by Laura Legend
They were sharing a meal. He took a piece of bread and broke it, then looked right at Cass, standing in the doorway.
For Cass, that glance—as if he could see her—frayed her connection to the image and the whole scene bled back into noise.
She took a faltering step back down the stairs and turned to go when that same slice of time skipped and then stabilized again.
The scene was consistent except that, this time, the man who had seen her before now had Judas by the arm. His eyes glinted green. He leaned in, whispered something to Judas, and sent him off with a kiss.
Cass could feel that kiss burning on her own cheek, as if it had been given directly to her.
Cass flattened herself against the wall and Judas, oblivious, passed by on his way down the narrow stone stairs.
Then her connection to the moment collapsed again and Cass was back in the present, unbalanced and lurching down the stairs, the cheek below her weak eye aflame with that kiss.
Cass ended up on her butt at the bottom of the stairs, looking back toward the top.
Jesus H. Christ! she cursed in her head.
Then, realizing the irony, she repeated the refrain.
“Jesus—” she whispered to herself.
Was this the real location of the Upper Room where Jesus had held his Last Supper? Had she just witnessed the very moment when, with a kiss, Jesus had set in motion Judas’s ... transformation—was that the right word?— into something no longer quite human and no longer quite alive?
The first vampire?
“Hoooly fuuuck,” Cass said, trying to get her feet back under her. She rubbed at her cheek as if she were trying to scrub the lingering sensation away.
If that kiss was what she thought it was, she certainly didn’t want to feel it.
Save for a few bars of moonlight, the first floor room was still dark and Cass’s vision was still grainy and unstable. Her bag and sword were still in the middle of the room where she’d left them.
She needed to pull herself together. She needed to gather up her magic toad and get to the Temple Mount.
She was sick of being shut out of her own body.
She was sick of her cloudy, wandering eye, hamstringing her at every turn.
She was sick of being sick.
The tiny hairs on the back of Cass’s neck stood on end. She could feel the shadows behind her pooling into something more substantial and reaching for her with long fingers and needle-thin nails.
The whole room’s worth of darkness seemed to come alive.
Cass refused to look behind her. She put one foot in front of the other until she reached her pack and unsheathed her sword.
Cass drew herself up to her full height and, once she was sure she wasn’t going to just topple over, she turned on the shadows and pointed her sword into the darkness.
“Enough!” she yelled, not caring about the noise she was making. “I’ve had enough of you!”
The gathered darkness appeared to visibly recoil.
“Stop with all the hiding and lurking and spooking. Stop pretending you’re something more than you are. I’m the goddam Seer—stop hiding in corners and step out where I can see the truth of you!”
The shadows bumped and rustled, resisting.
“Now!” Cass said in her best mom voice.
One by one, three hooded figures emerged from the darkness, all of them thin, all of them about the same height.
Cass was afraid that she knew where this was going.
Could she bear it?
The first figure removed his hood. It was Judas.
The second figure stepped in front of Judas and removed her hood. It was Rose.
The third figure stepped in front of Rose removed her hood. It was Cass.
Cass felt her grip on her katana tighten.
She didn’t have any doubt now—she wasn’t ready for this. She didn’t want to see it.
All three of the shadows merged into a single figure, Rose’s face superimposed on Judas’s, and Cass’s face superimposed on them both.
The vision sputtered and rolled. Cass fell to her knees as she stifled a cry.
Was this really what the future held for her?
She recalled the final terrifying vision she’d had in the ruins of Judas’s castle when she’d learned that her mother was still alive. Cass had been wearing the Heretic’s cloak. A cloud of light had swirled around her. The sky had cracked open. A bolt of light had picked her up and spun her around until she saw them. All of them. They were gathered at her feet, a throng of thousands of vampires bowing their heads in reverence, watching her expectantly as if she were their queen. As if she were their last hope. As if she were going to save them.
Cass shook her head, fighting the blazing pain in her eye.
Was Thomas right? Was her mother right?
Was there no other way?
The other two faces faded and Cass was left alone, staring into her own shadowy reflection, wondering who—or what—she really was.
Then her shadow dissolved, too.
35
CASS WASN’T ALONE for very long. Red had tracked her down.
Red hurled herself against the door, cracking the frame and bending links in the chain that held it shut. The door, though, wasn’t quite passable yet. She threw herself again and the lock held but the frame itself gave way and the door, another splintered mess, crashed to the floor.
Moonlight flooded in, framing Red and her tiny feet in the doorway.
“Finally,” Red said when saw Cass on the floor in the center of the room. “Don’t move. I’m going to enjoy this.”
Cass knew she wasn’t going anywhere. Her legs felt like rubber. This was it. She was going to be captured. Maybe even killed. She couldn’t tell if Red’s dogged pursuit came from her loyalty of Maya, or her desire to see Cass pay for putting Gertrude, however unintentionally, in the hospital.
She was surprised in part by the intensity of Red’s underlying bloodlust—as her Amazonian nurse/guard, Red had seemed more like a steroidal babysitter than potential killer. Clearly, Cass had seen in Red what she’d wanted to see, and that perception had failed to account for the validity of Red’s own emotions. And the result of her miscalculation here would, if she wasn’t careful, result in her own untimely and accidental death.
Surprisingly, she felt relieved. She wasn’t in charge of her own fate anymore. Most likely, Red would sedate her and haul her back to Maya. If she fought back, Red might slip up and kill her. If she arrived intact, they would strap her to a bed to keep her from hurting herself or anyone else. They would make the decisions for her. She wouldn’t have to go back into the basement of her mind. And her apocalyptic vision wouldn’t come true. She wouldn’t have to finish what Judas and her mother had started.
She wouldn’t have to save them all.
All Cass had to do now was surrender. All she had to do was what Richard and Thomas had advised all along.
Her vision filled with static.
It wasn’t hard to surrender when you were alone.
She could do it, couldn’t she?
Red unspooled a length of rope and approached Cass deliberately, ready to wrangle her into submission if need be.
Cass—though she couldn’t have physically done otherwise—stayed where she was.
Red bent over Cass, her bare feet black with dirt, and Cass realized, finally, what the ultimate price of her submission would be.
She was going to lose her boots.
That last bit was just too much—the ridiculousness and the deadly seriousness of the whole situation melding into the hulking figure of Red, eyeing her not with the dispassionate interest of a professional but with the cold and calculating light of someone willing to wait to take her revenge. Cass fought back a sob.
“Now don’t be a crybaby about it,” Red said, her voice hard. “We’re going to be spending some time together. I told Maya I’d bring you back, and I will. How much of you arrives, though, that’s up to you.
”
Cass gave an involuntary shudder at the hatred in that voice. It was clear that while Red still respected Maya’s orders to bring her back, that she wasn’t going to be very worried if something happened to Cass in transit.
Just as Red was about to loop the rope around Cass’s wrists, another figure appeared in the door, backlit by the moon. His face was in shadow but Cass immediately recognized him: it was Thomas.
“Hello again,” Thomas said.
“You bastard!” Red shot back. “Don’t you dare open or close a single door within a mile of here!”
Thomas glanced at the wreckage from the door scattered across the floor.
“I think you already eliminated that option.”
Only once Thomas had stepped into the room, though, did Cass realize that he wasn’t alone.
Behind him, his face deep in shadow, was a man in a hat and leather jacket. Something about the figure struck Cass as familiar but, as time skipped and rolled, she couldn’t put her finger on it.
Instead, gripped by a wave of nausea, Cass vomited directly onto Red’s bare feet.
“Mother—!” Red cried as Cass lolled onto her side. She wasn’t going anywhere.
Pointing at Thomas, Red switched gears. “Fine! I”ll deal with you first. Maya didn’t say anything about needing to see you again.”
Red went after Thomas, rope in hand. She was big and fast and strong. Thomas ducked a blow and blocked a kick, but Red was a professional. The opening blows were just a diversion to set up her real strategy. She slipped a loop of rope around Thomas’s leg and brought him to the ground. Then, straddling his body, she snapped another coil around his neck and pulled it tight.
Thomas face immediately turned a deep red.
“No—” Cass said, trying to push herself upright and stop the room from spinning.
The guy in the leather jacket was in a better position to intervene. He unleashed a vicious kick to the back of Red’s leg. It brought her to one knee but, in response, she just laughed and tightened her grip.
Thomas’s face went from red to purple as the rope dug into his neck and blood began to trickle from the deep abrasions.
“Step away, old man,” Red said, her voice ice cold. “Or I’ll pop his head right off.”
Cass believed her.
But the old man, apparently, didn’t.
He snatched a broken length of board from off the floor and weighed it in his hands. Then he reared back and smashed Red across the head with it. The board snapped in half, leaving him with just a fragment of what he’d started with.
Apart from looking even angrier, Red seemed unfazed as she wound the rope another turn around her grip, tightening it around Thomas’s neck. His face was nearly black now, his eyes bulging.
Cass felt her eye start to burn deep in its socket. With a start, Cass realized the truth of the situation: despite not knowing if she trusted Thomas, she did know that he loved her. She saw the span of his long life spiral out before her, spooling at her feet, and all along the thread she saw a life marked by a love for others, including the Lost, including Rose, and including Cass herself.
In that moment, Cass felt that love circling her, giving her strength, and hope. She reached for her sword. If she could just get back to her feet, maybe it wouldn’t be too late.
“Let him go!” the man bellowed.
“You’re next,” Red replied, giving the rope a rapid jerk with a sharp smile. It was clear that not only was she willing to kill Thomas, but she was enjoying the process. Thomas groaned in reply, the sound trapped inside his chest, stifled and small. It broke Cass’s heart. She tightened her grip on her sword. Red had crossed a line, and Cass would make her pay.
In the darkness, the man’s eyes glimmered green and then, somehow, his broken board was on the floor inches from Cass’s grasp and Cass’s sword was, instead, in his hands.
The sword, Cass couldn’t help but think, looked right in his grip.
Without giving Red a chance to realize what had happened, he stepped into a swing that took her head clean off.
The head rolled across the dusty floor.
The body slumped to the ground on top of Thomas’s lifeless body.
The man in the leather jacket fell to his knees next to Thomas, his back to Cass. He was sobbing angry tears as he unwound the rope from Thomas’s bloody neck.
“No,” he whispered to himself, “no, no, no.”
Cass crawled over to the pair of them.
With a lurch, Thomas opened his eyes and coughed up blood. The man helped roll him onto his side so that he could try to clear his lungs through a largely crushed windpipe.
Once he was pointed in Cass’s direction, though, Thomas locked eyes with her. He was clearly coughing now only in an effort to say something to her.
A memory flashed through Cass’s mind: Richard, disappearing beneath the crush of crumbling stone walls. Surely if Richard, Turned like Thomas, could survive that, Thomas could come back from Red’s savage attack?
But there was something different in Thomas’s demeanor. His eyes were already distant and, after all these years, he seemed to be willingly surrendering what was left of his life.
“Cass,” he croaked. “Finish our work. Do what your mother failed to do. Save them.”
Cass reached for his hand and squeezed it in her own.
“Thomas—I …”
Thomas rattled through another bloody cough.
With his free hand, he reached for the old man’s hand and placed it on top of Cass’s.
“Your father,” he said, “will guide you on your healing trip.”
Thomas exhaled one last time, coughing again, closed his eyes, and did not draw another breath.
Cass was stunned. She realized that she had not believed, until that moment, that Thomas would leave her, even though she had left him behind.
Cass looked down at her hand, joined by Thomas with the stranger’s.
Then, finally, she looked past the hat and the jacket and into the man’s tired face.
“Dad?” Cass whispered as tears filled her eyes.
36
CASS AND HER father sat back to back in the center of the room, propping each other up, for a long time. The silence was welcome. Sooner than Cass expected, the moon was gone and a gray morning light crept over the horizon. The silence gave way to the increasing sounds and smells of the morning: loaded carts heading to the market a few blocks away squeaked as they rolled past, fresh bread and sweet dates lingered in the air, and eventually, the chatter of school children gathering to begin their day.
Gary lay the sword down at his side. Cass rested the back of her head on his shoulder. Her eye ached, but at least she didn’t feel like she was under attack.
Cass looked for a place to begin, a way to break the ice. In the end, she decided to just do what came naturally.
“How are things going at the library?” she asked, her voice soft but casual.
Gary cleared his throat.
Already, Cass could tell that he was grateful for the question and that she’d hit the right note.
“We just acquired a handful of rare, second-century Coptic manuscripts for Special Collections,” Gary said with a noticeable hint of pride in his voice.
“Nice,” Cass said, genuinely impressed. Those kinds of finds usually went to much bigger libraries. “Any progress with your research into lost Pauline materials?”
Cass could feel him shake his head.
“No, nothing.”
Cass thought back to the lost Pauline gospel that she and Maya had recovered (a.k.a. stolen) to ransom Miranda’s location from Amare. What her father wouldn’t give to see the hidden libraries she’d visited in her travels!
“I might have something for you on that,” she said with a weary smile. “Ask me again if we make it home.”
“When we make it home.”
Cass gratefully accepted the correction.
“Right. When we get home.”
The silence between them stretched out again for several minutes but, as before, it wasn’t uncomfortable.
“The weather is beautiful in Jerusalem this time of year,” Gary offered as a cool breeze drifted through the room.
Cass caught a hint of spring in the air—it smelled like damp earth baking beneath the sun, and poppies.
“Yeah, it’s still freezing in the Alps.”
Cass scooted sideways and lay down on the floor. Gary followed suite, but facing the opposite direction. They were both staring up at the waterstained ceiling. Rose’s sword still lay between them.
“Thank you for coming, Dad,” Cass finally said.
“I’m sorry I didn’t arrive earlier.”
“You came, like always, just when I needed you.”
A tear trickled down Gary’s cheek and toward the floor. He sniffled and wiped it away.
“You are my little girl.”
One of the water stains on the ceiling looked distinctly like a cherry tree in full blossom. Cass could almost see a little family of three arrayed for a picnic in its shade. She could almost hear her father telling a joke and her mother laughing.
“Dad—” Cass began.
“I’m here,” Gary replied.
Cass tried to think how to begin.
“There something I need to tell you. A couple things actually. They aren’t going to be easy to hear.”
Gary swallowed and reached for Cass’s hand.
“Okay,” he said, his voice unsteady.
“Dad, Miranda …” Cass choked, her own emotions a swirl of guilt, relief, and despair. “Dad, Miranda is dead. She’s nothing but ash.”
Gary gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.
“And Zach ... I lost Zach. And I don’t think we’ll ever get him back.” Cass felt the ice inside of her crack down the middle—though, to her relief, it still held.
She gripped her father’s hand hard. The water stain on the ceiling now looked less like a tree and more like the profile of a hulking, red monster. She squeezed her eyes shut but the image remained, stamped into her mind.
