He nodded. “And when the Spirit passed into Jesus, he preached the Lord’s word, then sacrificed himself atop Golgotha to seal the covenant God had spoken through Him—the Second Covenant. Or if you prefer, the New Testament.”
“I don’t remember Jesus willingly killing himself,” Charlotte countered. “Judas betrayed Him.” There was that whole story about Gethsemane when soldiers came to arrest him.
Cohen smiled. “Misinterpretation,” he sternly replied. “Judas was an Essene, certainly no traitor. Jesus sent him to the Sanhedrin to facilitate the final sacrifice.”
“That can’t be right,” she insisted.
“Oh?” He tilted his head. “I ask you, then: when Jesus named his betrayer at the final meal, did the other disciples try to stop Judas?”
“In fact, they all went to the Mount of Olives to await the Temple Authority, just as Jesus had planned. The words are there, yet the truth is missed,” he said. “Another reason why the oral legacy is so vital.” He made a ball of his fist. “If one reads the texts according to their historical context, the Bible tells a most remarkable story of human existence, an evolution of spirituality that shifted from metaphorical rituals of animal sacrifice in the First Covenant to the slaughter of our own egos and pride that God taught through Jesus in His Second Covenant—the metaphors transformed into parables. Now we herald a Third Covenant.” He spread his hands over her head to indicate the glowing orb.
Charlotte watched as one of the priests presented something to Cohen —shiny, long.
“But like each of its predecessors, the New Covenant begins with blood. Sacred blood.”
88
******
Enoch snapped some bullets out of the spare magazine to fill the empty slots in Amit’s Galil and flipped the safeties off. He then insisted on going through the door first. His rationale was sound: “I’m a much smaller target,” he told Amit. “Standard protocol.”
Point taken. “Fine. I’ve got the right,” Amit said.
“Okay.”
“Just don’t shoot the hostage this time,” Amit teased. During one of the
Gaza raids, Enoch had planted three rounds in the buttocks of an Israeli diplomat.
“Funny,” he grunted.
“You scared?”
“Scared shitless,” he responded with a big smile.
“Godspeed, my friend,” Amit said, clasping his friend’s hand.
Since there were no exterior handles or knobs, Amit wedged his fingertips under the left door’s vertical stop and squeezed slightly to lever the door just enough to confirm that the lock was indeed breached.
In a sideways stance, Enoch was a meter from the door, weapon raised to his sodden right shoulder. His left hand stabilized the muzzle along his sight line, and his right index finger was hooked at the ready on the trigger— hunt-and-scope mode. Rolling his neck, he drew breath, held it, and signaled to Amit.
89
******
Before Charlotte could turn to get a better look at what Cohen had in his right hand, the fingers of his left hand had snaked through her hair and cranked her head back. A knee simultaneously jammed into her spine.
“Before the Lord shall we be purified!” he declared, his bestial eyes riveted to the bare flesh of her neck.
Now she had an upside-down view of the meaty gold blade Cohen was bringing down over her throat in preparation for a broad slice.
Just as her fingers clutched the glowing Mercy Seat, there came a loud disturbance from behind, immediately followed by gunfire.
The rabbi’s face showed surprise, but his gaze did not falter. He bared his teeth and prepared to cut her to the bone, to seal the covenant—at any cost.
But Charlotte had a different plan. As he crouched deeper to position the blade for a long, sweeping slash, she swung the Ark’s lid up into his face. It was unavoidable that the blade would cut her. How deep was the only uncertainty.
The sharp-edged wings of the gilded angels caught him below the chin. Crackling tendrils spat across the sphere’s surface and webbed over his face. Instinctively, he dropped the dagger midpull as his hands went for the lid.
Charlotte rolled out from under him, clutching at the blood spewing from the left side of her neck.
Grasping both sides of the lid like a serving tray, Cohen tried to throw the thing away, but the light held him steady between the angels, physically grasping at him, pulling his face forward. Shrieking in pain, he tried shaking his head free, but to no avail. The beard, earlocks, and hair sizzled away almost instantly. Then the light turned on the flesh, unfastening it, stretching it from the bones of his face, tearing it away in wet slabs.
More agonizing screams; tremors shaking the body . . .
Simultaneously, Cohen’s hands succumbed to the fury, the flesh rising up into horrid boils that blackened and split to release the ghastly redbrown ooze beneath. He fell to his knees before the Ark, pitching forward so that the lid fell back into place on the Ark’s base. Beneath the vestments, the entirety of his body was roasted within seconds, his organs bursting.
Then the robes went up in flames.
