2 The Judas Kiss

by Angella Graff

  “I have no time to explain. I need you to get your brothers up, and we need to pack the home,” Yosef said, not bothering to cover his voice much. “We have to leave.”

  “Where are we going?” Yeshua asked, now awake and attentive.

  “Back home. To Galilee,” Yosef said, his voice heavy and deep with regret.

  I wasn’t sure what that meant for me as I sat there while the sons of Yosef began to scramble to put their most valuable things in sacks. After a few moments, Yosef fixed me with a firm eye. “Are you not intending to help, Makabi?”

  “I wasn’t sure…” I said, trailing off. “What does this mean for me?”

  “You asked me to take you in as one of my own, and I’ve done so. If we leave, you will come with us. Now get to work,” he snapped, but the edge was absent from his voice.

  Flooded with pride and relief, I jumped up and began to grab and pack everything that Yosef pointed to. I wasn’t sure how we were going to carry it all, or how we were going to get to Galilee from Alexandria, but I was ready to go. Armed with packs of items from the home, and my small meager belongings, we started out on the road.

  Yosef had three donkeys to help with carrying the pack, and one to bear Maryam, as she was very swollen with child. The young ones rode from time to time, but it was apparent as the sun beat down on us as we crossed the land, we were walking.

  Some of the land had Roman roads and places to stop along the way. Other times we marched through the desert, hot, thirsting, exhausted, sleeping under the stars, and praying we’d make it alive. I can’t tell you how long it took, only that when Yosef announced that Galilee was in sight, I felt years older, and decades wiser.

  The city we approached was nothing like the place I had called home, and as we passed into the area, I realized that this was nothing short of a slave colony ruled by the Romans. I was nervous, nervous that someone might recognize me, or question me. I was nervous that I didn’t look like a Hebrew, that I was too different from the family who took me in.

  As we approached the city, our pace quickened. Yosef was anxious, staring around at the people watching us behind dreary, exhausted eyes as we trudged through the streets. The youngest was crying now, sitting on the back of the donkey. We were all hungry, tired, and ready to be settled.

  Never had I experienced anything like this journey, crossing the desert, my skin was baked and eyes blurred from the constant barrage of sunlight. The soles of my feet were calloused, thick and cracked, and I had never known hunger or thirst the way I knew it on this journey.

  We were to be staying with the brother of Yosef, a metal smith by the name of Zecharya and his wife Elishiva. They had one son, as we were told, the cousin to Yeshua and Yehuda, by the name of Yochanan who was in Jerusalem, a student learning to become a scribe.

  Yosef explained the life of a Hebrew, the religion and rules to which I was rather unaccustomed. I had never paid much attention to the gods, and the idea of just one taking care of everything in the world was perplexing. The idea that one god determined our fate, our lives, and our deaths, didn’t make sense. But I nodded to him, desperate to show that I could understand and fit in, because for the first time I felt like I belonged, and I needed them. I needed this family.

  As we neared the house of Zecharya, we neared the massive sea, which Yosef said was the sea of Galilee. It was the only way most of the Hebrews here could make their money, through fishing, and it was likely his carpentry business would not bring him the wealth it had in Alexandria.

  “Life will be different here,” Yosef said to Yehuda, Yeshua and me as Maryam ushered the youngest ones into the house. “You are too young to remember what life was like before we left, but it wasn’t easy. Things are not carefree here. The Roman Legion is strict and angry. This is a place where we mourn the loss of our freedom, not celebrate our diversity. Be cautious, my sons, be brave and above all, be quiet.”

  I was absolutely petrified. We settled in while Yosef and Zecharya arranged where we would live, and their start up. The house was far too small for us, but luckily there was a place we could go soon after we arrived. While Yosef did his best to get life started, Yehuda, Yeshua and I learned to adapt.

  There was a man called Cephas there, young but his eyes were dark, wise and scared. He was a kind man, though, learned through the schools at Jerusalem. He was a fisherman, and accepted coins in exchange for teaching Yehuda, Yeshua and I how to fish.

  We learned quickly that he was a good man, Cephas. He had a full belly laugh, told us jokes and taught us well. Before the week was out, the three of us were hauling in nets of fish and steering the boat, something I never thought I would do.

  I felt older here, in Galilee. I was more tired, I worked harder, and it was by my eleventh birthday that I realized everything I had ever known was gone. No longer was I the young Roman lord. No one was searching for me, my mother was dead, and my brothers had forgotten my name. I was Makabi now, without meaning, without a background or culture. I was floating between worlds, hiding with my beloved Hebrews but not part of them.

  Cephas found me one evening sitting on the shores of the sea, my sandaled feet soaking in the warm, gentle waves that rocked back and forth across the sand. The sun was setting, and the boys were helping their father set up shop. I’d been given a reprieve from work, likely from Yosef who had seen how melancholy I’d become, and he allowed me the evening by the water.

  “How old are you?” he asked, the first real personal question anyone had ever asked me.

  “Eleven,” I said. “My birthday just passed.”

  “You’re an Alexandria boy,” he said, pushing a lock of rich, black hair from his eyes.

  “I miss it,” I said to him with a slow nod. “It’s different here. It’s heavier, and more tired, and I miss home.”

  “When I was young,” he said after a long moment of silence, “I went to the east. My head was so big, full of dreams, floating me across the land. I saw many things, many cultures. I saw people worshipping their golden gods, laying fruits to their fat, idols and elephants with four arms. I talked with men of peace and love, and of life and death. When I came back home here to live, to make my family and come back to my people, I felt like you. I felt tired and dark and angry. I missed the richness of the world outside of this little village. I missed the freedom, freedom from the end of the Roman Sword, and the threat of being nailed to a stake, left to die. But there is beauty here, Makabi. Beauty among these people. There is peace and love, and the promise of something amazing, if you only give it the time. These are our people, above all.”

  “But what if these are not my people?” I whispered, terrified that I might let out the secret, but unable to hold it in anymore.

  He looked at me, a glint in his eye from the setting sun, and then he smiled. Leaning in close to me, he gave me a wink and a nod. “Makabi, I know your secret, but let me tell you this. From the moment I met you, I knew that these were your people.”

  It felt like cold water rushing into my face, those words, but by the time I came out of my shock, Cephas had gone, and I was again alone by the water. He knew my secret… but how? How could he know? And how could he assume that I belonged here. I was frightened, but something woke in me that night, a brave sort of something that fueled my body and my breath and from that moment on I worked hard, I studied, I prayed to Yahweh. I stopped thinking of myself as a Roman boy lost in a Hebrew world and I gave myself fully to them. By the time Pesach came and the trip to Jerusalem that would forever change us, I was one of them. I was Makabi, the Hebrew boy and my destiny was sealed.

  Chapter Eleven

  Ben was drunk. Really drunk. The kind of drunk that he really wanted to be in that moment, with the strange girl possessed by Thor, of all ancient gods out there. Thor, the big famous one who, in myth, was the hammer wielding hero, and now self-described president of an ad agency who loved humans.

  Every time Ben thought about that conversation he took a swig from the wine
bottle. They’d replenished their bottle stock three times before Ben finally felt like he could deal with the situation in front of him. He was still having trouble wrapping his mind around Thor being in that petite woman’s body, but secretly he was enjoying the little show the god was putting on of making objects dance around the room, his cigarettes light themselves, and at one point her body actually floated up to sit cross-legged on the ceiling, but that only lasted a moment.

  “This human body is a little too drunk to sustain that kind of energy,” she giggled, rubbing her backside which was sure to have a violent bruise the next morning. She stretched, kicked her legs out into the air a little, and grinned at Ben.

  “So are you going to tell me how that’s even possible?” Ben asked, trying to keep his words together coherently. So far he was doing okay, but he was only a few drinks away from taking his shirt off and wearing a lamp-shade for a hat.

  “Oh it’s simple,” Alex said, waving her hand in the air. She jumped on top of the bed and crossed her legs. “I mean, humans have always called it magic, or powers, or whatever, but it’s not really that. There’s science behind everything, you know.”

  “Everything,” Ben challenged. “So being able to reach inside my brain and snatch out a cancerous tumor by sheer will was science?”

  “I don’t know how Judas’s powers work, why they work that way, and how they got started,” Alex said. “Believe me, I’d love nothing more than to strap him to a table and dissect his brain and find out what makes him tick. But in answer to your question, Benny boy, yes, it can be explained with science.”

  “So these crazy anti-science, anti-evolution nutjobs are wrong?” Ben asked. He eyed the nearly empty pack of cigarettes on the table but stopped himself. His throat was already sore from his chain-smoking, and the last thing he needed was another brush with cancer. He grabbed a bottle of water instead.

  “They are very wrong,” Alex said. She laid back and wiggled her body around until her feet were kicked up on the headboard, her head turned to stare at Ben with her wide, questioning eyes. “I was there for it, you know. When the first cells of bacteria puffed their methane into the developing atmosphere, setting the wheel spinning to introduce oxygen and carbon dioxide, paving the way for beautiful creatures like this pretty little girl here to come around and steal your heart.”

  “I’ve got a girlfriend,” Ben said absently, not really thinking of Stella at all right then, but it was a sort of automatic response. “So what’s the science of being able to make a champagne bottle float around the room?”

  “Matter manipulation,” Alex said with a shrug. She shifted onto her stomach and cupped her chin in her hands. “It’s really simple. You see, we’re all one big mass of energy trapped inside matter. Every single ball of energy vibrates at a certain level. The higher the vibration, the more control over matter we have. It’s not really complicated, and it’s completely organic. I can shift my energy away from me, wrap it around that bottle there,” she paused and Ben looked over to see the now-empty champagne bottle floating a few inches above the table, “and lift it up. It’s the same as doing it with your hand, only I don’t need to use my own matter to do it. I can use my energy. And the more practice with it, the faster you get.”

  “So why can’t humans do it?” Ben demanded. “If, like you said, we’re all big, vibrating balls of energy.”

  “Your evolutionary process,” Alex said. “You’ll get there eventually, just like we did. Soon enough your bodies will become unnecessary and your species as a whole will be ready to move on.”

  Ben was getting a headache trying to contemplate everything she was saying. On one hand, especially since he was drunk, it made complete sense. On the other hand, he was talking to Thor inside of a young English woman’s body and that was just absolutely and completely insane.

  He shook his head and groaned. “Why are we still sitting here?”

  “Unfortunately,” Alex said, now picking at her fingernails, “we’ve gotta wait on Andrew to return, and believe me, I don’t like being stuck in here any more than you do. Truthfully I’d like to be out on that beach half naked watching people watch me. It’s good for business, you know, understanding the psyche of these beach bros. I sell a lot of crap to a lot of people based off of information from social experiments.”

  Ben rolled his eyes and walked to the window, opening it to let some of the smoke out. He was most certainly going to be charged for the cigarette smell at this point, but he resigned himself to his fate. Insane situations with huge hotel bills to follow. He sighed and pressed his forehead against the cool glass, kneading his skin gently from side to side.

  “I know this sucks, okay. I get it. I realize you don’t believe me, but I understand humans a lot better than my compadres do, and I sympathize. I mean hell, you’ve got this whole big burden thing, you had to deal with the death of your sister, which by the way I hope Andrew bothered to tell you that she’s still alive.”

  “He did,” Ben muttered tonelessly. He was in no mood to drudge up that emotional tidal wave right then, and he wanted to move on.

  “Good well, that’s something, then. Andrew doesn’t really have the comprehension of human compassion, so I figured he was a bit rough, or that he’d forgotten completely.”

  “Moving on,” Ben said quietly.

  “Moving on,” Alex said. Ben looked over his shoulder and saw she’d gotten up from the bed and was standing a few feet behind him. “If I had any idea what Nike was up to, I’d stop her, okay? I have a huge stake in this world with no intention of letting that crazy bitch put things upside down. All I know right now is that you and your sister are important, and if we have a shot at ending whatever her madness is all about, it’s because we’ve got you working against her.”

  “And what about Mark and Judas? What’s their whole big deal about this? I get Mark’s weird I can control cults with my words or whatever,” Ben said with only a touch of sarcasm, “but I don’t understand why they need them.”

  “I don’t either,” Alex confessed. She spread her hands out and gave a helpless shrug. “The good news is, Nike loves to talk. She’s a complete moron, really sort of Bond-Villain-y you know, spilling her guts when she thinks she’s won. She thinks she’s really clever, but I’m betting by now she’s spilled everything to Judas and Mark, and what we have on our side…”

  “They can’t die,” Ben finished for her. Whether or not he believed that, he stayed sane by treating the insanity as fact. He was a detective, he functioned on facts, and if he put these clues together like a case, he could keep his head from spinning in violent circles. “So whatever she has planned for them, if we can get to them, we can figure out how to stop her.”

  “Exactly. And if my pally-pal Andrew pulls off what he’s trying to pull off right now, we may have a location on where she’s keeping those two biblical fellows.”

  “And then what?” Ben asked, feeling the alcohol start to wear off and a headache start to form. He grabbed for the water and took a big drink. “Last time we had to blow up an entire goddamn compound to stop her from doing whatever it was she was planning on doing. I don’t exactly have the resources to pull off something like that, and frankly, I don’t want to. Innocent people died. I shot people in the fucking head, for Christ’s sake, and I’m not exactly interested in having a repeat of that incident.”

  Alex looked sad suddenly, her eyes going soft and arms falling to her sides. “I know, and that was terrible, and I don’t want anything like that to happen again. I promise. Last time you didn’t exactly have a cohesive Scooby-Do gang. I mean, you had Asclepius, for god’s sake, the stripper-loving boozer who really doesn’t exist to do anything besides have sex and spend all of Greg’s hard-earned money on over-priced Cuban cigars. And Mark was a little deranged at the time, being all desperate for his friend and what not. This time it’s a little better.”

  “You mean some sociopathic god with no desire to have anything to do with humanity and an a
dvertising exec who’s currently possessing an English nanny?” Ben challenged.

  Alex threw her head back and laughed. “Well when you put it that way…”

  “I guess it’s the best I’ve got,” Ben said. He pulled out his phone and stared at the screen, contemplating calling Stella. He didn’t know what she was up to, or how deeply involved she was, but so far Alex hadn’t warned him off of her, and he took that as a good sign. Depending on what she knew and how strong her god-side could be, Ben wondered if maybe she could help.

  Then again, Ben thought, feeling his body go tense at the very idea, her god side could also be working against them. It may have been Stella’s god-half that was drugging Abby, or worse, tipping off their locations and plans to rescue Abby.

  “That’s not the best idea,” Alex said, startling Ben out of his thoughts. She closed her hand around Ben’s wrist, lightly, but Ben could feel the power and strength behind the grip. “I know what you’re thinking, but until we’re sure about Stella’s intentions, I think we should probably keep her out of this.”

  Ben peered out the window again. They’d been in the room for a few hours now, but the sun was still shining high, and the slight breeze was calling Ben out. He started to feel claustrophobic, and he slipped the phone into his pocket as he fixed Alex with an almost begging stare. “I need a walk.”

  Alex glanced over at the small radio-clock on the nightstand and gave a small shrug. “Andrew will know how to reach me if he needs me. Let’s head down to the water.”

  The hotel they were at was bayside, not a lot of tourists, a few shops, and the sand around the water was rougher, full of broken mussel shells and bits of rock. There were boats at the dock nearby, but Alex led the way down to the shores where families had set up wide beach towels, rainbow colored umbrellas to blot out the sun, and children ran around, playing in the calm, shallow waters trapped in by the long, near-black jetties.

  Ben held his hand to his forehead as he toed off his shoes and kicked them near the low wall. Alex did the same, smiling a little as she slipped her hand into Ben’s warm, clammy palm. “Sweaty palms. Do I make you nervous?”