALS more often struck the middle-aged, it wasn’t uncommon for a young person to fall victim to it.

“Then you’re aware that curing ALS is no trick,” he said. “Joshua’s

symptoms began only two years ago,” he explained without emotion. “He would fall often. At first, we thought he was just clumsy. Then he began dropping things. Simple things, like cups, forks, pencils. Within no time, his legs weren’t functioning at all. The neurologist spotted the symptoms immediately and the tests began. So many tests.”

Charlotte’s sad eyes went over to the boy. Poor kid. But given the circumstances, she needed for him to be more specific before she’d buy into this story. “Did his doctors try drugs?”

“Baclofen, diazepam, gabapentin, to name a few,” he swiftly replied. “Not to mention a regular cycle of antidepressants.”

So far, he was getting it right. She had seen it firsthand when she’d been treated for cancer. Parents of chronically ill children, particularly those with a terminal prognosis, gained clinical proficiency along their taxing journey—a defense mechanism against the utter helplessness that was the alternative. The drugs he’d named were prescribed for muscle spasms and cramping. The antidepressants were no surprise. Like bone cancer, ALS was a diagnosis that amounted to little more than a death sentence. For a young man, it must have been psychologically overwhelming, hence the compulsive nail biting. And like bone cancer, ALS had no cure—just therapeutic damage control.

Genetic chaos. Bad coding. Corrupted chromosomes. Evan had injected the serum into her bloodstream. She had no contact with the kid, except for ...

“When I touched you, I felt something in my fingers,” Joshua said. “Tingling. Not the bad kind I normally feel, though. When I left you, it began to spread . . . down to my legs and feet.”

Touched me? She shook her head in disbelief. Then Charlotte remembered the cracked skin on Joshua’s fingertips peeling the tape away from her mouth. His wet fingers. The sweat from Charlotte’s cheeks. An exchange of fluids? “It can’t be that simple,” she said. “You can’t just touch...” Her words trailed off.

But what the kid just explained had jolted a memory Charlotte would never forget . . .

“Are you ready?” Evan asked, holding her hand in his left hand. In his right hand, a plastic syringe was