As he made a tiny correction upon his latest creation, the end of the tweezers quivered, and he tore the delicate forewing, sprinkling iridescent green scales upon the white silk. He uttered a curse that had not been heard since the days of ancient Rome and threw the tweezers to his glass desktop.
He drew in a long breath, searching again for that peace.
It eluded him.
As if on cue, the telephone on his desk rang.
He rubbed his temples with his longer fingers, seeking to work calm into his head from the outside. “Sì, Renate?”
“Father Leopold has arrived in the downstairs lobby, sir.” The bored tone of his beautiful receptionist strummed through the speaker. He had rescued her from a life of sexual slavery on the streets of Turkey, and she repaid him with loyal, yet indifferent, service. In the years he had known her, she had never once expressed surprise. A trait he respected.
“Allow him up.”
Standing, he stretched and walked to the bank of windows behind his desk. His company—the Argentum Corporation—owned the tallest skyscraper in Rome, and his office took up its uppermost floor. The penthouse looked out upon the Eternal City through windowed walls of ballistic glass. Underfoot, the floor was polished purplish-red marble, imperial porphyry, so rare it was found in only one site in the world, an Egyptian mountain the Romans called Mons Porphyrites. It had been discovered during Christ’s lifetime and became the marble of kings, emperors, and gods.
Fifty years before, he had designed and engineered this spire with a world-renowned architect. That man was dead now, of course. But he remained, unchanged.
He studied his reflection. In his natural lifetime, scars from a childhood scourge had pocked his face, but the imperfections had disappeared when the curse of endless years found him. Now he could not remember where those scars had been. He only saw smooth, unblemished skin, a set of small wrinkles that never deepened around his silver-gray eyes, a square rugged face, and a mass of thick gray hair.
Bitter thoughts swept through him. That face had been called many names over the centuries, worn many identities. But after two millennia he had returned to the one his mother had given him.
Judas Iscariot.
Though that name had become synonymous with betrayal, he had come full circle from denial to accepting that truth—especially after discovering the path to his own redemption. Centuries ago, he had finally discovered why Christ had cursed him with immortality.
So he could do what he must do in the coming days.
Shouldering this responsibility, he leaned his forehead against the cool glass. Once he had a manager who was so terrified of falling that he could not stand within six feet of the window.
Judas had no such fear of falling. He had fallen to what should have been his death many times.
He gazed through the glass to the city below, its glittering streets known for its decadence since before the time of Christ. Rome had always been ablaze at night, although white-hot electricity had long replaced the warm yellow fire of torches and candles.
If his plan worked, all those lights would finally go dark.
Glitter and fire were characteristics that modern people thought belonged to them, but man had brightened the world with his will long ago, too. Sometimes for advancement and sometimes triviality.
Standing there, he remembered the sparkling balls he had attended, centuries of them, all the partygoers certain that they had reached the peak of glamour. With his looks and wealth, he had never lacked for invitations, nor for female companionship, but those companions had often demanded more than he had to give.
He had watched too many lovers age and die, dimming any hope of lasting love.
In the end, it had never been worth the price.
Except once.
He had attended a ball in medieval Venice where a woman had caught his eternal heart and showed him that love was worth any price. He stared down at the colored lights of the city until they blurred together and carried him into memory.
Judas paused at the edge of the Venetian ballroom, letting the colors swirl in front of him. Crimson reds, deepest golds, indigos that matched the evening sea, blacks that ate the light, and the pearly radiance of bare shoulders. Nowhere did the women dress as brightly, and display as much skin, as in Venice.
The ballroom looked much as it had one hundred years before. The only changes were the three new oil paintings hung on its stately walls. The paintings depicted stern or jolly members of this Venetian family, each dressed in stylish finery of their day. All were now long dead. At his right hand was a painting of Giuseppe, gone thirty years, his face frozen at forty by the oils and talent of a long dead painter. Giuseppe’s brown eyes, ready always for fun, belied the stern brow and stolid posturing. Judas had known him well, or as well as it was possible to know someone in ten years.
That is all Judas allowed himself to stay in any one city. After that, people might wonder why he did not age. A man who did not wrinkle and die would be called a witch or worse. So he traveled north to south, east to west, in circles that widened as the edges of civilization spread. In some cities he played the recluse, in others the artist, in still others the gadabout. He tried on roles like cloaks. And wearied of each one.
His stylish black leather boots crossed the wooden floor with practiced ease. He knew each creaky board, each almost imperceptible cove. A masked servant appeared with a tray laden with wineglasses. Judas took one, remembering the strength of his long-ago host’s cellar. He sipped, let the flavors caress his tongue—thankfully Giuseppe’s cellars had not gone into decline with his death. Judas emptied the glass and took another.
In his other hand, hidden behind his back, his fingers clutched tightly around a narrow black object.
He had come here for a purpose larger than this ball.
He had come to mourn.
He slipped between masked dancers on his way to the window. The long nose of his mask curved downward like the beak of a crow. The smell of the well-crafted leather from which it was made filled his nostrils. A woman swept by, her heavy scent lingering in the air long after she and her partner had moved away across the floor.
Judas knew these dances and countless more. Later, after more wine, he would join them. He would choose a young courtesan, perhaps another Moor if he could find one. He would try his best to lose himself in the familiar steps.
Fifty years ago, in his last pass through Venice, he had met the most enchanting woman he had seen in his long life. She, too, had been a Moor—dark-skinned, with luminous deep-brown eyes and black tresses that spilled over her bare shoulders to her slender waist. She wore an emerald-green dress with gold trim, pinched in at the waist as was the fashion, but between her breasts, hanging from a slender gold chain around her neck, rested a shard of bright silver, like a piece of a broken mirror, an unusual adornment. The scent of lotus blossoms, a fragrance he had not enjoyed since his last sojourn in the East, lingered around her.
He and the mysterious woman had danced for hours, neither needing a different partner. When she spoke, she had a curious accent that he could not place. Soon he forgot that and listened only to her words. She knew more than anyone he had ever met—history, philosophy, and the mysteries of the human heart. Serenity and wisdom rested in her slim form, and he wanted to borrow her peace. For her, perhaps, he might find a way to rejoin the simple cares of mortal men.
After the dancing, at this very same window, she had raised her mask that he might see the rest of her face, and he had lifted his as well. He had gazed at her in a silent moment more intimate than he had ever shared with another. Then she had handed him her mask, excused herself, and disappeared into the crowd.
Only then did he realize that he did not know her name.
She never returned. For more than a year he had searched Venice for her, paid ridiculous sums for incorrect information. She was the granddaughter of a doge. She was a slave from the Orient. She was a Jewish girl who escaped from the g
hetto for a night. She was none of those.
Heartbroken, he fled the city of masks and strove to forget her in the arms of a hundred different women—some dark as Moors, others fair as snow. He had listened to a thousand stories from them, helped some and forsaken others. None had touched his heart, and he left them all before he had to confront their aging and deaths.
But now he had returned to Venice to banish her from his thoughts, fifty years after he had danced with her across these floorboards. By this time, he knew, she was likely dead, or a wizened and blind old woman who had long forgotten their magical night. All he had left of it himself was his memory and her old leather mask.
He turned the mask over in his hands now. Black and glossy, it was a thick flat ribbon of leather that slashed across her eyes, with a tiny paste jewel glittering near the corner of each eye. A daring design, its simplicity at odds with the ornate masks worn by the women of those times.
But she had needed no further adornment.
He had returned to these bright halls to cast that dark mask into the canal tonight and banish her ghost to the library of his past. Gripping the old leather, he glanced out the open window. Below, a gondolier poled his slim craft through the dark water, ripples lit silver by moonlight.
Beyond the canal’s banks, figures hurried across stone tiles or over bridges. People on mysterious errands. People on everyday ones. He did not know, did not care. Like everything else, it wearied him. For one moment, he had believed that he might find connection, until she left.
Reluctant now to part with it, he stroked the mask with his index finger. It had rested in the bottom of his trunk for years, wrapped in the finest silk. At first he’d been able to smell the scent of lotus blossoms, but even that had faded. He brought the mask now to his nose and sniffed—one last time—expecting to inhale the odors of old leather and cedar from his trunk.
But the scent of lotus blossoms bloomed instead.
He turned his head, fearful of looking, the movement so slow that he would not startle even a timorous bird. His heart thumped in his ears, so loud that he expected the sound to draw all eyes to him.
She stood before him, unmasked and unchanged, her serene smile the same as a half century before. The mask slipped from his fingers to the floor. His breath held in his throat. Dancers swirled around, but he remained motionless.
It could not be.
Could this be the same woman’s daughter?
He dismissed this possibility.
Not with such an exact likeness.
A darker thought intruded. He knew of the ungodly beasts that shared his march through time, as undying as himself, but of craven bloodlusts and madness.
Again he banished this prospect from his mind.
He could never forget the heat of her body through her velvet dress when he danced with her.
So what was she? Was she cursed like him? Was she immortal?
A thousand questions danced in his head, replaced finally by the only one that truly mattered, the question he had failed to ask fifty years ago.
“What is your name?” he whispered, afraid to shatter the moment into shards like the one that she wore around her slender neck.
“This evening, it is Anna.” Her voice sounded with the same, queer accent.
“But that is not your real name. Will you share it with me?”
“If you will.”
Her glittering brown eyes looked long into his, not flirting, instead assessing his measure. He slowly nodded his agreement, praying she would find him worthy.
“Arella,” she said in hushed tones.
He repeated her name, matching her voice syllable for syllable. “Arella.”
She smiled. She had probably not heard her name spoken aloud by another in many mortal lifetimes. Her eyes sought his, demanding he settle the promised price for learning her one true name.
For the first time in a thousand years, he said his aloud, too.
“Judas.”
“The cursed son of Simon Iscariot,” she finished, looking unsurprised, wearing only a faint smile.
She held out a hand toward him. “Would you care to dance?”
With secrets revealed, their relationship began.
But those secrets hid others, deeper and darker.
Secrets without end, to match each eternal life.
Oversize doors swung open behind him, reflected in the window, drawing him back from ancient Venice to modern-day Rome. Judas tapped his fingers against the cold ballistic glass, wondering what the medieval Venetian glassblowers would have made of it.
In the reflection, he watched Renate stand framed in the doorway. She wore a mulberry-colored business suit and a brown silk top. Even though she had grown from a young woman to middle-aged in his service, he found her attractive. He realized suddenly that it was because Renate reminded him of Arella. His receptionist had the same brown skin and black eyes, the same calm.
How have I not seen this before?
The blond monk stepped into the room behind her, wearing a face much younger than his years. Nervous, the Sanguinist pinched the edge of his small spectacles. His round face fell into lines of worry that looked out of place on one so youthful, betraying a hint of the hidden decades behind that smooth skin.
Renate left and soundlessly closed the door.
Judas waved him forward. “Come, Brother Leopold.”
The monk licked his lips, smoothed the drape of his simple hooded brown robe, and obeyed. He passed the fountain and came to a stop in front of the massive desk. He knew better than to sit without being told.
“As you ordered, I took the first train from Germany, Damnatus.”
Leopold bowed his head, using an ancient title that marked Judas’s past. The Latin roughly translated as the condemned, the wretched, and the damned. While others might take such a title as an insult, Judas wore it with pride.
Christ had given it to him.
Judas shifted a chair behind his desk, returning to his workspace, and sat. He kept the monk waiting as he focused his attention back on his earlier project. With deft and practiced skill, he unclipped the forewing he had ripped earlier and dropped it onto the floor. He opened his specimen drawer and removed another luna moth. He detached its forewing and used it to replace the one he had damaged, returning his creation to flawless perfection.
Now he must repair something else that was broken.
“I have a new mission for you, Brother Leopold.”
The monk stood silent in front of him, with the stillness that only Sanguinists could attain. “Yes?”
“As I understand it, your order is certain that Father Korza is the prophesied Knight of Christ and that this American soldier, Jordan Stone, is the Warrior of Man. But there remains doubt as to the identity of the third figure mentioned in the Blood Gospel’s prophecy. The Woman of Learning. Am I to understand that it is not Professor Erin Granger, as you originally surmised during the quest for Christ’s lost Gospel?”
Leopold bowed his head in apology. “I have heard such doubts, and I believe that they may be true.”
“If so, then we must find the true Woman of Learning.”
“It will be done.”
Judas pulled a silver razor from another drawer and sliced the tip of his finger. He held it over the moth he had constructed of metal and gossamer wings. A single shiny drop of blood fell onto the back of his creation, seeping through holes along the thorax and vanishing away.
The monk stepped back.
“You fear my blood.”
All strigoi did.
Centuries ago, Judas had learned that a single drop of his blood was deadly to any of these damned creatures, even those few who had converted to serve the Church as Sanguines.
“Blood holds great power, does it not, Brother Leopold?”
“It does.” The monk’s eyes darted from side to side. It must trouble him to be close to something that could put an end to his immortal life.
Judas envied him his fe
ar. Cursed by Christ with immortality, he would have sacrificed much to have the choice to die.
“Then why did you not tell me that the trio is now bonded by blood?”
Judas slid careful fingers under his creation. It shook itself to life in his palm, powered by his own blood. The whirring of tiny gears vibrated, barely audible under the fountain. The wings rose up and came together on its back, then extended out straight.
The monk trembled.
“Such a beautiful creature of the night, the simple moth,” Judas said.
The automaton flapped its wings and lifted from the bed of his palm. It slowly circled his desk, its wings catching every mote of light and casting it back with every beat.
Leopold followed its path, plainly wanting to flee but knowing better.
Judas lifted his hand, and the moth came again to light atop Judas’s outstretched fingertip. Its metal legs brushed light as spider silk against his skin.
“So very delicate, yet of immense power.”
The monk’s eyes fixed on the bright wings, his voice trembling. “I’m sorry. I did not think it mattered that Rhun had fed upon the archaeologist. I . . . I thought that she was not the true Woman of Learning.”
“Yet, her blood flows in Rhun Korza’s veins and—thanks to your ill-advised blood transfusion—the blood of Sergeant Stone now flows in hers. Do you not find such happenstance strange? Perhaps even significant?”
Obeying his will, the moth rose again from Judas’s finger and flitted around the office. It danced across the currents of air just as Judas had once danced around the ballrooms of the world.
The monk swallowed his terror.
“Perhaps,” Judas said. “Perhaps this archaeologist is the Woman of Learning after all.”
“I am sorry—”
The moth descended out of the air and settled to the monk’s left shoulder, its tiny legs clinging to the rough cloth of his robe.
“I tried to kill her tonight.” Judas toyed with the tiny gears on his desk. “With a blasphemare cat. Do you imagine that such a simple woman could elude such a beast?”
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