Tyranny of Coins (The Judas Chronicles, #5)

by James, Aiden

  Or, maybe in some other dimension?

  I ignored the fear building rapidly inside me, instead relying on reason to assess the situation and determine the smartest move. A move necessitating much more wisdom than any of us had demonstrated since leaving Sedona, Arizona.

  “Well, can either of you tell us what the hell is going on here?” Alistair asked, shifting his gaze from Roderick to me, and then back again. “Maybe our friends outside can enlighten us, since the two of you are absolutely no help!”

  Alistair took a step toward the door. Amy reached out and grabbed his arm.

  “Don’t Ali,” she said softly, her eyes pleading. “It’s all wrong!”

  “What? Now you, too?”

  “She’s right, son,” I agreed, reaching to stop him from pulling away from her grasp. “It’s all wrong.”

  “I’m afraid there’s no other choice, other than stepping through that door,” said Roderick, shaking his head wearily as he moved toward the exit.

  I couldn’t stop them both. Beatrice increased her grip on my arm, her eyes tightly closed. Meanwhile, something new was happening. Patrons who made warm eye contact upon our arrival now regarded us warily. Was it Krontos at work? I tried to think of something other than what was happening. I thought about our trip, the hotel, Auschwitz—anything to not let my mind wander aimlessly. A non-purposeful mind seemed to be the prescription for a Hungarian mentalist takeover.

  I pictured Roderick holding the same resolve. But, if so, he chose an entirely different way to express it. He picked up his pace and exploded through the main door, with Alistair, Cedric, Amy, and soon Beatrice and me behind him.

  A silver Mercedes SUV sat waiting for us at the edge of the sidewalk. The vehicle’s passenger doors open, Arso and Jevrem beckoned for us to get in. The pompous blonde eyed me knowingly, after offering a similar smirk to Roderick.

  “It is useless to resist,” Arso advised, his Slavic accent more pronounced than earlier. “Not to mention, it is better not to keep the Master waiting.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Traveling with these goons was surreal—especially when Alistair and Amy bantered with Jevrem and Arso. Beatrice politely commented when our son and his fiancée drew her into the conversation. A conversation, I might add, involving the sightseeing trip the three thugs escorted my family on, while in another reality they were assisting Dracul in his attempts to end Roderick’s and my earthly existence.

  “Where are you taking us?” Cedric blurted out, when the initial shallowness gave way to awkward silence. He was still hammered, though obviously aware of the dangerous turn our evening on the town had taken.

  “Well... let’s just say we have been instructed to save you a trip to the Mátra Mountains,” said Arso, chuckling and nodding to his cohorts, as if this was some private joke. “I regret to inform you this will not be a scenic trip, as it might have been had you driven into the mountains tomorrow morning as planned. Besides, snow is in the forecast tonight.”

  He motioned to wet flakes pelting the windshield. Arso sat in the front passenger seat, and Jevrem sat behind him, next to Amy and Alistair. Roderick and Cedric sat in front of Beatrice and me, as we sat in the very back of the vehicle damned near as big as our rented minivan. Gajo was the driver, reminiscent of when Roderick and I traveled with these guys to Dracul’s castle the past June. Fitting, since the guy rarely spoke.

  “Who told you we were coming tomorrow?” I asked. “Krontos?”

  “Why, of course,” said Arso, his warm tone slightly icier.

  “I suppose we should be flattered he cared enough to send you guys to pick us up,” said Roderick. “Sounds like he’s anxious to see us.”

  Words I might’ve offered in the past. Roderick’s subtle taunt brought a slight smile to my face… until I saw the latest dread in Beatrice’s eyes.

  “Don’t flatter yourselves, yet,” said Jevrem, evenly. “Master has not been pleased by your disdain for his warnings.”

  “Is that why he went to the trouble of eliminating the competition in Berlin?” I asked, cheerfully, adding a shit-eating grin I hoped these guys could detect in the car’s dimness. “And here I thought he ruled the world uncontested.”

  “Watch your tongue, Judas!” Arso snapped. “Unless you want a less than cordial greeting when we arrive at our destination, you would be wise to shut the hell up!”

  “Aren’t we touchy.” I chuckled while Beatrice tensed next to me. “By the way, has Krontos upgraded to a new swanky pad, or does he still prefer the medieval dinginess we last visited in… when was it again, Roderick?”

  “Seventeen-ninety-six,” said Roderick, wearily. He hadn’t anticipated where I was going with this, but played along. “And, yes, Judas… we were on our way to visit Comte and Raccczis de St. Germain.”

  “I’m impressed,” said Arso, snickering. “You both once knew the infamous St. Germain brothers? How clever.”

  “Do you know how old your ‘master’ is?” I asked him, while everyone other than Roderick surely wondered what in the hell this thread had to do with anything pertinent to our present circumstances. When he simply glared in my direction, I pressed him further. “No? You wouldn’t even hazard a guess, Arso? Last I checked, you were telling my druid companion and me the two of you shared sorcery skills. Skills that should tell you how long the little old man ruling the world from inside his shit-hole in the Mátra Mountains has been at the game. No guess at all?”

  “Judas… let it go,” pleaded Roderick. Hell, Beatrice, Amy, and Alistair wore mortified looks to match his entreaty. Only Cedric looked amused, likely wondering if a full-on fight was coming while his buzz continued to wane. “He’s just a kid.”

  Nice. An unexpected barb that successfully hit a nerve. Even from where I sat, I could tell Arso’s complexion was heating from anger. Very nice, Roderick!

  “Your ‘master’ was soiling his infant garments by the time both of us—and the St. Germain brothers—had been walking the earth for a few centuries past our first millennium,” I continued, praying my kid especially remained lock-jawed in surprise, and more importantly, silent. “Rod, what do most historians agree was the birth date for Krontos Lazarevic?”

  “There are several dates that have been proposed over the years, the most popular being thirteen-twenty-six, A.D.”

  I couldn’t see Roderick’s expression, but his matter-of-fact tone told me he was completely in tune with what I tried to achieve.

  “And, yet, these clowns knew none of this,” I said, allowing a stronger chuckle than before. “I guess they don’t teach much history in Hungarian schools, or what passes for education in Montenegro, eh?”

  “You, shut the hell up!” shouted Jevrem, reaching for the gun concealed in his coat. “Maybe you would like to join your American friend and the German traitor in a river! Is that what you want, asshole?!”

  Bingo.

  So, we had confirmation as to who killed Thomas Wilburn and Franz Reifenstahl. One less thing for Krontos to play with, should he seek to shift our reality.

  I was beginning to develop a theory about the rules surrounding Krontos’ ability to alter dimensions. Knowledge shared with others might prevent a shift. Yeah, it sounds almost as crazy as the ability to alter reality. But, consider a few interesting facts before dismissing the idea of how knowledge might affect Krontos’ power. Roderick and I shared a reality in Dracul’s castle that remained intact throughout—while Beatrice, Alistair, and Amy had the experience wiped clean and replaced with another. Yet, Roderick and I had virtually nothing wiped. Other than our shared immortal status, what else did we have in common? Nothing. Only the continuous confirmation of the reality we dealt with. Namely, that we were facing death, and never stopped reminding each other about what we were up against. Perhaps the induced strain was another factor.

  Even if my theory were eventually foiled, knowing what happened to Agent Wilburn was important. As long as Jevrem didn’t shoot the two of us, or our family.

&
nbsp; “Hey, man, I wasn’t trying to upset you.”

  “Bullshit, Judas!” shouted Arso.

  Maybe I did push too hard.

  “Look, sorry I was a bit crass,” I confessed. “But, if Krontos wants any cooperation from me, the three of you will need to play nice. Otherwise, I’ll lock down tighter than an iron chastity belt, and he can take out his frustration on each of you instead. How does that sound?”

  The tension didn’t immediately abate, and surely everyone but Roderick thought I had lost my frigging mind by continuing to be an ass. Even he looked nervous as Arso and Jevrem pointed Russian assault rifles at us.

  “AN-94’s, both modified,” Roderick mused softly. His tone was steady and detached. “Impressive.”

  “Well, we could go on about how your Russian neighbors still build superior guns compared to your local gunsmiths, but I believe you guys are far too sensitive to handle such a discussion.” I kept my tone merry and confident, too deep in this shit to back out meekly. That alone could get us riddled with bullets. Cold-blooded killers such as this trio were like sharks, and unlikely to resist a frenzied feast upon frightened blood—their boss’s imminent displeasure notwithstanding. “Why not put your toys away, before you end up angering the sorcerer who created your last employer, Dracul?”

  It was dicey, and perhaps stupid. Certainly there are those out there who would view this latest reckless endangerment of my beloved wife and son—hell, all four mortals—as cause for a stern rebuke. But it wasn’t like we were going to grandmother’s house for Sunday dinner. For all any of us knew, Krontos might well be waiting in the castle driveway, ready to snatch one of the AN-94’s from either Arso or Jevrem and himself mow us down in a shower of bullets.

  In my defense, and based upon my lengthy experience in life, engendering tension among one’s captors has often resulted in me and my allies gaining the upper hand. Arlo and Jevrem slowly lowered their weapons as the debate within raged on, until they finally returned them to the holsters inside their coats.

  “We shall see what Krontos decides,” said Arlo, his tone frigid. “Maybe he will let us participate in your coercion, should you continue to prove difficult to deal with, Judas. If so, we will start with your son and his girlfriend, and move on to your beautiful wife. Only if necessary, of course.”

  He smiled meanly, letting his dead blue eyes linger on each of us before turning his attention back to the road ahead. Jevrem soon followed suit, and neither one spoke a word until we reached the mountains. From that point on, Arlo spoke occasionally by radio to someone else, using an unfamiliar Slavic dialect. Likely one of the older regional dialects. My guess was Krontos taught it to his subjects to keep his dealings with his staff undecipherable to outsiders.

  The Mercedes eventually veered onto a narrow two-lane highway that took us up a mountainside. Near the top, stood the castle of Krontos Lazarevic. Though it had fallen on hard times back by 1796, which made me openly wonder if it was still standing, the fully restored magisterial structure glistened beneath the clear light from a crescent moon. Many of the castle’s rooms were aglow, and for the moment it was impossible to tell if the lamps were candle, gas, or electric.

  “Or aglow by his very will,” said Roderick, glancing at me after barging in on my private musing.

  Beatrice shuddered and drew nearer to me, and I pulled her close to shelter her. Amy scooted closer to Alistair, while Cedric subtly shook his head. Meanwhile, our escorts looked worried, as if they had time to digest my warnings to them, and actually believed it possible that Krontos would be displeased by their behavior. Gajo coasted past an immense marble fountain featuring Poseidon in its center, dormant for the moment, and brought the vehicle to a halt before the main entrance.

  An entourage of butlers, footmen, and maidservants, dressed similarly to the last time we were here, lined both sides of the granite steps leading to the door that lay open. The staff bowed and curtseyed as we all exited the Mercedes, flanked by Arlo and Jevrem, while Gajo followed behind us. I could see the shadow from his rifle, as if he expected us to flee.

  “As they say in America, ‘Here goes nothin’!’” whispered Roderick, smiling slightly as he led the way up the steps.

  Indeed. Perhaps the phrase “Something from nothing will leave you nothing in the end” would be even more apropos. After all, we were dealing with a sorcerer. A sorcerer who knew the secrets of time, dimensional travel, and how to distort reality.

  Chapter Thirteen

  My heart pounded heavily as we stepped into the castle’s grand foyer. When Roderick and I last stopped here, admittedly it was to gloat at Krontos’ ill health. He had somehow ingested an unknown poison. Shamed now that we took solace in this monster’s likely death, we assumed it would happen soon after we viewed his writhing body lying on what amounted to a makeshift, surgical table.

  Like a vampire seized by blood sickness after drinking from a dead body, the poison caused Krontos’ gray eyes to flood crimson—more hideous than the ink-like appearance his eyes would take on in a fit of rage. I would’ve given whoever felled this fiend a handsome sum for taking out one of the cruelest tormentors I had dealt with in my near eighteen-hundred-year-old existence back then. Roderick had suffered nearly as much. If he had died, I might have sought to torture Krontos on his deathbed, severely.

  But we left him in his filth, ignoring his pleas for mercy and to find a certain berry that grew wild in these mountains. It was the thing he claimed could heal his sickness. His servant staff had deserted him—likely because of frequent ill-tempered attacks, both verbally and physically.

  As to who had done the deed, we never found out. Rumor reached me in England two years later that Krontos had recovered from his illness and set out to find the wench who tried to end his life. Nearly ninety years later, when Roderick came to visit me in London, and before Ratibor was revealed to be Jack The Ripper, I considered Krontos to be the culprit—largely from what we heard he had done to the woman who had tried to kill him. The anger driving her to find a poison that would work on this ancient alchemist turned out to be nothing in comparison to the vengeful rage inspiring him to visit a dozen countries in two continents to find her.

  I shuddered as I considered the report on what the police in Brussels found. Only a locket and her status as a previously arrested prostitute served to identify the corpse brutally torn from the inside out.

  “Greetings Judas and Roderick! Welcome to you, Beatrice, Alistair, Amy, and Cedric!”

  The timber of the voice familiar, the power causing it to echo against the foyer’s marble walls and beyond was not. A diminutive figure approached us from the castle’s depths. Dressed in a black robe with the hood pulled back, the lustrous white hair falling onto the figure’s shoulders and the pale gray eyes should have identified who it was. But the slight limp—something he entered eternal life with—confirmed Krontos’ purposeful approach. A much more comely and vibrant version of this immortal than we had encountered before, we faced a difficult task reconciling the vile history with the charisma attendant now.

  “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost, Judas,” he said, upon reaching where we stood, just inside the foyer.

  Alistair and Amy were busy admiring the ring of stained glass windows high above, along with an incredible fresco. More impressive in detail than the ceiling we had seen in the Essene’s Bolivian residence, this one appeared to have been done by an actual master. That’s what Beatrice murmured.

  “Annibale Carracci is the artist,” Krontos announced, proudly. “The scene should be one familiar to you, Judas.”

  The betrayal portrayals I had previously seen were nowhere near as flattering as this one, although it still was far from accurate. Very few artists have caught the essence of what happened that night in Gethsemane, and later at Simon Zelotes’ palatial home.

  “If you had not been in such a hurry to leave me stranded when you and Roderick stopped by on your way to Istanbul, you might have seen this magnificent work
by Carracci!” Krontos enthused. He offered a generous smile. Even his veneers glistened, or the illusion of veneers if what we viewed with our eyes wasn’t actually there. “But, why waste time on old wounds and injustices? I committed them, too. How I long to move on from our past, and let bygones be bygones.”

  The warmth and jovial air were unexpected. Roderick’s perplexed expression confirmed he had the same reaction. Perhaps a tongue-lashing, or worse, was still coming. But for the moment, the warmth in Krontos’ smile and cheerful voice seemed genuine.

  I searched my memory for anything to hint our long awaited reunion would be like this. The last time we had seen the bastard in full health was at a ball, the last one held by Marie Antoinette. Shouting vicious curses at a young peasant woman and her starving child lingering by the palace gates at Versailles…. His eyes back then were black as midnight—as dark as any vampire or other soulless creature Roderick and I had ever laid eyes on.

  Impossible to reconcile that image with the man standing before us. Even as he chastised us for coming to Hungary, instead of staying put in Arizona, he did so with merriment in his tone… and, dare I say, compassion?

  “If I needed you or your coin, I could have taken either or both at any time—you know this by now, no?” said Krontos, chuckling as he led us into a large reception area. The room was opulent as the foyer and grand staircase we passed along the way. Several female servants stood to either side of the room, carrying hot cider and cocoa. All of us waived off the refreshments when approached. “Do not fear me, my friends. I intend you no harm.”

  Of course, none of us took a sip until Krontos gulped down half a glass of each beverage.

  “There… you see? I am still well as you all will be. Drink. Surely you are thirsty and cold within.”